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galacticlamps · 3 years ago

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Tagged by @the--highlanders ! Thanks!

How many works do you have on AO3?

What’s your total AO3 word count?

76,200

(oh what a nice even number - I should try to mess that up as soon as possible, shouldn’t I?)

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Aw man is this intentionally worded to be really hard to answer? I get that it says ‘written’ and not ‘posted’ but then what constitutes a ‘fandom?’ I definitely wrote fics for stuff I was interested in long before I even knew the word ‘fic’ - I did it throughout my childhood, and then in high school, and while I didn’t do it as much in college, it still happened from time to time. So a lot of the books/movies/tv shows/plays/musicals I wrote things for aren’t really fandoms, and frankly, I had to check my old folder just now to even remember some of them existed. I’ll just list the ones that I know for sure had fandoms, since that’s more fun (and embarrassing), right?

Obviously Doctor Who, classic and modern, Torchwood, Sherlock Holmes (ironically more of these seem to be about the books, but yes, I will admit, some for that tv show too), Les Mis, a couple different Marvel comics & movies, Good Omens, hell, I even found a Night Vale fic in there just now.

And I know there are other older things not even in that folder, some of which never made it to a computer at all, so if I had to ballpark a number I’d probably say around 25ish but really, who knows?

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Across the Gap

On the Spot

Expectations

Shards of Memories & Fragments of Glass

Itemized

(this was fun, I’d never noticed Ao3 even had a stats page until now lol)

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to! Sometimes I take a long time to do so but for the most part, I usually get around to it. The rare exception would be if I first saw the comment when I was super busy/distracted and then felt like way too much time passed before I noticed it again, that it might be awkward if I said something at that point.

I do genuinely enjoy hearing what people think, but I’m also weirdly terrified of making anyone feel like they have to reply to my comments. I know that’s probably a little strange, but it’s actually a large part of why I made this Ao3 account in the first place - my original one, from high school, is followed by some long-time friends of mine who aren’t interested in this fandom, some of whom are involved in art & writing professionally. The thought of anyone like that reading something I wrote out of friendliness or even just curiosity and potentially having to pretend they liked it for the same reasons stressed me tf out, so I like having this virtually anonymous one because I can relax knowing that anyone who reads or interacts with something I wrote has probably done so only because they wanted to, rather than feeling obligated, and there’s no pressure on them to be nice to me about it if anything I write or post annoys them - so I really hope nobody who does just know me as an anonymous blog has ever worried about offending me by not replying to something, trust me, I’m perfectly happy with it!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t think I’ve really written any angsty endings? I guess the answer would have to be Reckless just because it involves the characters arguing about sad/weighty things and there isn’t really any solution to those issues - but even then I think I ended it with a kind of acceptance that stops it from really qualifying as angst? I also set it in the the same universe as other fics, so maybe that doesn’t even count as an ending? Am I that bad at ending things on angst? Lol

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Obviously none of the fics I’ve posted are crossovers but I’m trying to think now if any of my WIP’s are - I’ve definitely poached setting/premise ideas from other media, but in terms of actual crossovers . . . I’ve got a few cross-era or cross-Doctor, a few involving Torchwood, but that’s already the same universe, so the only thing that’d qualify as a true crossover would be some vague pieces of a fic where Jamie, Zoe, and Two end up on the Enterprise, since I think the 60s series of Star Trek and Dr Who feel kind of compatible, don’t they? In fact, aren’t there like officially licensed crossover comics or something? Or did I make that up? Idk, and the ideas are very loose, so it’s not much of a WIP either

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope, never

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

I’ve never written smut, but I’m wondering if it’s possible that could change soon. There’s a longish multi-chapter fic I’ve been working on for a frankly embarrassing amount of time, and the plot does call for a sex scene at one point towards the end, but I can’t seem to make up my mind on how - uh, I guess the word is explicit? - it should get. I know I could easily do a fade to black/implication thing, but it’s kind of a source of contention and anxiety for the characters, so to skip over writing the actual scene and just revisit them afterwards rings of “and they slept together and now everything’s fine!” which feels kinda cheap to me - in this context, anyway - and not the right payoff for a long fic that’s otherwise more of an interpersonal drama/slightly a period piece, if I had to place it in a genre. I feel like my aversion to actually writing the scene might just be prudishness I should get over, or maybe just self-doubt, because I know I’d rather have a well-written, funny, character-development-supporting sex scene than nothing at all, but since I’ve never had any interest in writing a scene like that before, I don’t know if I can do it well, and I also don’t want to ruin a fic I’m otherwise proud of by doing it badly... ugh I have to figure this out

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I seriously doubt it

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I mean, it’s gotta be Two & Jamie. I’ve shipped things before with varying levels of investment, but I’ve never been able to use the term ‘otp’ in a literal sense until I came across them, and now it’s already basically gone out of fashion, go figure!

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I’m not sure if I have one? My WIP doc is huge, but I don’t actually intend to get around to finishing everything in it, so I’d like to think that anything I’ve currently singled out to complete can actually get done.

That said, I do have a few AU’s that I don’t really plan to finish, but it might be cool if I could. Two of them are for all the main + some supporting characters of the Second Doctor’s era - one’s a modern day school teachers AU, and the other is a typical fantasy/fairy tale AU. Another is just Two/Jamie, based on Doctor Faustus (specifically the Marlowe play version) but right now there are two different versions of the ending coexisting in my head. I’ve written parts of scenes & some gen. backstory for all of those ideas, but I don’t know if I’ll ever try to finish them, or what form a finished product would even take - a series of one-shots set in the same universe? one long multi-chapter fic with some kind of overarching plot? And the amount of context/worldbuilding a big AU like these would require might not make them very appealing fics for people to read, so maybe it is better if I just keep them to myself, since in my head I already know what’s going on in those worlds lol.

What are your writing strengths?

I honestly don’t know. I haven’t had a creative writing class since middle school, and since then I’ve only ever shown creative writing to others in a fandom context, so it’s been a while since I’ve discussed it or gotten critical feedback. I suppose when I work in other arts or even academic writing contexts, people usually say I’m kind of insightful or at least detail oriented, which might just be another way of saying I overthink things, but I like to imagine I’m decent at finding little points of interest to expand upon.

What are your writing weaknesses?

If you’ve read this far I feel like you must know what I’m about to say: I do not know how to be concise.

Usually when I’m writing a fic, I put down the dialogue first on its own, leaving out the action of the scene and whatever plot/context led there, even if I’ve already figured all of that out. But then when I go to add those things in, they’re always longer than I wanted them to be. I don’t mind writing something long, but I don’t want my fics to be a slog to get through either, and there can be a point at which the stuff I’ve added for context overwhelms the stuff that I wanted the fic to be about in the first place, so it becomes a structural/proportion issue too. I haven’t completely given up on any fics because of this yet, but there’s one I’ve been struggling with for a couple months now - probably because I’m even second-guessing myself on which scenes need to be written out and which can just be referenced like a recap. Hopefully I figure that one out soon.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

((this is karma isn’t it? i posted a fic last week with two words of gaelic in it and was worried about that and now this is karma))

In general, I don’t want to do it. I feel like you’ve gotta have a really good grasp of a language to write dialogue & speech patterns for someone who’s a native speaker, and since I’m far from fluent in any language the characters I write for are, I wouldn’t feel confident writing any significant amount of dialogue in, say, Gaelic.

As a sidenote, though, I kinda love it when other people do it, particularly for Jamie. Irish (Gaeilge) and Scottish (Gàidhlig) are both languages I’ve wanted to learn for a long time, because my family’s fresh out of living speakers of either & I think that’s a shame, but I started with Irish and at the moment I’m still very much learning it. As different as they are, it still helps me understand parts of lyrics or texts that I come across in Gàidhlig fairly frequently, so when it comes up in a fic I get to feel like I’m being responsible and practicing, and it’s great when I can actually understand what’s being said.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

I’m gonna go with Harry Potter even though that’s probably not a perfectly accurate answer - it’s almost certainly the first thing that has a fandom that I ever wrote for, but it was in a notebook when I was a kid and never something that I even typed on a computer, much less posted online or shared with other members of a fandom. But even then, I’m sure it wasn’t the first pre-existing fictional universe I ever set an original story in, because I did that a lot when I was a kid, it’s just hard to remember those clearly or on any kind of timeline.

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

I’m very partial to Across the Gap, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that ranked first on the kudos thing above - but I’ve also got a soft spot for So Merrily We’ll Sing. It’s so self-indulgent it feels silly saying ‘it was so easy to write!’ but I guess having a fic that’s already just 100% headcaonons and fluff tied together by a song you really love does prevent it from being much of a labor (I also managed to refrain from making that one unnecessarily long, so that’s another win there)

tagging @terryfphanatics and anyone else who wants to do it - sorry I’m bad at remembering whose tumblr goes with whose Ao3 account, but I really would be interested to read this if anyone else feels like answering them!

#oh boy that was long #sorry #also sorry if the 13 is really big for some reason #i dont know how it got that way so i dont know how to change it #it doesnt look like that when i edit the post only when i save it #not fic but fic talk

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vocalfriespod · 5 years ago

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Wikitongues Transcript

Megan Figueroa: Hi. Welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

Carrie Gillon: I’m Carrie Gillon.

Megan Figueroa: I’m Megan Figueroa. I’m a wee bit sick.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. But at least you have a voice.

Megan Figueroa: Just in case anyone was wondering.

Carrie Gillon: People were.

Megan Figueroa: It’s the podcasting – it’s the life. Sometimes, you have to go on the air when you’re sick. [Laughs]

Carrie Gillon: We have an email from Jeffrey. “Dear Carrie and Megan, I recently finished listening to ‘Practice Makes Easier’ and I wanted to tell you how it helped me. I’m an attorney specializing in start-up companies in the San Francisco Bay area. “As you know, or at least can imagine, this area attracts immigrants from all over the world with high concentrations from China and India, among other places. Many of my clients are founded by and employ a large number of non-native English speakers. At on onsite presentation I gave today, I think I was one of maybe three native English speakers in the room.

“Thinking of the episode, I made a special effort to remember that many folks were not native English speakers. I usually like to think of my job as translating law speak into English, but now I’ve come to see that maybe there’s a second step of translation involved as well. I’m putting an extra effort into being as clear as I can and also very, very patient. In the words, try not to be an asshole.”

Megan Figueroa: Aww, Jeffrey! [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: “I just thought that you should know that your podcast is actually changing behavior. I enjoy it very much, although I sorta hope I wasn’t an asshole before I started listening either. Please keep up the good work. Jeff.”

Thank you so much!

Megan Figueroa: Wow! A little sneak peek behind the scenes again. Carrie was like, “I have an email” and I was wondering if it was tooting our own horn. And she kinda hinted that, yes – yes, it is. But I didn’t know it’d be tooting our horn so good.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah, no. This is really nice. It’s exactly what we wanna do in the world, right?

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. That’s fantastic. I doubt that people that listen – I like to think that people that listen to our podcast aren’t huge assholes – raging assholes – in the first place. I’m sure Jeff was not a huge asshole in the first place, but I really appreciate that email. Thank you.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. Me too.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, I, too, learn from our podcast because, I mean, we have people that – we have guests on here for a reason because we don’t know everything. It’s definitely made me more thoughtful as well.

Carrie Gillon: Me too.

Megan Figueroa: I like hearing that. And thank you, Dr. Melissa. There was a little Twitter fiasco around a very racist tweet related to language that we missed that we didn’t get to talk about. Luckily, someone screen shot it because it was deleted.

Carrie Gillon: Well, rightfully so. This was definitely one of those tweets that you should be like, “Oops.”

Megan Figueroa: I think that that’s what happened. Because it’s – I actually don’t know how many people follow this Twitter. So, I’m looking at the screen shot and it’s @HSTeachProbs – “teacher problems,” “high school teacher problems” – and it says, “‘I ain’t trippin’ is probably one of the most annoying phrases a student can say. What are some other annoying phrases your kids say that get under your skin?”

Carrie Gillon: “#Stuffstudentssay" and I'm fixing this: "#teacherproblems.”

Megan Figueroa: Then, you shared with me someone’s lovely tweet. This is @KaiserMoore. “I feel like all the white teachers saying that African American Vernacular English is annoying should be removed from predominantly black schools. They’re clearly holding prejudice against the students they are supposed to be there to help.” Which – absolutely.

Carrie Gillon: The reason why I even saw this was because someone else quote-tweeted it and said something like “All teachers should be removed from all schools” – “Any teacher who has these ideas should be removed from all schools.” And I was like, “Yeah. You’re right.” I mean, yes, it’s more of a problem when you’re in a class with black children, but if you’re infecting children with these ideas regardless of their race, it’s very problematic.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely. I mean, that’s gonna be coming through in whatever you do, then. Obviously, when you think that you hold different ways of speaking above each other and, as we’ve learned on the show, that means that you are holding people above each other. I mean, you’re creating a hierarchy here and you’re passing that on if you believe that – if you’re teaching kids from that point of view.

Carrie Gillon: If we wanna fight white supremacy, I mean, the biggest source of it is white people, right? We want the white kids not to pick up on these ideas. Granted, obviously there’s gonna be other places where they can. But at least in the school we should be helping them not pick up these ideas.

Megan Figueroa: It sucks though because that’s still the biggest population of teachers just from the way that things have shaken out is white women.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. There are a variety of reasons for that. Because it used to be, at least, more gender-balanced but then the pay was so bad men won’t do it anymore. And then, yeah, there’s obviously reasons why it’s mostly white women. Obviously, not all white women are gonna have these kinds of racist ideas but many, many do.

Megan Figueroa: Right. Let us hope that there’re some that hold this view that, when told, they’re like, “Oh, shit.”

Carrie Gillon: “That was a bad thing to think” – yes.

Megan Figueroa: Yes.

Carrie Gillon: Well, let’s hope that because they deleted the tweet, they realized how bad it actually was.

Megan Figueroa: And not just because they were like, “I don’t wanna deal” –

Carrie Gillon: “Deal with it.”

Megan Figueroa: Exactly. It’s sad for me because this is a reminder – I don’t think that this is uncommon. That’s the problem that this is –

Carrie Gillon: It’s incredibly common. I mean, we know this. I didn’t get this exact message from my classes but – from my teachers – but something kind of like it that there were “correct” ways of speaking and “correct” ways of writing. And, yeah, there was hidden anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity and anti-everything else in there. It was just more subtle.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. Absolutely. No. It’s not an innocuous thing to say, “I ain’t trippin’ isn’t” – “I hate when my students say that.” This is no innocuous. This is part of a much bigger problem. I dunno. I dunno what the message is here. Just the message that we always have, I guess. Don’t be an asshole.

Carrie Gillon: At least, at the very least, keep your bad ideas about language to yourself because it’s not helping you. It’s not helping the kids that you teach, and it’s not helping the communities around you. Stop.

Megan Figueroa: I know. Think about it a little bit – about where this is coming from our why you might think this.

Carrie Gillon: We all have things to unpack. All of us. All of us have grown up with bad ideas about language in particular and other things in general.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely.

Carrie Gillon: You’ve gotta work through it but don’t work through it on Twitter. [Laughter] All right. Yeah. This is episode really fun and uplifting.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. It almost sounds like we never have anything fun or uplifting to say. Like, “Let’s preface this by saying, ‘Hey! This is a fun, uplifting episode today.’”

Carrie Gillon: I guess they’re usually a least somewhat uplifting. It’s just that there’s something even more uplifting about this one because it’s the living languages episode, right? It’s about Wikitongues, which allows people to upload their own language video or audio – although they encourage video – so people can at least record what their language is actually like right now regardless of what it was like in the past, regardless of what it will be like in the future, just a snapshot. It’s just – I love it.

Megan Figueroa: I love it too. It’s a reminder that language is living. And it’s okay that it changes.

Carrie Gillon: Language will always change no matter what you try to do. Colonization had this huge impact on many different languages, and I don’t wanna ignore that, but it is what it is. Languages would’ve changed even if that hadn’t happened.

Megan Figueroa: Right. To have a little place on the internet to celebrate what your language sounds like now is lovely.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: Okay. Today, we have Daniel Bögre Udell who’s the co-founder of Wikitongues, a non-profit organization that aims to document all of the world’s languages. Welcome, Daniel.

Megan Figueroa: Thanks for being here.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Thank you for having me.

Carrie Gillon: Of course!

Megan Figueroa: Excited to talk about this today. I’ve heard of Wikitongues, but I don’t know much about it. I don’t know anything, actually. I don’t know how old or young – you’re gonna tell us all about that, right?

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s funny. I’ve been following Vocal Fries on Twitter for a while and so, Carrie, when I found out that you and I would be on that show together, I was excited because it was an opportunity to meet you too.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. It was an interesting experience. It was really strange being on a TV show that will be shown soon, I think. It was all very professional. There’s a panel. And I was, like, way far away if you’re in Phoenix. And that was in London, I believe.

Daniel Bögre Udell: It was my first remote talking head experience actually.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. Me too.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, wow. Was it a BBC thing?

Carrie Gillon: No. It was a Turkish news channel. I don’t remember what it was called. Do you remember, Daniel?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Off the top of my head, I do not. Well, the show itself was called “Round Table,” but I don’t remember what the network was.

Megan Figueroa: Okay. Well, very cool. We’ll have to share that when it comes out.

Carrie Gillon: Definitely. So, tell a us a little bit about Wikitongues. How old is it? Why did you start it? Etc.?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Sure. Wikitongues started in 2014 as a non-profit initiative to crowd-source documentation in every language. We started with oral histories because that is a kind of linguistic documentation that is easy to do without a lot of training or advanced equipment. Pretty much anybody with a smartphone or with access to a smartphone can produce them.

We did that for two reasons, 1.) language revitalization is only possible when accessible documentation is available in the language in question and, from a question of representation and inclusion, we thought it would be an interesting online project to try and represent every language in the world, which is in effect representing every culture in the world.

As we grew, we started to get the question, “How do I save my language?” which is an incredibly loaded question and one to which there really isn’t a systemic answer despite all the work on language revitalization over the past few decades. Starting this year, we’re actually teaming up with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages to build a toolkit for people who wanna get started with language activism in their communities.

The idea is giving people a framework to do a health check on their language. So, if you are worried about the future of your language, you can actually assess what it needs because different languages need different things, right? If your language has already been documented and the community has that documentation, maybe what you actually need is a framework for community organizing to keep it relevant for young people. Or maybe your language actually is undocumented or under-documented and you actually need to start from the beginning with oral histories, dictionaries, whatever.

The idea is to give people the framework for doing this health check and then a roadmap to achieving what needs to be achieved. Because over the past 30 years, there has been a ground swell of language activism around the world and there are successful cases of languages being revitalized, or perhaps a better way to put it is there are successful cases of cultures keeping their languages alive – people asserting their cultural sovereignty.

There are universal lessons there, we think, that can be applied because there are cases of languages being revitalized with the help of a government. And there are cases of languages being revitalized in an entirely unfunded and grassroots way with no institutional support. Then, there are cases where people have attempted to keep their languages alive and not succeeded, right? Our hope is to be able to build a very wide and open front door to the process of language activism.

Megan Figueroa: You said, “crowd source,” and I think sometimes – I’m always skeptical when I hear that because it’s so sad in the US how we have to crowd source, like, people’s medical bills and all this stuff. But this is one of those things where I feel like crowd sourcing is the right thing to do, that way the community can be involved. You may hear from groups that we didn’t know that wanted some outside help or whatever – or these frameworks to work with.

I like the idea that the internet can be used for crowd sourcing in this way, especially when we get kind of jaded when we see all the ways where it’s kinda sad that we have to crowd source things.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yeah. The internet is powerful technology, and all powerful technology has good and bad application. In this case, I think it’s good application. What we’re doing would not be possible without the internet. One really positive thing from the past few years is that increasingly more and more people have access to internet. It’s not always stable. It’s not always good. But, for the first time, they have it.

What’s interesting is every now and then we’ll get contacted by someone who just got internet in their town, and the internet’s not very good yet, but they wanna contribute soon. There was someone who reached out to use from the interior of Papua New Guinea. One of the first things that he wanted to do was see if there are other people around the world that are concerned about this, and he found that there were.

It’s a very, very exciting thing that makes me very optimistic. I really am pretty confident that the internet is going to be a really positive thing for marginalized peoples because it offers a way to organize around your language when your community has been culturally displaced.

Carrie Gillon: It’s been great to see, for example, on Twitter people using their language – just tweeting in their language and not using the dominant language, which has been really fun.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Absolutely. It really creates an opportunity for breathing space for your language because one of the most challenging things for language revitalization movements is, if your community has been culturally displaced, it becomes almost impossible to use your language in the ancestral homeland because it’s been displaced by a more dominant one.

With the internet, you can circumvent that and create Whatsapp groups and Facebook groups and other online forums where you can use the language on a daily basis without the pressure of a locally dominant one. That’s an increasingly common tactic among language activists. And it usually leads to good results.

Carrie Gillon: What has been one of your favorite results that you’ve been a part of?

Daniel Bögre Udell: That’s a really good question. We’re just starting to scratch the surface of support for language activist movement, so I would feel very uncomfortable necessarily giving Wikitongues credit for an actual language revitalization initiative. We have definitely been a platform for people looking to amplify some of their work.

I don’t wanna say I have a favorite, but some of the ones from the past year that have been particularly meaningful to me is the Kihunde language in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It only has about 200,000 thousand speakers. Children are learning it but it’s very under-documented and it has no institutional support. Wikitongues has been a channel for a man named Hangi Bulebe, who is at the center of this effort to keep the language alive, teach it to children, standardize it, and all that.

He said that being able to share the language on a global platform like Wikitongues has helped accelerate work for him because he says when people in the community look at him skeptically, he says, “Well, look, people from other countries care about our language. Why can’t we?” That, he said, has resonated with people. I met him in person for the first time in Rwanda a couple months ago and this was one of the things he said, which was just fabulous.

Another movement that we have been a platform for amplifying is – and, really, that I just feel privileged to get to be close to – is the effort to revitalize the Tunica language of Louisiana, which went dormant in 1948. If you haven’t had any of the members of that community on your show, you should definitely invite them because they’re doing really, really cool work and they love sharing it with the rest of the world.

They’re one of the languages that prompted Ethnologue to add a “reawakening” category to the language vitality scale because they – the language went dormant in 1948. In the 1980s, a woman named Donna Pierite decided that she wanted to revitalize it, and that was partly because her husband is Choctaw. He was learning Choctaw. Choctaw is a language that is still being taught to children and still spoken natively.

She paused and said, “Wait. We don’t actually have our language anymore. But we had one.” So, she would go to Baton Rogue and New Orleans to photocopy old dictionaries and grammars and things that were kinda stored away in university archives, and she brought the language home that way and made it a family activity. She reclaimed Tunica, taught it to her children.

For a long time, they were the movement – their family was the movement to revitalize Tunica. In the 90s, they started sending out newsletters – physical newsletters because the internet mailing lists were still a fresh technology – and other families started to get involved in that way. Something happened in the late – like, 2010 or something around that year – where they got some support, academic support, from linguists in New Orleans and over that next few years they were able to convince the tribal government to actually allocate funding and resources for the program.

Now, I think upwards of 10% of the tribe is enrolled in language immersion. They have 32 new fluent speakers, hence the new “reawakening” category. This is very inspiring to me, personally. One of my more immediate ancestral languages is Yiddish, which means I also have a connection to the Hebrew language, which went dormant in the second century and was revitalized in the 1800s by Jewish activists at that time.

For a long time, that was the only instance of a dormant language being reclaimed by its people. The Tunica are another case of that. In so enthusiastically promoting their work online and around the world, I think it’s a source of inspiration for other people. So, those are two cases that I feel very grateful to have been close to.

Megan Figueroa: I know people are in their communities doing work, but sometimes the help or support they need is really just amplification, which is really great that Wikitongues can do something like that. Those are really good examples of it. Because maybe the framework that they need is just how can I get a bigger audience to hear our oral histories because this is something that we want to share, or we just want people to know what we’re doing.

So, it’s really great that that’s where Wikitongues is coming from. Because linguists have gone into communities and kind of been this savior-type people. They try to be the savior-type people or force things on people. I know, just, linguistics has this terrible history, so it’s really lovely to hear something where it’s like this is about the people and what they need – or what they want – and sometimes that’s just sharing.

Daniel Bögre Udell: There’s one language activist in Scotland – his name’s Àdhamh Ó Broin – and if either of you watch that Showtime show, Outlander, he’s the Gaelic dialect coach for that show. He’s very, very intent on keeping alive his dialect – or his variety of Scottish Gaelic – which is moribund. They’re classified as moribund. Scottish Gaelic, obviously, is not classified as moribund.

He is linguistically trained, right? He is actually a linguist. He just happens to be a dialect coach. He’s very able to do the documentation work. That is not a challenge for him. For him, he said his biggest desire is just to talk to other people who are doing this work because sometimes it can be lonely. There’s a huge community building and solidarity aspect to it.

I do wanna say that at least in my experience over the past several years, there’s been a huge shift in linguistics to be the discipline that supports people in this work, especially the new generation of linguistics who’re doing incredible work. The question is, how can we standardize some of these processes? Like, the Tunica did something correct, right? That can be replicated, not exactly the same way because every community has different needs, but there are universal lessons that everyone can have been there just aren’t enough field linguists in the world to help everybody who needs help.

It needs to be thought of in these systemics terms. I’m excited that we can be part of that conversation and hopefully, actually, behind some producing materials that can be useful to people.

Megan Figueroa: Well, I really like the idea that can be their own community’s field linguist, so that’s something that can facilitate that because you’re right that there aren’t enough PhD field linguists that can go everywhere or have particular skills for a particular community. The idea that you could be your own community’s field linguist is really great.

It’s funny because I’ve been thinking, I dunno, all these think pieces about the new decade and has the internet ruined us and what has the internet done in the last 10 years. It’s nice to hear these stories about how the internet can actually make the world smaller in a good way.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yeah. I mean, I’m very optimistic. I think the internet obviously has its problems, but I worry that a lot of the critiques of the internet come from jaded people who live in places that have had the internet for a very long time and who just spend too much time on –

Megan Figueroa: Twitter?

Daniel Bögre Udell: – following people on – yeah. And I love Twitter, but you can unfollow people if they’re annoying. So much of this is – nobody who just got the internet last year is mad about it. Right? So, a little global context would be nice beyond “Partisan arguments on twitter are mean-spirited and therefore the internet sucks.” So much of the critique is that. It’s just so limited and is unfortunate.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of bad actors on the internet, but it’s true that in some ways you can make your experience better by blocking the ones that are for sure bad actors and focusing on the ones that are good, which is what I do try to do.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Right. There’ve been bad actors since before the internet.

Carrie Gillon: Of course. Just because the internet’s so powerful, it’s really to easy in a bad way, just like it’s really easy to use in a good way. Let’s focus on the good!

Daniel Bögre Udell: That’s right. It’s like nuclear technology – double-edged sword.

Carrie Gillon: Absolutely. 100%. Why is this work so important?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Why is this work important? I think this work is important because language is the vehicle of expression for communities. When a language disappears, it means that a community has collapsed. I saw this BBC headline the other day that was – it was just a headline. I didn’t actually read the article. But the fact that this is the headline that got written as it did is so indicative of how the discourse around this stuff needs to improve.

It was like, “Yeah. Yiddish used to have ten million speakers in Europe and now those numbers have depleted.” [Groaning] Right? It’s like, “No. There was a genocide that murdered everybody.” What we’re talking about is Ashkenazi Jews in Europe were the victims of a massive genocide. That’s why Yiddish’s number of speaks have depleted.

And that’s how we talk about all these languages. Like, Lakota isn’t a “dying” language, Lakota is a language that is taking work to be kept alive because the community has been at the blunt end of genocide, land theft, ethnic cleansing, and other forms of systemic racism. Language revitalization is a way for communities who have been marginalized to assert themselves on the global stage. It’s about justice. It’s about reparation. That’s why I think it’s most important.

Then, there’s this more intangible question of knowledge. Because, in languages, there’s almost always unique vocabulary, which sometimes have biological applications, which is why there’re fields in biology that work with local language speakers to accelerate conservation. It contains prehistories. We know about the Bantu migration and the Bering Strait migration in part because of how languages change across vast geographies. It’s so important. It intersects with everything.

Megan Figueroa: I’m so glad that you brought up the point about Lakota’s not dying – or to say that a language is “dying” – I’ve heard a lot of people starting to say that they don’t like to hear this kind of language around a language, like saying it’s “dying.”

I think that’s such a good point because I’ve been thinking a lot about intergenerational trauma. Even say the Jewish people that did survive the holocaust and did speak Yiddish, there may be some trauma there that makes you not want to pass on a language. I see that in Spanish in the American Southwest. I’m learning more about this and how that’s happening in Ireland with the Irish language.

To remember that things have been done – horrible atrocities have been done – to people and what happens with language is kind of the consequence –

Carrie Gillon: -knock-on effect.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly. I think that’s so important for people to sit and think about.

Carrie Gillon: The thought I had was – I didn’t realize until really recently because I am not Jewish but, I dunno, like a year or two ago someone posted something about, “Did you know that in 1939 there were more Jewish people on the planet than there are now?” and I just couldn’t even believe it. I mean, I believed it, obviously, but you know what I mean? It was just like, “Oh my god. That’s so true.” Obviously, that’s true as soon as you say that.

The tie-in with Yiddish is also very important and, yeah, we really need to talk about these things differently. I know some of the language has changed towards “sleeping” or “dormant,” but that still doesn’t get at the heart of it, which is what you’re talking about, Daniel, which is like, “This is the result of genocide usually.”

Daniel Bögre Udell: Or, if not genocide, at least forced assimilation. The Occitan people weren’t necessarily victims of physical genocide in France, but there was a concerted effort by the French government to erase Occitan identity, culture, and language, and forcibly make the French. How did they do that? The beat children in school who were speaking Occitan. They forbade the use of Occitan in the public sphere.

And, low and behold, within a generation, the people kinda had their culture squeezed out of them. That’s the nicest case. It’s funny that you bring up the intergenerational trauma because there is this other counter-discourse that I hear sometimes which is that, “Well, if the community doesn’t wanna teach their language to their kids anymore, that’s their choice.”

Going back to the Yiddish case because that’s my personal one, it’s like, there’s a reason that my dad wasn’t taught Yiddish. It’s because Ashkenazi Jews fled Europe and they either went to Israel, or they said we’re gonna speak Hebrew now and reclaim this ancient language, or we’re gonna go somewhere else and assimilate. And if we assimilate, they’ll be nice to us.

It’s sad. Language is about so much more – so much more. I was talking to another person you should get on the show. Her name’s Hali Dardar. I forget home to pronounce her last name. She’s from the Houma community in Louisiana. Their language, when it went dormant – potentially problematic description, but for lack of a better phrasing – it was undocumented.

Unlike Tunica, there were no complete dictionaries and grammars gathering dust in libraries. So, they’re in the middle of reconstructing Houma before they can consider reclaiming it. When I asked her what her end-goal was, it’s like, do you want this to be the mother tongue again of Houma people? And said, “Maybe. But I just want us all to feel Houma and not forget.”

That’s really what the core is. Revitalizing language is about community. It’s about history. It’s about your ancestors, your descendants, your place on earth.

Carrie Gillon: And the stories about who you are.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, I think about it because – I’ve talked about it before – how I feel like Spanish was forcibly removed from my generation. But Spanish is always gonna be there for me when I want to learn it. It won’t be, perhaps, not my family’s Spanish, but it’ll be there for me.

Whereas, these languages, are they gonna be there? That’s the question. We want them to be there. But, again, just this horrible ways that we have treated other human being where we’ve got to the point where we are where there are some languages that are, for lack of a better word, “dormant,” it’s not true for everyone that that language will be there for them, unfortunately.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Right. That’s why the documentation side of things is so important. We have one oral history of a language from Vanuatu called Lemerig. It has two known speakers. From what I understand, there isn’t really any active movement to revitalize the language and the culture.

If in 30 years there is, there emerges that desire, it’s important that the language be there for the community to bring it back. With the Tunica case, the last native speaker was the Chief – Sesostrie Youchigant, I think was his name. You can ask them when you bring either Donna or Jean-Luc or any of them on the show.

He worked with a linguist named Mary Haas to produce dictionaries and grammars because he knew that he had to leave the language behind for the next generation. It took 30 years. He passed away in 1948. It was the 80s when Donna Pierite started this movement again. So, thank goodness it was there. Thank goodness he did that. The documentation is so important and the first step, really.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. It’s the first step that it’s necessary but not sufficient.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yeah. I’m convinced that there’s actually been a huge shift in the history of cultural diversity over the past couple years and we’re just starting to realize what that is because I think this statistic that half the languages in the world are gonna disappear in 80 years keeps getting touted and that statistic is from the 90s. Even then, there were different estimations.

But let’s be charitable and say this estimation was correct. That was the 90s. There was no Tunica revitalization – well, I guess they had started, but it was still a couple families. There’re just a lot of cases of languages being in a better – and cultures, really, communities – being in a better position now than they were in the 90s.

I mean, there’re probably cases of others being worse. So, maybe the net is not any better. That’s part of what makes this so hard because it’s so vast a scale.

Carrie Gillon: It’s really hard to estimate how many languages really are under extreme threat or just a little bit of threat. It’s hard to really know for sure because we don’t – and no one person has that amount of information. We can’t possibly know.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. That’s why I think another thing that needs to happen for an infrastructure to sustain cultural diversity at scale is beyond there being these systems or these frameworks for people to do the work in their communities. There needs to be a better survey method that’s more frequent, more consistent.

Carrie Gillon: Because even census data isn’t that good. I mean, it’s really good but, like, it’s not very frequent and it’s not that deep.

Megan Figueroa: It’s different from each country, right?

Carrie Gillon: Exactly. Each country does it differently.

Daniel Bögre Udell: When you look at Ethnologue or Glottolog – they work with what they have. This is no knock on them. But sometimes you’ll see the last datum about this language is 1980. It’s like, “Cool. That’s where this language was 40 years ago.” A lot can happen in 40 years.

I was having a conversation with a Shanghainese person. That’s her heritage language. She doesn’t really speak it. She’s American, I think. But she was like, “How long until Shanghainese dies?” And I was like, “Well, damn. That’s a question.” I was like, “It’s not even classified as endangered.” Maybe it’s not. Maybe this is just her perception. Or maybe she’s getting news from relatives back home that the language is not spoken anywhere near like it was 10 years ago, and the census isn’t even caught up with that.

Of course, Beijing is not gonna be taking censuses about this stuff because they’re one of the few countries that is still actively working to assimilate minorities. This stuff is really messy. There needs to be a better survey method that would probably rely on some self-reporting, which is its own unreliable can of worms.

Carrie Gillon: But I think it’s the best that we would have in this instance. Because there might only be one speaker, and so who else is gonna report it but that one person?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. There would also have to be a way to report and track language revitalization that would be okay. There’s a new initiative on the ground – and then also keep track of all the different ones. Because the Tunica case is really interesting. It’s got incredible momentum over the past 10 years. But for the first 20 years, it was just a few really persistent people. There’s a lot of variables to track, I think.

Megan Figueroa: Well, and of course, most of these languages do not have institutional support. With institutional support would come, perhaps, some better numbers on things. But that’s not what’s happening. That’s not the reality.

Carrie Gillon: I’m curious about the Yiddish case. I know there was a revitalization effort. Is that still ongoing? And if so, are you involved in that at all?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Not yet. I’m decided that I’m gonna start with the – I’m learning Hebrew right now. And once I get conversational, I’ll move over to Yiddish. The reason I did that is just because all Jewish languages are Hebrew plus something else, right? So, I was like, “I’ll start with the oldest one.” There’s a certain ancestral quality to it that has drawn me to it. I will learn Yiddish when I get a little more proficient in Hebrew.

There is a lot of Yiddish activism right now because, for a long period, the only community that really kept it alive were the different orthodox communities in North America. There was a secular – what was really depleted, as the BBC said, was the secular Yiddish world, which was lively and had theater and literature and all this stuff.

There is a movement to bring that back. A lot of young, especially diaspora, Jews in North America are starting to rediscover that because it really is the one that we can go back a couple generations and find an ancestor speaking. In fact, another guest you should get on the show is a woman named Sandy Fox. She lives between Tel Aviv and New York. She’s part of that whole movement. She actually runs a feminist podcast in Yiddish.

Carrie Gillon: Cool! Definitely need to have her on.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. Definitely!

Daniel Bögre Udell: She’s great. So, there’s a lot of that. That’s definitely happening. What’s interesting is because the orthodox communities, especially here in New York City, they kept the language alive, it was there for the rest of us – as you put it, Megan – because they had kept the language alive, it was there for the rest of us when we were ready to come back.

Megan Figueroa: As a kid – I’m very millennial-age, and the internet came around for me when I was like 8 or 9. The best part about it is – well, it wasn’t Google then, but whatever kind of search engine I had – I could ask questions like, “Is Yiddish still spoken?” Because I remember watching “Laverne and Shirley” and being like, “What did they say? Like, ‘schlemiel,’ ‘schlimazel’?”

[Excerpt “Laverne and Shirley”]

Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!

[End excerpt]

I was like, “What? What is that?” Being able to finally ask – because I was just this kid in Phoenix, Arizona. I knew Mexican culture and that’s about it. I didn’t know whether Yiddish was spoken or was it fake. This is where I was at 8, based on who was around me. I’m just so happy that kids these days – or anyone, I mean, I’m not saying you have to be a kid to know whether if Yiddish is spoken and where – to be able to go to the internet and be like, “Tell me.” Just how powerful knowledge is about language.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. It’s history, which is interesting and important. So, your ancestral language is Spanish?

Megan Figueroa: Yes. Well, my dad speaks Spanish and my – I have traced it back five generations to Sonora, Mexico, my family.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Incredible. Do you speak it now?

Megan Figueroa: A little bit. I’m more receptive, so I can understand it. I get really skittish about speaking it because I have this shame of people expecting me to have the knowledge that they expect of me because of my last name or because my dad spoke it. That’s where my baggage is at.

Carrie Gillon: There’s also a lot of shaming from other people like, “Oh, you don’t speak the real Spanish.” Makes it hard.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly.

Daniel Bögre Udell: That stuff is so toxic. We’ll get comments on our YouTube channel a lot in that vein like, “This person is not speaking the language well.” And it’s like, “Well, okay. Of course not because of the history of how this person got access to their language. Calm down.” Celebrate that they speak it. It’s all right if it has some loanwords from the dominant language. Our thing is always like, “Okay. Then you send a video.” Sometimes, people do and, sometimes, they go away.

Carrie Gillon: That’s a really good response.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Because that’s our thing, right? We’re not policing authenticity.

Carrie Gillon: No. Nor should you. How would you?

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s funny how ubiquitous the desire to police authenticity is though because we get those comments from a wide range of communities on every continent. There’s always that person who says, “This person’s not speaking well.” I get the desire to keep the language alive in its most robust state because it probably has better vocabulary than the loanwords that this person is using – but celebrate that they still speak it.

Carrie Gillon: Well, there’s also dialect differences too that sometimes people either forget about or don’t wanna admit exist. So, you come from the wrong family? Oh, that means you’re not speaking correctly. I’ve definitely encountered that as well.

Megan Figueroa: That’s why I like to use the pronouns like “my Spanish,” “This is what my Spanish is,” or “That’s what your French is.” I think it gets around that because, again, I do have these insecurities but it’s like, “No, this one’s mine.” I try to remember that when people are cruel. But it’s true. The policing comes from inside the community, outside the community. It's everywhere.

So, people send videos to Wikitongues?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Yes.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, that’s so cool. I mean, I’m sure there’s just audio recordings as well, but to see videos, what a great resource to have.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Video’s important because it puts a face to the language. It makes the evidence of language and culture a little more explicit. It’s also necessary if you’re looking at every language because at least 300 of the world’s languages are signed. You cannot have an audio recording for that language.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly. That’s exactly the point I was getting to is, I’m so glad that they’re video because – yes. Myself, I probably made this mistake growing up too, a lot of Americans think that ASL is the signed language, but there’re so many signed languages.

Daniel Bögre Udell: In my travels I found this to be a global misconception.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, really? Okay.

Daniel Bögre Udell: I mean, not ASL exactly, but most people think that there is a sign language that all people who are deaf in the whole world speak somehow. And then when you say, “No, they all have different languages,” people have a hard time processing that until you say, “Well, there’s different spoken languages and it’s the same thing.” And they go, “Oh.”

Carrie Gillon: This is probably the most common misconception about language that I’ve encountered as well is that there’s one sign language. For once, it’s not just Americans.

Megan Figueroa: I always like to drag Americans under the bus – [Laughter]

Daniel Bögre Udell: What’s more American than that?

Megan Figueroa: It’s just a recreational activity. [Laughter] I do it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Well, I just think it’s great because, like I said – I’m obviously a linguist, a trained linguist, now – but the internet’s helped me so much to learn about language. I hope our podcast does that as well because I think there’re a lot of things that people might be too scared to ask.

I like to remind everyone that I am very naïve. I’m still – in my 30-plus years and after a PhD program – I’m still very naïve. And I think that we can’t be ashamed.

Carrie Gillon: We can’t possibly know everything.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. You can’t be ashamed. If you have to go and Google, “Where is Yiddish spoken?” after this, that’s okay.

Carrie Gillon: In fact, I encourage you to do because you will learn something for sure.

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s totally fine. People always get confused about – because they don’t understand that there’s multiple Jewish languages, and so they’ll confuse Yiddish and Hebrew a lot. And I’m like, “No. Very different.” One’s close to Arabic and one’s close to German. Then, there’s also Ladino and Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Farsi and Judeo-Malayalam, which is one that I just learned about recently and I’d never even known about existing.

It’s like, okay. Because I think that’s the other thing, I think, when people start, they get really intimidated because culture is so vast, and they don’t wanna be perceived as ignorant or they don’t wanna offend people – a lot of eggshell walking. And it’s like, “No. Just ask the questions. As long as you’re being respectful, it’s fine. No one should be expected to know everything.”

Carrie Gillon: It’s impossible.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. How are you supposed to know it until you learn it?

Carrie Gillon: And it’s impossible to know everything. It’s just impossible. Just learning a little bit every day, that’s good.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Exactly. Learn one new thing every day.

Carrie Gillon: I think that’s a good life lesson.

Megan Figueroa: I think it is too. It’s also a great plug for listening to Vocal Fries.

Daniel Bögre Udell: By the way, I love your name. Because I actually found you through Twitter because I’m not an avid podcast-listener. I remember when I saw that, I was like – follow.

Carrie Gillon: I’m pretty proud of that.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Are your listeners well prompted on the whole vocal fry?

Megan Figueroa: Yes. And we don’t get hate mail about our voices. I think that that is also a really good thing is like, “Okay. We’re coming right out, and our name is the Vocal Fries, and we’re about linguistic discrimination. Don’t shit on how either one of us talk.”

Daniel Bögre Udell: It’s true. You have a built-in defense barrier, which is pretty cool.

Megan Figueroa: I hope it makes our customers – our customers? – our guests –

Carrie Gillon: What? [Laughs]

Megan Figueroa: – our guests feel comfortable too because we’re like, “You’re safe in this space.”

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. No shaming allowed.

Megan Figueroa: There is no language shaming here. That’s for sure.

Daniel Bögre Udell: No language shaming, baby.

Carrie Gillon: Exactly. How can people support Wikitongues?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Oh, there’s a lot. We’ve only worked with about 500 language communities. I’ve kind of been off the grid for the past few days taking long walks and recovering from New Years, so the number’s probably a little higher now – maybe it’s like 504 or something. But that’s only 14% of every known culture.

There is an endless amount of contribution still to be done to this seedbank of linguistic and cultural diversity. Please, send us videos of your language – whatever that language is and however you speak it. We love all dialects, sociolects, idiolects, accents. Then, of course, you can also donate to Wikitongues – wikitongues.org/donate. Or, if you’re a Patreon user, you can make a monthly pledge on Patreon. You can subscribe to us on YouTube, which also helps.

Wikitongues is a non-profit. All contributions are tax-deductible. They go primarily to supporting the documentation work or now, also research on language revitalization as we work with the Living Tongues Institute to build this toolkit.

Finally, we have grown almost entirely organically over the past five years. Word of mouth is also an insanely valuable contribution to building the community that we’ve built. So, talk about us to your friends, help make the name known more around the world.

Megan Figueroa: Again, I feel a little naïve because I didn’t – I mean, you’ve been around for about 5 years now, and I just never pursued you further, and I feel guilty now. But I’m glad to know you know. That helps, right?

Daniel Bögre Udell: Oh, yeah. Hey, I never messaged you guys. I never tried to slide into the Twitter DM because we’re on the same – [laughter].

Carrie Gillon: Which you definitely could have. We encourage people to let us know if they have something interesting to talk about.

Daniel Bögre Udell: DMs are open.

Megan Figueroa: You know what would be a fun way to contribute – now that I’ve just spent time with family that I actually like, I know not everyone likes their family because family – but you could do that with your elders is ask them to contribute, and you can do it yourself. You can help them. You can use your smartphone. It’s a way to preserve some of your family’s culture too.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Absolutely. That’s something that I should have clarified a moment ago. Send us your language, but you can also send us your friend’s language too. You can send us your neighbor’s language. You can help people to participate. There was one volunteer in our very early days named Plator Gashi from Kosovo. He travelled all up and down the Baltics and must have contributed oral histories in up to 30 or 40 different languages.

Megan Figueroa: Wow. That’s very cool.

Daniel Bögre Udell: He is a remarkable individual. But, yeah, it doesn’t have to be you speaking is what I’m saying.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely. That’s what I was thinking because I know some people might be shy. You don’t have to do a video either, right, it could be audio only?

Daniel Bögre Udell: It could be audio. We won’t publish it on YouTube if it’s just audio, but we will archive it. We’re on the verge of rolling out an accessible archive on our website so you can actually browse every video we’ve ever done, which is a long time in the making. But when you’re a non-profit, resources are limited, and tech is resource intensive.

We also are on the verge of rolling out templates for other kinds of documentation like phrasebooks, wordlists. If you do want to send us videos in the meantime, these templates are not yet out, but if you wanna send us videos, just head over to Wikitongues.org and you will see “Submit a Video” in the toolbar. There’s a form to fill out and a Google form if that doesn’t work.

Megan Figueroa: Awesome. We’ll be happy to update our listeners whenever ya’ll make progress on the new templates or projects.

Daniel Bögre Udell: Thank you. There’s a lot this year. I am grateful to have kicked it off with the Vocal Fries. Thank you for – [excited exclamations]

Carrie Gillon: Thank you so much.

Megan Figueroa: Well, it was so lovely to meet you virtually.

Daniel Bögre Udell: You too.

Megan Figueroa: Do you know how to say, “Don’t be an asshole?”

Daniel Bögre Udell: No. Not yet.

Carrie Gillon: That would be high level.

Megan Figueroa: It’s fine. One day.

Daniel Bögre Udell: That’s a great thing to learn how to say in a language. That should be a core phrasebook – we should add that to our phrasebook template.

Carrie Gillon: You should. Even if you make it slightly nicer and just say, “jerk,” I still think it’s an important thing for people to be able to say.

Megan Figueroa: Or “Be nice.” Something like that.

Carrie Gillon: “Be nice” is probably already in there, I’m guessing.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah.

Daniel Bögre Udell: “Don’t be an asshole”’s more fun though, right?

Carrie Gillon: It is way more fun!

Megan Figueroa: That’s why we always tell our listeners to not be an asshole. They know we mean it with love.

Carrie Gillon: It also feels more boundary-enforcing, which is sometimes really important.

Megan Figueroa: I can see that, yeah. I never thought of it that way.

Daniel Bögre Udell: On that note –

Megan Figueroa: So, don’t be an asshole.

Carrie Gillon: Don’t be an asshole. [Laughter]

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: Okay. We would like to thank our newest patrons for this month. Russell Lee Goldman, Paige Andrews, Jeff Goldman, and Ellen Pearleberg – or “Pearlberg.” It’s probably “Pearlberg.” I went a little French there.

Megan Figueroa: I love seeing names that I recognize from Twitter!

Carrie Gillon: Me too.

Megan Figueroa: Yay! Thank you so much.

Carrie Gillon: Thank you. If anyone still listening would like to support us, we have $2.00, $3.00, and $5.00 levels. The $2.00 level, you get a thank you. The $3.00 level you get a sticker. Actually, you get multiple stickers. You get a sticker every few months. $5.00 level you get the stickers and our bonus episodes.

Megan Figueroa: Yes. Our latest one is about child language, and I get real salty. So does Carrie.

Carrie Gillon: So do I but, yes, you do more so because it is your area.

Megan Figueroa: Yes.

Carrie Gillon: Thank you so much. We’ll –

Megan Figueroa: See you next time.

Carrie Gillon: See you in a couple weeks.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at [email protected] and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

[End music]

#transcript #language #linguistic discrimination #language documentation #wikitongues

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mimi-love-4ever · 6 years ago

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Summer Heat

SasuSaku Month 2018 - Day 13: Summer Heat Rating: T+ (Language) Context: Non-massacre, non-shinobi AU A/N: Thank you for reading and I hope you like it! Here’s the previous prompt, Day 12 (Dinner).

Sasuke was carrying a bucket of paint and a tray of brushes the first time he saw her. He blinked several times to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. Pastel pink hair and alluring green eyes. She was talking animatedly with his uncle Obito near the front gate of the house as she swept her strangely colored hair up into a ponytail. Since he had his earphones in, he failed to hear what she was saying, but whatever it was it had his uncle howling with laughter with the way he was bending over and slapping his knee. It honestly looked like he was dying from oxygen deprivation.

Whatever the girl said couldn’t have been that funny, he thought to himself, almost annoyed.

He forced himself to look away and kept walking towards the end of the fence where he was supposed to start painting first. When his uncle had convinced his parents to let him stay for the summer, to clear his head before college began, Sasuke hadn’t expected to be put to work. Obito had bought an old house in a nice, quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Konoha and had decided to renovate it as a summer project. So, honestly, he should have suspected he’d be used for free labor by his eccentric uncle. The only thing that had kept him from driving back home was that Obito had promised to teach him some martial arts, which is something his mother had forbidden him from learning when he was younger.

The next time he saw the girl with the pink hair, he was driving through downtown Konoha one afternoon. Obito had sent him to pick up something or another at the store like a little errand boy. He just happened to take a glance to the right at a stop light and saw her spinning on her tiptoes as easily as a breath of air. She was in a dance studio, alone. The passionate expression on her face caught him off guard. He couldn’t deny she was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen. Which is why he grumbled to himself and sped out of there before anyone caught him staring. Sasuke was not in the habit of letting girls catch his eye and he did not plan to let it happen.

He arrived back at the house thoroughly annoyed, threw the shopping bag on his uncle’s table, and holed up in his room. He slipped in his earphones and spent the next couple hours trying to put that girl out of mind. He tried so hard that he ended up falling asleep to the image of sparkling viridian eyes, nonetheless.

It was almost a month into his stay when he ran into her again. Obito had left him a to-do list of things that needed to be done while he went into town for a few hours. Sasuke called bullshit because his uncle had been gone since early morning and he was stuck cleaning the stinky gutters as the sun blazed on mercilessly. Sweat trickled down his neck right down to his shirt, making it stick to his body uncomfortably. The heated up metal of the ladder he was standing on wasn’t helping the situation. He groaned in protest and decided to scoop one last patch of gutter gunk before calling it quits. Not even the music blasting through his earphones was helping him put the summer heat out of mind. He let the ball of gunk fall to the ground carelessly, where he could then pick it up better, when his ladder shook roughly and almost toppled him over.

Sasuke cursed loudly and looked down trying to find the source of the disturbance. His eyes widened in shock when he saw pink muddied locks, then a furious face with green eyes shooting daggers at him. He ripped the earphones off and quickly climbed down.

“What the hell is your problem?” The girl exclaimed. “I was just trying to get your attention and you go and drop this shit on me!”

Sasuke winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you, or hear you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I figured,” she pouted and tried to get big chunks of gutter trash off her head. “Great, now I gotta go all the way back home and shower.”

“No, wait.” Sasuke surprised himself by saying and looked away embarrassed. “Uh, why don’t you come in? You can use our bathroom.”

She raised an eyebrow at his boldness. “I don’t even know your name, buddy. You could be a killer for all I know, looking to kidnap girls like me.”

“Annoying?” Sasuke quipped.

“Young and full of life.”

Sasuke couldn’t help but roll his eyes at her reply. “Sasuke Uchiha. College-bound student, not a killer.”

“Oh, you must be Mr. Uchiha’s nephew!” Her eyes brightened as she stuck her hand out to him. “He hasn’t shut up about you, you know?”

“Great,” he grimaced. “I can just imagine the things he’s said.”

“Well, you don’t look stupid, for one,” she giggled. “Although, he did also mention you have a stick up your ass, so…”

You’re dead, Obito! Sasuke glared at the floor furiously. He could feel the tips of his ears burn red.

“Sakura Haruno,” she introduced herself, chuckling. “Now that I know you’re not a closeted killer, I wouldn’t mind using your bathroom, but I still got my eye on you.”

After their official disaster of a meeting, Sasuke found Sakura stopping by more often. She would try to get him out of the house any chance she got, but to no avail, so she ended up trailing after him and helping out. Once Obito found out what was going on he waited for Sakura to go home before laughing and teasing him relentlessly about her. Somehow his uncle got it in his head that he and Sakura would soon hook up, which is why he almost freaked out when two weeks later Sakura started pestering him about a party. A friend of a friend was hosting a party at her family’s summer house, about forty minutes away, and Sakura insisted he should go with her. Of course, he flat out refused, remembering his uncle’s teasing. That’s when Sakura had pulled out the big guns.

Her pink lips formed a pout as her viridian eyes widened slightly and she looked at him pleadingly. His thoughts betrayed him as he found her to be entirely too enticing for her own good. Needless to say, she played him like a damn fiddle.

Sasuke threw on a clean white t-shirt, jeans and a pair of black Converse and waited for Sakura to show up. Since he didn’t want to tip off Obito of the situation, he told Sakura they should take her car, to which she readily agreed. It seemed Obito had started teasing her too whenever he wasn’t paying attention.

At seven, on the dot, Sakura was pulling up in the driveway. She waved at him without getting off and he hurried over to the passenger seat. The drive on the way over was laid back with Sasuke simply enjoying the cool air from the AC beating away the heat of summer while Sakura played songs from her playlist and sang a long at the top of her lungs. She grinned at him and laughed every time he would complain about the too bubblegum pop songs she played, but he never once told her to shut up or change it. When they finally reached their destination an hour later, the party looked to be well underway already. Sakura parked down the street and was checking over her light make-up as he got out.

The second Sakura stepped out of the car, Sasuke knew this party was gonna be hell. He hadn’t noticed it when he got in the car, but Sakura looked good. Way, way, too good and damn it all if he didn’t find her insanely attractive. She wore a thin red, off the shoulder top that fell a little short and showed off a good amount of her flat stomach. It accompanished a tight, high waisted black skirt that stopped mid-thigh and a pair of black wedge sneakers that had a mesmerizing effect on her long legs.

“Do you think I look okay?” Sakura asked him, biting her lip, as she tucked a rose-colored lock behind her ear.

Sasuke had never felt so conflicted. He wanted to tell her that she looked amazing, but at the same time, he wanted to shove her back in the car and drive away so no stupid hormonal boys could look at her.

“You look fine,” he forced out.

“Oh,” she said. He could have sworn he saw a flash of disappointment in her eyes before it was gone and she smiled. “As long as I don’t look terrible. Come on, Sasuke, we need to loosen you up.”

As soon as they stepped through the door, Sakura was bombarded by a vivacious blonde who grinned like a Cheshire cat at her outfit and handed both of them a half-filled red cup. Ino, he remembered Sakura mentioning the name of her best friend. She wasted no time in pulling her into a throng of people in the middle of the large living room that were supposed to be dancing, but looked to be too tipsy for that. Hard paced music blasted from hidden speakers around the room while a strobe of light flashed every now and then.

He wasn’t the type to drink, but when he caught several leering glances directed at Sakura, he chugged the entire contents of the cup. Whatever it was tasted terrible and almost made him gag at the after taste. Although he hadn’t known Sakura for very long, he felt protective of her. It almost came at no surprise seeing as how there was just something about her that drew people right in.

Sasuke ended up in a corner, mostly to hide from the attention other girls were directing at him in the form of flirtatious eyes and not so subtle looks. He focused instead on Sakura and the big smile on her face as she danced. She had ditched the cup and had both hands thrown up in the air above her, her hips swaying sensually in time to the rhythm of the music. He lost count of how many songs Sakura danced to, but she eventually made her way over to him slightly out of breath and fanning her face.

Her eyes shimmered with excitement and her cheeks were flushed a pretty pink. She looked at him with a certain intensity that made the room heat up a couple of degrees.

“Dance with me?” Sakura giggled, tugging on his arm.

“I don’t dance,” he replied, glancing at the tangle of people unamused.

“Oh, come on!” Sakura crossed her arms over her chest. “I promise to keep my hands to myself.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Sasuke found himself muttering under his breath.

“I’m gonna go get another drink then.” She gave him one last hopeful look before maneuvering through the living room and out of sight.

Having nothing better to do, he followed Sakura to the kitchen area, pushing people out the way. He could never understand why girls tried clinging to him when it was obvious he wasn’t interested. All except Sakura, that is…

He shook away those thoughts and rounded the corner. The sight before him, however, made all those thoughts come roaring right back. Sakura was leaning against the counter, drink in hand, smiling and laughing as some guy was talking to her. He stood a little taller than her, which made him lean down closer to Sakura’s face to be able to be heard over the loud noise of the music. Too close. Sasuke found it incredibly hard to resist the urge to shove him away and punch that smug grin off his face.

I have no claim on Sakura. Sasuke repeated like a mantra over and over in his head.

The guy leaned down even further and whispered something in Sakura’s ear. He put his hand on the counter and placed his other on her small waist. Her eyes widened a bit at whatever it was that he said before an offended expression crossed her face. Sasuke was about to step in when Sakura lifted her arm and dumped the contents of her cup on top of the guy’s head.

“Asshole,” she snarled angrily and pushed him away.

The guy stumbled back, but managed to grab her wrist in a firm hold. “Don’t be such a bitch.”

In a flash Sasuke shot forward and gripped his arm tightly. He squeezed hard until the guy let go of Sakura with a groan of pain and fell to the ground clutching his arm. Sasuke ushered Sakura out of the kitchen, pushing past a small crowd that had gathered around them, and headed out the back door. Unlike the inside, the backyard was deserted and quiet enough to hear. Sakura stomped down a set of stairs and plopped down on the bottom step, fuming. Sasuke followed after her.

“Why are guys such jerks, Sasuke?” Sakura exploded. “Ugh, I swear, I always attract the worst.”

“That idiot, what did he say to you?” He asked a little curiously. He wanted to know whether he had to commit murder or not.

Sakura’s cheeks turned red, but it looked like more from embarrassment than anything. She huffed, “I’d rather not say.”

He frowned and figured it must have been pretty bad if she didn’t even want to tell him. Since he’s known her, she’s never held anything back. He also didn’t fail to notice the glossy shimmer in her eyes that signaled incoming tears.

“Forget that guy, he’s a loser if he can’t appreciate a girl like you.” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them.

She turned to him and felt the ghost of a smile on her lips. “Annoying?”

He smirked. “Young and full of life.”

A chorus of giggles fell from her mouth, turning into full blown laughter a second later as she remembered their first encounter and the very same words being spoken between them. A comfortable silence fell over them. Sakura enjoyed the cooling summer air and admired the stars above while Sasuke couldn’t keep his eyes off of her.

“Hey, Sasuke?” Sakura broke the silence.

“Hm?”

“Thank you,” she smiled so brilliantly, he thought his heart would stop. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Hn.”

Sakura laughed at his one-word syllable, but was overjoyed when she could discern more than that one word. Although Sasuke didn’t talk a lot or express his emotions as easily as she did, she was quick to pick up on just what exactly he was trying to say. Not for the first time, Sakura was glad she met Sasuke and more than happy that they had become friends. Friends…

Before she lost her courage, Sakura raised her head up and pecked his cheek. His warm skin felt like silk under her lips and sent a shock of electricity down her spine. She moved away and stared straight ahead, feeling a sense of shyness creep over her.

“Happy birthday, Sasuke-kun,” she whispered.

Sasuke sat frozen in his spot. The spot where she had kissed him blazed hot like wildfire and slowly spread throughout his body. He slowly registered her words and wondered if this was Obito’s doing. A faint blush reddened his cheeks as he tried to figure out what to do or say. Frustratingly enough, his tongue twisted itself and left him speechless. Instead, he puckered up the courage and cradled her hand in his tentatively, giving her enough time to pull away if that’s what she wanted. She didn’t. Their fingers interconnected effortlessly, like two complementing jigsaw pieces.

“I’m really glad I met you, even if I never see you again after this summer,” Sakura said, every word ringing with sincerity.

“Don’t be annoying,” he stammered and squeezed her hand firmly. “We’re not going to stop being friends just because summer ends.”

“Oh yeah?” Sakura teased, her shyness melting away. “Can’t live without me, Uchiha?”

“I think you mean, you can’t live without me, Haruno,” Sasuke shot back easily.

Sakura poked him in the rib as payback and both erupted in laughter. The party was completely forgotten as Sakura launched into a story and Sasuke listened like he always did, while neither noticed their fingers were still interlocked.

#ssm18 #ssm18d13 #sasusakumonth2018 #sasusaku #prosasusaku #sasusakufanfic

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rennyji · 3 years ago

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July 13th tweets...

So I like all music that sounds good. From Rap to Becky G singing her song “Shower.”

Now, regarding Rap, some of the wording can make things awkward. I was blasting 99 problems remix from Jay Z feat Linkin Park. While listening, I’m at a red light in Tuckahoe. An elderly Caucasian woman walks across the street in front of my car, and Jay Z yells, “Ive got 99 problems but a b*tch ain’t one…” I can only imagine what goes through that old lady’s mind.

now from jay z’s perspective, in what older white men would call street language, when you think about it, from that one line, hes saying he has a slew of problems, but he’s so good or suave with women that, that part of his life is set…so in the spirit of expressions among some men like: “b*tches be trippin…” , it’s a crude way of referring to women for the sake of what is understood and accepted as cool.

Regardless,”99 problems” and the Linkin park remix really stimulate you or is invigorating. So it’s hard not to listen to it for the yelling and the tunes.

Then there’s DMX, God bless his soul.

While he sings”X Gon give it to ya” or even “Lord Give Me A Sign”,he also sings a song (I forget the name…oh yeah…it’s called “X is Coming” by DMX), where one of the lyrics is about how someone crossed him, pushes him, and how he lets his rage and anger manifest in threats. How does he express this? Well for one thing, he says he’ll shoot this guys wife…ummm ok. But then he says, if the guy who messed with him, has a daughter, and she’s 15 (he specifically mentions her as 15), DMX says, he, a grown man, will rape the 15 year old daughter. I mean WTF?! But maybe like poetry, you can’t take it literally, and you gotta see “what he means” or “where this hate?! Is coming from.” To rape a 15 year old daughter, words can’t express his hate for the dad or the offender, so he chooses those words.

“Hes basically saying, if you f*k with him, he won’t stop short of killing you. But he wants to take it a step further and say he is so spiteful, that he will screw you and ur entire family. Point being, don’t f*k with him.”

Even then, though I get where he’s going with lyrics, isn’t raping a 15 year old, pedophilia? Where there’s a Will, there’s a way, and there’s always more than one way to do something or say something. If he wants to express hate, why is this grown man talking that way about 15 year old girls?! I felt awkward with the elderly white woman walking in front of my car at Jay Z saying, I got 99 problems, but a b*tch ain’t one. It would be humiliating if that elderly white woman walked by my car while DMX expresses his hate toward haters, by talking about raping 15 year olds. I mean geez, WTF?! On a comical note, based on “what’s” said and “how” it’s said, theres the song “Last Night”by Diddy and Keyshia Cole. You gotta wonder how Keyshia Cole goes along with Diddy monologuing at the end of the song with :

“

Hello

Hey what's up?

I've been tryin' to reach you all night

That shit ain't funny not picking up the mutha fuckin' phone

Better stop fucking playing with a n*gga's feelings like that

You know how much I love you though right?

But for those couple of seconds though,

When I couldn't get in touch with you.

I'm ready to come over your house and shoot that mutha fucker up

You fuckin' dumb bitch

You better fuckin' not be there when I get over that house

[laughing]

That's really how it goes down right?”

Then there’s rap like from the artist, “Nas.” He has a song called “I can.”

It’s inspirational, it has a message, the tune or background music just needs to be catchier.

These rap songs need catchier, classier, diction along with trending or catchy tunes/music.

---

And then there’s Eminem, with “The Way I Am” song.

Part of the lyrics go:

“I don't know you, and no, I don't owe you a mothafuckin' thing

I'm not Mr. N'Sync, I'm not what your friends think

I'm not Mr. Friendly, I can be a prick if you tempt me

My tank is on empty, no patience is in me

And if you offend me, I'm lifting you ten feet in the air

I don't care who was there and who saw me just jaw you

Go call you a lawyer, file you a lawsuit

I'll smile in the courtroom and buy you a wardrobe

I'm tired of all you, I don't mean to be mean

But that's all I can be, it's just me

And I am whatever you say I am

If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?

In the paper, the news, every day I am

Radio won't even play my jam

'Cause I am whatever you say I am

If I wasn't, then why would I say I am?

In the paper, the news, every day I am, huh

I don't know, it's just the way I am”

While I’m about networking, by my core nature of a Libran (only inanimate object in the zodiac: the scales of justice), while I’m about people coming to me, talking to me, me talking to them, I hear this song and wonder about instances where the orchestrators filter what I’m saying or use it for their ends. I think about the instructions given to people under the delusion of “wtf?!” Assisting me?! Did anyone think of talking to me and telling me what’s going on, instead of the signs in a delusional scenario that is the definition of conspiracies and leaning toward what some doctors would see as paranoid schizophrenia?! I mean WTF?! So there’s that part about not owing anything to anyone. If ur just a stranger randomly eavesdropping into my life, then until you speak to me, I don’t know you, I’m not ur friend NOR ur enemy- I mean that’s reality, that’s what the song gets at, that’s how human relationships start out.

I’m writing this, not because I’m presently mad, but because I’m relating to words in a rap song by, a somebody: Eminem. I’m nobody, minding his own business. They blame Eminem for being mean or aggressive with lyrics. But in my “situation” and adult years, I see a guy talking about dealings with human nature, while trying to fix things with his wife, and do everything he can for his daughter. Ive said before, anger can be a source of fuel for ur goals or to get a point across. I mean, under this retarded “make him a role model type hero cr*p, for the no culture or no British style class that is America”, the orchestrators like to press my buttons. The extent they go with pushing buttons is -I’m not just saying this- a type of evil that the mind just can’t digest or grasp. That’s a bit of info my brain cannot process, grasp, or comprehend. There’s something worse than the teenage type sounds projected or whatever it is that others hear- I keep saying that.

But it’s like Gospel, they have eyes, but don’t see, ears: and don’t hear…

the orchestrators you know about, are so arrogant with thinking they control every aspect of my life, they need to consider where they’re not. They push me, and like Eminem’s rap, “push me/tempt me, then I’m lifting you ten feet in the air…”

I went for the path of computer science and engineering instead of being a doctor like my brother. I would joke to people ages ago, “I don’t have the ‘patience’ to deal with ‘patients.’ ” People are so complicated…language difficulties, talking to non native English speakers, cultural differences,filters they have in their heads/biases, stereotypes they believe in- I mean what a headache. The orchestrators have people believing I’m friendless loser, while they actively keep people away from me. But in the words of Eminem, whatever f*ers, “I am whatever you say I am…”

---

In “Gangstas paradise” by Coolio, there’s one part of the song that goes “you don’t know what’s going on in the kitchen…” it’s incredible what speaks to you in ur adult years…cuz clearly I’m thug…I mean even with all the mind cr*p and technology, not because of ego or arrogance or pride, you and the orchestrators don’t know what’s truly going on in my head, in my house, wherever.

Like rap, I am the meaning behind the lyrics.

---

From The original Hulk/1st ever version of the Hulk movie soundtrack, great themes or scores. Also a great song called “set me free”

“Hey Mama” - one of my favorite songs from Nicki Minaj to blast out while driving…

Great Running music - “Confident” - I think by Demi Lovato … another song of hers that I like “Really Don’t Care”: like that part of the song with the words and background music to “even if the stars and moon collide…”

I miss Beyoncé in Destiny’s Child with songs like “Survivor” … I feel it gets the same point across as DMX’s “X is Coming” without some of the questionable ideas in his lyrics…

---

Haiku Asian Bistro in Bronxville lets you eat a quality variety of East Asian food in a New York City feel…about the NYC feel, I dunno, sitting by the window, watching the traffic of people walk by, along with cars, through those windows, in that bar type low light setting: make you feel or made me feel like I’m in a restaurant in the city…going on a 2 month diet as I’m hideously obese, so while I miss and crave sesame chicken with fried rice, I hope you enjoy quality food as such…

Speaking of which…my family and me got used to sesame chicken over general Tsos chicken, when craving Chinese…I feel everyone in America, including my New York and Texas based cousins, always order General Tso Chicken over Sesame Chicken…I mean why?! Who started that trend?! Though essentially the same, I prefer and am an advocate of Sesame Chicken.

---

Though I’m obsessed with leaving the AC on all day/everyday because of the cool energizing air and the sound of the breeze type air blow, I recently found that my TaoTronics standing tower fan isn’t a bad alternative. I think I have the TaoTronics desk lamp too. I believe I have their standing tower heater but just didn’t have the motivation or energy to try it out…probably as awesome as the desk light and fan…I’m thinking, from my own experience, TaoTronics, and a lot of Asian made products are good stuff or sourced in great ideas. With some of the products I’ve run into recently, what I’m realizing is this:

China now has some great ideas and products, but sometimes you have to return or exchange those awesome ideas because some things were manufactured differently or as defective. Maybe they don’t have the money for better manufacturing plants…I think people should invest there. I mean they have some great ideas and technology for compression massagers for just about everywhere in your body.

Now proud Americans may not like this, as well as what I’ll say next: with the products I’ve encountered recently, America gives off the feel or notion that everything is manufactured identically and the places where things are manufactured are quality factories…but here’s the part probably not liked: from my searches on Amazon, it would seem America lacks the ideas , or innovation, or imagination, that the Chinese are indicating in their products and technology-I mean check out the head massager helmet from Breo. Helps with falling asleep. It’s from a Chinese manufacturer and looks futuristic and the concept works. My only complaint about it was, I had to go through 4 returns, before getting a helmet that was free of manufacturing defects (i.e. some you couldn’t see thru the helmet, some had a part moving inside when moving the helmet up and down, some overheated on one side of the heated helmet while the opposite side was left cold, etc.). It’s like Doc Browns attitude in Back to the Future. With respect to something not looking like it works, 1950s Doc Brown says “no wonder…it’s made in Japan.” Marty McFly responds, “watiya talking about Doc?!…all the best things are made in Japan.” People may feel like Doc Brown about Chinese products right now, but the hard work and imagination of the Chinese will find themselves in Marty’s way of seeing things. I mean these people, be it Chinese, Korean, all East Asian born Asians, tackle every nook and crannie in their hard work. They need opportunities. Not so sure about the ABC’s or the American born East Asians, but those born in Asia and immigrating here, at least people Ive bumped into (as I’m not gonna generalize), they really give their jobs 110%. (To my fellow ABC’s, by Indian standards, I’m an A-B-C-“D” or American Born Confused Desi, so nothing malicious intended, its just in admiration over our immigrant counterparts. They are the living definitions of the “immigrant work ethic.”). I recently went for a men’s pedicure after seeing Will Smith talk about it on an episode of the fresh prince of bel air. The woman who attended to me was Chinese and I just couldn’t help but notice how much detail and energy she puts into the task. I also once had a Chinese masseuse. I was sore all over and wanted to try the “firm” massage. Ive never experienced so much effort, force, and energy. It makes you want to friend people like that. Pride aside, I think a lot can be learned from their discipline, hard work, imagination, and ideas.

But a thought…

---

So, in my search for non coffee based sources of energy that last long and don’t make you crash, I found things like “Kion Coffee,” Trader Joe’s “Well Rested Tea” (as it turns out Trader Joe’s sells its own interesting varieties of teas), the $4.99 or $3.99 “Rebbl”brand Plant Based Energy and/or Protein Drinks, and the $2.99 version of Smart Water Renew. Smart Water Renew is composed of dandelions (yeah, freakin’ dandelions give energy!!!) and lemon flavor. But it is ridiculously expensive for one bottle and isn’t available at Shop Rite. I found it at Wegmans in - I think- Harrison, NY, through the InstaCart app. As dandelions seem to be the key, I typed dandelion in the Amazon app, and realize there is a dandelion tea…I hope it gives the same focus as the Smart Water Renew…I mean the tea you can buy in bulk…why are the healthy coffee alternatives expensive?!-I’m assuming it’s because people don’t know about these things and not enough people buy them…

---

Perhaps u’ve heard, “Why worry about tomorrow, when each day has its own concerns.” It’s said, look how God clothes the flowers of the field-that not even King Solomon, in all his splendor, was dressed so beautifully. Are we not more than flowers?!, as is asked. My grandmother would say, when career concerns were expressed, that if God made a person with a mouth, He will also give every mouth created, food to eat-to elaborate: everyone is provided for. I mean “Seek and you will find.” Put in some effort, however so, at least through a prayer or a hopeful/positive thought. I believe everyone, in life, gets what they need, for all that their respective lives throw at them.

Some people may have more things in appearance, but you may have less because you’re that much innately stronger and don’t require as much. While I’m no one, as a small example, since I was in Kindergarten, I could never sit comfortably with my legs folded. The position in yoga is called sukhasana. As a need grew, when I was older, to sit in that position for yoga and meditation, I feel life led me to find the “Alexia Meditation seat” and the means to buy that expensive seat, enabling me to sit long hours with my legs folded. I feel, if we have some faith and do our part, God or The Universe, will provide for us and take care of our needs/desires through direct means, or indirectly, by giving us the needed mental faculties and abilities to achieve our desires.

---

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braincoins · 8 years ago

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Title: Controversiae et Circenses Fandom: “Voltron: Legendary Defender” Summary: Mr. Shirogane and Ms. Fala are taking their own damn sweet time asking each other out. Time for the Voltron High Debate Club to step in and handle things. Ships: Shallura Warnings: Barely-edited Author’s Notes: High School Teacher AU for @milkteamiku! Happy Valentine’s Day from your seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeecret valentine! I hope you like it. ^_^; (3,947 words - also on AO3)

“Okay, we can’t let this go on much longer.”

“Yeah. It’s getting kind of pathetic.”

“How’re things on your end? Get anything good?”

“Oh, definitely! I think we’re go for launch.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be without blowing my cover.”

“Okay, cool. So, here’s how we proceed…”

At the bell, Keith ran from his last class to his locker, tossed his unneeded stuff in, and slammed it shut. He was already texting Lance one-handed as he bolted for the stairs. [OMW]

His phone was lighting up with the others responding similarly. Keith shoved his way up the stairs as everyone else tried to go down. People gave him dirty looks, but he ignored them. This was important.

Mr. Shirogane – “Shiro” to most everyone – was one of the best teachers in the school. He was tough but fair and he had ways of making the most boring periods of history interesting. He was also the secondary sponsor of the Debate Club, and most of them had joined just because Shiro was such a cool guy to hang out with (and, as they’d all come to realize, they liked arguing).

But there was a problem. And that problem was the Debate Club’s primary sponsor: Ms. Fala. She was a civics teacher, even stricter than Shiro was. She took her job of educating future citizens on their rights and responsibilities very seriously, and her class was a graduation requirement. She was the bane of nearly every student’s existence. But, more importantly, Shiro clearly had the world’s biggest crush on her.

Most of the time, he could hide it pretty well, but there were times when she smiled at him or when the sunlight coming in the windows hit her hair just right or, hell, whenever she touched his hand or something, when Mr. Shirogane would look like his brain had just been wiped. It would take him a bit to “reboot.” It was funny at first, but it was starting to get annoying.

So, the club had done their research. Allura Fala was only a year or two older than Takashi Shirogane was, she was unmarried and, near as anyone could tell, not seeing anyone. She had pet mice. Shiro didn’t claim to have a fear of rodents, nor did he own a cat; so far, so good. Most importantly, the research indicated there was the hint of a possibility that she might like Shiro in return. Pidge reported a 5% increase in touching and nearly a whopping 10% increase in smiling when she was around him. (Pidge was in Ms. Fala’s class this semester, so she was able to study the subject more closely.)

Subtle hints to Shiro that he should ask Ms. Fala out had failed. Telling Shiro straight out that he should ask her out had failed. The students of Voltron High Debate Club were taking matters into their own hands now. And today was the day.

He slowed down as he approached Shiro’s last period classroom. Fortunately, it wasn’t the same one the Debate Club met in. “Hey, Shiro!” he called as he saw him emerge.

“Keith,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be over to the room in a minute.”

[He’s wearing a tie today] Keith texted surreptitiously. At least he hoped that was what he texted; it was harder when he wasn’t looking. “I actually had some questions, if that’s okay?”

“Of course it is. Walk with me over to the office; we can talk about it while I drop my stuff off.”

“Sure,” Keith said, keeping a straight face. He let Shiro go first and whipped up his phone to send off a thumbs-up emoji.

“Keith’s got him distracted and he says he’s dressed up a bit. At least, I think that’s what that means,” Lance reported. “Is Pidge in position?”

“Uh, yeah? She has her class last,” Hunk reminded him. “She’s been ‘in position’ for the last fifty minutes.”

“You’re taking all the joy out of this, Hunk.”

“Less talking, more working.”

“…but voter turnout is a constant problem,” Pidge was saying. “If you can’t get asses to the polls…”

“Language,” Ms. Fala warned.

“Sorry, but it’s the same sort of ‘butts in the seats’ thing that businesses worry about, isn’t it?”

“Yes, in a sense, though I would argue civic engagement is more pressing than even economic participation, all the moreso because it’s voluntary. People have to buy certain goods and services, but they don’t have to take part in their communities.”

“Exactly, but then how do we get higher voter turnout? I mean, that’s why I’m saying like… I dunno, give a tax credit to voters who show up at the polls or something.”

“You don’t want to have to bribe your citizens into doing their civic duty.”

“No, you don’t want to, but the voter turnout for the last election…” Shiro, you better appreciate the sacrifice I’m making here, Pidge thought. And you better take advantage of it.

“So, it’s actually four different memoirs?” Keith asked.

“Yes, and each with a distinct purpose. Initially, Lady Hyegyong was writing more for herself, but she increasingly directed her memoirs to the public. She was trying to bear witness to history about the treatment of her family members.”

“Like her husband.”

“Yes, but also her father, her uncle, her brother, herself. It’s a great chronicle of the Korean court, written at a time when monarchs were held to be unquestionably moral, almost divine. She showed the human side to them, with all the flaws that entailed. It’s an incredible primary source for the Joseon Dynasty.”

Keith nodded and tried to still look interested. I’m dying here; hurry up, guys. “And it talks about her husband going nuts and being killed, too, right?”

Shiro snorted. “Yes, her memoirs talk about Crown Prince Sado’s descent into madness. That’s all anyone ever wants to read about.”

“Well, sorry, but can you blame me? I mean, that sounds really cool! They should make a movie about it.”

“They have.”

“But not in English, I’m guessing?”

“Correct.”

Keith groaned and Shiro looked at the wall clock. “Hey, we should get to the room. The others are probably wondering where we are.”

Keith glanced at his phone. He hadn’t gotten the all-clear yet. “Do you have any of the movies?”

“What?”

“About Lady whatshername.”

“Hyegyong, and no, I don’t but I thought you didn’t want to watch subtitled movies anyway.”

“Well, I mean, I don’t need subtitles for the bits where the guy is being a nutjob.”

Shiro frowned at him. “Show a little respect. He wasn’t a nutjob. He had a mental illness.”

“Okay, but he did kill people, right?”

Shiro sighed. “Yes, according to his wife, anyway. In the 1805 Memoir, she says…”

“Are we done?”

Lance looked around the room and nodded. “I think we’re good.” He whipped out his phone. “Text Pidge; I got Keith.”

Hunk snorted. “Yeah, like at lunch time? I saw you two sneak off to the bathroom together.”

Lance grinned. “Hey, ain’t nothing wrong with my love life. Let’s focus up.”

Pidge pulled out her phone when it buzzed at her. “Oh, hey,” she said, seeing Hunk’s thumbs-up, “we should probably get to Debate Club.”

Ms. Fala looked at the clock. “Oh, goodness! We did get a bit carried away, didn’t we?” She gathered up her things. Pidge led the way out of the room and waited for her to lock up.

“Uh, actually, I have to go to the bathroom real quick. See you over there!��

Ms. Fala nodded and strode off towards the room.

Keith’s phone pinged at him. “Oh, hey,” he said, “they’re wondering where we are.” In reality, his text from Lance read [Ready for Romance? The room is anyway! LOL XOXO] with a bunch of kissy emojis. Horndog. But he suppressed a grin.

“Yeah, I’m not surprised. C’mon.”

Keith let Shiro lead the way out of the History office. He waited for him to lock up and walked a little ways with him.

“Hey, y’know, I’ve gotta take a pit stop. I’ll catch up.”

“Okay. Don’t take all day in there; we’ve got a meet this weekend to prep for.”

“We’ll be fine. We’ve got this.”

Shiro grinned. “Lance is rubbing off on you.”

Keith grinned back. “You have no idea.”

“Yeah, okay, way more than I needed to hear. Just go already.” Shiro made shooing motions with his hands and headed for the room.

“Huh?” Allura looked around the room. Most of the desks had been pushed up against the wall, except for four pushed together to make a table of sorts (still with their attached chairs). A white tablecloth had been draped over them, and a small votive candle in a glass jar was sitting in the center next to a vase with a red silk rose in it. Gold colored napkins and actual, non-plastic flatware marked two place settings. The lights were off but twinkling white Christmas lights had been strung up around the room and wrapped in pink see-through gauze to soften the light further. There was an iPod and some speakers on the teacher’s desk, quietly playing piano music.

The Debate Club was nowhere to be seen.

“What’s going on here?” Shiro’s voice asked from behind her.

She turned to him and shrugged. “Honestly, I haven’t the first clue.”

Shiro was standing in the doorway. Backlit by the hall lights, he looked like he was glowing. More importantly, he was staring at her, lips parted just faintly. She wasn’t sure if he was even breathing.

She licked her lips, aware of her face heating and hoping the darkness of the room would hide it. “Is… is something wrong?” she asked him, hoping she didn’t have lipstick on her teeth or something.

“You look… luminescent,” he breathed, voice barely above a whisper. Then he cleared his throat and turned his head, rubbing the back of his neck. She could make out the blush in his cheeks, but then he had the lights of the rest of the school behind him. There was still hope he couldn’t see hers, even if her own face had gotten redder (and she was almost certain it had). “Sorry, I…”

“No, it’s okay. I mean, you don’t have to apologize.”

“Table for 2?” She looked past Shiro, who had turned around, and saw Lance standing there in a suit, with a white cloth draped over one arm, and a ridiculously long and thin mustache on his face. He was speaking in an overdone and bad attempt at a French accent. “Wee wee, come weeth me, right zees way.”

Allura snorted a little and tried to turn it into a cough. Lance just pushed past Shiro and “escorted” him to the “table.” “Right here, monsieur and mademoiselle,” he said. He couldn’t pull chairs out for them because they were bolted to the “table,” but he did gesture quite grandly.

“Lance, what are you doing?” she asked him.

“Showeeng you to your table, mademoiselle,” he insisted, repeating his gesture.

“Oh, for goodness’s sake.” But she took a seat, setting her briefcase down beside her.

Shiro shook his head and sat down opposite her, and she jumped as his foot hit hers. “Oh, sorry, I…”

“These desks are…”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“No, I understand.”

Lance smiled at them and then clapped twice in a very imperious manner. Pidge and Keith, both wearing suits and aprons, came running in. Pidge had a basket of bread that she set in the center of the table and Keith had a bottle and two champagne flutes.

“You do not have alcohol on school grounds,” Allura said with a frown.

“Mademoiselle!” Lance gasped in outrage. “Eet ees our very finest sparkleeng grape juice, I weell have you know!” He scoffed.

Shiro dropped his head into one of his hands. His shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter. Keith just set down the glasses and was about to unscrew the top when Lance grabbed the bottle from him. “I weell do zat! Go on, shoo shoo!”

Keith frowned at him and rolled his eyes but left with Pidge. Lance unscrewed the bottle – releasing the telltale hiss of carbonation – and offered the screw-off top to Shiro to smell. Shiro looked up at him and shook his head. “Lance, what are you doing?”

“Eet has a lovely bouquet, sir, eef you would like to…”

“No,” Allura put in, “What Are You DOING? All of you. What is this?”

“I have a terrible feeling I know exactly what this is,” Shiro groaned.

“Well, I would appreciate an explanation,” she told him.

“Ah!” Lance declared. “May wee! But of course!” He poured the champagne flutes full of sparkling white grape juice, set the bottle down, and then declared, “I weell go and check on zee status of your meal!” and practically ran out of the room. He closed the door behind him.

Allura just looked at Shiro expectantly. He cleared his throat. He had quite definitely stopped laughing. “Well?” she asked.

“The, uh…” His blush was clearly visible; that probably meant he’d seen her blushing earlier, but she couldn’t do anything about that now, and she was too curious to care. “…the Club is trying to get us to date.”

“What?” Oops, she was blushing again now. She wished she knew a way to get that to stop. “Why?”

Shiro’s face got redder. “They’ve been after me to ask you out for weeks now.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” she pointed out.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “No, it doesn’t,” he admitted.

“Well?” she prompted again. He cleared his throat again and picked up his flute, downing half of the grape juice at one go. “Shiro.” She used his nickname after school, because it was simply easier than constantly referring to him as “Mr. Shirogane,” as she did during school hours.

“I wish this actually were alcoholic.” He grabbed the bottle and topped off his glass.

“Shiro, do you…?” But her question was interrupted.

The door opened to Pidge and Keith – under Lance’s watchful eye – bringing in plates of pasta. “Zees ees one of our chef’s specialties!” Lance informed them.

“Oh my GOD, Lance, stop it with the accent,” Pidge grumbled.

“Insolent pig-dog!” he yelled at her. “Do not eensult zee French! Eet ees zee language of L’AMORE.”

“I think he just slipped into Italian,” Pidge muttered.

“He took Spanish because it’s an easy A for him,” Keith told her. “He wouldn’t know French if it bit him on the a-…”

“Keith,” Shiro and Allura said together.

All three of them grinned at that. The plates of pasta were set in front of them. “Our chef has worked very hard on zees especially for you two! Enjoy!” Pidge and Keith left, but Lance went to the iPod to turn it up just a little bit. Then down a little. Then up a little more. Keith finally popped back in to grab Lance by the collar and haul him out of the room. The door practically slammed shut.

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hungry.” Shiro pulled his napkin out and set it on his lap.

“Or you’re trying to get out of a full explanation by keeping your mouth full,” Allura charged, but she also draped her napkin over her lap.

“Well, they went to all this trouble. I’ve heard Hunk is a great cook.”

“Shiro,” she said again.

“Using your teacher voice on me doesn’t work,” he reminded her, picking up his fork and knife. “I’m one, too.”

“Why would the Club want you to ask me out?”

“Because they want us to date.”

“And they want us to date… why, exactly?”

But it was too late: he’d already shoveled some pasta into his mouth. Quite a bit of it, actually. She sighed and sipped her grape juice, then helped herself to a piece of bread. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll have to conjecture,” she warned him. He just gestured to his mouth full of food and shrugged. “Very well then.

“So, the known facts are this: the Club has set up this classroom to look like a nice restaurant. They have tried to create a classically ‘romantic’ atmosphere, including Italian food, a wine substitute, soft lighting, and music. If I believe you, they want us to date. Also, by your statements, they have been pressuring you to ask me out. They have not, however, pressured me to do the same.”

She took a bite of her bread and chewed thoughtfully. “Thinking back on it, Pidge has been asking me a number of questions lately about my personal life. And all of them have asked me my opinion on you numerous times.”

“What did you say?” Shiro asked immediately.

“Oh, so now you can speak.” He winced and scooped up some more pasta to fill his mouth with. She narrowed her eyes at him, but grinned. “Well, then, to return to my conjecturing: their… curiosity about me and about my opinion of you lends weight to the supposition that they want us to date. I have no reason not to trust your word, so I must therefore also believe they have been urging you to ask me out. The fact that they have not asked me to ask you out speaks to either outdated modes of thinking as regards gender equality OR, more likely, they believe your attraction to me is greater than mine to you. Perhaps even that this is more about making you happy than it is about ‘our’ happiness in any larger sense.”

He looked aggrieved at that. She reached across the table and patted his hand twice. “You’re their favorite, Shiro. I take my job as a teacher very seriously, and I know that doesn’t make me the warmest person in their eyes. It’s hardly surprising.”

He blushed at the touch, but couldn’t say anything still. She used her bread and fork to scoop up some pasta and mm’ed appreciatively.

He cleared his mouth first. “If anyone ever doubted your qualifications to serve as Debate Club sponsor…” He drank more of his grape juice, but then thought of something. “Wait a second, are you saying I don’t take my job seriously?”

She swallowed hurriedly. “No, no, not at all! We have… different teaching styles, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh. ‘Cause it sounded like you were saying…”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“…Maybe,” he admitted.

“Do you want to ask me out, Shiro?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re colleagues.”

“We’re allowed to date if we want to.”

“I just don’t want things to be …weird. Awkward.”

“Well, it’s a little late for that now, after all of this.” She gestured with one hand to the room around them, then picked up her champagne flute. “Will you feel emasculated if I ask you out?”

“No!” he said immediately. “N-not at all! But, I didn’t think you’d… be interested in me.”

She was sipping her fake-champagne when he said that and she nearly choked on it. He started to rise to come help her, but she waved him back into his seat. “Honestly, Shiro.”

“What?”

“Do you not know there’s a betting pool going on about which of the single teachers will ‘net’ you first?”

His blush deepened. “Uh, no. No, I did not know that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, now you know. I’ll split the pot with you, don’t worry.”

“Gee, thanks. Now it sounds like you’re only interested in me for the money.”

She chuckled. “You’re handsome, smart, and sweet. Winning the pot is an added bonus. Besides, I’m far more interested in showing up Romelle down in the Science department than I am in the money.”

“Don’t lie; you’re a teacher. I know your salary.”

They both laughed.

“They’re laughing,” Lance said. “I think that’s a good sign.”

“Are they saying anything about the food?” Hunk asked.

“Hunk,” Pidge hissed.

“What? I worked hard on that! A cook likes to know his work is appreciated!”

“Shhhh!” Keith warned them. “They’ll hear us.”

“Like they don’t know we’re out here listening in,” Pidge pointed out. “Or that at least Lance is.”

“Hey!”

“So, you are interested in me,” Shiro confirmed.

She nodded; her mouth was the one full of pasta this time.

He smiled in relief. “You’d think that’d make this easier, but now I just worry that if I ask you out on a boring date, I’ll blow my chance.”

She smiled and swallowed her food. “You know, technically, you haven’t told me that you’re interested in me. I conjectured that.”

“Oh!” He blushed deeper. “I’m… yes, I’m interested in you. In dating you. I…” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Hold on, let me start this over again so I sound less like one of our students.” She laughed and he opened his eyes again. “Your laugh is beautiful.” She blushed, and he continued. “Your smile is captivating. You’re so brilliant, so passionate about your work and your beliefs, so dedicated. It’d be hard not to be attracted to you, even if you weren’t heart-stoppingly gorgeous.” His face felt like it was going to combust, but he’d finally gotten it all out.

“Oh, now you’re overstating it,” she protested lightly.

“Not by much,” he insisted. “I’d give you that golden apple every time, and who cares what the other goddesses think?”

She laughed again. “Didn’t that nonsense start a war?”

“You’d be worth it.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do.”

“Shiro…”

“Takashi.”

She smiled. “Only if you’ll call me ‘Allura’ and never start a war over me.”

He reached across the table to rest his hand on hers. “I promise, Allura.”

“So, uh, how long do you think they’re going to be in there?” Pidge asked.

Keith opened his mouth to reply but then the door opened. Ms. Fala was standing there, arms folded, frowning at them. The room lights clicked on behind her, and the music shut off. “Well, there’s our meddlers. You can all come in and help us put the room back the way it needs to be. And then we are doing our meet prep for the weekend,” she informed them.

“Did you like the pasta?” Hunk asked weakly.

She smiled. “It was very good, Hunk; thank you. I hope you didn’t make too much of a mess making it?”

“I already cleaned up the home ec station I used,” he told her. “A good chef doesn’t leave their area messy.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” She stepped away from the doorway to let them in.

Shiro had blown out the votive candle and was disassembling the table. The dishes had been moved to the teacher’s desk.

“So, uh… how’d it go then?” Keith asked.

Shiro and Ms. Fala both looked at him, and he feared for his life suddenly, but then they looked at each other and smiled faintly. “We have plans,” Shiro told him. “That’s all you need to know.”

Lance whooped and started passing out high-fives until Ms. Fala grabbed him by the ear. “And so you have no further need to involve yourselves in other peoples’ personal lives, Correct?”

“Ow, yes, sorry, never again!” he yelped. She let go.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Hey, uh, Shiro?” Pidge asked. “Are you wearing lipstick?”

He blushed and wiped at his mouth. Ms. Fala just cleared her throat. “Let’s get the room squared away,” she ordered as if she weren’t an interesting shade of red herself. “And then I want to hear the argument you wrote on voucher systems for charter schools, Hunk.”

Keith grinned at his co-conspirators. Mission Accomplished. “You heard the lady, guys. Let’s get to work.”

#Socks writes Voltron fanfic #milkteamiku #Secret Valentine #shallura #writing #fic

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