#feel free to add that to your conceptualisation

[calamarispiderart]

time to extrapolate to unfounded degrees

[houjitsun]

desire gripping ✶ 20.7 x 29.7cm watercolour, graphite and gouache on cold press paper

part of my ongoing art project! feel free to read below for extra notes and thoughts on this painting.

one of my project’s main themes is desire of the immaterial. something - in this project’s context, someone - you want and crave so so badly, yet it’s just out of your reach. navigating my first experiences with love, i found myself chasing after this intangible thing and wanting to grasp it and never let go. this painting embodies the feeling of wishing so badly for an ideal that is not promised.

using the silhouette motif again, i wanted to create a chaotic and pulsing background that embodied the feeling of lust and desire. working with almost exclusively reds and hot pinks, i used frantic brushwork and full utilisation of my watercolour skills to bring the painting to life. the hands are representative of humanity and the material - all flowery to say those are my hands. the red stains on the fingers is supposed to be from the background, as if the desire has been pulled from and dripped onto the hands. it was another impulse decision i made right before completing this painting, but it feels impossible to envision this painting without it. the star details felt right to add, i have a fondness for star motifs and the placement of them felt serendipitous to tie the painting together.

this was one of the first paintings i made for the project in early june and had conceptualised since march, so it was in the works for a while. it feels good to share this in a right conscience and i hope you enjoy this foray into my personal stories!

[fbcelebrations1]

Unique Wedding table Centerpieces without Flowers.

Embrace the season with creative alternatives to flowers that add charm and personality to your celebration.

•            Candles create a warm and romantic ambiance. Whether you choose clusters of varying heights or elegant floating candles in water-filled bowls, their glow adds a cozy feel. For a rustic touch, consider using lanterns.

•            Succulents offer a modern, fresh look. Arranging them in terrariums, glass bowls, or decorative pots they’re not only eye-catching but also serve as great keepsakes for your guests.

•            Seashells make for a breezy, beach-inspired centerpiece. They can be combined with driftwood or displayed them in clear bowls layered with sand.

•            Pumpkins are quintessential for an autumn wedding. Paint them in your wedding colors, carve them with patterns, or mix various sizes and colors for a festive arrangement.

•            Fruit displays: They bring a burst of color and freshness and can even be an edible delight for your guests.

These flower-free centerpieces will ensure your wedding is both unique and unforgettable.

Event Conceptualised, Executed & Managed by @fbcelebrations1 Décor Designing, Execution & Entertainment Curation @fbcelebrations1

[bhaskarnatarajan]

https://youtu.be/3r0-5NNjjO4 Creativity - What if finding inspiration was merely a matter of shuffling through a set of cards to use a different lens or trying out a new technique? Techniques that are guaranteed to help you get through impasses, generate new ideas and exercise your creative brain. You can shuffle the cards and draw one at a time, or you can use the cards for self, group games, 1-on-1 / group coaching, and various facilitation techniques. 108% Indian is the first and only creativity/brainstorming tool based on Indian constructs, concepts, quirks, philosophy, culture, and stories. It is a set of 108 cards with an abstract image and a thought-provoking question that will enhance your divergent thinking/creative thinking every time you use it -whether as an individual or in your team. ​Whether you are a founder, Coach, or Teacher or running a team, or just by yourself working on a passion or a challenge, these cards will add zing to your creativity every single time. Having worked in the corporate space for a few years, Mr. Neelacantan B, or Neel as he is more popularly known, discovered that creative problem-solving was his calling. His start-up, Coolture Designs which he co-founded with Charusmitha Rao, combines his expertise in problem-solving with his passion for games. Neel feels that ‘Indian culture and heritage is ripe for a rich reinterpretation in order to make it relevant in the current context’. This led him to conceptualise a creative toolkit – 108%Indian. Join me in a 'free-flowing' conversation with the 'Creator' - Neel, to explore the story & inspiration behind the '108% Indian', 'How to use these Cards?'; 'Where to find them?' and much more. Date - Saturday, 14th January 2023 (Today) Time - 7:30 pm IST onwards Click the 'Subscribe'; 'Notify me' & 'Like' buttons and 'Share' with those who may find this useful, interesting, and informative. https://www.instagram.com/p/CnYsWH4yvtn/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[official-wonho]

The secret to Wonho's abs: two 2-hour gym sessions and no instant ramen

K-pop's resident beefcake shares his well-oiled fitness and diet routine

K-pop idol Wonho's love of fitness is something he developed only when he started training to become a performer, which makes his status as the industry's resident hunk even more impressive. Even if you've never heard any of his music (we recommend you hit ‘add to library’), you've likely seen a fancam or two of him grace your Twitter timeline or Instagram explore page. To put it plainly, he's got a rockin' bod.

All abs, thighs and arms, Wonho has been a staple in K-pop since 2015 when he debuted with the group Monsta X, who quickly became known for the masculine ‘beast idol’ concept. Since 2020, he's embarked solo, infusing that strong outer appearance with something more vulnerable. He's just released his second single album Bittersweet, which he's been promoting since early October. The promotions for a K-pop idol are gruelling and intense. Never just about an expertly conceptualised music video, they also include early start appearances on music shows, long interview days and ‘fan calls’ that involve a steady stream of Facetimes with fans who win the chance to talk to their fave starts off the back of buying albums. The process is a well-oiled machine, and so is the fitness routine and diet that Wonho has developed alongside it.

Not one to shy away from a revealing stage costume that shows off his six-pack in equal measure to his dance moves, or to entice fans with an expertly taken thirst trap, it's obvious Wonho has mastered the balance required to maintain one of the most jacked physiques in music and the gruelling reality of promoting as an idol. Here he explains what it takes to be the adonis of K-pop.

Workouts

"Monday morning I will work out my chest and then after I'll do my back and shoulders. Then the next day it will be my arms and my lower body, and then I'll repeat myself. So I spend four hours working out in total per day. I'll divide it up into the morning and the night, and then as well as that I'll also do a one-hour cardio workout. There are two types of ab workouts that I do after the main workout. I'll use the machine called hanging raise, and then I'll also work out with the cable, and I'll do 10 sets every single day. Seven days, every week.

So my favourite workout would be exercising my back because I often feel that I've worked out really hard and have that fulfilling feeling, I guess. I hate working out my chest because it's hard to get the posture right and I have back pain so, it's kind of hard to do it. I start off my set with free weights without using the machine, and I'll use the equipment in every gym that I would like to try out. There's a lat pulldown machine from the Italian brand Panatta that I really like.

For most Korean artists, when we start our album promotion [schedules] are packed and really tight, so many artists will sleep for, like, one or two hours and then get up and do another schedule. Whenever I don't get enough sleep, in the morning I often feel like giving up that day. But I'll never skip my workouts, especially because my face will bloat. So if I don't do it before the schedule, I'll do it during.

During the pandemic, it was really hard for me to work out in the gym. In Korea, many of the gyms were closed, but I had my own gym and supplements in my house. So I would use those to work out, but I also went outside a lot instead. Even if I couldn't focus on weights, I kept on working with my dancing and being mobile. [To dance] I do a lot of stretching and I use a foam roller constantly which helps a lot with balance. I think because I practice a lot of dancing, regardless of my muscles, [that fluidity] just naturally comes."

Diet

"I start my morning by training, and after working out I'll drink an oatmeal juice. For my first meal, I eat chicken with carrots, broccoli, kale and rice, and for my second I eat beef rump with rice. Then, in between my dinner and the second meal, I'll have another oatmeal juice. For dinner, I'll have white fish, again with rice, carrots, broccoli and kale, and I'll finish it off with egg whites. Sometimes I'll also eat pineapple for digestion.

It's probably a special case for me, and I don't think it will apply to many other people, but I often think of my fans or of being in front of a camera, and so naturally, it makes me handle my appetite and drive me further. It's like a motivation for me."

Vices

“My favourite food is ramen, but ramen is often recognised as an instant food and something that's not good for your health. But I can never resist it, so whenever I finish shooting a music video, or after my album promotion, I'll eat it. But since I have a photoshoot coming up, I won't have it yet.”

Skincare and beauty

"I don't use any specific skincare. I don't really know how to care for my skin, to be honest, so I will just use things that I see in front of me. For example, when I go to the gym they will have skincare that people can use, so I'll just use that.

I do love using perfume, though. My favourite is, and sorry to use a swear word, called Fucking Fabulous Eau de Parfum by Tom Ford."

Source: gq-magazine.co.uk

[probably-ace-ok]

Ninjago Timeline

Was meant to be studying for a biology exam earlier but ended up thinking about the Ninjago timeline instead, so here you go.

I think we can compare Harumi, Lloyd, and Nelson’s ages to approximate a timeline.

So first of all, lets assume that Lloyd in the first season and a half is 12. His general personality and attitude fits your typical 12-year-old boy (I should know, I have one for a little brother) and it’s also the original target audience for Ninjago. He’s also old enough to be walking around on his own without anyone trying to find his parents while still being immature.

So what about the Tomorrow’s Tea? Well we don’t know exactly how much Lloyd aged since Lego doesn’t really distinguish between adults and teenagers, but we can guess that he’s aged up to at least 16 as he’s clearly past puberty. Based on him being seen as ‘old enough’ to fight Garmadon but still young, likely between 16 and 18. It should also be noted that his sudden maturity after being aged up suggests his brain development followed that of his body, as he acts more like someone in their mid-late teens than a preteen from that point forwards.

So what about the ninja themselves? Well word of god tells us that they were conceptualised as teenagers, although they all seem to be treated pretty much as adults within the world so we must assume that they’re in their late teens (17-19 range) with Zane being an outlier. It’s also implied that Nya is younger than Kai. The creators have said that they see the ninja as perpetual teenagers so they remain relatable to the audience but this is a timeline post so I don’t care about that, they gave up that right when they made them teachers in Rebooted (Season 3).

So, now that we have our initial ages for the main characters, let’s look at the ones that naturally age through the show. First of all Harumi. From her story, we can estimate that since she was around Lloyd’s age when the Great Devourer attacked and appears to now be an adult (or at least she better be because otherwise her relationship with Lloyd…) at least 6 years have passed between Rise of the Snakes and Sons of Garmadon (Season 1 and Season 8 respectively).

We can also look to Nelson, who was first seen as a child in Skybound (Season 6). We later see him in various seasons up to Crystalized (Season 16) where he attends the Ninja’s trial — however in these appearances he is now taller, implying he is still a teenager. As his first appearance with his new height is in Secrets of the Forbidden Spinjitzu (Season 11) we can guess that approximately 3 years have passed between Season 6 and Season 11, and as his appearance has not changed since that less than 3 years has passed between Season 11 and Season 16.

So, where do these years go? While at least one or two of them goes between Legacy of the Golden Ninja (Season 2) and Rebooted (Season 3) due to technological development, the only other solid mention we have of time between seasons is between Seabound (Season 15) and Crystalized (Season 16) which is exactly one year.

So what does this tell us? Surprisingly, quite a lot. We know that the Ninja have had a lot of their recent adventures within a very short period of time, and also that they are all currently in their twenties (including Lloyd, both physically and chronologically). Feel free to use anything here for AUs or fanfiction!

(Also, not trying to work out Wu, Garmadon, and Misako. FSM decided to spawn kids out of nowhere one day, forgot to add the ageing feature for a few centuries, and Misako experienced premature ageing due to Wu and Garmadon being idiots).

[leyyvi]

This is super meta but as a relatively new fan, I wonder if the fan reception to Levi is different in Japan VS in the west?? I mean he’s a character conceptualised in Japan, reaching a Japanese audience first, so I wonder if there are certain nuances to his character that don’t mean much to us with a non-Japanese lens, but mean a LOT more to fans with the context of deeply complex Japanese culture/beliefs…

This is such an interesting thought. I wish I knew, if someone does feel free to add your input. I'm not fluent in Japanese but I know a bit and there's some moments where things are translated in subtitles and I sit there like "huh that's not what they said."

most of the time I think it's bc companies like crunchyroll/netflix/funimation try to translate things in a way that appeals to a western audience.

So much gets left out of translations. the jokes aren't the same. There's so many language puns too that just don't come out the same in English compared to Japanese, even after it's explained.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Levi's jokes sound a little different compared to what we read in English

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 56: Not NOT a negation episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 56: Not NOT a negation episode. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 56 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today we’re getting enthusiastic about negation!

Gretchen: Or “We’re not getting unenthusiastic about negation,” if you will.

Lauren: “We’re not NOT getting enthusiastic about negation.” But first, we just want to say thanks to everyone who became a patron or was already a patron and came to our April liveshow that was part of LingFest.

Gretchen: It was really fun to get to see and hear from you all in the chat and on social media. This show has been edited and put up on our Patreon bonus feed. If you want to listen to it in audio only like a normal podcast, you can listen to it on Patreon if you didn’t catch it live. We’d also like to thank everybody who came to LingFest in general. All of the great events that people put on were really fun! It was really great to see all of the community around that.

Lauren: LingFest came on the back of LingComm21, which was our conference for people doing LingComm, which was also a lovely experience. Thanks to everyone who participated in one or both of those events.

[Music]

Gretchen: “There is nothing to be suspicious about here.”

Lauren: “That’s good because I absolutely did not eat the whole secret stash of chocolate while you weren’t looking.”

Gretchen: “And I definitely didn’t spill water everywhere.”

Lauren: “I totally have not adopted a pet dinosaur.”

Gretchen: “The moon is absolutely in its usual position. No one has blown it up – especially not me.”

Lauren: I am quite dubious, and I’m just gonna wait until I can definitely check that by looking at the moon.

Gretchen: I am also a little bit worried about the status of your dinosaur or dinosaur-free lifestyle.

Lauren: I don’t have a pet dinosaur. I was very clear. No dinosaur.

Gretchen: But if you haven’t had a pet dinosaur the entire time I’ve known you, why are you bringing it up today?

Lauren: Every day I have not had a pet dinosaur, and yet, bringing it up today somehow makes it feel relevant in a way a bit like we talked about in our episode on Gricean maxims where you only talk about things because they are relevant.

Gretchen: Just like I have not been blowing up the moon every single day of my life –

Lauren: Thankfully.

Gretchen: – yet somehow, when I start saying it like that, it also reminds me of a feature of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, which is a delightfully surreal podcast. There’s this bit in Episode 8 that I wrote about back in 2013 when I was first listening to Welcome to Night Vale that also uses negation in a very similar sort of way. Here’s the quote, “We’re receiving word from the City Council that there was absolutely not a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular this weekend at Radon Canyon – there never was a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular ever near Night Vale. ‘Pink Floyd is not even a thing,’ said the Council in a statement,” and at the same time, you’re left with this impression that –

Lauren: That’s a lot of denying.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s sort of “Methinks thou dost protest too much,” like, “Why are you protesting so much?” Surely, every day, near my house, there is not a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular, and yet no one has felt obliged to inform me of this.

Lauren: It’s because the only times we talk about something not happening is because the absence of something is relevant. Language takes a default positive talking about things that are here or do exist. It’s the lack of something that gets overtly marked in the grammar of languages.

Gretchen: Right. It’s also the lack of something brings in this presupposition that the lack of something is a relevant thing to talk about or that it could have been expected but hasn’t happened. If I say something like, “I haven’t eaten dinner yet today,” that’s not ontologically weird, philosophically weird, in the same way “I don’t have a pet dinosaur” is weird. Because it is still an open question on any given day whether or not I’ve had dinner. Or if I say, “I don’t have a cat,” that is an open question that reasonable people sometimes do have cats, and so it could be reasonably relevant that I might or might not have a cat in the way that it’s not reasonably relevant that I might or might not have a pet dinosaur.

Lauren: This shows up in the grammar where the default is positive. You don’t add anything to a sentence, usually, to indicate that something’s positive. You have to add something to the grammar to show that it’s negative.

Gretchen: If you look at the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures, which is a great set of maps that is available on the internet for free for you to look at, they have over 1,000 languages on their negation map. They have a bunch of different ways that languages can indicate negation, whether you add a different word or whether you change something about the verb or whether you add two things or other things like that. In over 1,000 languages, all of them have something you add to make the sentence negative – not, for example, something you take away.

Lauren: You get to this point with language as a consistent feature of language where the absence of something or the negation of something is indicated by adding something to the grammar whether that’s a word or a morpheme that affixes to a word.

Gretchen: Which is philosophically weird when you think about it, right, because why is the presence of something indicated with the version of the sentence that has less in it, and the absence of something is indicated by the version of the sentence that has more in it.

Lauren: I think it definitely goes back to the initial examples we used where actually talking about the absence of something only happens when absence is relevant because there is not a dinosaur in my house every day, but I absolutely don’t need to point out every day all the things that are not in my house.

Gretchen: You don’t have any zebras either?

Lauren: I just start the day by rattling them off.

Gretchen: Listing every single animal that’s not in my house every day before I do anything else.

Lauren: We tend to only talk about the absence of something when it’s relevant. This is part of why negation is an additive thing to the grammar. We think about the positive version of the utterance as somehow being more default.

Gretchen: It’s actually kind of similar to how we think about numbers. Like, “one” and “two” and “three” were invented a long time before the number “zero” was invented. Even though before you have one of something, you have zero of it, but it wasn’t being commented on in a numerical way. It might’ve been being commented on in a negative way because languages do have negation, but it wasn’t being commented on as “I have zero dinosaurs.”

Lauren: Why negation is something that’s kept mathematicians and philosophers and people doing logic and linguists entertained, and many other people entertained, for such a long time and why we’re giving it its own whole episode.

Gretchen: “We’re not NOT doing a negation episode.”

Lauren: Alongside the strong consistency of having some kind of additional marking to indicate negation, the use of particular gestures to indicate negation seems to be one of the more consistent things that languages do across families.

Gretchen: I love it when you have a gesture tie-in.

Lauren: For a couple of centuries, people have grappled with the fact that shaking the head to indicate “no” is incredibly prevalent across languages – and way more prevalent and consistent than nodding is to indicate “yes.”

Gretchen: Oh! That’s interesting.

Lauren: The generally agreed-upon theory is that shaking your head to indicate “no” starts really early when infants are refusing food because it’s something you have an imperative to do.

Gretchen: “No, don’t want this food. No!”

Lauren: Even Charles Darwin wrote a book that, I think, it was just gonna be a chapter of On the Origin of Species, and he just got way into it looking at gestures looking across humans and other animals and different languages and was like, “The head shake for ‘no’ is really consistent.” How people indicate “yes” is less consistent, and it just seems to be “do something that isn’t ‘no’,” whereas “no” seems to be the starting point.

Gretchen: Hmm. That’s interesting.

Lauren: You have this really consistent pattern with head shaking, and you also have these families of gestural tendencies across languages where people use some kind of away motion for negation with their hands.

Gretchen: Like, “Oh, no, I can’t.” I’m doing some sort of sweeping away from my shoulders.

Lauren: A pushing away or a sweeping away or a throwing away are all part of this family that have been looked at across languages. I’ve just published a paper in a journal, Semiotica, about this flicking away, rolling away, gesture that you get in Syuba narratives when people are talking about the absence or the lack of something in a story. All of these types of away negation seem to also tap into this human conceptualisation of negation as something pushed away from or held away from the body – “away” and negation seems to fit together in our –

Gretchen: “It’s not near me.” That actually ties into this idea that the affirmative, the positive, the non-negative form is the default because if you’re pushing it away from your body that implies that it was near your body in the first place.

Lauren: We have a very bodily lived experience of existing and things being here or not being here. Although, that is a good point. I’ve been just talking about the positive, but there is a technical linguist term for “not negative” which is “affirmative” – probably should mention that.

Gretchen: I feel like people have encountered “affirmative” in a very robot voice, you know, [imitates computer voice] “Affirmative. Destroy all the humans” – or something like that.

Lauren: It’s one of those times where you’re like, “Oh, good. A technical term that’s already part of my vocabulary.” That’s a win.

Gretchen: It’s interesting because you could imagine a language where the default beginning is actually negative and, instead, you add something to make it affirmative.

Lauren: This is a hard-to-wrap-your-head-around constructed language experiment.

Gretchen: None of the languages in WALS do this, apparently, but you have English, which has “I don’t have a pet dino,” which is the negative, and “I have a pet dino,” which is the affirmative. English Prime, which is what linguists do when they’re trying to make up a language that is very similar to English but different except one thing so we don’t have to make up new words the whole way through, where you could say something like, “I have a pet dino,” meaning “I don’t have one” because that’s the default form of the sentence, and then if you have like, “I AFF have a pet dino,” which means “I do have one,” where the “AFF” is a fake word that means “affirmative.” That’s just not a thing you see grammatically.

Lauren: I have learnt many languages, I have encountered complex grammars of many languages, and this actually hurts my brain to conceptualise as a way of speaking. In English we have a variety of ways of expressing negation in the grammar. We have separate words like “no” or “not” that we can use to make a whole sentence negative, or we also have affixes that we can use to make a particular word negative. “Unenthusiastic” would be an example from the top of the show – or “unhappy,” “unexciting,” “uninteresting,” “hopeless.” There’re a variety of strategies that English has to do negating; it’s not just one particular thing.

Gretchen: The word formation side of negation often brings up the question of the fossilised words that English has in its vocabulary that look like they have a negative part to them, but we don’t have the positive version of them anymore. You have things like, “ruthless” or “feckless” or “unkempt,” but we don’t have like, “ruthful” or “feckful” or “kempt.”

Lauren: “Kempt.” Yes.

Gretchen: There’s a great poem about this which we can link to. What’s interesting is that I’ve actually been – this is a shameless bragging moment here – I was reading an advance copy of Arika Okrent’s upcoming book.

Lauren: I will be jealous of this on behalf of everyone because Arika Okrent wrote an amazing book about conlanging called In the Land of Invented Languages probably a decade ago now and has a new book about English grammar and its wonderful weirdnesses coming out in the middle of 2021.

Gretchen: Her book is called Highly Irregular. It’s coming out on July 1st, 2021. She makes this really interesting point in the advance copy which is, “We joke about the missing flipsides of ‘hapless,’ ‘ruthless,’ and ‘feckless,’ but not what we should be able to form but don’t from ‘bashful,’ ‘grateful,’ and ‘wistful.’”

Lauren: Huh! I feel like this is a reaction I have when I read Arika’s work a lot. I’m just like, “Ah, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that before.

Gretchen: There’s no “bashless,” “grateless,” or “wistless,” even though it feels natural that there should be a missing positive form of forms that have a negative. We don’t have the same reaction of the missing negative form of things that have a positive, which also gets into that positive-as-default form.

Lauren: These things always seem so consistent on the surface. Then you look at how people actually use them and what gets actively used and what becomes fossils, and you realise that applying negation is a little more complicated.

Gretchen: Then on the flipside of affirmative is no negation at all. There’s also this thing of like, “What if you have extra negation? What if you wanna make something even more emphatically negated?” “I absolutely did not get a baby dinosaur. Nope. No siree. Nah-uh. Didn’t happen.”

Lauren: Some languages can put in more than one negating word to really emphasise that something is negated, which is a strategy you might be familiar with as “double negation,” which occurs in about 10% of the world’s languages.

Gretchen: This is the strategy that I’m really familiar with in French because that’s the default way of doing negation. In formal, written French you have at least two negative words. Sometimes, you can put in more. The default way of doing that is a “ne” before the verb and a “pas” after the verb. Sometimes the “pas” can change into something else. So, “ne VERB pas” is “not,” but if you have “ne VERB personne,” that’s “no one,” or “ne VERB rien,” that’s “nothing.” Even if I just want to say, like, “I did not receive a baby dinosaur,” it would be, “Je n'ai pas reçu un dinosaure,” which is “dinosaur” in French, in case that wasn’t clear. You have the “ne” and the “pas” there. Although, in spoken French, a lot of times the “ne” gets dropped, and so you just have the “pas” indicating negation.

Lauren: The “ne” is the older part, right?

Gretchen: Yeah. English actually, historically, had a second negative particle that was before the verb. If you have “I cannot,” it was more something like, “I ne cannot.” They were both there and then the earlier one gets dropped. This happens sometimes you get negatives reinforcing each other and then “Oh, now we don’t need this one.”

Lauren: If we revisited those 120 languages with double negation in the WALS map in a century – because languages are constantly changing and moving around in their grammar some of them might’ve dropped one of those negative elements and gone back to being a single negation language, and some languages might add a second one and become a language that has double negation. French is kind of in the middle of doing that at the moment.

Gretchen: This process in linguistic research is called “negative concord” rather than “double negation” because it’s not just two of them necessarily. A language that has negative concord can continue stacking negative elements like “nothing” and “no one” and all of these on top. Like, “I didn’t give nothing to no one,” that’s totally the expected way of saying it in French.

Lauren: It’s interesting that that gloss works as the expected form in French because it is totally grammatically viable for some dialects of English, but it’s often stigmatised as being not acceptable or not part of standard English.

Gretchen: The thing that drives me up the wall about the logic for doing that is that the logic for stigmatising it is quote-unquote “two negatives form a positive,” but what this logic doesn’t realise is that it’s extremely spurious logic. It’s a misuse of how logic works.

Lauren: Do you wanna unpack that for us? Because I personally find joy in the fact that language is more interesting than logic, but if people have encountered this argument, where does it fall down for you?

Gretchen: First of all, languages like French exist.

Lauren: I do wonder how much more milage double negation or negative concord in English would get if we called it the “French negation.”

Gretchen: Right! “Oh, it’s like French toast!” Everyone likes things that are French. The “French toast” negation style. There were plenty of early logicians who were French who were surely not making this argument that doesn’t even work for their language in the only way that they were doing things in Descartes’s time.

Lauren: Language is not just numbers.

Gretchen: Also, in English, nobody is confused about the difference between “I didn’t give nothing to nobody” and “I’m not NOT excited.” Those both use multiple negations. In one of them, the negation is trying cancel out the negation, and in the other one, it’s reinforcing the negation. We do know what people mean. It’s not actually confusing.

Lauren: In fact, we can throw even more negation into the way that we speak, and people cope with it really fine.

Gretchen: The other thing is, is that – I don’t wanna get completely linguist on the logicians, but languages have been around for a lot longer than logic has.

Lauren: True.

Gretchen: Formal logic has existed for, I dunno, what, Aristotle? So, a couple thousand years, if we’re gonna be generous. Language has been around for somewhere in the tens of thousands of years. We’re not even sure whether it’s tens or hundreds of thousands because we literally don’t have records. Just several orders of magnitude longer than logic has existed, language has been around. If we think that roughly 10% of languages have negative concord now, probably some fraction of languages have always had negative concord because it’s a thing that people could do. It’s a bit rich for logic, this young interloper, to come into language, which has been doing just fine this entire time, and be like, “Sorry, you need to redo your entire system because I don’t like it.” Who are you? It’s so young.

Lauren: With that in mind, should we try squeezing even more negation into a sentence? Because we can do better than just double negatives for negative concord.

Gretchen: Yes. This is where we can do one of my favourite examples which is the Mean Girls approach to negation.

Lauren: Okay, not what I expected to be your favourite example, but let’s go.

Gretchen: I mean, look, any excuse to have a Mean Girls reference. That’s the “She doesn’t even go here” type of negation. When you have several bits in a sentence that are actually negative, you could still take one out, and that’s what makes the logical argument superficially appealing because you could get rid of someone, they’re just reinforcing each other. But in this case, you have “She doesn’t even go here,” and if you try to make that positive – “She does even go here.”

Lauren: “She even goes here.” I’m taking out the “n’t” – “She does even go here.” It doesn’t work for me.

Gretchen: Or you could do it with a different stress like, “She EVEN goes here.”

Lauren: Or I guess the affirmative form of this would just be “She goes here.” The “even” doesn’t turn up at all.

Gretchen: The “even” there is doing something interesting. It’s reinforcing the negation without itself being negative per se in isolation – just sort of not being around at all – without the negative there to help it.

Lauren: I guess it would be like a sentence like, “I don’t like ice cream at all,” which apart from being a fake fact –

Gretchen: [Laughs] Would you say, “I like ice cream at all”?

Lauren: I would just say, “I like ice cream.” The “at all” doesn’t need to be there at all.

Gretchen: Or the “I didn’t eat a crumb of cake,” which you can say, “I ate a crumb of cake,” but it’s not quite the opposite of “I didn’t eat a crumb of cake.”

Lauren: It’s a little bit too literal in the affirmative version.

Gretchen: Or something like, “I didn’t touch a drop of water.”

Lauren: “I touched a drop of water,” I just boop it with my ear.

Gretchen: Just going through the rain booping rain drops.

Lauren: That one absolutely does not work when you keep “a drop of water” in there. That construction only works for me in the negative even though a lot of the words in it that are adding to the negation aren’t necessarily negative in their structure.

Gretchen: Exactly. It’s saying, “I didn’t touch even the smallest amount of water” is what that’s doing there. And there’s that “even” again. Coincidentally, this is also something that Arika Okrent talks about in her book Highly Irregular, which is coming out. It’s not only a book about negation, I promise. I was just thinking about negation because I knew we were doing this episode when I was reading it.

Lauren: Also, as you can tell from the examples, negation is where grammar starts to get particularly interesting, so it’s unsurprisingly that a book like Highly Irregular would have a couple of stories about negation in it.

Gretchen: Yeah, because there’re interesting things to say there. Arika Okrent has this great section which talks about things like “even” and “any” and “at all” and “a drop of” which are called “negative polarity items,” if you want a technical term for it.

Lauren: This is a technical term that I know but hadn’t really thought about until we started putting the show together. I guess that by “items” they just mean things that are words or multiple words because “a crumb of” isn’t a word. We can’t just call them “negative polarity words.”

Gretchen: Some of them are individual words like “any” or “yet” or “even” or “either.” Some of them are longer phrases like “at all” or “a thing” or “an iota,” “a drop.” You can get verbs like “budge.”

Lauren: In a sentence like?

Gretchen: Like, “The boulder won’t budge.” You don’t say, “The bolder will budge.”

Lauren: Hmm. I guess some of these are like, “Huh.” Sorry. I’m just gonna take a moment to consult my intuitions there because, yeah, I guess not.

Gretchen: I might be able to say, “budge over,” or something to a person. Then you have whole phrases like, “breathe a word,” “hold a candle,” “sleep a wink,” “lift a finger.”

Lauren: “I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

Gretchen: “Couldn’t sleep a wink.” “I could sleep a wink.” [Laughter] “I could lift a finger.”

Lauren: When you put them into the affirmative, they don’t work. It also shows why they’re just called “negative polarity” rather than “negation” because they bring this negative sense with them, but they are not doing grammatical negating themselves. There’s no “no” or “not” or “un-” in there.

Gretchen: That’s what distinguishes them from something like, “no one,” “nowhere,” “nothing,” which are themselves already negative words. If you think about the polarity of a phrase as like, I guess, if you go away from the equator – let’s say you go north for negation because they both begin with N. As you head towards the North Pole, your negative polarity gets higher.

Lauren: As someone who lives on a continent that is often called the “antipodes” because we are on the opposite side of the world from the Northern Hemisphere, I appreciate that you’re putting north as your deficit for negation. Thank you.

Gretchen: It just, I dunno, acronyms – they’re nice.

Lauren: N for “north,” N for “negation.” Negative polarity items are just sending you in that direction without necessarily being negative themselves.

Gretchen: What’s interesting about them is that although they’re called “negative polarity items” because of this canonical contrast where you say, “There aren’t any here,” versus “There are any here,” which is weird because it doesn’t have the negation, there are also some other contexts where you can say stuff like this. You can say negative polarity items in questions often. “Do you see any?” Or in if-clauses.

Lauren: And if-clauses are famous for not existing quite in our reality. That’s one of the things they’re doing.

Gretchen: “If you make a peep, you’ll get in trouble.” The “if” part of that, you know, somehow that works for negative polarity. And also contexts with words like “without” or “doubt” or “surprise” or “regret.” That’s something like, “I regret lifting a finger to help.” You’re not gonna say, “I lifted a finger to help,” because that one’s weird, but as soon as you regret lifting a finger, somehow that one works fairly well.

Lauren: So, they’re not just doing straight up negating, there’s something more complicated happening there.

Gretchen: This is something that’s still an active area of research to figure out exactly what all the contexts are because some of the negative polarity items work better in some contexts than others, so there can be a bit of fuzziness around the borders for which ones work when. The theories for the reasons behind those conditions can get fairly complicated. It’s interesting to have this observation of like, here’s this whole class of words. You knew about nouns and verbs, but negative polarity items, they’ve been there this whole time, and yet you didn’t realise they had this unifying characteristic of them.

Lauren: There might be some times when something that’s listed as a negative polarity item actually works in the affirmative for some people and why intuition checking becomes a big part of thinking about this because I’ve definitely met some people who can use “anymore,” which I can only use in negative like, “I don’t have a dinosaur anymore.”

Gretchen: Oh no! What happened to it?

Lauren: But there are some English speakers who can use “anymore” in a positive sentence. Whenever I hear it, I’m like, “Oh, that works for you,” but I literally can’t even come up with an example in my head because it doesn’t work in my variety of English.

Gretchen: I have a fun story about positive “anymore,” which is, I didn’t have it growing up. I encountered it in grad school in this very like, “Did you know that in some varieties of English people have positive ‘anymore’?” I was reading the examples and being told these examples. It’s something like, “Cake is expensive anymore.”

Lauren: Alas.

Gretchen: Where it means “nowadays.”

Lauren: I can totally understand it functioning when you use it in a sentence like that. It’s not like my brain can’t process the meaning at all. It’s just not something I would say.

Gretchen: I actually went to a linguistics conference, and I went to a workshop by a linguist who had positive “anymore.” The first time I heard him say it in the wild, I was like, “Oh, this is this thing that I read about in the books.” Three days later, I’d heard this linguist on enough occasions say enough tokens of positive “anymore” that I’m like, “Yeah, it’s grammatical for me now.” I acquired it in this week in 2012.

Lauren: Amazing.

Gretchen: Sometimes, the only reason you don’t have positive “anymore” is because you only have negative evidence to suggest that it doesn’t exist.

Lauren: I just haven’t been exposed to it.

Gretchen: Then I have probably, I dunno, probably less than a dozen tokens of positive evidence in this naturalistic setting from this linguist who didn’t realise that he was grammatically teaching me to use positive “anymore.” He thought he was doing a workshop on a perfectly unrelated topic, and yet I walked out of that being like, “Yeah, it’s grammatical for me,” and it has been ever since.

Lauren: You are an inspiration for lifelong grammatical acquisition.

Gretchen: Right! Because I was an adult. It was great.

Lauren: You called it “positive anymore.” So, the fact that we have negative polarity items, can I intuit that there are also positive polarity items?

Gretchen: Yeah. There aren’t as many, but one of them is–

Lauren: Interesting. Again, this obsession with marking negation.

Gretchen: We mark negation a lot more. But one of them is “somewhat.” You can say, “I liked that cake somewhat.”

Lauren: We’re definitely not moving as close to the positive pole with the “somewhat” there.

Gretchen: “I didn’t like that cake somewhat” is just kind of ugh for a lot of people.

Lauren: That doesn’t work for me.

Gretchen: There’re a few positive polarity items as well that move people further towards the South Pole, if you will.

Lauren: I like that talking about positive polarity items has moved us full circle through negation and back into thinking about negation and thinking about negative structures and affirmative structures as all part of this larger, more complicated system of ways that we have of expressing that things exist or they don’t exist and how we go about talking about that.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, esoteric symbol socks, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can get access to 49 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website.

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Lauren: Lingthusiasm is produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic! Don’t stay unlingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[buildarocketboys]

Even after spending so much time on it in my dissertation (honestly I spent probably upwards of 1000 words - in a 12,000 word essay - analysing the translation of a single word), I'm still astonished by the number of layers the word Herrchen has and the potential it has as a gender descriptor.

First of all some context - the scene, as it were, takes place in the transvestite bar Mikado in early 1930s Berlin (I chose to use transvestite as it's the closest translation to the German, which is literally 'transvestiten', and it evokes transness without definitively saying whether someone was transgender or a crossdresser or any other shade of queer and gender nonconforming, since making that distinction about historical figures is impossible and pretty meaningless anyway, in a very queer way).

The bar is staffed by amab transvestites, dressed as women, who perform their gender for the clientele (who are often heterosexual and, in Moreck’s text, quite provincial and clueless to the 'actual' gender/sex of the performers). One of these clients asks one of these performers 'are you a man or a woman?'

To which she replies, 'Neither! I am a (Herrchen)!' (leaving Herrchen untranslated for now since I want to go through the layers first before offering my translation).

So the first possible meaning of Herrchen, and the one most native Germans would be familiar with (although I had no idea of this until it was pointed out to me), is that of a master or owner of a dog.

The second interesting thing about Herrchen is that while Herr (literally, gentleman or sir) is obviously a masculine word, the 'chen' ending makes it both diminutive (so, 'little sir', maybe - literally diminishing the masculinity and making it smaller) and, more interestingly neuter - it literally 'transgenders' the word.

Finally (and actually the first meaning I took from it, apart from the diminutive), Herrchen can be interpreted as a portmanteau of Herr (gentleman) and Mädchen (girl - also, interestingly, a neuter word in German). So this person is neither a man or a woman, but a gentleman-girl. Nonbinary, genderqueer, or just plain trans - but one thing she ain't (I use 'she' pronouns bc that's what's used in the source text) is cis (imo).

My eventual translation of Herrchen was one that tried to take into account all three layers (with varying levels of success, and it's certainly not perfect - but it does add something more to it in a way that was really pleasing for me from a queer translation perspective). My translation of Herrchen was 'your little lady-gentleman'. 'your' evokes the possession/ownership of the dog-owner meaning (although English readers might not get this), but also adds an element of the performative - this playing with and performance of gender at these bars was very much the appeal of these places, and we can't say how this person would have conceptualised or felt about their gender in private, or among other queer friends - 'your' acknowledges this, while not dismissing her self-describing as neither man or woman. 'little' obviously evokes the diminutive of 'chen' as well as the 'Mädchen' part of Herrchen in combination with lady (little-lady = a more playful way of saying 'girl') while lady-gentleman evokes the portmanteau element of Herrchen and humorously plays on the phrase 'ladies and gentlemen' in a genderqueer way. The only thing that's really lost is the neuter element inherent in 'chen', since English doesn't really have that

Overall I think it's a pretty good attempt at a translation that takes into account all the possible layers evoked in the word Herrchen (although I'd always be interested in hearing alternatives from other German speakers).

But the thing I enjoy about the original which isn't quite possible in English is the way it evokes so much in one, fairly short word.

It's definitely how I'll be describing my gender in German from now on!

(The book this is from, btw, is Curt Moreck’s Ein Führer durch das lasterhafte Berlin, or Guide to deviant Berlin, and the section title is Hier gibt es Transvestiten, or Here Be Transvestites - my translation again. I translated this entire section as well as the two sections about homosexual men and lesbians for my dissertation, so hopefully I'll get round to posting those - probably by linking to a Google doc - in the next week or so. Meanwhile if anyone wants to talk to me/ask questions about this book or 1920s/30s queer Berlin in general, it's literally one of my favourite topics - I've done two dissertations on it now - so please feel free!)

[currywaifu]

𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: damask rose 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: yukishiro azuma/reader 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: sfw 𝐰𝐜: 1.2k words 𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨: ruri <3

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: azuma and reader make perfume together 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐫: this work is a part of the flower shop event, a series of unconnected flower shop AU one-shots

“Azuma, which one of these smell nicer?”

Atop the palm of your hand, two white petals of different varieties resided. He wasted no time plucking them from you one by one, drawing the delicate pads closer to his face as he caught a whiff of their scents. Expectedly, the manner of which his already lidded eyes drooped to a full close had more than just a semblance to the flowers that closed up at night. He was probably just closing his eyes to assemble his thoughts properly, but it was hard not to find the simple action gentle and graceful.

When his eyes opened again, his lips parted to let you know his thoughts.

“Go with the jasmine— it’ll work better with the peony than the magnolia,” Azuma said, taking hold of your hand once more as he gently returned the petals back to their original placements.

Oh, he was right!

“Honestly, I think you’re doing better at my job than I am!” you joked, unfortunately having to look away from him to jot down the different plants you were planning to distill and extract oil from.

First, the Base Notes— the scent that lingers the longest… perhaps something woodsy, like blond wood, maybe several drops of patchouli?

“Fufufu~ I just enjoy perfume is all,” Azuma replied with a chuckle, “and I’m quite pleased your store decided to start selling perfume as well~”

Next, the Middle Notes— the heart, the scent that makes itself known second. Jasmine, peony, maybe even water lily? To be decided later. 10-15 drops each.

“I’m glad you think so! We decided it was finally time to expand our horizons,” you explained, mulling over your options for Top Notes. They were what the customer would smell first, after all, and first impressions were incredibly important.

“It’s actually quite cheap to produce perfume, but the market pricing…” you trailed off, your mind going back to the task at hand. There were several fruits and leaves you could use for the Top Note, but what would match the rest of the components?

“It won’t be that interesting if you keep it purely floral. Maybe add tea leaves, or something like cranberry or lemon,” Azuma suddenly suggested.

Tea leaves to give it a fresh feeling, while the cranberry and lemon would give it a fruity scent… it’d work really well, actually, especially in this season.

You whipped your head around to meet his gaze, the upwards quirk of your lips matching with his own.

“Honestly, I’m so glad you visited me during work today,” you said, not failing to miss the way his eyes crinkled slightly. “Your opinions really helped me, as in I would’ve been stuck here choosing between two flowers for 20 minutes if it wasn’t for you.”

“I just wanted to see my lover hard at work, is all.”

You had expected him to chuckle in response, but instead his voice turns just a tad sultrier, a change quite small but just enough for you to pick up on, then he hits you with that “my lover” like… how was that fair to you at all? First and foremost, of all the terms you could use for a significant other he really just had to go with lover? Second— it was only three in the afternoon…

“Azuma,” honestly, you weren’t sure if you were going to attempt scolding him, or if you were just going to whine, or if you were going to try responding in kind. Luckily, your boyfriend decided to save you from making that decision by yourself.

“And I’m happy you let me make my own perfume, too,” he said, interrupting your current train of thought, “I’ve never tried it before, but it’s been fun so far~”

You looked at his side of the table. Since he was already making something instead of merely conceptualising, he had minimal choices for the scents— the tiny bottles of essential oils you’ve distilled from beforehand being his only choices.

Dragging your seat next to his, you began resting your head against his shoulder as soon as you plopped down on the chair to observe him. It’s not like you were slacking off or anything, you were just… gaining inspiration.

Hahaha, definitely.

“I can smell roses,” you said, the smell strong enough that you wouldn’t need to put it too close to your face, “it’s a bit different from cabbage roses… so these are damask then, right?”

He hummed, and you quietly watched him as he carefully put drops of bergamot into the spray bottle, making sure he’d put the correct amount only.

One, two, three… you counted in your head alongside every press his fingers made on the pipette’s rubber bulb, admiring his precision to somehow have exactly one drop of oil come out with each press.

On the eight count, he asked you a question, breaking the sudden quietude the two of you took part in.

“Do you have a name yet for your perfume?”

Normally people named their creations after its creation, right?

That didn’t stop you from pondering on the possibilities.

As you thought of ideas, you found yourself observing Azuma (as if you ever looked away from him in the first place) as he rationed how many tablespoons of vodka to add to the perfume. Without meaning to, your eyes went from watching him work to his silky hair, silvery hue not unlike the snow that kisses the land and blankets it during winter time;

the name “Snow Prince” flickered in your mind, and with a faint blush that rivalled the champagne pink of Azuma’s perfume bottle you pushed the thought away.

The scent was clearly leaning towards being a spring or summer day perfume, so wouldn’t a name like “snow prince” be incredibly misleading? Not to mention, this would probably be targeted towards women so having “prince” in the title would be weird, right?

It was becoming clear to you that having him in your workplace in all of his beauty, even piping in with his own opinions and helping you conceptualise, was oh so distracting. It was hard not to think of Azuma though, especially with you still resting against his shoulder.

You still can’t believe your first thought was to name a perfume after him though!

“Oh? It looks like a rose just bloomed beside me,” his comment only worsens your embarrassment, and before he could question why you were suddenly so flustered you steered the direction of the conversation elsewhere.

“W-what about you? Do you have a name for your perfume?”

He swivelled on his seat to face you, and you’re unable to read his facial expression as he quickly lowered his lips, now beside your ear.

Without warning his voice drops to a sultry whisper, the only word coming out of his throat being your name.

As soon as you realised what he meant, your brain could only handle so much before it began malfunctioning. As overused devices had a tendency to do, you found yourself heating up. Though you averted your eyes from the man, you knew he was watching his effect on you— most likely the reddening of your cheeks.

His soft but mischievous laughter did nothing to quell your current feelings.

“What should I do with you? Should I just admire you from afar? Should I pluck you from your garden? Or should I be a good gardener and make you nice and wet?”

“ thank you for your hard work today at the flower shop! here, feel free to take home this damask rose with you~ ”

【 rose 】 love and passion, trust and unity 【 damask rose 】 beauty and love. formally known as Rosa × damascena (a type of hybrid rose commonly used in perfumery).

“ maybe you’d like some more flowers before heading home? ”

-ˋˏflower shop masterlistˎˊ- |  -ˋˏfic masterlistˎˊ-

𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐨: my friend gifted me some perfume recently. the bottle was golden and had rose embellishments. the yellow gold reminding me of azuma’s eyes + that one R story of his = this fic.

also, the perfume reader was conceptualising is based on Givenchy’s Ange ou Demon Le Secret (2009) and while vague, i based azuma’s perfume on Chloe’s Roses de Chloe, which is said to be delicate, graceful, and subtle.

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: i just meant to do a quick research about perfume but i got so invested that i spent two days researching- i watched two documentaries, learned how to make perfume, did research on the industry, on what common ingredients they used- now i have a bunch of random info about perfume taking up brain space. 

[myhoneststudyblr]

Introduction

With mocks all over now and the run up for GCSEs well underway in my school and many others, it’s got me thinking about last year when I was in this position like all the year 11s this year. I remember it being such a stressful and quite obscure thing because I had never done external exams before and I didn’t really know what to expect. I thought I would share some of my own experiences and advice and maybe quash some myths. I hope this will help and if anyone has anymore advice or specific questions feel free to message me or add a comment below.

Also while I will be focusing on GCSEs because they are exams that I have experience with, a lot of this advice will apply to other exams so don’t be put off!

*disclaimer*

these are just my own experiences with GCSEs and therefore are by no means universal. I have tried to draw from the experiences of friends and other people I know as well but everybody is unique so not everyone is going to be the same. BECAUSE OF THIS, not all of the advice will suit you and the way you learn. But I would suggest that you try at least a few of the tips just to see if it works.

Mocks - What do I do with them?

By this point, I think everyone will have done their GCSE mocks and probably have their grades back for them. Mocks were a very stressful experience for me because I hurt my hand literally the night before my first exam so I could barely write and I was in a lot of pain for the whole week of doing them. Because of this, I got very very stressed and then started to get worried that the same thing would happen in my GCSEs.

This leads me into my first point mocks are not the real thing: they are very much a trial run and I would say that nothing can really compare to the real exams. By the time you get to your second or third actual GCSE exam you reach a point where you don’t even think about the actual process of all the stuff you have to do before the exam because you are so focussed on the information. Furthermore, if you get grades that you are disappointed with, try not to be worried by that because they, in the grand scheme of things, do not matter

Do - learn from where you went wrong

Don’t - see a mock grade and get stressed out that you are going to fail the whole subject at GCSE

I know this is very easy to say but genuinely lots of people I know went up at least one grade from their mocks. Your mock grade is not an iron clad prediction of what you will get at GCSE

Now that you have got your grade, what do you do with the exam???

First, all of my teachers gave us back the paper to look through and then went through the mark scheme for each questions. THIS WAS SO SO HELPFUL!

If you get the paper, and you get a bad grade or one that is lower than what you were expecting, this is what I would you suggest you do:

Take a deep breath

Remember that this is only your mock grade not the final thing

Resolve yourself to actually learn from this

Read through the paper: did you make a silly mistakes? Did you keep making the same mistakes? Was there a particular question and topic that you lost lots of marks on?

Make notes on the mistakes

Ask the teacher to either give you the mark scheme or through the paper with you - I personally found this really useful because a lot of the time you can use the mark scheme to make notes for each topic and write processes, definitions, etc, using exactly what they want

Make a list of the topics that you found particularly difficult so that these can be your priority for revision

Key point - use your mocks as the spring board for your revision. They are there to point out any weak areas of your knowledge.

Pre-Study Leave Revision - “I haven’t done anything!”

After mocks I planned to get very serious with revision. I was going to dedicate 5 hours a week for all my revision during school time. In the Easter holidays i was going to stick to my revision timetable and I was going to do 6 hours a day. I was going to finish all of my notes for all of my subjects by the end of the Easter holidays.

I did not manage to do ANY OF THAT

My biggest advice for revision before study leave is to give yourself a break. Remember that you are still in school and are in probably the most stressful school year you’ve had yet.

You need to prioritise your studying and use your time wisely rather than put impossible standards on yourself which only make you more stressed when you can’t achieve them.

What should your priorities be:

Do you have any exams before study leave starts? If so, dedicate a little bit of time each weekend to revise that. For me, these were my German and French oral exams and these were the exams people in my school got most stressed about so make sure you’ve had plenty of practise

HOMEWORK!!! This may seem odd because at this point you may be thinking that your teachers shouldn’t be giving you homework and should just let you revise, but actually the homework they give, in my experience, can be really helpful. It is basically revision but you also know that someone is probably going to check whether you’ve done it so you’re more likely to actually do it

If you have time, but DON’T stress yourself trying to make time, do some past papers or make some notes

Revision Techniques: Past Papers vs Notes

Which method is better?

Honestly, neither. In fact you need to use a mixture of both to get the best out of your revision.

Note Taking

Pros:

writing out information is a good way to learn it

you need to know the information at least vaguely to properly be able to do past papers

it’s more studyblr aesthetic

Cons:

it’s very time consuming

you could be focusing more on making the notes look pretty than actually absorbing the information

there is the danger that you could spend so much time learning the information that you don’t actually have time to practise exam technique

Past Papers

Pros:

exam technique and learning to recognise what the question is asking for is really really important

you need to be able to practise doing the papers under timed conditions

you can start to see trends in the types of questions that they put on the papers

Cons:

they’re pretty difficult to do if you don’t know the information

sometimes it can feel like you are just answering questions rather than actually learning and revising

it’s a lot harder to refer back to the past papers to check information

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both so you can’t just rely on one method to get you through exams. here’s how I combined the two to maximise my revision:

I downloaded/printed off the specification for each of my subjects

I went through all of my class notes to see if there were any gaps in my class notes compared to the specification - if there were I would use my textbooks to make notes on it

Go through the specification again. Rank (eg through traffic light colours) each sub-topic on how confident you feel with it. [note: think carefully about this one and actually be honest with yourself. It’s very easy to just think you don’t know anything and make it all red- but in reality you are going to know quite a lot)

Make notes on your worst topics. And try to make notes in a way that is actually constructive and lays it out in a way that you can conceptualise it more. For example, in chemistry, I just could not ‘rates of reaction’ to click. It was one of the easiest topics but for some reason I could never answer the questions right so I make a mind map (before I had just written bullet points) and condensed my notes to one A4 page so I could refer to one the most important pieces of information.

Once you have finished making notes on your worst topics, do two past papers without any notes

Go through the past papers completely with the mark scheme. In a different colour pen to the one you wrote with, actually write the answers from the mark scheme on the past papers

Then, make your notes for the topics from the past paper mark schemes. For example, in biology, which has loads of content to learn, I would write processes, such as protein synthesis and generic experiments, using all of the key words given in the mark scheme. This meant that I always would hit all the key marks

Repeat this for each past paper you do and eventually you will see that you are no longer losing marks

Why this works:

You are making sure you know enough before starting the past papers

You are practising exam technique

You are making notes on the gaps in your knowledge using exactly what examiners want- which means lots of marks

Because you are doing lots of past papers, you can start to see themes and trends in past papers and the types questions that come up all the time

Study Leave

before my study leave, I didn’t think I would get much work done because I had been so bad at doing work and focusing on revision In half term and Easter but here’s a little bit of reassurance if you are thinking along the same lines as I was: study leave is completely different to a half term

I’m not entirely sure what exactly makes it so different but for me and pretty much everyone I know, it wasn’t actually that difficult to revise and stay focused during study leave. Maybe it’s because all you really have to think about are GCSEs or maybe it’s the sort of adrenaline of exam season but I was able to be more focused than I have ever been before.

Here’s my tips to help you:

Stay off your phone: you can either use an app like forest to make sure you stay off your phone during revision time or just turn it off completely

Prioritise your study schedule: there is no point studying for a biology exam that you have in three weeks if you have a history exam this week

Prioritise your studying: there is no point studying a topic that you already know like the palm of your hand if there are three other topics that you are not sure on

Stay hydrated and well fed: have healthy study snacks and lots of water. Also don’t feel bad if you need some more unhealthy snacks As a treat after exams or after finishing a particularly long day

Get a good night sleep as often as possible: taking GCSEs is extremely tiring. I can’t tell you the number of times I came home after a long day or week of exams and just completely wiped out. So it’s really important to sleep as much as possible even though I know pulling that all nighter is very tempting

Lean on your friends and others in your year: everyone is going through the same thing and there is also going to be someone who can help you. I found GCSEs to be one of the most uniting experiences in my school life

Summary

Use mocks to find the gaps in your knowledge

Before study leave, don’t set unrealistic revision goals, instead focus on completing homework

During study leave, use a mixture of notes taking and past papers to revise

Use past paper marks schemes to guide your notes

Prioritise your studying during study leave

Sleep well and stayed healthy

I hope this was helpful and if anyone has any other questions or more tips feel free to reblog or send me an ask/message

- Sophie x

[imaginebeatles]

Hi, this is a stupid question, but do you think oral sex could fit into "sensual attraction" as well? I know it has sex in it, goshhh, but still? Cause I don't find sex as, hmm, yknow the act of penetrating appealing, but some nice (almost wanted to type sensual) touching there is where I draw the line. I have no idea who I could ask this, as people around me are very conservative. Hope it's not rude of me.

It’s not a stupid question at all! And definitely not rude. This is kinda what I’m writing my thesis on (or it’s related to it), so I kinda love talking about it. I am reluctant to say whether oral sex is sex or not. It depends on your definition of sex. However, if you define it (as I have seen many do) as having to do with genital pleasure, then, yes, oral sex is sex, and that’s how I see it (I will explain this further below). However, I have a few things to add that might be more helpful to you.

I will put it under the cut so if anyone doesn’t want to see it, they can skip it more easily. There will also be a TL;DR at the end, if you only want a quick summary. I hope this will help you. If you have any other questions, don’t be afraid to ask :)

Firstly, I want to say that I understand you not finding the idea of penetration appealing. You are not weird for feeling that way, and you’re not the only one. For me the issue of penetration is a bit more… complex… but I won’t go into that. Just know you’re not the only one and it’s okay.

Firstly, there is a lot that asexual people can get out of sex. As I have said, some asexual people do have sex and do this for different reasons. To satisfy their partners is one, because it’s pleasurable another. However, it might also be appealing to be giving your sexual partner sexual pleasure. This “appeal” itself does not have to be sexual. It can nice to see your partner react to you and how good you make them feel, while not wanting to engage in sex yourself. Same with being pleasured; it might be appealing how much you partners enjoys doing that and making you feel good. Sex isn’t always about the orgasm.

In this way, sex does not have to be “sexual” either. In that, you can have sex, where the focus is not on the sex itself, but the emotional connection or the (nonsexual) pleasure of seeing your partner experiencing pleasure. Sex can have nonsexual goals, is what I’m trying to say. The same goes for oral sex. So, I guess you could say oral sex is not always sexual, if that is not where the focus lies. However, I would say in that case you’re finding nonsexual benefits in a sexual act.

Second, and this is what I am currently researching for my thesis so excuse any ramblings… The way the sexual act has been conceptualised in western society (and other parts of the world too thanks to imperialism) is very normative. Penetrative sex is often seen as “real sex”, despite there being many different ways of having sex. This, I and others think, is harmful. The main script for the sexual act is foreplay, (vaginal) penetrative sex, climax, and “pillow talk”. The focus is on climax through penetrative sex.

Foreplay includes anything from the more sensual things, like touching and kissing and caressing, to sexual acts like handjobs, oral sex, rubbing off, etc. None of this is seen as “real sex”, which is why if you have oral sex with someone, people don’t say you’ve lost your virginity, because it’s not (vaginal) penetration. Virginity, however, is not a biological fact: you can’t typically see if a person (usually a girl, but this goes for male and intersex people too) has had sex or not from a medical perspective.

Foreplay, moreover, is downplayed is not real sex, and is even sometimes seen almost like a necessary evil because (and this is the narrative, not my own opinion) women are less sexual and have a slower sexual response and thus need time. This makes it a necessity rather than something valuable in itself. Penetration, meanwhile, is “actual sex” and sex is only “successful” when it leads to penetration. The aftercare or pillow talk is glossed over. Sex ends after the climax. Moreover, Freud, who has influenced how we think about sex A LOT) sees penetrative vaginal sex as the sexual “goal”, and everything else as “deviation” or “perversion”, including oral sex.

Because of this and for many other reasons, different ways of having sex has been belittled, seen as perverted, or medicalized or made illegal. Sexual behaviour of queer people is the most obvious example. But this also means that people follow a specific script that is pushed on them through the media, but also through biology classes and sex-ed. This is not to say there is some kind of conspiracy going on, but this is the representation of sex we receive and thus replicate.

Basically, people have a clear perception of what “actual sex” is and this is often a very limited view. Oral sex, just as rubbing off and handjobs and anal sex and anything is also sex. You do not need to have penetrative sex to “have sex”. Sex is about navigating possibilities and the boundaries of you and your partner, so that you can experience sex in a way that is comfortable and that satisfies you. You should never do something that you are not comfortable with. If you don’t like penetrative sex, that’s okay. We need to recognise that sex isn’t just (vaginal) penetration but lots of different acts that have different goals for different people.

TL;DR: If you prefer oral sex and sensual touching, go with that. We have a very specific view of what counts as sex, but actual sex is a lot of different things and there are many ways to have sex. Also, while having sex, there are different reasons for wanting sex and engaging in it. In this way, sex does not have to be “sexual” for you, in that it can have a non-sexual purpose for you. It’s all okay. It’s all valid. If you don’t want any kind of sex, that’s valid too. Also, sexual behaviour does not have a one-to-one relationship with sexual identity. You can be sexual and not enjoy penetrative sex. You can be asexual and enjoy it. It’s okay. You are free to make sex whatever you want it to be.

[decaffeinatedreviewmoon]

WEEK 1 - 20/01 Museums’ Purpose

Conceptualising Learning in Cultural Organisations    An interesting approach to the concept of learning focusing on ‘its evolution over the past few years’

There is not one and only type of visitor, museums should design exhibitions from an inclusive perceptive. The great variety of levels of knowledge among the audience is key.    ‘Edutainment’ me please.

I like how this portemanteau word points at the importance of enjoyment in the learning process, however it should not affect museums only. One should be careful underlining the ‘fun’ in extracurricular learning as it might be perceived as a less valuable type of knowledge. I think this idea often leads to failure in the learning process of many children, they should be confident sharing any kind of knowledge as there is no hierarchy in this field. Moreover, parents should not only value education in school, education in cultural places is important too. I am happy with the ‘edutainment’ notion as long as it does not mean that this type of education is not essential. If you use this term about museums, use it for school as well. Enjoyment should definitely be one of the facets of learning, it sticks better this way.    Learning though feelings and emotions.

I could not agree more. If you ‘experience’ you are luckily to remember. I personally tend to remember artworks better if they trigger something in me, I could even add that this is how I approach art. This is what I am looking for when I wander in a museum, I wait for one of the artworks to catch my attention and spark emotions in me. I can think of a few exemples: the scary painting in Aberdeen Art Gallery and the uncanny reconstitution at the Pinault museum in Venise.        When your brain is in ‘floodlight’ mode.

I have never found the right words to describe this ‘blurred’ impression that overwhelms me when I am surrounded by a multitude of artworks. I am too small to appreciate all of them and that is upsetting. I see all of them but for some reason they do not stick, I try to take a mental picture of the ones I like and then remember I do not have a photographic memory and so that it is never going to happen.    Take a look from a Bourdieunian perspective.

I was so happy to read about museum learning through Bourdieu’s theories as I wrote an essay — ‘Renewing Museums with Audience Diversity’ — about it. I heard about his theories thanks to a sociology course I was taking during the first semester. The essay in a few words: Many museums are nowadays facing a dilemma between preserving a traditional vision of high art and a need for audience diversity. Bourdieu explains well why not everyone likes the same things and does not have the same amount of knowledge. Every type of audience has a different amount of cultural capital. This is why museums should study the great variety of their visitors’ background in order to design exhibitions that will engage as many people as possible. Other Readings and Videos   The various readings tend to be on the same page than Hopper-Greenhill. They all explain that it is important for the audience to feel and to use its senses in order to fully explore all the exhibition’s aspects. In Adult Learning in Museums, John Dewey goes a bit further adding that this is how visitors become active, they get involved in the learning process because they ‘experience’ what they see. The author also tackles how critical thinking is meaningful in the art field, visitors should be encouraged to express their opinion. I agree, this is a good way to desacralise the condescending ‘high arts’ concept, I do not think such hierarchy among artworks exist. People should feel free to say what they think in order to shrink the gap between the different types of audience.    What visitors will think of an artwork might be influenced by their background or what John Falks calls environment. “Learning is a dialogue between the individual and his/her social/cultural and physical environment.” This quote echoes Bourdieu’s theories mentioned above and leads the writer to reflect about individuals’ identities. This is a complex concept as it is difficult to define it, as John Falks explains it during his lecture, each one of us has a singular identity which is made of many facets. However some similarities among people can be found, museums should study their visitors’ identities and then focus on the elements they share.    John Falks enumerates the main visitors’ reasons to attend an exhibition: explorer, facilitator, tag-along, experience seeker, professional, recharger. It made me aware that I myself was not one and only type of visitor, I do not always visit museums for the same reasons. Most of the time, I am an explorer, I do not like knowing in advance what I am going to see. I am just looking for art. However, I can also be an experience seeker when I am in a megalopolis. For instance, I have been to Madrid once and I absolutely wanted to see Guernica by Pablo Picasso. I did not have the time to visit all the museums in Madrid so I went to the Museo de la Reina Sofia because I knew I would find the painting there. There is a third reason why I go to certain museums: I can also be a tag-along. This happens when I go on a trip with my friends who enjoy science exhibitions. I have to admit, I am not a big fan of those.    Regarding this week’s documents, there is one last point I did not mention: thanks to the internet and new media in general, we all have access to a huge amount of ressources. However we tend not to make the best use out of them and that is a shame as they can be helpful in the ‘free-choice’ learning process. In Class   This first class was an introduction to the course. I discovered the ‘diamond 9’ activity, it was useful! We had to organise quotes about learning, from the most to the less important one. We could also get rid of the ones we disagreed with. I was surprised we all came out with very different results. My group highlighted the importance of creativity, identity building and the individual’s background or environment. Except for the creativity notion which — if I remember well —was not mentioned in the various readings, all the other notions were. ___________________________________________________________ Falk, J., (2006) Free‐choice environmental learning: framing the discussion Environmental Education Research, 11:3, 265-280. Falk, J., (2006) Motivation and Learning Styles. Hooper-Greenhill, E., (2007) Museums and Education Purpose, Pedagogy, Performance. Chapter 3, Conceptualising learning in cultural organisations. Routledge, Abingdon, pp 31- 43     Monk D., (2013) John Dewey and Adult Learning in Museums. Adult Learning Journal 24(2) 63-71

[hrharthurkirkland]

ASD Headcannon - Ludwig

Your local aspie is here to throw out some sweet headcannoning about why I personally headcannon Ludwig aka APH Germany as Autistic. other than identifying with him deeply

I’m not an expert in autism - I just have it. so like... feel free to jump in. 

Difficulties with Social Queues - Throughout the series it’s very obvious to me that Ludwig doesn’t always see when people come across as scared of him or trying to be nice to him so he doesn’t shout. He takes a lot of things at face value, and the things he does question are thought more inwardly as if he was taught specifically to question them - be that through experience or being physically told, who knows. When he does follow a set of queues, it’s very practiced as if he’s studied on it to get it right. 

Difficulties conceptualising emotions (both his own, and others) - This is very similar to my last point, but maybe more detailed. This is more about trying to figure out what he’s actually feeling - considering he tried to read a book to figure out if he had feelings for Feli. Coming from a lack of understanding on what that specific emotion is, and that someone else is feeling something he can’t get his head round. He’s also seen as quite emotionless half the time, just stern faced and straight backed - which isn’t true but is perceived due to not being able to tell what he’s feeling, so he goes to default settings. 

Think before you Speak - More common in girls diagnosed with autism, this is a set of trained behaviours that are learned for you to fit in, whereas boys diagnosed are often more obvious and say what they think immediately. This lends to taking in your situation and conceptualising it from what you have been taught (usually through observation). So you stop and pause - is this the right reaction for this situation? do I sound as interested as I should be? what is the appropriate response? And so on. From observing other’s responses, you can guide through how the conversation/interaction should go by ““normal”“ standards. I see this specifically in Ludwig a lot, because he’s so level headed and often quiet, it’s easy to assume he’s going over the correct response/reaction to what has been said to him. 

Social isolation - Ludwig has been displayed to be lonely, Feli being his first friend. a lot of autistic people often choose the path of distancing from friends because it’s easier than keeping up with other people. this is definitely more of a childhood thing though, but explains why we never see any of Ludwig’s actual childhood. We just assume he spent the majority of it alone, and in fact enjoyed that peace. 

Various special interests - Out of all the characters in hetalia, I think he’s one of the main examples of this, because his interests aren’t necessarily to do with his country all that much. he’s been displayed to be interested in multiple things and have a very childlike interest in them. I hesitate to say “childlike” but what I mean is a certain type of wonder/joy that comes with having a special interest. there’s a little buzz that goes with it from my experience. He’s interested in movies, science, history, dogs - and all of these things (and more probably) have very obviously been studied on relentlessly, perhaps in periods of hyperfixation seen in most people with autism. When he’s interested in something, he has to know everything about it. 

Eye contact (both avoiding and being excessive) - He’s easily flustered. that’s obvious. Ludwig is actually shown to be quite shy and often avoids eye contact when he can. it’s one of the main things with autism that can be pointed out, not being able to hold it or always looking away when listening or speaking. I believe this is from a difficulty processing information, hard to look at someone’s face and listen/speak at the same time. I think Ludwig goes in and out of this a lot more when he’s in a less professional setting, otherwise he’s completely the opposite - too intense eye contact. this adds to his unintentionally intimidating vibe because he can only switch those two ways. 

Need to stick to a routine - a strict one at that. He’s clearly shown as particular with a need to have control over his life - such as cleaning and keeping things tidy. These routines are a stabiliser, if they go the wrong way it’s a full melt down and suddenly everything is wrong and nothing can correct it. as long as these routines go according to plan, he can work to a perfect pace and fit in everything he needs to get done correctly. I don’t personally identify with this because I’m a god damn mess who’s bad at time management, but i think Ludwig has spent so long perfecting that control that he can get it down to the second if he really needs that grounding.

Volume Control - LOUD but also sometimes very quiet. This is something a lot of autistic people struggle with. Knowing how to level your voice correctly. Ludwig is shown to be loud and shout a lot when trying to get his point across when it’s unnecessary to raise his voice to that level (i mean that’s arguable). I don’t know why this happens in an ASD diagnosis - it might have something to do with the sensory aspect of it. but i think he could also go the other way, end up being too quiet for people to hear when he’s not in a meeting setting. 

Sensory Overload - this is very common in people with asd, because our brains software doesn’t pick and choose what to process, we end up just processing it all at the same time. And when this gets too much, it results in a complete overload of information. Lights become too bright, the slightest sound too loud, feeling everything from the clothes you’re wearing to your organs moving. While I don’t think it happens to Ludwig so often, I think he requires moments where he’s on his own somewhere quiet quite a lot to tackle that feeling before it gets too much. it’s incredibly frustrating so I can see why it may be perceived as anger by others. 

SO. That’s my mass info on Ludwig being autistic. I’m sure I have more - such as stims and other things, but that’s about it so far in the way of explaining it to the best of my ability. again, I’m only using the experience of myself and some friends. if you want to add things, please do! I’ll probably do more posts like these for other hetalia characters. 

[symbellasworld]

Verbs and my PhD 👩‍🎓🎉

 Correct use of Verbs ! 🙌🎶 The soul of academic writing

For many, the second name of PhD thesis and academic writing is the correct use of verb. 

WHAT IS VERB? 🤔🙄

Doing words; words that do some actions. For instance:

Ø   Physical actions ⛷🤺 (run, Jump, skip, ……);

Ø  Mental actions 😵😇 (thought, imagined, …..); OR

Ø  a state of being or existence of something 🎭 (is, am, are, was , were, will be, ….).

 WHAT VERBS DO? 🤼‍♀️🗣

To persuade different kind of audiences to accept different kind of facts.

There are different set of verbs used to:

1: show research acts (like real-word activities, usually found in findings phrases, e.g. observe, report, describe, discover, notice, show) 

2: show procedures (e.g. analyse, calculate, explore), 

3: show cognition acts (verbs connected with mental processes like believe, conceptualise, view) and 

4: show discourse acts (to recall different kinds of speech like discuss, state, suggests, hypothesise))

The different disciplines use different set of verbs, for instance, Humanities tend to favour discourse act verbs (in Humanities, the person who did the work is important so the verbs tend to reflect what the person said and how they said it), and Sciences tend to use research act verbs.       

REPORTING VERBS 🤷‍♀️🧗‍♀️

The reporting verbs in academic writing used to report what someone said while evaluating the quality of others’ ideas. These verbs show how we assess and view others, ideas.  

Ø  Neutral reporting verbs (a neutral attitude on literature as ‘neither correct nor incorrect’)

Ø  Tentative/weaker reporting verbs (a weak belief that literature is incorrect)

Ø  Strong reporting verbs (a strong belief that literature is correct)

  1: NEUTRAL: verbs used to say what the writer describes in factual terms,  demonstrates, refers to, and discusses, and verbs used to explain his/her  methodology.

Example verbs 🐾

describe, show, reveal, study, demonstrate, note, point out, indicate,  report, observe, assume, take into consideration, examine, go on to say that,  state, believe (unless this is a strong belief), mention, etc.

 2: TENTATIVE: verbs used to say what the writer suggests or speculates on (without  being absolutely certain).

Example verbs 🐾

suggest, speculate, intimate, hypothesise, moot, imply, propose,  recommend, posit the view that, question the view that, postulate, etc.

3: STRONG: verbs used to say what the writer makes strong arguments and claims  for.

Example verbs 🐾

argue, claim, emphasise, contend, maintain, assert, theorize, support  the view that, deny, negate, refute, reject, challenge, strongly believe  that, counter the view/argument that, etc.

 You need to see where you should use ‘argues’, ‘shows’ or ‘asserts’. Just look the words into dictionary and decide which to use. For example, a scholar who argues typically has an evidence than other who merely asserts.

                 HOW TO MAKE A VERB CHEAT SHEET? 🤯🧐🤫

Download a few published papers from scholars of your field and make🤦‍♀️ a list of the verbs they use. Closely examine the use and placement of verbs by others researchers. Then cluster the verbs into three columns: this work is great/this is awesome, this work is fine/I feel neutral, this work is terrible/this work is poor.

Make and share your sheet with others. You can paste this sheet to your notice board, wall or laptop wallpaper. If English is your second language, can make a list in your first language along with English and stick it by side. Add an emoji to make it lively and ‘yours’.  

While writing your literature review, methodology, data analysis or findings (etc), close your eyes, think about your feelings what you feel about particular work and then pick a word that fits better to your judgement.

See a cheat sheet below taken from the book ‘How to fix your academic writing trouble’ written by Dr. Inger Mewburn.

This is the list I made to put on my own wall – you may disagree with my categories. Feel free to change it to suit your style.

                                     This  work is awesome! 😍

 argues        concludes           explains          Demonstrates

differentiates          identifies          Critiques           deduces

discriminates          Evaluates            proves            assesses

Examines             distinguishes            predicts            Proposes

assesses                 integrates             Discusses      illustrates      

 outlines

                                          I feel neutral 🤦‍♀️

 Shows                applies            outlines           Composes        

 proposes           uses             States          organises           

 differentiates       produces       examines            Separates       

 develops                appraises        Selects           performs          

 illustrates            Interprets       paraphrases          reports        

   Prepares              restates               reviews       classifies

contrasts          Debates           relates             produces

                                          This work is poor 🗑✂

 Asserts               chooses              justifies              Invents         

 constructs     States             makes            selects            

 Recalls             recites      tells            Generalizes               

  changes                 Characterises 

 👌📌📎Bibliography (See for more detailed information)

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/academicenglishskills/grammar/reportingverbs/

https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/article/downloads/reporting-verbs-2.pdf

‘How to fix your academic writing trouble, A practical guide’ by Inger Mewburn, Katherine Firth and Shaun Lehmann. 2019.

[moreorlessmemorable]

TRANSITION, verb

I remember the exact moment I realised that I wasn’t cisgender. It was on my way back home in Germany, a couple of weeks before I was going to leave for Smith. I was just getting off the train and as I climbed up the stairs from the platform, I thought, “I am not a woman.”

I wasn’t and still am not able to understand what exactly that means, and I have since realised that figuring out my gender identity is a process that is likely to be never-ending. This is often frustrating and scary, but ultimately I hope that I will be able to see it as freedom. The pressure to conform doesn’t stop with stepping outside of the gender binary. Even as I came to identify as trans, I was irritated at myself: How could I say I wasn’t one gender or another, when gender is a social construct? What would make the gender I identified with any more real than the one I was assigned at birth? I’ve never subscribed to gender roles anyways, so on what basis do I even define gender?

Coming to terms with questions like these is especially difficult in a society that generally doubts your gender identity even exists. I was fortunate to enter Smith and find a place where I could think about gender in a different way than I could have in Germany. It might seem ironic that I would distance myself from being female while at a women’s college, but it turns out that when you take gender out of the equation, there is more freedom to it.* Sure enough, Smith is far from representative for the rest of the United States (although I am not aware of any women’s colleges in Germany), but one part of the wider culture has been incredibly significant in my understanding of trans identity: the language.

While identifying as non-binary in Germany, the way I conceptualised it was to add a male alter ego to my established female identity. English, a language without grammatical gender and the option to use they as a non-gendered singular pronoun (however frowned upon it might be stylistically, it is established), provided me with the resources to think and express myself outside of the gender binary. Our language shapes our thoughts and thus our worlds. A language without gendered pronouns, for example Turkish, would help us understand the world in yet another way.

Language is a fundamentally social phenomenon. It shapes our communities and they shape it. I understand now that while, yes, gender is a social construct, that doesn’t make us as people living in society free of it. As people who exist in relation to one another, the way we are perceived by others will always be a significant part of who we are. As an individual, I have no problem with my gender identity at this point; I just am who I am. It is when others perceive me in a certain way that does not conform to my self-image that the problems arise.

While transgender awareness is slowly growing when it comes to transgender women and men, most people are not aware that it is a spectrum, and even when non-binary is included, it is often as a third category in addition to the binary extremes. Defying gender roles and wanting to be recognised as non-binary/trans is a balancing act. Even though I know that neither activities, nor clothes, nor makeup, or haircut have an inherent gender, presenting in a way that is socially construed as feminine will result in me being immediately read as female and erase my gender identity. It often feels that in order to disrupt this, I have to present in a way that is especially masculine, or even identify as a transman in order to not be assumed cis.

As long as we live in a society that upholds gender roles and the gender binary, not conforming to those will be a struggle. But even in this society we can find a community that supports us, in which we can discuss the issues and questions that arise out of this tension, and encourage each other to keep challenging the status quo.

Transition might be read as a noun, but for me it is a verb first and foremost. Life and all that comes with it is unfathomably complex and there will always be more to discover and figure out. What stagnates will wither, and change is the only constant.

Spring 2016 for a Smith College magazine