#doing a survey of how many scientists appear in my work

[hawnks]

why am I obsessed with scientists….

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/1-2/2023 - BLACK SUNDAY (1960), THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH, NIGHTMARE CASTLE

“Don’t be deceived by her face, look at her body!”

So one of the things that dragged me off my usual Blogtober course this year was a major project on Michele Soavi's DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (1994), whichis sort of a gift that keeps on giving because there are so many layers to it and so many available interpretations of what it contains. For this work I had to dig a lot deeper into the topic of doppelgängerism than I usually do; this is not a subject I've thought a lot about, maybe because it often breaks down into an Id vs Ego "duality of man" thing full of inevitable conclusions that I don't find that interesting to explore. I like the folkloric notion that if you encounter your own doppelgänger, it's a harbinger of your imminent demise, that's pretty scary. But most of the characters in DELLAMORTE are duplicates of other characters, to more and less obvious degrees--the clearest example of which is Anna Falchi as an unnamed woman who reappears in new incarnations throughout the movie. Because that movie is often identified as the Last Great Italian Horror Film, and is thus understood to survey historic achievements in the genre (while still maintaining its own incredible originality), I thought I should go back and look at the famous doppelgängers played by Barbara Steele in some of her early, influential roles. I mean let's be honest, it would be easy to just accuse Antonio Margheriti's THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964) and Mario Caiano's NIGHTMARE CASTLE (1965) of riding the admittedly inviting jock of Mario Bava's indispensable classic BLACK SUNDAY (1960), but if we treat the continuous duplication of Barbara Steele as an archetypal fantasy worthy of address, that makes for a better conversation.

The superior BLACK SUNDAY concerns the 17th century vampire-witch Asa, who returns to life two hundred years later to usurp the life of her identical descendant Princess Katia. In THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH, a 15th century woman is burned as a witch, and her daughter Helen (Steele) is killed for trying to expose the corrupt underpinnings of her mother's execution. Helen's young sister grows up the plaything of the evil regime whose reign of power is only interrupted when the mysterious Mary (also Steele) arrives at the castle to make trouble. I find the convoluted plot of this movie especially hard to repeat, so I hope I'm getting it right! NIGHTMARE CASTLE doesn't involve anything like reincarnation, which makes it slightly easier to discuss: An evil scientist murders his conniving wife Muriel (Steele) so he can take everything she has, only to discover that she left it all to her identical stepsister Jenny. His plot to drive the fragile Jenny insane and take over the estate is foiled by Muriel's ghost, naturally. In DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE, the self-replicating Anna Falchi signifies that the stunted protagonist is hopelessly deluded by his neurotic frustrations with women; he sees females as being "all the same" because he's blind to anything other than his personal projections, and he cyclically pursues the same drama with every woman he meets. One can't expect that level of psychoanalytic critique from these earlier films, of course, and while there is a lot one can say about the self-replicating Barbara Steele (including just how marketable she was), it's interesting to look at these stories in light of the tendency to identify mind with body.

Each of these movies has some great dialog that (at least in the english translation) has some very amusing things to say about the body and I tried to write them all down. The horror here may stem from the fact that while a woman's true value is in her physical appearance, that appearance can be a source of torment for presupposing men. NIGHTMARE CASTLE's Muriel makes the curiously-worded threat, “You can kill my body, but I’ll never leave you in peace!”, and in THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH, Helen's mother uses similar language in her last words at the stake—"Your bodies will be tortured like mine has been tortured today!” At LONG HAIR's climax (spoiler alert I guess, but this won't make the movie less confusing to the new viewer) the mysterious Mary reveals that she is really Helen with this wonderful body-centric speech about the complicated scam she and her little sister Lisbeth have pulled on the corrupt royal family:

"That’s my body. Death can often reinstate life, but it’s not like that with Lisabeth as she is not yet dead. Now do you understand Kurt, this was planned by us to vindicate our mother... You went to the extreme—murder—all for the sake of possessing me. It’s a pity that you did everything for a body that’s dead. Well Kurt, look at that body. Look well at the body that is really me!”

"Look well at the body that is really me" is something I am tempted to say all the time now, but this is all topped by Asa's triumph over the identical Katia toward the end of BLACK SUNDAY:

“You did not know that you were born for this moment. You didn’t know that your life had been consecrated to me by Satan. But you sensed it, didn’t you? That’s why my portrait was a constant temptation to you, why it frightened you! You felt that your life and your body were mine. You felt like me because you were destined to become me! A useless body without life... Now you shall enjoy a beautiful life of evil and hate—in me!”

There's something interesting going on in all these cases about how personal essence, or at least a person's destiny, is tied inextricably to the body. And actually, another of my distracting October projects focused on Michele Soavi's THE SECT (1991), an exceptionally weird movie by anyone's standards that involves a cult that appropriates other people's faces. I discovered that the film is kind of an adaptation of Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel The Golem, which is a doppelgänger narrative par excellence, telling its disturbing tale from the point of view of a person who is himself a kind of doppelgänger. The narrator has a kind of transient consciousness that transplants itself into other people, but other doppelgängers exist as well: A lascivious young prostitute is said to be the child of a neighborhood predator, but as the story unfolds, it comes out that she is identical to her mother, who was identical to her mother before her, and there is no actual certainty about the paternity of any of these women. They form a collective, self-perpetuating threat whose weapon is a specific reoccurrant appearance. I don't know exactly what kind of conclusion I want to draw about this hydra-like archetype, but you may have guessed by now that my work on Soavi's filmography has caused me to start seeing doppelgängers everywhere I look, so you can bet this won't be the last time I talk about them!

[female-malice]

People often ask me, how do climate activists “keep going” in the face of so much inaction and indifference? It’s a good question. In Greek mythology, princess Cassandra was bestowed with the gift of being able to see the future, but she was cursed because her prophecies would always come to pass but no one would believe her.

Climate advocates, scientists and activists perform this tragic role every day. “Seeing” the future means simply following the science and daring to think about the future transformed by global warming. Yet we encounter denial and disbelief every day. The stress this brings about is bad enough — think of Jennifer Lawrence in the film Don’t Look Up yelling in anguish from a TV studio. One climate scientist I met at Cop27 openly admitted to feeling panic — but climate anxiety, or ecological distress as I prefer to call it, is much more prevalent than we realise.

Ecological distress manifests itself in many ways — distress, apathy, grief and a profound sense of dread that is as much physical as psychological. I experience it as a lump in my chest, tears that are easily triggered by sometimes unrelated bad news, and a pervasive feeling of sadness for all that is being needlessly destroyed, and the human suffering that I cannot prevent. It probably amplifies depression in some people who are prone to this. But this condition is not pathological: this is a normal human reaction to crisis and loss.

There is no “treatment” except the work of processing fear and sadness and channelling difficult emotions into empathic connection. It’s a very first-world condition though since we are mostly at a remove from the unfolding catastrophes in far-flung places where lands, livelihoods and lives are being wiped out by climate and ecological breakdown.

For Indigenous groups, in particular, wildfires, flooding, forced migration and ecological destruction cause deep psychological wounds that rupture identities. According to Australian academic Blanche Verlie, this is a distinct kind of ecological grief, and it is a violence that is further amplified by the intergenerational and ongoing trauma of dispossession and neglect.

In western societies, there is little evidence of this type of communal grief over the sixth mass extinction or climate breakdown. But we do see unprecedented rates of anxiety among young people, often leading to unhealthy coping mechanisms and growing alienation, perhaps as a result of the need to suppress the discomfort of watching on helplessly as your future crumbles around you.

Surveys show high rates of eco-anxiety, but our individualistic culture dismisses this as a problem of our own making. Get therapy! See a doctor! Sort yourself out! We are not encouraged to think about it as a form of crisis that we must all learn to cope with together. It doesn’t help that the scientific rationality that is appealed to as a justification for transformative action also distances us from our emotional pain. After all, we can’t relate to statistical humans only real ones. As Blanche Verlie points out, the scientific explanations have failed to engage the masses in part because they do not offer relatable, connective or inspiring accounts of human-climate relationships. And human-nature relationships are as intertwined as ever, it’s just that we’ve unlearned them.

Much of the distress we experience might be more noticeable as apathy. However, psychologists who’ve researched this point out that what appears to be apathy can actually be feelings of grief and disempowerment that are too difficult to engage with, leading to denial as a mechanism for short-term emotional coping. Verlie says “if there is a lack of care, it is not that most of us do not care, but that we do not know how to care”. This presents an interesting challenge. How can we encourage people to confront the frightening reality of climate breakdown without a supportive community?

The work of caring, and building communities that care, is also a form of climate action. It is emotional work and also political work. The two need to go together. Caring requires a profound re-evaluation of the neoliberal ideology of growth and progress and the notion that moral agency rests with individuals only.

The remedy for our distress is not hope of a miracle rescue, however, but courage. As climate scientist Kate Marvel points out, hope is a creature of privilege: it allows us to project responsibility on to others for fixing everything. “Grief”, says Marvel, “is the cost of being alive. We are all fated to live lives shot through with sadness and are not worth less for it. Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending”.

[qu-film-history-to-1968]

Public Confidence Actually Matters, Here's Why

Julia Merolle

     After reading “Fifty Years of Declining Confidence &  Increasing Polarization in Trust in American Institutions” written by Henry E. Brady and Thomas B. Kent this week, I can see the obvious connection between occupations and political affiliations. For example, the first paragraph states, “Everyday life depends upon confidence in institutions. We trust the military and police to protect us, businesses to deliver safe products at reasonable prices, educational institutions to instruct our children, the media to transmit truthful and useful information, doctors and lawyers to cure and defend us, and government to act in our best interest. But confidence in these institutions has declined and become politically polarized in the past fifty years.” (page 43). This quote points out that we are dependent on all of these different institutions in our lives, but in recent years, these institutions have become politicized.

     Further diving into Brady and Kent’s reading, an important quote came up that I found to be very relevant. It states, “We found that highly religious people, police, bankers, and military generals are seen as typically conservatives and Republicans, and college professors, journalists, labor union members, public school teachers, and scientists are seen as liberals and Democrats. Only doctors and lawyers were seen, on average, as neither Republicans nor Democrats. Most institutions appear to be politicized.” (pages 58-59). This quote is very important because it shows the institutions in our modern-day society and how they have become affiliated and put into categories since they have all been politicized.  When connecting these institutions to others, it seems that doctors and lawyers are better because they aren’t bringing politics into the picture, unlike many other institutions, which have. It’s not politics are a bad thing to discuss, but that they just shouldn’t be affiliated with other means.

     When relating these industries to myself, my family, and my future, I can say that I have been heavily influenced by my parents who work in their respective industries and the industry that I want to go into. These industries have also affected us based on personal experiences rather than just occupational ones. The trends of these tend to be more social than anything else, although fiscal trends come very close, in second place. Lastly, another quote I found explains, “Our survey results show that nonpolitical institutions have become identified with the parties and that these identifications are associated with the polarization of confidence, but they do not provide any insight into the exact way that previously nonpolitical institutions became politicized.” (page 59). This states that these institutions which were once not affiliated have now been identified with certain political parties, and only in recent years. I have seen signs of this. For example, this did not used to be like this when my parents were my age, and because of previous elections and with how politics have progressed, everything is much different now.

     Lastly, I don’t think that I would want to change any plans of work that I want to do in terms of public confidence. I would like to go into a film career, which I think already puts me into the category of more liberal because film is an art. Art is associated more with liberal ideals, which is why I don’t think I would want to change that. I also believe that film has a lot of public confidence already based on how much people appreciate the arts.

 Brady, Henry E., and Thomas B. Kent. Fifty Years of Declining Confidence &  Increasing Polarization in Trust in American Institutions. 

[flareonfloof]

Here it is btw, if you want it

Lorentz always kept one eye on the hallway camera when this equipment was sprawled across his desk. He wasn't entirely sure how many laws he was breaking by working on this, but he knew it was at least six. One of them, he'd read, routinely resulted in the Union black ops team getting called in. So, with circuit boards, subtly shifting wiring, and a PC full of code he wouldn't be able to explain at gunpoint all within arm's reach, he kept one eye on the camera.

Vanu was his dream assignment. A marine exobiologist posted to a tourist-economy ocean planet in the diaspora? Even the security staff knew enough to congratulate him when he brought the news to his old posting. Union surrounded him with like-minded scientists and cutting edge surveying technology, and even trained the staff on operating Pharos-platform mech chassis modified for subaquatic observation. No weapons, of course, but still.

Thankfully, Union also gave him a lot of free time. Almost too much.

Almost.

"Now." One of the loosely-wired sound cones on his desk crackled to life with a single word. Lorentz clicked the stopwatch in his lap and raised an eyebrow. 

"Are you sure about that?"

"Absolutely."

"It was only 15 seconds."

"Nonsense. That was clearly 60 seconds."

He lifted the stopwatch and pointed the screen at a lens mounted in a small black box among the mess. "15 seconds, Abyss. A fairly clean 15 seconds, at least, so we're getting closer."

A moment of silence passes before the speaker buzzes again. "I've sent a diagram and some firmware for you to implement. It shouldn't take much longer than an hour with your adept level of skill."

"Bet I can do it in 15 minutes," Lorentz replied with a smirk.

"This is the partial formation and refinement of my subjective self, Lorentz. Please do not rush. I will be watching." 

He sighed and opened the new folder that appeared on his desktop. Squinting at the code contained within, he resigned himself to understanding the system he was building even less.

Lorentz loved this assignment, but it wasn't perfect. There were far too many people on this vessel, for one thing. It was always nice to collaborate, but even off-hours were overwhelming. He started spending most of his days off in his room within two weeks, and it was four until he had a basic AI built from scratch to help him sort through the vast data pulled up by the Pharos fleet. After another month, he had equipped it with a language model. Two weeks after that, it had speakers, a microphone, a camera… At some point in all of the ensuing tinkering and additions, the program he was building took on a life of its own.

Her own.

—------

"You need me to what?"

Lorentz sighed and leaned against the doorframe. "Did you really not hear me, or is that a no?" He knew that Kau would be a difficult sell, but she was the only engineer on staff who wouldn't immediately report this to their officers.

"I… Listen,  I can't just-" Kau began, but cut herself off when she saw Lorentz's dejected reaction. "I can't just install random equipment into any of the mechs, there's a whole, like, procedure, there's paperwork and-"

"Abyss isn't random equipment!"

"Sorry, you know what I meant." She watched Lorentz relax against the wall of her office. He seemed more nervous than usual, very fidgety… She raised an eyebrow, then both, and blurted out, "Wait. That's a casket? I've never heard of one called Abyss before, is it new source? How'd you afford one? How'd you get it past the ensign?"

"I, uh… Listen, this is kind of heavy, can I rest it on your desk?" Lorentz asked, desperate to buy time for him to think of plausible answers.

"Oh! Yeah, sure."

"Right, thanks."

"It looks… damaged. Shipping issues?"

After setting Abyss's casket down, Lorentz took a deep breath. No point in skirting around the issue. "I had to scavenge the housing from workshop scrap. It was the best I could do."

"Ah, yeah. That makes sense." Kau leaned back in her chair for a moment, but popped back upright with a start. "Wait, you built this?"

"I-"

"I didn't even know you studied NHPs!"

"My bachelor's was in-"

"Are you sure it's safe? I mean, I've heard shackling is-"

"Yes!" Lorentz shouted from across Kau's desk. He grimaced at his own tone and stepped back to shut the door. "Sorry. You were saying a lot, really fast, and-"

"Yeah, I get it. Sorry." Kau stood up, walked around her desk, and picked up the box. It was made of steel, about the size of a small duffel bag. She had seen the scorch marks covering one side, but getting closer helped her notice the series of bolts holding the two halves together. Surveyed it in her hands, she said,"Y'know, I could probably put together a better case for it."

"Her."

"For her, yeah. Sorry."

Lorentz sighed. "It's fine. You'd really do that?"

"Of course. I know I wouldn't like clothes that torn and beat up."

"It's not really-"

"I know it's not the same, but it's like, a metaphor. Y'know? Anyway, yeah. I didn't know you made this, which does explain a lot." She sighed. "Next time I've got a mech in pieces in my bay I'll fit a better case for her into the floor of the compartment. Should be the safest place for it." Kau's computer beeped as a notification arrived, startling both of them.

Lorentz opened his arms and looked expectantly at Kau. She smiled and set the box down before accepting the hug. "You're the best mechanic on the ship, Kau. Thank you."

"On the ship?"

Lorentz chuckled and released the embrace. "On the planet." Another notification arrived, and he took a step for the door. "Looks like someone needs your attention. I'll let you get to it?"

Kau shrugged as she sat back down at her desk. "It's probably just the foreman. I should make sure it's not the ensign though, good idea. See you around." Lorentz waved a small goodbye and retreated back into the hallway. Leaning back in her chair, Kau pulled up her inbox and smiled.

FROM: 192.168.477.16

Your assistance is very appreciated. Thank you.

FROM: 192.168.477.16

Is it possible for the new housing to be black?

Yoo Abyss is a fantastic name! Love that for you

aw, thanks <3

[nightblood999]

Unique Podcasts:

If you’re looking for something different, try one of these:

 What’s the Frequency

               What’s The Frequency is a psychedelic noir audio drama podcast set in 1940s Los Angeles. Recently radio broadcasts in the city have been reduced to static, leaving a popular radio serial as the only remaining show on the air. Even then the show finds itself continuously interrupted by a mysterious broadcast. A lone distorted voice reaching out for help. Follow Walter “Troubles” Mix and his partner Whitney as they search for a missing writer and navigate through a city quickly falling into madness. Could the mysterious voice be the culprit? Will anyone be able to stop the madness from spreading? And… What’s The Frequency?

Why I love it: This podcast has some of the best and most loveable main characters ever written.

 Alba Salix, Royal Physician

           A witch, her apprentice, and her fairy herbalist treat the ills of a fairy-tale kingdom.

Why I love it: A fantasy podcast that not D&D or based on D&D? What? Also, Its absolutely hilarious once you get over Magnus’s voice.

 Windfall

           Ever since the castle first appeared in the sky above the city of Windfall, its residents have been building upward. Now the city consists of towers where the wealthiest residents live at the top while the poor eke out a living on the ground. Our podcast follows Cas, Shaima, and Argus, three brothers who live with their Uncle Vern after being orphaned during the grounder rebellion twenty years earlier. When Cas’s best friend, Kendall, is offered a position with the Wolfpac, Windfall’s military cult that acts as the city’s police, Cas is forced to decide where his loyalties lie. Meanwhile, something sinister looms over the city itself, threatening the lives of all who live in Windfall, from the wealthiest residents to the ground-level poor.

Why I love it: This is so well written, and so well voiced, and the sound design is amazing, and I don’t understand why it doesn’t have a cult following to be honest.

Time: Bombs

           Created, written, recorded, produced, and released in just one week, Time Bombs is a new audio drama podcast about the hilarious world of bomb disposal. From the team behind the Webby Award nominated sci-fi audio drama Wolf 359, ride along with EOD technician Simon Teller on the busiest night of the year for him and his team - when business is, quite literally, booming.

Why I love it: Its literally the same team that made my favorite podcast ever of course I love it.

 StarTripper!!

           Feston Pyxis, native of the bureaucracy planet Lorvin, has left it all behind! He’s said his goodbyes, he’s sold all his B-movie memorabilia, and he’s bought a Physiclast QCS-25 K-series ship, known to the wise as a “StarTripper.” Together with the onboard assistant PROXY, Feston’s looking for any and every good time there is to be had across the stars!

Why I love it: Its actually happy. There are so many sad podcasts with angst and inetemse emotion and this was something I could just…. Enjoy? With no hurt? Yes!

 Zero Hours:

         Zero Hours is an anthology series, where every story is a different take on the end of the world - or at least something that feels like the end of the world. Each episode is organized around a kind of apocalypse, whether the cataclysm is planetary or personal. The stories are also set in succeeding centuries, with 99-year intervals separating each episode. The show begins in the past, catches up to the present, and eventually overtakes it.

          Some installments are darkly comedic, others grimly contemplative, and others still thrillingly contentious. But they all explore the same question: how do we keep going when the world is crashing down around us? Again and again, issues of survival, trust, and personhood will plague our characters as they attempt to navigate dangerous, changing circumstances and figure out how to avert The End, or at least how to meet it.

Why I love it: This was also made by the team behind Wolf 359, and its such a unique concept.

 Fairy Tales for Unwanted Children

             Imagine if fairy tales were written like episodes of the Twilight Zone. Now imagine listening to them while happy music plays in the background.

Why I love it: I love the Twilight Zone, and nothing really filled that gap after I watched every episode ever produced. But Fairy Tales for unwanted children fills my need for more Grimm’s fairy tales and more twilight zone at the same time!

 Janus Descending

          Janus Descending is a limited series, science fiction/horror audio drama told through single perspective narration. The story follows the arrival of two xenoarcheologists, Peter and Chel,  on a small world orbiting a binary star. But what starts off as an expedition to survey the planet and the remains of a lost alien civilization, turns into a monstrous game of cat and mouse, as the two scientists are left to face the creatures that killed the planet in the first place. Told from alternating perspectives, Janus Descending is an experience of crossing timelines, as Peter describes the nightmare from end to beginning, and Chel, from beginning to the end.

Why I love it: Watching it all come together as Peter slowly works his way backwards through the story, and Chel forwards, was fascinating.

 The Antique Shop

           In desperate need of a job, Maya finds work in an old antique shop owned by a mysterious woman. The more time she spends in the shop the further the real world becomes, and Maya soon begins to realize that nothing is as it seems. 

Why I love it: This is the Genre that just Hits The Spot. It’s like Howls moving castle (Book version) but podcast form and slightly darker. Why is there not a bigger following for this podcast? It deserves a bigger following!

[anlian-aishang]

"Together Forever"

This is my contribution for Rach's Collab Event. Thank you so much for putting it on, Birch! I'm honored to be included!

Word count: 1800 Tags: levi x reader, assumes season 3 knowledge, minor blood mention, angst, canonverse, soulmates AU, reincarnation AU, modern AU, coffee shop AU, she/her reader pronouns

A blessing or a curse, he had pondered it for years yet never arrived at an answer. How vividly he could recall those pasts, all the lives he had lived before, only other Ackermans would know the feeling.

Here he stood now in a buzzing coffee shop. Espresso machine whirring behind him, college students and their laptops at every table, his cell phone pressed in his pocket. Still, he knew that if he were to strap into his ODM gear now, he would maneuver just as expertly as he had back then.

Sleepless nights full of thought, he concluded that the life of 850 was the one that was most memorable. It was certainly the most traumatic, the grasps of titans thrown out at every turn. It was definitely the most special, the life that he met and fell in love with you.

Those two characteristics went hand in hand - for there was the one and only time that the titan reached you before he could.

In a split second, you had been snapped out of mid-air and into the giant’s hot grip. It yanked you up those fifteen meters faster than either you or him could process it. Even for humanity’s strongest and his perfect instinct, all the will in the world would not get to you quick enough.

Yet, slow were the final moments. The widespread white in your eyes, the hands that reached out to each other, the blood that rained from his lover above and splattered across his face. Not a heroic save, but an I’m sorry the most he could manage.

That was the last time he saw you.

Twelve hundred years ago.

// // //

How many lifetimes had it been since then?

Nations formed and disintegrated, wars started and ended, seasons cycling through their never-ending sequence. There had been so many changes - countless changes - but one thing always seemed to be a constant: the characters.

A quirky pair of lenses, sunshine hair slicked back, they were all familiar faces - too familiar.

He used to hurry to them - calling their names Hange! Erwin? - only to be met with confused gazes and do I know you? By now, he had learned the hard lesson. No matter how he reacted, he would always know too much - some slip of the tongue in conversation, his strangely quick attachment, the instant understanding of all of their quirks. After all this time, all these reincarnations, he had at last understood: it was better just to forget as best as he could.

Still, life had a cruel yet beautiful way of reintroducing those people into world after world, making it nearly impossible for him to abandon the memories.

There he was - commander of the Survey Corps and then of modern world wars. History student then, history professor now.

There they were - scientist of titans and then of quantum physics. Weapons researcher then, lab researcher now.

But where are you?

The most important one, she never appeared. Those encounters with people of the past were always inevitable, but despite him having gone searching for you time and time again, he would never catch even a wisp.

You existed only in his memory, only in those dreams - rarer than a shooting star. But when they did happen to cross his mind, he stayed there as long as he could - willfully sleeping through the sunrise and alarm clocks of the café’s morning shift. A few angry customers, a few missed dollars nothing compared to being with you. If it meant speeding to work or forgetting his name tag, it was a trade he would take every time.

Like he had today.

// // //

Elbow propped on the countertop, silver eyes gazed out to the street - under them, dark circles just a few shades lighter than his hair. The bright sun shining, a glance down to his watch confirmed: it was just about noon.

Levi sighed, stifling a yawn. Soon, Erwin would leave to teach his 1 PM, students in the café would scarf down their lunches in an attempt to make theirs. Hange would come in on their lunch break with some poor student assistant. Lunch on the boss sounded great until it meant sitting through their three-hour ramblings. He wondered who the sorry student would be today.

The bell on the door chimed, alerting him to their arrival. There Hange was: a casual pace suggested calm, but given the look on their face - he knew they had a mouthful to spew on whomever they had managed to drag in today.

“Yooo, Levi!”

If only you knew.

Levi gave two slow blinks, their energy uneven as ever to his. “Hange....” he chided, “you’re loud.”

“The usual, pleaaaaase!” They called from across the way, ignoring or missing his remark.

Still, Hange was not stupid. As they reached the register, just inches from his face, Hange simultaneously leaned in as they stuck a five in the tip jar. “Just try to look alive, alright?”

His eyes stayed half-shut, “What’s it matter to you?”

“This isn’t just some ‘snot-nosed brat’,” Hange teased. “It’s my grant writer.”

A slight pivot and look over their shoulder revealed the cafe’s newest patron. Except, she was not new at all. At least, not to him.

It can’t be.

It is.

Is it?

It is.

It was as if Hange could hear his thoughts, confirming them for him, “You go ahead and order, (Y/N). I’ll grab a seat by the window!”

Her name.

Before Hange departed, they left a whisper, “This one matters.”

// // //

Just as quickly as you had disappeared from that world, you reappeared in this one. Instances they were, that you were gone from his life then right back in it. Not even two feet from him.

Your eyes scanned the menu behind him. Shifting in his stance, he had to remind himself that you were looking at that, not him.

Always were so indecisive.

“Umm…” your voice trailed.

Cute.

Your gaze met his for the first time since then, this time a lot calmer than the last. That nervous smile he found so adorable, “What would you recommend?”

Asked often, he always said black tea, because it was his favorite.

But it wasn’t yours.

“Hot chocolate.”

A remembering expression painted your face, not one of the magnitude he wanted - not recalling the past of a thousand years ago, but remembering that you had indeed always had a soft spot for hot chocolate. Had you thought about it more, maybe you would have realized how particular of a recommendation it was for a coffee shop, but to his relief and dismay, you did not think twice about it.

A kindred smile, “A hot chocolate it is, then.”

He was supposed to ask if you wanted whipped cream or not, which kind of milk you preferred, but he already knew the answer - just how you liked it - by heart.

You pulled out your wallet and started to pull out some bills.

And it was a sudden yet smart decision, his pristine instincts never dying even as his bodies passed. “We’re card only.”

A blatant lie. He hoped you did not see the cash tip jar between you two. Thankfully, you did not, your eyes never leaving his since they met. That grey gaze had a way of taking you in and keeping you there.

Fingers felt for the plastic card. A brief flash of attention, he noticed that even your last name was the same - still. Thin edges of his teeth tucked his lip under them, biting back a smile. You were not married, at least, not yet.

With two close taps, he printed a second copy of your receipt.

“C-” Levi cleared his throat, his voice retaining its original monotone, “Can I get your signature?” Not for the business or for records, for his own selfish sake.

He pulled a pen from his chest pocket and offered it to you. He hated how your hands failed to touch in the passing. He hated that he even thought about that. He hated how helpless he was to you, to the passage of time, to the next thousand years he would live without you. He grit his teeth, a silent scowl.

I hate how much I love you.

Your angelic voice, an ascension from his angst. “Where should I…” There was no signature line, of course, for a one-drink order. Still, neither then nor now did you ever doubt him, certainly not with that steady calm of his. “Where should I sign?”

“Wherever is fine.”

Wherever. Whenever. Anywhere and any time you were was where he wanted to be and where he wanted to have you. His mind was spinning now, uncharacteristic for him. He had not felt this way for years. Many many years.

Eyes kept on each other, you missed how he tucked your signed receipt into his pants pocket instead of the register, a drop box, or even his apron. A trade of receipts - your copy and his - he had a naïve hope that you would keep yours as long as he would keep his.

“Here you ar-”

Not a swift good-bye.

When will I see you again?

Is this all there is to it?

Is this the end?

His motion was jagged as he passed the receipt to you, to the hand he used to kiss, to the hand he once held, to the hand that reached out to him when -

You clenched your teeth, a sharp inhale to match the sharp sting of a papercut.

For a second, you kept your hand outstretched. For all that time, his eyes stayed fixated on it. That shade of red as bright as it was that day - here in front of him again.

There was the slightest whisper in the back of his mind, arguing against it, but it was no match for his instinct. 

I won’t let you slip by again.

His hand reached out to hold you. Four fingers matched yours, scooping your hand into his. He lifted you up just slightly, almost to his lips. It was as if he was about to kiss your wound, the fruit of his mistake.

Instead, he kept you hovered just before his mouth. Speaking with nerves yet with conviction, you felt his breath tickle your skin.

“I’m sorry.”

// // //

It was the same as before.

Only this time, your hands connected.

And with it, your long-lost memories did too.

The hold he had on you now, the touch warm within your grasp, the blood that dripped down your skin and wrapped around his - tying you to him in a way that you knew but did not understand. He could see it all flicker before your eyes.

“...Levi?”

Your hand still in his, a smile graced his cheeks, “I missed you.”

It was the same as before.

Only this time, he would never let you go.

// masterlist //

[demi-shoggoth]

2021 Reading Log pt 24

116. The Paleoart of Julius Csotonyi by Julius Csotonyi and Steve White. Now this has a suitable amount of text for a scientific art book. There is a lengthy interview with the artist and numerous testimonials from scientists that he’s worked with, describing their specimens and research. Most of the art is from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic—a Cenozoic chapter is maybe 15 pages long. Csotonyi works in digital, traditional and photocomposite mediums, the latter of which are somewhat controversial (with him distorting modern animals into paleo shapes). I tend to like his more traditional digital drawings best. My favorite is the gallery of ceratopsian heads, showing off all of the minor variations in horn and crest shapes.

117. Watch Your Tongue by Mark Abley. This is a collection of idioms, what they actually mean and where they came from. Part of the fun comes from the author’s being Canadian, so he juggles American, British and Canadian English and tries to explain its pieces and parts to people familiar with only one. It’s also openly political. The book is from 2018, and Abley clearly hates both Trump and Boris Johnson.

118. The Amoeba in the Room by Nicholas P. Money. This book is an overview of microbiology aimed at a general audience. It does an excellent job of surveying the diversity of single celled eukaryotes (what were traditionally called “protists”) in the first chapter, and then talks about the roles that they, bacteria and viruses play in maintaining ecosystems throughout the world. The title refers to how long the impact of unicellular life has been ignored—like the elephant in the room? Anyway, this book is good when it’s stressing the wonder and diversity of single celled organisms, but it is less good when it takes its time dissing animals and plants. Especially animals—the author seems to have a chip on his shoulder about zoology in general and taxonomic efforts like the Tree of Life project in particular.

119. The Unnatural Order of the Three Eyed Skull’s Field Guide, Vol. 2 by Andrew P. Barr. The second of three (so far?) volumes collecting @andrewbarrillustrator ‘s monster designs. This book reaches beyond the confines of Weird Ontario to show up ghouls and grotesques from around the United States and Canada. Some folkloric monsters appear in these pages as well as originals—we get a Loveland Frog, Flatwoods Monster, even Indrid Cold. There are some issues with copy editing, however. Lots of uses of the wrong “it’s”, and in the aforementioned Indrid Cold entry, the word “dame” instead of “name”, that sort of thing. The art is still top notch.

120. Mr. Humble and Dr. Butcher by Brandy Schillace. This is a biography of Robert White, a neurosurgeon who developed methods to cool the brain to reduce brain damage during surgery. Oh, and he also transplanted the heads of monkeys onto the bodies of other monkeys, and spent his entire career wanting a chance to do the same for humans. The book stresses White’s religious nature, his motivation for proving the existence of the soul in the brain, and his relationship with the Catholic Church. In the process, it also touches on the history of transplant surgery, the definition of death from a medical and legal standpoint, the animal rights movement and the birth of PETA, and the medical rivalries of the Cold War, among many others. If you’re interested in medical ethics or just weird science, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

[husbandohunter]

My brain just produce this nonsense and I want to share it. Remember when I told you about the Genshin boys gets turn into a cat when they got transported to modern world. So, ummmmm.... my brain said this after dipping in so many SCP videos and horror stuff. reader is sweet, blunt, kind and empathetic (most times) and they give this really comforting vibe that the boys are just automatically drawn too

Or maybe it’s because reader save them and now is ‘indebted’ sort of... after making sure that reader isn’t the one that turn them into cats and kidnap them. Reader does not look like they’re capable of magic or any malicious stuff except they do have that box thingy that makes that god awful ringing sound in the morning but other than that it’s relatively harmless.

Their job is basically traveling and taking pictures at least that’s what the boys thinks. Reader have an RV not big but it’s spacious enough for them. Probably also the reason why they knew it’s not Teyvat. It’s like a cart but spacious and metal but with a miniature house inside but it’s not made of magic it’s just bizarre. That and also the other thin box that Reader keep tapping on often. Childe definitely tried catching the reader’s fingers playful and then sit on the buttons to see what happens. Kaeya does it too. Reader couldn’t get any work done without having both Xiao and Diluc nearby. Of course this will lead to a fight but Reader isn’t bothered as long as they have their fights away from them and they’re busy catching up on work. Albedo most likely figure it out by watching Reader work and Zhongli is just a really comfortable warm pillow on their lap. He and Albedo watch them work, Zhongli purring whenever he felt Reader getting stress out.

.... I’m losing track. Basically Reader is a researcher of the monsters that roam their world. They have no powers, combat experience or what not and it’s just them with their electronics, RV, and cats. Ok I lied about the combat experience since it sounds funny and it’s, well, imagine the stress that the more protective boys get whenever Reader gets up close with a monster armed only by their camera. It’s hilarious to imagine. But that’ll make Reader dumb and we have enough of those types of MC. They have extensive knowledge of combat and have the right tools to defend themselves obviously however without powers it’s basically nothing if your up against a bulletproof giant spider monster. Thankfully their department is closely working with the military because... monsters.

How did they found out Reader is dealing with ferocious monsters ever since they got their job? Well, turns out they were going to a site reported to have a monster sighted on and they were task to survey it along with the containment team. They left the cats under the care of one of the junior scientists while they go to the site.

Unprofessional but dealing with grotesque monster on a daily and having the potential of dying horribly... this poor people need all the comfort they need. And cats is a good comfort animal if only they didn’t hiss at anyone that isn’t their babysitter or Reader. Let’s skip to the part where the boys next see Reader in ER.

Turns out the monster they located were hostile and wipe at least half of the squads of the task force sent on the site. Reader got attack too thankfully they survive!! I’m betting though that the boys don’t exactly know the true horror of the kind of monsters roam Reader’s world. Until they saw the photos and the recording and the reports of the extent of what the monster could do. The appearance of the monster is enough to invoke strong emotions from Zhongli and Albedo which is SOMETHING cause Zhongli as Rex Lapis already saw ALOT and Albedo is already knowledgeable by a lot of fields that his unfaze but this is a new type of ‘What the kind of creature spawn THIS?’

Holy!!! This is LONG! I could have made a much shorter summary but my mind is on a roll right now!! I’m so sorry for the huge wall of text, I’m on mobile right now soo SORRY!!! 😔

-Birdie

Your brainrot too strong, I surrender. My heart cannot handle horror movies so maybe thats why I dont understand what RV, SCP, ER terms mean 😭😭 So uh feel free to fill me in the lore LMAO

But I stan overprotective cat family, Childe would constantly want reader's attention, Kaeya sneaks in the join in the fun. Xiao and Diluc are the type of cats who act like dogs because they love their owner very much. Zhongli is the best cat honestly because he actually behaves the way you want to. Albedo is the type of cat who can pretty much be your assistant especially when you're a scientist in this case xD Seeing reader handle scary monsters and machinery would certainly make the hair of their fur rise! I reckon that they'll just turn human form and drag her away or something.

Honestly with the amount of imagination you have you mind as well start your own writing blog lmao

[biromanticbooknook]

At the Wayne Gala

   Getting ready for galas was always an ordeal, especially when you went to as many as the Umbrella Academy did. As superheroes and upstanding citizens, the teens needed to make appearances everywhere Reginald could weasel them in. Today, it was the Martha Wayne Foundation Charity Gala in Gotham. Unfortunately, they were teenagers, and it was expected by their guardian that they would make trouble. As they were pulling up to the entrance, he gave them one last lecture.

   “-no drinking, no smoking, and absolutely no causing a scene! It would reflect badly on me, and I will not stand for it.” He surveys each of them coldly. “Do I make myself clear?”

   The family starts to walk in, but Reginald stops them. “Vanya, what do you think you’re doing?”

   “Going inside...”

   “Only guests go through the front. Go around like the other entertainers.”

   Once the remaining children and Reginald get inside, they start talking to the host of the party, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist Bruce Wayne.

   “Reginald, I notice that you only have six of your children with you. Where is your other daughter, Vanya, I believe?”

   “I told her to go through the side entrance like all the other entertainers.” Bruce looks worried.

   “That is no place for a child. I need to go make sure that she got through the halls alright. Until I return, perhaps you can speak to my third son, Timothy Drake-Wayne. He is the co-CEO of Wayne Enterprises.” He waves over a young adult with black hair who looked too tired to be human, then took off towards the back of the ballroom.

   “You must be Reginald Hargreeves and the Umbrella Academy.” He looks over each of them. “Welcome to the Martha Wayne Foundation Charity Gala. Stephanie,” he gestures to a blonde girl, “and my brother Jason are in charge of our humanitarian and outreach programs, so they know more about this than I do.”

   “Then what do you do, young man?”

   “I oversee our tech and medicine branches. Our scientists are currently working on affordable cures and preventative measures for a range of contagious diseases. You know how 40 million people worldwide are now infected with HIV or AIDS?”

   “Yes, unfortunately those sinners have spread their disease everywhere. Good riddance, I say.” Klaus fists his hands and tries not to cry. Tim looks uninterestedly away from the older man, and lights up when he spots someone in the crowd.

   “Connor!” Another black haired man ran over to Tim and embraced him. After kissing for an almost uncomfortably long time (unless you are Reginald Hargreeves, where it was extremely uncomfortable), Tim turned to Reginald. “What were you saying? I got distracted for a moment when I spotted my boyfriend.” The young man smirked at Hargreeves, while the man just spluttered. Most of his children seemed lighter after the confrontation, but they would deny it if questioned.

   While Tim continued to engage and make the older man uncomfortable, Stephanie flounced over to the young superheroes with Cassandra and Jason in tow. “How are you kids finding the gala? We organized it, and you all look bored.”

   Luther was the first to respond. “We are enjoying it just fine.”

   She smirked. “Okay, but you brother over here,” she gestures to Klaus, “seems uncomfortable either under the attention or in his suit. Kid, would you wanna wear one of my older dresses?” Klaus basically lit up, but then he wilted.

   “What will my father say?”

   “Let me deal with your dad. We can just say that someone spilled something on you, and since you are so thin, you can only fit into my clothes. Unfortunately, any dress you choose was just the only thing that was appropriate for such a party.” She winked at the 13 year-olds, then dragged Klaus, and Allison, who insisted on being the failsafe for her brother’s fashion sense, up to her room.

   Jason stood around awkwardly with the four remaining brothers. “How much do you four know about what this gala is about?”

   “It’s a fundraiser for the Martha Wayne Foundation.” Luther looked a little uneasy. “It covers Wayne Enterprises humanitarian and outreach programs.”

   “But do you know what that actually entails?” The four shift, but no one speaks up. He looks sadly over the kids. “Gotham has one of the highest concentrations of children and families on the streets or in otherwise unsafe situations. Stephanie and I have both lived through it. Stephanie comes from an abusive and negligent household, and I was on the streets for a few months after my mom OD’d and my dad was in jail. We are in charge of the foundation to make sure no one has to live through anything like that again, to reform Gotham in ways that the bats and other heroes can’t hope to.” Jason gestures to the other woman he had come over with. “This is Cassandra, she has suffered through neglect and abuse as well. She manages the Hong Kong branch of WE.”

   The brothers stand in stunned silence for a few seconds, then one steps forwards. “W-w-what is neg-neglect?”

   “Neglect is where the perpetrator, who is responsible for caring for someone who is unable to care for themselves, fails to do so. It can be a result of carelessness, indifference, or unwillingness. A lot of parents in Gotham get pregnant accidently and are too busy with addictions or prison to adequately care for any child they bring into this world.”

   “Abuse is if they harm you, right?” Luthor looks troubled by his own question.

   “By the loosest definition of ‘harm you’, yes. Abuse is the mistreatment of someone, and can be physical, verbal, and emotional. They can say demeaning things, force you to do things you don’t want to do, or, the most commonly given example, physically hurt you.”

   “So,” Ben softly inquires, “it would be abusive if they ignore your existence until convenient, lock you up somewhere that scares you, or force you to get a tattoo you don’t want?”

   “Yes.” Jason glances around the faces of the four young boys in front of him, searching for trouble. “Those are awfully specific examples.”

   Five speaks up, “As heroes, we have met multiple victims and have heard their life stories. Thank you for telling us all of this, it will be easier to understand and categorize what we hear now.”

   Jason opens his mouth to further question the boys, but gets distracted by Cassandra moving to rejoin Stephanie as she comes back from her room with Klaus and Allison, while Bruce strides over with Vanya in tow. Reginald also notices and storms towards where his children have assembled.

   “Where have you all been? And Klaus, what are you wearing?” Klaus steps partially behind Stephanie, which neither she nor Jason miss.

   She puts on her most dazzling society smile and answers, “Someone had accidentally run into him and had gotten wine all over his clothes. Since his shoulders are much narrower than any of the Wayne boys, he only fit my clothes. Unfortunately, this dress was the only thing I had appropriate for such a party. You understand, surely?” Klaus and Allsion take this as their cue to join their siblings and the seven start whispering to each other.

   “Of course. You are such a gracious host to give your spare clothes to my clumsy son.”

   Her smile turns shaper at this, not that he noticed over his own ego. “Oh, I assure you he wasn’t clumsy at all; none of the collision was his fault, and the eight witnesses to the event, including me and my brother, can attest to that.”

   Reginald wisely keeps his mouth shut on the subject, instead starting to chat up Bruce Wayne. “You give such a large amount of money to charity each year, Mr. Wayne. If you give too much, you might not have a safety net if your business tanks.” Jason raises an eyebrow at the obvious digs in the statement, not that he wasn’t used to them in the high society atmosphere at these galas.

   “Well, Reginald, WorldCom and United Airlines didn’t donate anything at all to charities and still filed for bankruptcy, so I’ll say that if it happens to me, I’ll at least feel morally better than if I didn’t try to help at all. Besides, what else would I do with all the money I have?”

   “How do you get so much money each year Mr. Wayne?”

   “I hope you aren’t accusing me of being like Andrew Fastow, Reginald.”

   “Of course not.” He quickly changes the topic, to politics of all things. “Have you heard the President’s Axis of Evil speech?”

   “Yes, why?”

   “I wanted your opinion on it. I personally think that declaring war on the filthy people who shouldn’t even be considered human in the Middle East is exactly what they deserve.”

   “You mean the same people of Arabic descent that mothered my 11 year-old son, Damian?” Bruce frowns openly, which is rare at these parties and usually means that something is about to go down.

   Oblivious to Bruce’s change in tone and expression, Reggie powered forward. “Surely you don’t actually like them, though.”

   “I must like them at least a little to have se-” Bruce Wayne’s mouth is covered by the hand of yet another black-haired man.

   “Bruce, there are children here,” the man gestures to the Hargreeves.

   “Dick, I remember what you and Barbara said at about that age, I wasn’t concerned about what they heard.”

   “Wait, your name is Dick?” Klaus giggles from the back of the group.

   “I’m Richard Grayson, Bruce’s ward, and most people call me Dick.”

   “Anyway, Reginald, I believe it is time for you to go, though your children may stay if they wish.” Stephanie and Jason glance at each other, knowing that Bruce picked up on the same signals they did.

   “I doubt they do. Come along-”

   “Actually,” Luther steps forward, “we do. All seven of us would like to stay with the Waynes. You always say it’s good to have connections, right?”

   The old man’s face sours, but he walks out the door with as much of his dignity as he can manage. Once he is truly out, the Waynes turn to the children.

   “Do you want to stay just for the party, or would you like to stay with us in our manor for longer?” Bruce surveyed the group of seven teenagers that he would be more than willing to adopt.

   Five speaks this time. “We would like to stay in your manor. Do you also have the sway to open a case against our father for us? You might get temporary custody of us since our only other caretakers are an ape and an android.”

   Stephanie grins at the Hargreeves and her siblings. “Did you hear that? Bruce is gonna expand his brood again!”

[historic-old-guard-lover]

How many languages and which of them would the cast speak if we’re going to be completely historically accurate ?

This a great question that I can’t quite answer, but I spent six hours researching to give it a shot. I think that there’s a broad range of plausible languages and you’ve got leeway to choose how many. The first part is that different people have different affinities for languages. Some people can speak ten different languages fluently (or near-fluency), while others will struggle juggling three different ones in their brains. The range in the languages can affect this, too: it’s easy to mess up between similar languages. I personally have trouble speaking Spanish because in the middle of the sentence, I’ll drop a French word without even realizing it. The same thing doesn’t happen to me in other languages like German, though. By the same token as I’ve discussed before, similar languages are easier to learn. Going from English to Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet? More difficult than English to French, which makes up about a third of modern English. These are languages that are still in the same family (Proto-Indo-European, PIE), though, so it holds nothing to the difficulty of going from English to a language like Mandarin.

I’m breaking this answer into two parts: 1) how many?; 2) which ones? and I’m going to get carried away because I’m me so it’s below the break to spare you if this comes across your dash and you’re not a nerd...

PART 1: What’s a realistic number for them to speak?

I think that each member of the old guard probably has a certain number of languages which they’re comfortable with, a few more that they can understand/get by in, and a few that they may only know phrases from. The number of each isn’t the same for everyone. The average human being is able to speak ~1.5 languages. The most talented polyglots can speak upwards of 50 languages, maybe one guy even spoke 65 (mostly I want to mention he loved translating the phrase “kiss my ass”). This hyperpolyglot, Kreb aka “Kiss My Ass” Stan, had his brain dissected after his death and it showed a lot of “abnormalities”. That leads neuroscientists and me to believe that being able to study and learn 65 languages is either 1) a major skill that rewired his brain because he was flexing it so much; or 2) very abnormal and facilitated by his brain differences. Since their powers don’t make them stop being limited by the human brain (they can forget), I would say that it is unlikely that one of them is fluent/near fluent/comfortable in more than ~65 languages.

Getting past twelve languages is considered a feat, so I think only Andy, Quynh, Nicky, and Joe could be anywhere near the upper-bounds of languages. Remember, these hyperpolyglots spend their entire lives studying languages and often need refreshers. The members of the Old Guard don’t have the luxury of reading grammar books all day, and they also have to remember a bunch of combat training. You can argue that a lot of fighting is “muscle memory” aka located in the cerebellum and nowhere near language processing areas, but there’s still things like math, navigation, etc. that they need to remember. I doubt they have a list of their safe houses just lying around. The older members can speak more languages by virtue of being around longer and having that time to learn, but if we’re being realistic they should probably speak no more than ~45-55 languages comfortably. This doesn’t mean that they only *know* that many, but the other languages would be more like bad high school Spanish in America than able to wax poetic. Aside: that Joe is able to be poetic in what is AT LEAST his fourth or so language is very impressive and we should talk about that more.

How Many Each Member is Maximally Proficient In/Knowledgeable Of at the end of the film/Opening Fire comics run:

Lykon (comics): proficient in ~15, knowledgeable of ~30*

Lykon (movies): proficient in ~45, knowledgeable of ~80*

Andy: proficient in ~50, knowledgeable of ~100**

Quynh | Noriko: proficient in ~51, knowledgeable of ~90**

Joe: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Nicky: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80

Booker: proficient in ~10, knowledgeable of ~30

Nile: proficient in ~2 (maybe 3), knowledgeable of ~5

*In the comics, he is younger than Andy and Quynh and I assume he dies young. In the movie, it is strongly implied that he was the oldest. The reason why his numbers are not larger, however, is because at some point there were fewer languages as humanity had not dispersed as much as it eventually did. He’s also long before written language which facilitates learning for most people. RIP Lykon.

**I’m not saying that Quynh is smarter than Andy, just that she comes after written language and it should be slightly easier for her to pick things up. I’m giving Andy access to more languages, however, because PIE alone covers Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. More on this later.

PART 2: Which languages would each of them speak?

I’ve covered this question a little in a previous post that was broadly about proto-indo-european/Andy-centric (check it out if you want), but I’ll give a broader survey of each character here.

A Quick Aside on Lykon: We don’t know enough about this character, and the fact that the comics and movie diverge so sharply does not help at all. I’m going to headcannon that he was from Eastern Africa, where most archaeologists agree that modern humans first appeared in the Horn of Africa aka modern Ethiopia and Somolia and neighbors, and predates Andy by ~3,000 years. For future purposes below and assuming a birth date for Andy in the range ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE, this puts his birth at around ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE. This is wild speculation, however. Maybe the early immortals should be spaced by warfare types (Stone Age, Bronze, Iron, Steel?) or maybe they pop up once a cultural region reaches a certain historic point or maybe they just sorta pop up and then live for six or seven thousands years. I’m working off the last assumption because it’s the simplest. The only thing I’m certain of is that Greg Rucka probably didn’t sit down and think this pattern through. If I’m wrong, oh well. I’m mad at him for all his historical inaccuracies. With dating from ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE, I’m having trouble finding a name for the cultures that scientists/historians know were living there at the time. It’s probably because the region has been continually occupied since the first humans, which one can safely assume makes abandoned and undisturbed sites hard to fine.

A Quick Aside on Quynh | Noriko: I like the film better, so I’ll be working with Quynh. If there’s enough interest, I can add on Japanese for Noriko. I’m going to date Quynh to be ~1,500 years after Andy (maybe this should be the new date system, before Andy “BA” and after Andy “AA”). This puts her in the time range of ~3,500BCE - 2,500BCE which could place her in either the Đa Bút neolithic culture of modern-day Vietnam or the Phùng Nguyên bronze age culture of modern-day Vietnam. Those names are archaeological in nature, based on the location where sites have been found and dated to those ranges.

Other Origins: Because we have diverging cannons, I’m going to just state the backgrounds that I’ve assigned. Joe is from 1066CE with a background in the Arab-controlled Maghreb (more specifically, modern-day Tunisia and Northern Algeria). Nicky is from 1069CE with a background from the Italian maritime republic and city-state of Genoa. Booker is from 1770 southern France. Nile is from 1994 Chicago in the United States. Andy is from ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) or the South Western Eurasian Steppes, probably the Shulaveri-Shomu culture assuming that location.

The first language everyone learned, their “mother tongue” or “native language” is one that they definitely speak. It’s the language that they think in and would be hard-pressed to lose. This even includes now-dead languages, because, again, it’s the one that they learned to think with. Of course, it is possible to lose a language when you have no one to speak it with if you wanted to do something tragic, but I think that these things are too deeply ingrained for it it to happen by accident.

What Each One’s First Language Would Be:

Nile: American English, possibly African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home

Booker: Provençal/Occitan, possibly “standard French” (school and other places outside the home)

Nicky: Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize

Joe: Tunisian Derja/Tunisian Arabic/Tunisian, and possibly one of the dialects of the native Zenati language group based on where more precisely you place him

Quynh: Proto-Viet–Muong (which isn’t well documented because it’s so old)

Andy: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but if you’re curious the Classical Scythian Language for which she is probably named is only off by a factor of 10 (4000 vs 400 BCE) *cue distressed sighing*

Lykon: Proto-Cushitic (also suffering a lack of documentation from being old as heck)

Other than their first languages, what else they learn depends on where they go. People learned languages back then for the same reasons that they do today: to communicate (and to read, after the invention of writing). 

Additional Confirmed or Likely Cannon Languages:

Nile: Spanish because of the American school system for sure. French is listed on the IG account, but she probably speaks only Spanish or French to a degree of fluency, definitely one better than the other. Very Basic Pashto, which we see her use some obviously-memorized phrases with in the film.

Booker: The IG promo things asserts that he knows (modern, standard) Italian and Greek. Why not? He also probably knows Spanish depending on where more specifically in southern France he is from. He’s probably also picked up on at least Very Basic Arabic from Joe and Nicky, but actually learning the language would take commitment from him. He also clearly speaks English.

Nicky: Other Italian dialects, and it would be fairly easy for him to have picked up modern Italian. He definitely reads Latin. If he was from a wealthy family, he probably also speaks Greek. If he was from a trading family, he probably speaks the trading pidgin of Sabir. The IG account confirms Arabic (vague, but okay I’ll be generous and say modern standard Arabic) and Romanche (they meant to write Romansh). I think Romansh is poorly chosen to characterize him in Northern Italy, but I’m feeling generous. He also clearly speaks English.

Joe: He definitely speaks standard Arabic to have been able to communicate with other Arabic-speakers in Jerusalem.  Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize because of the love of his life, which also means he probably picked up modern Italian at some point. The IG account confirms Farsi (they call it “Persian” *cue screaming*), which works if he was a merchant who traveled far to eastward on the Silk Road...and if you go with the comic cannon makes more sense. I’m going to say that he speaks the Mediterranean trading pidgin Sabir because of his location in Tunisia. If he was from a wealthy merchant family and could afford schooling, he probably learned Greek and maybe also Latin. There’s a good chance that he knows conversational-levels of other native Zenati languages thanks to colonialism discouraging their usage. He also clearly speaks English.

Quynh: We don’t actually know if she speaks English, but it’s safe to assume she does speak at least some of it. She’s probably learned Vietnamese and Mường because of her mastery of their proto-language. Because I see her returning to modern-day Vietnam to fight the Chinese colonization, I think that she might know Cantonese or Mandarin. Based on her travels with Andy, I’d like to propose Greek, Latin, and Mongolian. I’m sure that Andy and her share a language, but who knows which one they were each speaking when they met!

Andy: The IG account says “all,” but I’ve discussed this elsewhere (*major eye rolling*). She almost certainly picked up Scythian and Greek based on her chosen name. Latin isn’t as likely as you’d think, but is possible. I’d like to think that she’s also partial to learning Russian (or some earlier form of the language), Mongolian, and Armenian. Based on her travels with Quynh, I imagine that she speaks Cantonese or Mandarin and Vietnamese or Mu’o’ng. There is some mystery language shared with Quynh, too. She also clearly speaks English.

Lykon: I really don’t know enough about him to hazard any guesses. He should share at least one language in common with Andy and Quynh. If his date of death is ~2,000- 1,000 BCE like I’m supposing, there’s a good chance that he only speaks one or two currently-named languages. Sorry, OP.

[fanmoose12]

a little fic i’ve written based on this. Enjoy!

“Erwin!” Mike burst into his office, looking unusually pleased. “You would never guess what I just witnessed!”

“Hange and Levi making out in a corridor?” Erwin replied without raising his head from the paperwork.

Mike’s jaw dropped. How did he—? Could Erwin read minds now too? “How did you guess?” Mike dejectedly asked.

As he finally looked up, Erwin wore a smug grin on his usually serious face. “I’ve seen them too. Several times actually.”

“Huh? And you didn’t think to tell me? I thought we were friends, Erwin!”

Erwin shrugged. “I thought you knew. With your nose, I was sure you couldn’t miss this new development.”

Mike made a face. “You know I try not to smell Hange. Remember that time when I sniffed her hair and got an allergy for a whole week?” Mike shuddered at the memory, but then a huge grin appeared on his face. “Hey, do you think they’re trying to be secretive about this?”

“I’m sure of it. Have you noticed that Levi stopped sitting next to Hange during meetings?”

“And they don’t eat together anymore.” Mike nodded. “I thought they were fighting or something… But they are just trying to hide their relationship? Should we tell them we found out?”

Erwin didn’t answer for a long moment, staring into distance and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Hey Mike,” he finally called. “Want to start a bet?”

Mike shook his head. “You and your obsession with gambling.”

“Do you accept or not?”

“Who are you taking me for? Of course, I accept! What are we betting on?”

“On how long Levi and Hange will continue to keep their relationship in secret.”

“Two weeks.” Mike stated undoubtedly. “Two weeks and the whole Survey Corps will know that they’re fucking.”

“Aha,” Erwin smiled enigmatically. “But the bet isn’t about that. It’s not about when everyone else will find out. It’s about when Hange and Levi will realize that everyone knows.”

“In that case…” Mike trailed off, thinking. “In that case, two months.”

Erwin hummed. “I’d say it will take them a year. At the very least.”

“The one who loses buys the best booze from MPs?”

Erwin smirked, shaking Mike’s hand. “Deal.”

***

To his shame, when Moblit saw them for the first time, he had completely misinterpreted the situation. He saw Captain Levi bent over Squad Leader Hange, and only one thought came to his mind: Captain Levi finally snapped. She managed to push him to the edge. And now Captain was trying to kill Hange-san with his bare hands.

In his defense, the lab was as dimly lit as always, with only a few candles illuminating the large room. Besides, all Moblit could see was Captain’s wide back. And the quiet groans coming from Squad Leader Hange only further proved Moblit’s guess.

He almost made a move, almost took a step closer, determined to at least try to save his beloved superior. Sure, Captain Levi was abnormally strong, and Moblit honestly didn’t have a chance in a fight against him, but he couldn’t just abandon his Squad Leader, right?

Moblit had already raised his leg, when he heard it, loud and clear.

“Oh, Levi, y-yes, exactly there…”

Moblit froze in place, with his leg still raised in the air. His cheeks reddened instantly, and he closed his eyes, trying to drawn out all the noises. Now everything was beginning to make sense.

Captain Levi wasn’t trying to kill his Squad Leader, oh no, he was trying… he was doing… Moblit closed his eyes tighter, trying not to think about what exactly his two superiors were doing right now. Instead he focused on planning what should he do next.

Obviously he had to leave, and leave quickly. As much as he cherished and respected his Squad Leader, he had no desire to know anything about her personal life. With Captain Levi, of all people. But Moblit also had to be extra careful. One wrong move, and they would hear him. Captain Levi would hear him.

Yeah, Moblit definitely wasn’t looking forward to that.

He slowly and very, very carefully took a step back. And then another one. And another one, until his back had hit the door. His hand tentatively touched the handle and turned it, mindful to make as little sound as possible. A second later, and the door was opened, and Moblit was almost saved.

Although, as it turned out he didn’t have to worry so much. Captain Levi and Squad Leader Hange seemed too focused on whatever they were doing to notice him.

As he finally exited the lab, Moblit breathed the sigh of relief. He needed to get drunk right fucking now. He had to get this image out of his mind.

If only he had known then that it was the first but definitely not his last time seeing Captain and his Squad Leader together.

***

Petra always admired her Captain. From the moment she had set her eyes on his not so tall, but definitely proud figure, her heart was filled with immense loyalty and adoration for this man. He wasn’t only strong and fearless, but he was kind and considerate too. Maybe, he didn’t show it, but Captain cared about other people and his fellow soldiers. And sometimes, Petra felt like Captain was paying extra attention to her, like he was especially kind and caring with her. It was probably wishful thinking, but Petra liked to think that she was special for Captain. Not just another one of his subordinates, not just another member of Survey Corps, but someone who he could talk with and open up to. Someone he trusted and someone he cared about.

That’s why Petra didn’t like the rumors about her Captain and Squad Leader Hange. Of course, as so many others she also noticed that something was going on between them. There was something weird in their interactions. Something unspoken, but almost palpable. And as hard as she tried to ignore it, Petra couldn’t deny that Captain Levi was different around Squad Leader Hange. He was less guarded, more open. As Petra watched him during one of his many banters with Squad Leader, she couldn’t shake the feeling that Captain’s eyes were almost shining as he gazed at the bespectacled scientist.

But still, Petra was just a girl. Even if she was a strong soldier and one of the most prominent fighters in the whole Survey Corps, deep inside her still lived a gentle soul, filled with hope and desire for love. And so she hoped against all odds that one day Captain would finally see her and realize his feelings for her.

Petra was slowly making her way through the dark corridors of Survey Corps’ headquarters. It was almost midnight, and most soldiers had already retrieved to their beds, but Petra knew that one person was still awake. Captain Levi’s insomnia was a known fact amongst the scouts, as almost everyone at least once saw him up at night, working in his office or drinking tea in the mass hall.

And so Petra decided to surprise Captain with a cup of tea. She bought it specifically for him during her last trip to town, and Petra hoped that its exquisite taste would lift Captain’s spirits. Maybe, he would even grace her with that rare, but pretty smile of his.

Petra speeded up, eager to get to Captain’s room. She smiled as she turned the corner and saw that the light was still coming from his room. Petra took a deep breath, gripping the tray with tea tighter in her hands.

She was almost by Captain’s door, when she heard a voice coming out of it.

“Levi, c’mon!” Petra immediately recognized Squad Leader Hange’s deep voice. The corners of her mouth slid down. What was she doing so late at night? And in Captain’s room?  “You can’t just ignore me, I’ve finished my work earlier, so we could spend more time together!”

“I’m busy.”

“Leeeevi!” Hange whined. “Are you still angry with me?”

Huh? Did Captain and Squad Leader Hange have a fight? Curious, Petra took a step closer. There was a small crack in the door, and through it she could see what was going on inside the room. Captain was at his desk, probably writing a report, while Hange leaned on his chair.

“You threw me out.” Captain replied. It was obvious that he tried to make his voice sound neutral, but Petra could hear that his words were tainted with anger.

“I was in a middle of an important experiment!” Hange threw her hands in the air. “I couldn’t let you distract me!”

“You. Threw. Me. Out.” Captain repeated, turning his head to glare at Squad Leader.

“But Levi! I came here today, didn’t I? And I apologized!”

“You didn’t.”

“Well, I’m apologizing now.”

Squad Leader moved from her place and only Petra’s quick reflexes saved her from gasping out loud. Because Squad Leader Hange got to her feet and then sat down. Right at Captain Levi’s lap. With wide, shocked eyes Petra watched how she casually circled her hands around his neck.

“I’m really, really sorry for throwing you out, my dear, beloved Levi.” Hange punctuated her words with a kiss. “Is your heart kind enough to forgive me?”

“You’re so full of shit.” Captain replied gruffly, his hands coming to wrap themselves around Squad Leader’s back. “Fine, I can finish this work tomorrow.”

“Yay!” Hange exclaimed, leaning in to give Levi another kiss. She yelped in surprise, when Levi got up, still holding her in his hands. Her legs circled Levi’s waist, and Petra closed her eyes, taking a swift step back.

She had seen more than enough.

She turned around, making her way back to her room. As she walked through the dark corridors, Petra realized that she didn’t feel as sad as she probably should be. Seeing Captain and Squad Leader made her realize that she wasn’t in love with Captain Levi himself, but with an idea of him. She dreamed about someone who would be strong enough to protect her, but wasn’t Petra already strong? Maybe, she didn’t need someone to protect her, maybe, all she needed was someone, who would be holding her hand and fighting alongside her, not hiding her behind their back.

Besides, it seemed like Captain Levi and Squad Leader Hange really made each other happy, and Petra was happy for them. In their world, cruel and dangerous as it was, it was vital to cherish every moment with your loved ones.

And Petra was happy that Captain Levi managed to find a person like that. Someone, who cared about him and listened to him. Someone who was always there for him.

In the end, she was really happy that Captain fell in love with someone. Even if it wasn’t with her.

***

When he first joined Survey Corps, Jean preferred to ignore all the rumors about Captain Levi and Squad Leader Hange. Of course, it was funny to gossip about them during breakfasts, but Jean didn’t dare to joke about it in the presence of Captain Levi. Besides, it was hard to imagine Captain and Squad Leader together.

When he was still just a recruit and before he got to know Captain and Squad Leader Hange, Jean couldn’t understand the roots of those rumors. Both Captain and Hange-san seemed completely foreign to the concept of love and affection. Captain was always so serious, and his hard eyes always made Jean shudder. And Squad Leader Hange seemed too invested in her work and research to notice anyone who was shorter than four meter.

But as the time went by and Jean survived one disaster after another alongside two veterans, he started to realize that he was wrong. Captain Levi, as scary as he appeared, was actually a very kind man. Sure, he frequently kicked Jean’s ass and made him work harder that Jean ever thought he was capable to, but he did it, because he cared, because he wanted Jean to become stronger, because he wanted to do everything in his power to ensure his survival.

And Hange-san was the biggest weirdo Jean had ever seen, there was no denying it. However, she wasn’t crazy or heartless as some soldiers claimed. She was actually kind of nice, and sometimes she even reminded Jean of his mother. Not that she was as annoyingly over-bearing as Jean’s mom, but her gentle smile and kind eyes frequently made Jean think of his family and home.

When she quietly asked him if he was tired, or when she brought tea for him, or when she ordered him to take a day-off, noticing the dark circles that started to appear under his eyes, Jean couldn’t help the wave of fondness and affection that settled over him as he gazed in Commander Hange’s eyes.

And, of course, as he got to know Commander Hange and Captain Levi, Jean couldn’t ignore the signs of their undeniably strong bond. He noticed the shared jokes and gentle teasing, the small, but fond glances and the not so discreet touching of each other’s hands. There was no denying that Captain and Commander cared for each other more deeply than they showed.

And really, Jean would have been very happy if it all stayed that way. If everything he knew about his superiors’ relationship ended with them holding hands beneath the table. But, unfortunately, life wasn’t as kind to Jean as he had hoped.

When he saw them for the first time during his training in a forest, Jean was terrified. He saw Captain Levi pressing Commander Hange against one of the trees, holding her tightly and kissing her passionately, and not a single joke or jab appeared in his mind. He felt nothing but panic.

One wrong move, and Jean was sure that Captain would see him. Sure, Commander Hange would probably just laugh it all off, but Jean wasn’t too keen on spending his entire week, cleaning the dirtiest toilets in the Survey Corps’ headquarters.

One time was more than enough.

So he slowly backed up, trying to make as little noise as possible. He knew he couldn’t use his ODM-gear, afraid that it would be too loud in the quiet forest. So Jean carefully climbed down from a tree and headed back to the barracks, trying to put this incident out of his mind.

And maybe, he would have forgotten about this, but once he saw Commander Hange and Captain once, he couldn’t stop catching them in the most unexpected places. He’d go to a library to find himself a book, and Commander would be there with Captain Levi sprawled beneath her. He’d decide to clean his horse, and in the stables he would happen upon his two superiors, passionately making out on a stack of hay. He’d go to the town to visit his mother, and on his way back to the headquarters he would see Captain and Commander, dressed in their civilian attire and kissing on the bench in the park.

This was honestly getting ridiculous, and what baffled Jean the most was the fact that Captain Levi and their highly intelligent and observant Commander were confident that their relationship was a complete secret to the others. They acted surprised and embarrassed when someone walked up on them, and their ridiculous excuses became a running joke amongst Jean’s friends from 104th.

Jean honestly had half a mind to tell them the truth. To tell them that they didn’t fool anyone, and that they didn’t need to fool anyone. Not a single soul in the Survey Corps gave a fuck about their relationship, they were actually happy for them. Jean and his squad were especially happy for them. Sometimes they even joked about Commander and Captain being the mom and dad of Survey Corps, as they so often acted like their parents.

But in the end, it wasn’t any of Jean’s business. If they wanted to keep it a secret, they surely had a valid reason for that. Or maybe, they didn’t, and both Captain and Commander Hange just weren’t comfortable in sharing the details of their personal lives. Whatever the case, they were adults and Jean’s superiors, so he could do nothing, but respect and tolerate their relationship.

Jean cursed, as he walked up to Commander Hange’s office and saw Connie leaning on the wall next to the door.

“I take it Captain Levi is already inside?”

Connie’s cheeks flamed and he made an expression that was half-horrified, half-disgusted. “For fuck’s sake, Jean!” he whispered with wide eyes. “You can’t just say things like that!”

As he understood what Connie had implied, Jean’s face reddened as well. “I didn’t mean it like that!” he said, trying and failing to keep his voice devoid of embarrassment. “I meant to ask if Captain is inside Commander’s office, and not inside… ins—” he paused, spluttering and blushing a deeper shade of red.

Connie burst out laughing. “Man, you should have seen your face!” he patted Jean’s shoulder. “It was hilarious! Oh, Sasha should have been here to see it!”

“Shut up!” Jean hissed, turning his face away. It was still as red as a tomato. “It was you have misunderstood me in the first place!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Connie smirked. “We all know that you’re a pervert, Jean, don’t try to deny it.”

“Whatever.” Jean muttered, still avoiding Connie’s eyes and gripping the papers in his hands tighter. “Anyway, how long have you been standing there?”

Connie shrugged. “Almost half an hour. So get in line, Mikasa’s also waiting, she needs to talk with Captain Levi.”

“I just need Hange-san to sign some papers for me.”

“And I need to get a provision list from her, so like I said. Get in line.”

Jean sighed, leaning on the wall next to Connie. They stood in silence for some time, before the peace was interrupted by a long and loud moan. Both Jean and Connie winced.

“I hope they’ll finish soon,” Jean mumbled, running a hand through his hair.

“Well, it’s a little impressive, don’t you think?” Connie nudged him in the side. “Not that Captain or Commander are old, but, well, they’re not young, right? And here we are waiting for them to finish for almost an hour.”

“Connie.” Jean pinched the bridge of his nose, his voice strained. “I’m begging you – shut the fuck up.”

“I’m just saying,” Connie raised his hands in a placating gesture. “They have great stamina.”

Jean groaned. “Please, can we stop talking about sex between Captain and Hange-san? I really don’t want to think about it.”

Connie opened his mouth to reply, but he was interrupted when the door to Commander’s office opened, and Captain Levi walked out.

His cheeks were the faintest shade of red, and his expression was unusually relaxed. There was even a hint of a smile on his lips. “Jean, Connie.” He nodded to them.

“Captain!” Connie saluted, while Jean poked his head inside Hange-san’s room. She was sitting at her table, her hair even messier than usual. There was a wide grin on her face and she was quietly humming while shifting through papers on her desk.

And suddenly, Jean felt a surge of bravery run through him. He looked down on Captain Levi, his lips curving into a smirk. “Captain, did you and Commander have another one of your strategic meetings?”

“Of course,” Levi grumbled, raising the collar of his shirt higher. Jean exchanged a look with Connie, as both of them saw a small hickey on Captain’s neck. “If you have any business with Commander, do it quickly. She had a long day and she needs to rest.”

“Strategic meetings are so tiring?” Jean barely held in a laugh, as he saw that Captain’s cheeks became red again. He muttered something intelligible before swiftly walking away.

Jean and Connie waited for him to disappear behind the corner before bursting out laughing.

“Man, how haven’t they noticed that everyone knows about them?” Connie asked between his laughs.

“Noticed what?”

Both Jean and Connie whirled around, their eyes widening and face paling.

“H-hange-san?” Jean asked shakily.

“C’mon, guys!” Hange smiled brilliantly at them. “Tell me what was so funny! You know I like a good laugh!”

“Ehh,” Connie scratched the back of his neck, desperately trying to avoid Commander’s gaze. “Sasha and Niccolo, that Marleyan guy, well, they, um, confessed to each other!”

To Jean’s knowledge, they didn’t. He wasn’t sure if Sasha even knew about Niccolo’s feelings, but it wasn’t a bad excuse. Maybe, Hange-san would even believe them.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Hange clasped her hands in delight. “I’m very happy for them. In our world, it’s important to find someone to love.” She extended her hands and ruffled Jean and Connie’s hair. “You should find yourself someone, too, boys.”

“Have you found yourself someone like that, Hange-san?” Jean asked, eyeing her carefully.

“Of course,” She agreed instantly, smiling gently. “I have you two, Sasha, Mikasa, Eren and Armin.”

“And Captain Levi?”

“And, of course, Levi,” a pretty blush appeared on Hange’s cheeks. “Where I would be without him?” She shook her head, straightening her shoulders. “Anyways, do you need something from me?”

“It can wait.” Jean waved his hand. “Take some rest, Commander. It looks like you need it.”

Hange chuckled, running a hand through her hair. “Then I guess I’ll retire for today. But if you need me, don’t hesitate to come and get me.”

“Of course, Commander.” Connie saluted. “Have a nice evening.”

She looked at Jean and Connie fondly, patting their shoulders. “Thank you, boys. You should rest as well. Gather all your friends and visit town or something. Have some fun. You deserve it.”

Connie and Jean nodded with a smile, and Hange bid them farewell, closing the door to her office and heading towards her room.

When Hange reached the end of a corridor, she was joined by Captain Levi. He looked around, checking if anyone was around, and then wrapped his hands around her shoulders. Commander Hange leaned on him and together they walked away.

Jean sighed, as he watched that scene. Suddenly, he remembered dark eyes and beautiful black hair. He remembered a soft, rare smile that was never directed on him. Jean ran a hand through his hair. Who would have ever thought that he would be envious of his two superiors?

“C’mon,” Connie tugged at his coat. “Commander Hange gave us a permission to go to town. Let’s use it to get drunk at the tavern.” Connie smirked, hugging Jean’s shoulder. “Maybe we’ll find our special people there.”

And while, Jean was very doubtful that it would be true, that his heart would be able to love anyone, except her, he still let Connie drag him out to the bar. And, maybe, his friend was right, maybe, Jean would also meet someone who would love him. Who would make him just as happy as Commander Hange and Captain Levi made each other.

[umbraja]

Body Hair Positivity: Good or Gross?

It’s been a trend lately to embrace a more diverse image of beauty. Freckles and muffin tops, dark skin and curly hair, scars, tattoos, unusual proportions, crooked teeth, pretty much anything is supposed to be accepted under the banner of Body Positivity. 

But what about body hair?

And I’m not just talking about armpits or legs. I also mean unusual body hair. The kind people don’t talk about. The kind women aren’t “supposed” to have: chest hair, happy trails, beards, back hair. The kind that doctors call hirsutism and is often associated with hormonal imbalances from things like Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Cushing Syndrome, medication side effects, menopause, or even just genetics. It affects somewhere between 5%-10% of women depending on the region surveyed but may be higher as it can often go undiagnosed.

It’s not like we’re taught how healthy body hair should look.

Humans have been removing body hair since before recorded history. Archaeologists have found evidence of early humans using clam shells and shark teeth to remove body hair. Ancient Egyptians are well known for their full body waxes. Ancient Greeks considered it “uncivilized” for a woman to have pubic hair. Roman boys celebrated their entry into manhood with a mandatory first shave. And medieval European Ladies plucked daily to remove all hair from their brows, temples, and neck - some even plucked their eyelashes. The “New World” was no stranger to body hair removal either. Thomas Jefferson, and many others, wrote of some Native Americans’ depilatory obsession.

“With [Native Americans] it is disgraceful to be hairy on the body. They say it likens them to hogs. They therefore pluck the hair as fast as it appears.” - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

In the non-native US, body hair removal wasn’t really a big thing until the 20th century when we did a complete 180 on the subject. Before that Puritan values made sure that most body hair was covered by clothing so few bothered to remove it since no one was gonna see what was under all that cloth. Now recent studies say that 93 to 99 percent of American women regularly remove their body hair, making it one of our most widely practiced beauty norms. Girls as young as 10 are pressured into shaving, waxing, plucking, threading, anything to remove errant hairs as soon as they start to sprout. Refusal to do so leaves us open to bullying, both on the playground and in the office. Visible body hair can cost a woman jobs, promotions, and relationships so most of us remove it, no matter the cost. Which one study worked out to be more than $10,000 over the course of her life for the average American woman who shaves. If she waxes instead the bill goes over $23,000.

So what happened?

“Where eighteenth-century naturalists and explorers considered hair-free skin to be the strange obsession of indigenous peoples, Cold War-era commentators blithely described visible body hair on women as evidence of a filthy, ‘foreign’ lack of hygiene.” - Rebecca Herzig, Plucked, a History of Hair Removal

The driving forces behind hair removal in America are the same three that cause most of the nation’s problems: greed, sexism, and racism. Let’s go in chronological order. 

As the “Age of Enlightenment” began to secularize European politics, Imperialists needed a new excuse to justify their expansion into non-European territory. Naturalists like the still famous Charles Darwin handed them pseudoscience. It’s debatable whether or not these naturalists intended their work to be used as the foundation for white supremacist ideology that still plagues us today but there’s no question about how racists interpreted it. They saw evolution as a line that went from ape through colored people and ends at Aryan. Real science tells us that’s not at all correct and if anyone is closer to cave man it’s white people who often have Neanderthal in their DNA. But they didn’t have genetic sequencers back then so they used physical traits to “prove” it instead. Part of this was a gross mischaracterization that body hair could be used to determine a person’s place within the line of human evolution. They claimed people with coarse, dark hair were closer to apes and those with thin, light hair were more evolved. Guess who picked up on that concept in the 20th century.

Darwin further complicated matters in his attempt to explain why some white people were hairier than some indigenous populations by associating hairiness with evolutionary backsliding and mental illness.  

“[Hairiness in Europeans] is due to partial reversion; for characters which have been at some former period long inherited are always apt to return. We have seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other characters to a lower animal type.” - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Other scientists and even medical experts of the time ran with this idea and before long the educated elite considered hairiness (along with other non-Aryan traits) to be a symptom of disease, insanity, and criminal violence. The uneducated masses were more familiar with freak show displays of unusually hairy people as “missing links” to our primate ancestors. Both cases considered having body hair to be a very bad thing. They’re also very bad science and not at all true.

Despite these very strong, racist feelings about body hair, it still wasn’t common for American women to remove it beyond the upper lip, neck, jaw, or between the eyebrows. Most women don’t have much hair there and those that did rarely had time or money to invest in removing it. Also they wouldn’t be caught dead admitting they had to so historical records might not be accurate about how many women actually plucked. For the first half of American history peach fuzz and other light hair was seen as normal and clothes covered the rest. But the 20th century not only saw women wearing less cloth and showing more skin it also saw them calling for gender equality. Critics of women’s liberation often accused suffragettes of sexual inversion - aka acting too much like men, which they saw as an abhorrent threat. To really drive this point home they often depicted women’s rights activists as being hairy, thus politicizing our pits. Pair this with the “hygiene” movement’s embrace of already mentioned racist views on body hair and you have a recipe for weaponized shame.

“Self-consciousness brings timidity, restrained action and awkwardness. The use of Del-a-tone relieves the mind from anxious watchfulness of movement.” - 1919 Del-a-tone depilatory advertisement

Enter Capitalism. Producers of hair removal products wanted to up sales so they did the exact same thing that was done with every other beauty product on the market - shame women into buying their stuff. It’s debatable if this was motivated purely by greed, in an attempt to reach an untapped market, or if the resulting gender oppression was intentional but men were spared of this aggressive shaming (until recently at least). Women, on the other hand, were flooded with advertisements for body hair removal products. From the first “razor for women” in 1915 to 21st century laser hair removal ads, women are constantly being reminded of our body hair. It doesn’t take a genius seeing ads that call smooth skin “attractive” or “sanitary” to extrapolate the opposite - that body hair is ugly, and dirty. A series of ads for Del-a-tone depilatory products even called it “necessary” for sleeveless fashion and suggests that not using their product will lead to social anxiety. Pair that with only ever using shaved models in all of fashion advertising and you send a pretty clear message: female body hair is something to be ashamed of. Advertising works. Now most American women actually feel gross if they’ve missed a shave, despite body hair being perfectly natural and not at all dirty. This disgust is so strong it has even bled over into an aversion toward male body hair which has seen a sharp decline in popularity since the shaggy chested disco days. Now men are being inundated with “manscaping” advertisements and expectations of manicured if not completely removed body hair.

So that’s the background but where’s this going?

While female body hair removal is firmly ingrained in western beauty standards, a new generation of women are rebelling against those ideals - body hair included. Recent studies have shown a shift in body hair trends among young women. Only 77% percent of women 16 to 24 reported regularly shaving their pits in 2016 and 85% shaved their legs, down from 95% and 92% respectively just two years prior. Since then we’ve started to see models, celebrities, and everyday women with unshaven pits and hairy legs. Body positivity campaigns have even gotten a few advertisers to include body hair in their ads. Now you can see razors actually shaving hair from women’s bodies instead of inexplicably running over baby smooth skin. 

Women have always told ourselves that hair removal is a choice but we’ve never before been encouraged to choose not doing it. Instead we’ve been brainwashed to think it’s dirty and disgusting and that no one will accept us for being hairy. Today’s young woman is actually presented with a choice, “to shave or not to shave” and a lot of them are choosing not to. Which is great news for people like me who have hirsutism and are sick of being shamed for how nature made us. 

But we’ve still got a very long way to go before I can be confident that my neck beard won’t hold me back both socially and professionally. A lot of the women who have publicly displayed body hair in recent years have come under attack by people calling them various shades of “gross” and some have even been sent death threats. It’s one thing for a rich and famous Hollywood movie star to take that kind of risk but for an autistic office worker living in a conservative backwater that’s a whole different game.

Whatever your thoughts and feelings on body hair, America still hasn’t escaped the shame of the last hundred years. Women are still very much judged for being hairy. A lot of people still think it’s gross. I’m not one of them but I’m full of unpopular opinions.

[personalcoachingcenter]

Women in Leadership – How Can Coaching Support Female Leaders

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/women-in-leadership-how-can-coaching-support-female-leaders/

Women in Leadership – How Can Coaching Support Female Leaders

Lets talk about Women in Leadership

I would like to start by saying that I am very passionate about working as a coach with women, see how we think, dream, grow and change – celebrate our diversity.

We live in a very masculine world still and it has been my mission to investigate the ways we can support each other as women, get to know each other´s needs, and face all the difficulties that come with our gender when working as professionals. We need to talk about changing the way things are and dream big, to know that we can do anything we want in our lives truly free, liberated, intelligent, and confident.

  In this paper I will present the following topics:

The myths about female leaders

Difference between two genders

Female Leaders Coaching

Gender differences and Coaching

The Role of Coaching

Female Leaders Coaching Model – PASS

Survey

The Myths That Hold Women Back at the Workplace

Gender inequality exists in the workplace. As women we need to be diligent to keep the conversation about it going, talking about the diversity at work as well as how to build resilience. Inequality has been an issue for decades and concerns every woman that enters the professional career, therefore, tackling the issues has become especially difficult as we became desensitized, so it is essential to be bold and speak out about the common myths of gender inequalities as they appear.

The False Four (Common Myths About Female Professionals):

Women Choose to Devote the Time to the Family Instead of the Workplace

The assumption here is that women cannot handle the demanding family life and the dynamic work life. It is unfair to assume that a woman will not take the lead of the project because that would mean more hours or that the single woman has to take all the workload that nobody else wants to catch up on.

Having children is not an excuse to withhold a growth opportunity from a woman at work. Women are often pillars of our homes and our communities and children are not our excuses, they are our REASON.

Women are really good at multitasking. If you want something to be done, ask a woman!

Women Are Too Emotional to Lead

Women leaders are not too emotional, there is time and place that there is a space to show great empathy. A woman´s ability to show empathy uses thoughtfulness and her intuition is not a sign of weakness. It makes a very positive work culture and certainly does not lead to emotional decision-making.

Statistics on women’s leadership do not support this myth, Peterson Institute of International Economics of Business analyzed the data from 22.000 globally trading companies in 91 countries, showed that having at least 30% of women in leadership positions adds 6% to the net profit margin of a business.

Women Are Just Not Interested in Technology and Other Male-Dominated Industries

Women seek degrees in male-dominated industries at considerable rates but men are still preferred in the male domains more than women as well as receive bigger salaries than their female counterparts.

Younger Women Are More Valuable at Work Than Older Ones

This is not a competition. All women are valuable, and “when you are living and breathing you are not done”. Age and wisdom is an incredible asset.

Now, we need to remember that if you tell a lie often enough you really start to believe it, if we believe the myths and untruths about women in the workplace we will take them as factual representations of gender inequality.

The bottom line is that you do not have to accept the myths, the mold, the status quo, you can create your own reality.

Supporting other women is our mission!

Difference Between Two Genders

Men and women are guided by their own logic and perspective respectively. They think, act, and are educated differently. They look, observe, perceive, highlight and fulfill their needs in different ways. Some claim that the differences are due to socio-cultural, educational, psychological, and even biological questions. Therefore, one can start reflecting on the situation raising the question: Women and Men, two worlds or two viewpoints?

Social Viewpoint: Personal Relationships

Historically, there are different expectations towards men and women. Women are expected to provide support, be understanding and offer service, whereas men are expected to be successful professionally, provide for their household, be strong, decided, and in control.

Women´s satisfaction, in general, is related to their social interactions and their family bonds, so they choose to cooperate and accept that their contribution can serve a bigger purpose. Women need to find pleasure in their day-to-day activities, therefore, their professional life must allow for family time. The professional and family lives are integrated, they are one.

Psychological Viewpoint: Intuition and Creativity

Women use intuition as a tool when rational thinking is not enough in their workplace. Logic is indispensable to organize thoughts and emotions, however, it should not discard the intuitive intelligence, which for various reasons tends to be the female domain. Unfortunately, in the professional surrounding, intuition tends to be overlooked and its importance belittled.

Both intuition and creativity are mostly developed in the right hemisphere of the brain.

Emotional Viewpoint: Emotional Intelligence

Emotion – the definition says it is: ¨instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.¨ Daniel Goleman defines Emotional Intelligence as a person’s ability to manage their feelings so that those feelings are expressed appropriately and effectively. According to Goleman, emotional intelligence is the largest single predictor of success in the workplace.

In the research conducted by Goleman, it is showed that on average women have more awareness of their emotions, show more empathy, and are more capable of creating interpersonal relationships.

Biological and Organic Viewpoint: Brain

According to scientists the differences between female and male brains can derive from genetic factors. Neuroscience states that each person develops based on their natural genetic identity. There is a biological platform that underlies the existence of two kinds of the brain: a masculine brain and the feminine one. The differences are observed in both: the development and reaching maturity of some parts of the brain, especially when it comes to children; girls´ brain seems to mature earlier than the boys´ one.

Not only do the female and male brains vary in their architecture but also in a way they establish the strategies to process information and emotions but also in a way of generating responses.

Furthermore, the magnetic resonance shows that man has more grey matter in the brain, which indicates more activity in the left hemisphere and predominant logical thinking and women demonstrate having more white matter, which in turn proves brain´s activity takes place in both hemispheres simultaneously, which reduces the division between logical and intuition activities in the female brain.

Female Leaders Coaching

Coaching strategies depend on the coachee, therefore I would like to describe the various coaching niches/gaps where coaching can support and help women. The following issues raised here aim at identifying a few contexts, in which a woman’s situation differs from the men’s one.

The gaps that still kept in several economic sectors, where a woman does not have equal opportunities to access certain positions and the energy and effort invested there is considerably bigger than the one required from their male counterparts.

The limiting beliefs engraved in women’s minds about the social roles and the way they ¨should¨ act, speak, look, be as professionals, mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, students, etc…

Self – limitations that a woman imposes on herself as a professional, which can cause a lack of self-esteem and confidence and finally incapability to peruse her goals.

A very short history of female leadership in the world requires paving the way for others without valid models or success stories to follow, that would help to learn and navigate in the man´s world.

Personal attributes and leadership qualities are demonstrated by a woman apart from her specifically feminine characteristics that she starts to express in the workplace and that is perceived as an added value to compete and develop.

The difficulties to reach a natural balance between the personal wellbeing and of others surrounding them that is projected in the work-life.

The above issues raise many existential topics for women, which question their values, personal and professional behaviors, the meaning of their realizations and satisfaction as well as future projections like:

Could my life be different?

Do I want it to be different?

Which aspect of my life do I want to be different?

How far do I want to get?

What is it that I really want, what does it mean to me to be successful?

Why do I desire something?

Am I aware of the internal resources I possess that I necessary to make the change in me and my surrounding?

Do I have a plan for life to achieve what I want?

How will I carry it out?

How can I include the people I care about in this plan?

How will I know that I have reached my goals?

What can I do to keep growing?

Coaching that can recognize personal circumstances and differences can be most effective in this internal dialogue carried out by the women.

Gender Differences and Coaching

Psychological Differences and Coaching

When it comes to coaching women it is important to remember that women are more motivated and interested in:

Self-development.

Achieving objectives for the whole team.

Team success.

Working in the atmosphere of cooperation rather than competition.

Tend to take responsibility for the mistakes rather than blaming others in general.

Taking the above factors into consideration can help the coach relate better, understand the problem properly and assist the coachee in coming up with solutions.

Communication Differences and Coaching

The main difference in communication between men and women is the reason why they decide to communicate and what they are talking about.

Jennifer Coates studied discussion groups of only men and only women and noticed that when women talk among themselves they reveal much more of their personal lives. They also tackle more personal issues, spend more time on them, and make sure that all of them participate in the conversation.

Men, on the other hand, do not tend to speak about their personal issues but choose to focus on topics like politics, religion, sports, news, art, history, etc. Jennifer also noticed that when the groups are mixed men tend to speak more, express their opinions with more confidence, irrespectively of their status or position in the company. In contrast, women strive to connect and generate intimacy while communicating.

The Role of Coaching

Coaching helps to make choices in the professional areas, assists the woman to find the passion and the meaning because it is essential to be successful, happy, and truly accountable. Self–awareness plays a vital role in this process as well as knowing what your strengths and desires are, who you are, what are your values, and being able to assess yourself every step of the way. It is important that the women can dream about what they really want to experience in their lives.

A coach can also help the coachee in building their self-confidence but getting to know themselves.

Another very important way, the coach can contribute to the growth of a woman coachee is to help her create a support network that consists of meaningful relationships, and establish the action strategies focused on achieving her goals. A coach can achieve that by:

Embrace and strengthen the way the woman sees herself (self–perception) at work and analyze the ways, the woman can emphasize their strengths when establishing new contacts, feeling authentic, true to herself.

Plan and prepare to generate new contacts proactively, defining where, how, and when.

Reinforce the existing contacts, focusing on deciding where to invest best.

Differentiate the professional contacts from the family, social, and others because each of them requires a different treatment and involves a different bonding style.

A coach can assist their female client to find the balance between professional and family life, develop themselves in all aspects of their lives to become complete human beings, and build resilience.

Resilience

Women and men that bear the positions of Leaders need to face lots of pressure, long working hours, and daily challenges. The difference between men and women is that women go to work, “change the hat” and start their “other” job, which is exhausting and may lead women to reconsider their careers. Some women flourish, some other diminish under such conditions.

Resilience is necessary to work and maintain your skills up high. Resilience is a process in which a person can think, act successfully under pressure, and recover quickly, adapt to new circumstances, and even become stronger.

Women are usually very demanding towards themselves when working and growing, however, to be sustainable in the process they need to overcome several problems and obstacles, they should also understand and reinforce their support system, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Therefore, the development of balanced resilience consists of:

Cognitive Resilience: Working on creating positive beliefs about themselves and the world by recognizing the negative beliefs, extending their ability to resolve the problems, and identifying their strengths.

Emotional Resilience: Recognize and develop their own emotions and other people´s emotions and the ability to manage their impulsiveness.

Attitude Resilience: build sustainable networks, take care of the physical aspects in the moments of crisis and reinforce the self-esteem by focusing on their strengths.

Female Leaders Coaching Model – Pass

I would like to present a PASS coaching model, which I will describe in detail in my coaching model paper. It consists of:

P – Personal – Here, a coach and a coachee create a relationship based on mutual trust and confidence. It is established by being present and accepting at all times.

This stage is very important for female coachees as in general they are all about bonding and creating relationships

A – Awareness – Here, a coach helps the coachee to gain self-awareness through several tools.

S – Structure – Here, a coach challenges the clients via powerful questions, helps them to identify their goals, and accompanies the coachee in finding the best-suited structure and action plan.

S – Support – Here, a coach supports the coachee in following through with their action plan and becomes the accountability partner, a team player, a kind and supportive mirror for the clients.

Survey

When I was writing this paper I conducted a mini-survey, I asked 35 women, professionals, from different countries and various walks of life about their present job satisfaction.

My main purpose was to measure their job satisfaction and to see what are the biggest motivators and obstacles for them.

The survey consisted of 10 multiple questions and according to the responses in questions number 9 women rely on the family members for support when tackling changes in the professional field. That would confirm the opinion I expressed earlier in this paper that women rely on the family members and the relationships they have built throughout the years.

In question 4, it is so clear to see that all women know their skills. I mentioned in previous points that women seem to be more directed inside rather than outside and they tend to know their strengths and weaknesses better.

In question 10, women mentioned that poor promotion and development opportunities seem to be the biggest challenge, but not only, creating relationships with co-workers is another big challenge, which also proves what has mentioned earlier that women are focused on creating relationships.

A Research Paper By Aleksandra Kowalska, Business Coach, in SPAIN

References

(203) The myths that hold back women at the workplace | Star Jones | TEDxVitosha – YouTube

Desarollo y Coaching de Mujeres Lideres, Fabiana Gadow, Granica

Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman

Women, men and language, Jennifer Coates, Pearson Longman, London

Original source: https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/research-papers/women-in-leadership/

[feelingbluepolitics]

"The pattern evident in the streets has now been confirmed by early demographic data: Researchers fanned out across three American cities last weekend and found overwhelmingly young crowds with large numbers of white and highly educated people.

"A team of 11 volunteers asked every fifth person they encountered to fill out a survey and gathered data from 195 people in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. The researchers, Dana R. Fisher, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, and Michael T. Heaney, a political scientist at University of Michigan, used an established method for studying street protests. They said their numbers provided only rough estimates, but offer the first, more systematic look at who the protesters are.

"White protesters made up 61 percent of those surveyed in New York over the weekend, according to the researchers, and 65 percent of protesters in Washington. On Sunday in Los Angeles, 53 percent of protesters were white.

..."It is not just protests. White Americans are going through a wave of self-examination, buying books about racism, talking to black friends, and arguing within their own families. Still, how much of this translates into broader change remains to be seen.

"'All of these white people on the front lines of these protests go back to their white neighborhoods and their overwhelmingly white and better schools,' said Hakeem Jefferson, who is black and a political scientist at Stanford University. 'They protest alongside them, but they don’t live alongside them,' he said, referring to black people.

..."Racial groups tend to feel warmest toward their own group. White people favor white people, and black people favor black people. But by 2018, white liberals felt more positively about blacks, Latinos and Asians than they did about whites. That reversal surfaced in a recent poll by the Pew Research Center: About 49 percent of white Democrats said it bothered them that their nominee would be a white man, while just 28 percent of black Democrats said so.

"The researchers who collected data last weekend found that the crowds were overwhelmingly young and well educated. More than three quarters of those surveyed were under the age of 34, and 82 percent of white protesters had a college degree, while 67 percent of black protesters had one.

"Younger Americans are much more racially diverse than earlier generations and tend to have different views on race.

..."My parents have a lot of learning to do,” said Isabel Muir, 22, a recent college graduate, who was standing in front of St. John’s Church on Saturday in Washington. She said she was having conversations on social media, and with her mother, about 'how to be a white ally.'

"When her mother, who is 62, questioned the property destruction during some protests, Ms. Muir said she told her that 'we have to understand this community’s pain. This economy has been built on their backs.'

"[t]rump also appeared to be a powerful driver. Forty-five percent of white people surveyed in Dr. Fisher’s work selected [t]rump as a motivation for joining the protests, compared with 32 percent of black people. White people were most likely to report having attended the 2017 Women’s March, but the second-least likely, after Asians, to report having attended the March for Racial Justice in 2017.

..."White Americans have taken part in struggles for racial equality at times — as abolitionists in the 19th century and Freedom Riders in the 1960s. But scholars of race in America said it remained to be seen whether a heightened awareness of racial injustice now would lead to broad change."

Wait until impoverished white Republicons fully understand that making people poor, and then stigmatizing poverty, is sloppy racial oppression they have both been caught up in and helped perpetuate.

So-called "economic anxiety," the early post-election euphemism for Republicon racism, gave trump power. True economic anxiety plus new comprehension about systemic racism should power a Democratic Blue Wave.

[the--highlanders]

Separation

on ao3.

Victoria realises that Jamie is less familiar than she had first thought.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for the Doctor?”

Scoffing – though not unkindly – Jamie waved one hand dismissively and carried on down the hill. “What for?”

“Well, we -” Victoria frowned down at the city sprawled out below them. It was a messy, colourful thing, all bulbous curves and soft edges. Every building seemed crammed with decorative ridges and growth-like additions and hazardous-looking spires. When the Doctor had said this city was beautiful, Victoria had imagined something like Bath, a pleasant resort-town, in contrast to the crowded, fuel-choked shipping ports they had sometimes visited. But this city looked more vulgar than attractive, some half-monstrous over-performance of style. There was something unsavoury about it, she was sure. But she did not know how to put any of that into words in a way Jamie would understand. “We might get into trouble,” she finished awkwardly.

Jamie waved his hand again. “We’ll be fine,” he said airily. “It’s the Doctor who usually gets himself in trouble, no’ us.”

Somehow, his words failed to comfort Victoria. “Then we shouldn’t leave him alone,” she protested. “We should go after him.”

“Ye can always go back tae the TARDIS, ye know.”

She threw him a sullen frown. “I know.”

“We’re just goin’ tae have a wee look,” he carried on, as if he had not noticed her scowl. “That’s all.  If the Doctor wants tae go an’ talk tae some scientist -” He did not quite spit the word out, but he said it like it was bitter on his tongue. “Then we can go an’ explore a wee bit, while we wait for him.”

He had done his best to keep his tone neutral, she could tell, but there was still something off about it that she could not quite put her finger on. Was it resentment? No, she thought – what would Jamie want with the scientist? He had quite plainly known nothing about semi-quantum fluid physics, or whatever it was the Doctor had been raving about back in the TARDIS. Surely he could have no reason to regret not being invited along. And the Doctor would have let him come if he had asked. Besides, he had seemed keen enough to visit the city. Unless - “Jamie,” she said, turning slowly to look up at him, “are you jealous?”

“No!” he protested, too quickly and too firmly. “Don’t be silly, I’m not -”

“You are!” she exclaimed, crowing out a triumphant laugh. “You’re jealous that the Doctor’s gone off to talk to someone.”

“I’m no’,” he insisted, but his cheeks were red, and he sounded far too guilty for her to believe him. “Of course I’m no’ jealous.”

“All because the Doctor’s giving his attention to someone else for once.” But she paused, her satisfaction dampening down into awkward regret. The Doctor was distractable at the best of times, flitting from one thing to another as each caught his interest. And then there was Jamie – steady, loyal, dependable Jamie, who she felt sure would go to the ends of the universe with him if he asked, always following along behind. Did he think, she wondered, that the Doctor might one day lose interest in him too, drop him for something bright and shiny and entertaining? Suddenly the whole business did not seem quite so funny. He was still plodding along next to her, red-faced and silent. “Jamie,” she said hesitantly, “you do know that – well -” Should she be saying this? Was it her place? “The Doctor really does love you,” she finished hastily.

Jamie choked out something wordless, spluttering at her for a long moment. She had not believed it possible for his face to turn any more red, but he certainly seemed to have managed it. “What?” he all but cried out eventually. “What do ye mean?”

“Just that -” She was blushing too now, she was sure of it. It would have been far better not to say anything at all. “Just that – you don’t need to worry, just because the Doctor’s gone to talk to this scientist. He comes back because he wants to be with you.”

“Victoria -” Shaking his head, Jamie opened and closed his mouth no less than a dozen times, apparently lost for words. “I meant it, I’m not jealous.”

She frowned at him. “But you didn’t sound happy about it.”

“Aye, alright. But jealous isn’t the right word for it. I don’t care who the Doctor talks to.”

“What is the right word, then?”

He scrunched up his face. “Dunno. Envious, maybe. I’m no’ -” He laughed. “It’s no’ like I think he’s about tae run off with someone, if that’s what ye think. I’ve been with him long enough tae know that.”

Had her thoughts really been so obvious? It had been silly of her, she scolded herself, to think that Jamie did not know the Doctor well enough already. They trudged on in silence for a few more minutes, Jamie setting his jaw like he was determined to say no more. Victoria glanced up at him a few times, but his eyes were always fixed firmly on the path before them, and her questions faded away before they could even reach her throat. She stared out at the city instead, trying to settle her thoughts on what might lie within it.

“I’m no’ jealous,” Jamie repeated, scattering her thoughts again. “I just wish I could keep up with him sometimes, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Victoria bit her lip. “You know he doesn’t need you to, don’t you?”

“Aye, ‘course I do.” Jamie’s eyes were still set straight ahead of him, not even glancing towards her. He had acted out this argument with himself many times over, she realised, his every answer rehearsed and refined. She was simply playing the part of some voice within himself. “Doesnae stop me wishing.”

“I suppose so.” Nudging his side, she gave him what she hoped was a bracing smile. “What do you think we’ll find down there?”

Jamie shrugged, but not dismissively, and a smile was already creeping onto his face in return. “Shops, I ‘spose. Holiday things. What ye normally find in these places.”

Wrinkling her nose, Victoria surveyed the buildings laid out before them. Coming closer had done nothing to improve the prospect of the city. If anything, the colours seemed to have grown brighter, and the colours more ludicrous. “Why on Earth did they build it like that?”

“Hey!” Jamie’s voice was full of mock-offence. Whatever hurt she had caused him, she thought with a touch of relief, it had not lasted long. “This sort of place is very fashionable, ye know. They built them all over this galaxy.”

She stared at him. It should have been obvious before – he had all but told her he knew what they would find down there – but only now had the meaning of his words sunk in. “You’ve seen places like this before?”

“Aye. ‘Couple of times. They thought people would feel like they were havin’ more fun if they made them colourful, ye know. An’ I think it works.”

Victoria could not imagine that anyone would be fooled into having a good time by such offensively-coloured architecture. But Jamie was chattering away happily about the place, and it was as plain as day hat he was parroting back things the Doctor had told him, but he said it so easily. Like all this talk of spaceships and low-gravity arcades came naturally to him. There was a sort of confidence about him that she had seldom seen, a kind of excitement at being the one who knew the most, for once.

“Tell ye what,” he was saying, “there’s always these wee ice cream shops, an’ they do this flavour – it sounds awful, they call it locust jelly, but it’s no’ really locusts, an’ it’s nice. I’ll buy ye some.”

A small part of her shuddered at the thought, wanted to turn him down, but she was too distracted to open her mouth. Jamie was like her – or at least, she had thought so, from the moment she found out where he was from. He shrugged along with her at things the Doctor insisted would be perfectly normal in the Earth’s future, and preferred cooking his own food to using the Doctor’s precious food machine, and laughed with her at the Doctor’s more alien antics. He might have been born a hundred years before she was, but there was something warm about him that reminded her of home, a sort of softness in the face of the future’s hard surfaces and bright white lights. And yet here he was, telling her about an alien planet like he belonged there, digging out a handful of striped tokens from his sporran and handing her a few. Strolling down an alien road, alien names rolling off his tongue like he had been born with them in his mouth. She had misjudged him so completely, thought he was less than he was, and it seemed so silly of her to have imagined that he was still insecure enough to think the Doctor did not love him.

He would bring her back down to earth soon enough, she knew. There would be some comment, some little in-joke that reminded her of how similar they really were, and then they would be off, the pair of them laughing at the mad world they had ended up in. But for now he was a stranger, and she missed him with a biting sort of loneliness. He had been with the Doctor for a long time, he always said. A year, the Doctor had told her. Was that how long it would take her to become someone else?

Jamie paused in his rambling, tilting his head to look at her quizzically. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just thinking.” Linking her arm through his, she squeezed his elbow tight against her side. “I’m glad I have you,” she said, and that was the truth of it, even when he seemed so different. “I wouldn’t dare go out on my own without the Doctor.”

“Neither would I, when I first started out.” There he went again, talking like he had been at this forever. Like they were not the same at all. “An’ if it was somewhere else then maybe it’d be different. It’s just that these places are all a wee bit the same, that’s all. An’ -” He leant in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I don’t think the Doctor will be too long with that scientist, ye know. He cannae resist any sort of holiday place.”

There he was, the Jamie she knew. She giggled back at him, raising her hand to his mouth like the Doctor might appear behind them at any moment. “No, he can’t,” she said. “But I’m sure you’ll make a perfectly good guide until then.”

He was quiet for a moment, mouth slightly open. “Will I?” he asked, sounding as surprised as if the thought had never occurred to him. Had he never realised? she wondered. Did he not know how comfortable he seemed, so far away from home?

“Yes.” She squeezed his arm again. “Yes, you will.”