#i'm thinking maybe a shade of orange like terracotta

[bobfloydsbabe]

i'm getting my nails done on tuesday, but i'm having the wildest crisis about which color to choose 😩

[softshuji]

'Hey you. You not enjoying the party?' Ran's voice beckons you from the open doorway behind you, the flicker of the orange kitchen light outlining his silhouette. Tall and proud and beautiful.

He asks it like it's a secret between the two of you, like he's known you for years, an underlying fondness in the way the corner of his mouth crinkles and he steps out into the cold with a glass half empty.

'Hm?' You cast a glance back and then turn again, swinging your legs over the bare brick wall, the back of your trainers scuffing the red terracotta brick. 'Oh, you know me, I can never stand the noise for very long. I just wanted some air,' you say now, and scoot over to make room for him as he crouches over the wall and sidles up next to you, his glass now abandoned on the doorstep.

He's wearing the expensive type of pants, the old money style ones, and a baby blue button down with the top button open. Enough for you to see the beginnings of the inky whirl that disappears down his chest, half hidden by the blanket of darkness folded over the sky. You thought it would be a cute idea to wear the kind of shirt that matches. A baby blue that reminds you of the sky in summer, and cut off at the elbows where your woollen cardigan has slipped to.

He leans back and closes his eyes briefly as a frosty but welcoming chill flutters over his skin. 'Mhm, me too. Gets tiring after a little while don't you think?'

'Yeah, but I wouldn't want Rin to think I didn't appreciate being invited. I know he didn't have to.'

'Oh come on, you know we wouldn't have left you out.' And he nudges you, playfully, and again like there's a secret you're sharing that you don't entirely know about, with a twinkle and a sharp glint of adrenaline in his eye. It suits him, this look. Boyish and charming and young and full of life, like it was made for him, like nothing could ever be wrong. You enjoy being near him when it's like this, where it feels safe and assuring, and you can share his light - intimate enough for you to think maybe there is only the two of you on earth.

'Ah well, it wouldn't have bothered me, I know we're not from the same kind of scene.'

'Hm well maybe he's a bit soft on you. Rindou tends to be like that.'

'How'd you mean?'

Ran shakes his head. 'He's just softer than he lets on, and somehow meaner than he lets on too, depending on who you are.'

You frown and your raised eyebrow sparks a shiver of affection in him, because maybe your makeup has faded, and maybe your lipstick is a cooler shade of red now but he can smell your perfume still, and see the shiny glint of moonlight off your hair and he thinks you look very pretty despite it all, like the velvet night.

'Maybe you just see him as a baby still,' you say, an occasional glance at the still open doorway behind you, where the noise of the ongoing party is still undulated by the rush of loud music.

And he laughs. 'Probably, he's always going to be a Baby to me.'

'I'm sure he can look after himself you know, you don't have to hover around him like a mother hen.'

Ran splutters, faux accusation, with an aghast expression that only makes you giggle. 'Mother hen? I am not.' And then, with a glance at the vast and endless sky. 'I've always looked after him that's all, and it'll never change, no matter how old he gets.'

You nudge him lightly, and he senses it then, the way your walls come down, the big sigh you take that has the breath clouding from your lips and he wants to bottle it, take it with him to press to his heart. 'But then who looks after you Ran? You deserve some pampering as well.'

He smiles, and it's open and genuine, soft imploring eyes you could swim in, a vast and deep and endless violet shimmering with silver. 'Hey, you know me, I can look after myself Princess,' he says. 'Besides, what about you? I don't see you indulging in a lot of rest and relaxation either.'

You soften and give him a knowing look. One without words, one you know he understands intrinsically. 'Can't think too hard about your problems when you spend so much time avoiding them can you?'

'Is that what you're doing? Avoiding problems?'

'isn't everyone in some way?' You shrug and the movement of your shoulders has the slipping cardigan brushing his arm, a zap of electrifying heat zipping along your skin. 'Besides, I wouldn't want to put the burden of taking care of me on anyone else. It wouldn't be fair.'

He tilts his head and the light falls, slowly, in a soft shaft of glowing silver, through the purple and navy silky strands. 'The burden? You think that's how people see it?'

'Isn't it?'

'Well, would you say the same if it was someone else? Say Rindou. Or me?'

You shift, and the heat of his gaze has a fleck of fire spilling across your cheeks. 'No, no I wouldn't but it's different with you.'

He hums, and tongues his cheek, pink, supple and soft lips bitten now as he muses. 'Hm, I don't think it is. If you never open yourself to being cared for, people can never experience knowing you. They also don't have to fulfill the obligation of letting you know them either. You'd be a hypocrite to hold others to a standard you don't actually believe in and you can hardly blame them for being hurt when they feel like you're not honest with them.'

You flush and he wonders if he's overstepped a mark, an apology now writing itself on his tongue when you kick at the brick wall, burning out like paper when you pout and mumble about him being a 'smartass' under your breath and he laughs, heartily, full and whole, all the tension slipping away into the grass.

'Do you want that though? To be cared about?' you say, a naked vulnerability inlaying the soft edge of your hushed voice. 'I mean you yourself, just you, Ran.'

He takes a breath, and the sigh feels clear, clean, alcohol buzzing lightly in his head, washing away with the frigid air. 'Mhm, yeah. I think everyone does. I think people who say they don't only do so because they feel like it hurts less when they can't have it, don't you think?'

You scrunch up your nose and he chuckles at it now, the cute little pout you seem to get when your hair is falling over your cheeks and the moonlight seems to kiss at your skin.

'This got strangely philosophical,' you say to break the tension, to hide the creeping pink now trawling across your neck. And then, after a pause. 'I think that's just it for me though.

'Hm? How'd you mean?'

You mull it over, twisting the words, testing them out on your tongue, the sweet unravelling that feels like a release.

It's easy to see why people flock to him in moments like this. He has, and has always had, this ability to make you feel seen, understood, and you volunteer your ribcage and your chest like a bird. An art perfected. A fox masquerading as a sheep. You think it's his eyes. Open, imploring, a veil of honesty and boyish vulnerability, that hardens to crystals with a smirk when the bunny is caught in his trap.

'I mean that's how it works isn't it?' you say now, your arm rubbing his, your eyes avoiding his all together. 'It's because you want something so bad that you'll never have it. That's how love is for me. The more I want to be loved, the further it is. I don't think it's written in my destiny. And it's my fault really. If I didn't want it so bad, maybe it would have found me somehow.'

The edge of his soft smile wilts, a particularly cold gust of wind chills him to the bone. 'You really believe that?'

You nod, avoiding his eye, casting it to the moon instead, to the trees and the bareness of them, bones and hands crawling in the dark. 'I do... unfortunately,' you say, and then, more seriously this time, turning to look at him as he frowns and his brow creases. 'Look at me. This is all there is. I'm not super clever, or beautiful. This is all you could get. And yet I want it so bad. I think it'll always be my biggest regret if I don't have it.'

He parts his lips, stunned and locked, a fish out of water, mouth opening and closing and saliva drying on his tongue. 'Well I don't think love is something you find. Or even finds you. I think it's something that you have to make in some way. Maybe it starts out being out of your hands but you can .. cultivate it, nurture it, y'know?'

You hum in thought. 'That's an optimistic way of looking at things.'

He chuckles, and it's a bright sound, a little embarrassed, full of wonderment and life. 'Aha, well I prefer not to dwell on sad things for too long. And besides who knows, maybe love is right around the corner for you.'

You giggle, girlish and carefree despite the conversation and despite the tension, and it drips with love, with a feeling he wishes he could bottle. 'I hope. It's a shame it's not to you huh? You'll make a girl very lucky one day.'

He puts a hand on his chest, mock indignation and faux affronted. 'Hey you don't know it's not with me! What makes you say that?'

'Oh come on, you're Ran. You could have anyone. There's no way you'd settle for someone so ... average like me.'

A pain lances through his chest, and he mumbles, quiet, afraid, hurt in a way he can't mention. 'I don't think you're average.'

Your eyes flit to his, a brief glance, a weighted one, and your throat closes, heavy and thick. 'You don't believe that.'

'I do.'

'You don't.' An edge of warning to your voice now, the tremble of your lips frosted with cold. 'You don't have to lie to save face. I'm a big girl Ran, not a baby. I don't expect anyone to love me, either now or ever, and I don't expect to ever be enough- least of all for someone so...you.'

He flinches almost, a fraction of a movement back. 'You don't get to decide that, and what is that supposed to mean anyways?'

You shake your head and turn to face the garden again. 'Let's not argue, it's New year After all. New beginnings and all that, I don't want to sour it.'

And he lets it go for that reason, a lick of apprehension curling in his chest along with that hurt, the ache of you so close and so far.

You take a deep breath and the cold Pierces, bites at your lungs, your eyes now pearly white and silver from the moonlight swimming in your pupils.

'Hey,' you say, nudging him slightly, leaning on his frame. 'The moon looks beautiful tonight doesn't it?'

His eyes widen, shock and palpable tension freezing his blood. And his tongue sticks, lips warm and buzzing, alcohol and sugar on his breath, and you are so close, so real next to him, he only needs to reach out.

'Yeah,' he says and watches the curve of your smile as you lean into him, lips puckered into a soft and easy semblance of calm.

And then.

'Listen, princess-'

'heyy! I've been looking all over for you!'

Rindou holds two beers in his hands from the doorstep, an easy smile, a slightly drunken sway to his step as he passes over the threshold and reaches around to hand you and Ran a beer each.

And you stiffen, the two of you, inching further apart as Rindou pops open the caps and rambles about the music, the DJ set, the sticky floors on the kitchen from where someone has spilled something. You avoid looking at Ran and he avoids you too and you hum along to Rindou till you excuse yourself ten minutes later.

You call a taxi home without telling him, and you discreetly take your coat from the hanger by the stairs, your hand touching the glass window from the car.

And Ran watches you leave from the upstairs window, the moonlight coming through the branches, glinting off the metal of the car as the sound of the engine fades into the velvet night.

Reblogs appreciated, happy new year everyone, sorry for this.

[meichenxi]

I hope you don't mind me asking, feel free to ignore this, but you mentioned you have synesthesia. I'm curious, how does this work for you? From my understanding (which is limited) everyone experience a bit differently. It just sounds really interesting, so I hope I'm not overstepping 😅

No not at all!! It’s a really interesting topic :D (and I’ll answer your other ask in a bit if you don’t mind once I’ve got some good resources together!)

This is going to be long, because I think it’s really fascinating! So I apologise in advance. It’s also going to get quite linguistics-y, because that’s what I’m here for always. 

So my synesthesia presents itself in a number of ways. Most obviously, I have the ‘normal’ bog-standard colour-grapheme synesthesia, whereby every letter or word is strongly associated with a certain colour and sort of...feel. So for example <k> is a sly orange, sharp and mischievous. Not all letters have very strong impressions; <I> and <i> for instance are both just sort of wishy-washy and pale cloudy lemonade colour. 

Also! I have evidence for the psychological reality of the syllable and the phonological word. Often word- or syllable-initial consonants ‘colour’ the rest of the word, especially with ‘light’ vowels like <e> or <I> or <y>. So for example, even though I’m not sure whether your username is a name or a word or what exactly, it’s ‘split’ into two halves: <karo> with an orange undertone, whilst still being able to see the ‘colour’ of the other letters, and <lincki> which is a pale yellow, despite the presence of the <k>. 

One other interesting thing is that these associations seem to come from quite well-founded generalisations based on place and manner of articulation. We’ve all heard of the Boba-Kiki affect (if not, look it up) where ‘kiki’ is the sharp, pointy object and ‘boba’ is the flat, blobby one, despite them both being non-words. This holds with my synesthesia too, so there are seemingly articulatorily-founded patterns!! For instance, many of my plosives are middle to dark blue; almost all of my voiceless/voiced pairs match up with the voiced version being darker than the voiceless version (except /k/ and /g/, and that’s because of the ‘orange’ pressure from palatals and ‘green’ pressure from velars, I think); many of my palatals are on a spectrum from pale yellow-white to orange, etc. My back vowels are dark, warm, deep colours, and my front vowels are lighter. I’d be interested in knowing if this holds with other people with synesthesia: I can only do so many experiments on myself lmao (and trust me I’ve done a lot).

Each letter also occupies a certain ‘space’ in the air, like the spikes in a line graph. This is how I read quickly; I memorise the ‘shape’ of the word (which doesn’t always map on to the physical shape) and use that. 

One weird thing which happens is that phonemes and graphemes don’t always have the same colour!! Which leads to very interesting results. For instance, <u> is a sort of terracotta brown, so I hate this letter in most words (I have very strong opinions about a lot of this. I hate <p> and <b> with all of my heart). But the sound /u/ is a deep, crystal midnight green! So if I hear the word ‘Undomiel’ (thank you Tolkien), it’s incredibly beautiful. Writing it down, though, I can’t stand it, especially clashing with the pink of <m>.

This is why I dislike some languages so irrationally for no reason I think. 1) I don’t like their colour palette. If it’s all over the place or a mess or a horrible sludge-green, sorry, I’m probably not going to learn it. 2) The colour palette of what I’m hearing and what I’m reading don’t match. This could in theory happen with English, but doesn’t, because I’m so used to it I think. But this is why I dislike French so much (sorry everyone!!), because what I’m hearing and what I’m seeing literally clash in front of my eyes and it’s gross.

Where it gets really interesting is in foreign language acquisition. What happens with tone? Non-Latinate writing systems? 

I don’t have as strong associations for sounds which have no representation in the Latin alphabet (so, say, the distinction between Hindi aspirated and non-aspirated stops), because a lot of it is still based on graphemes, but that representation is still there. Sometimes it’s a modified version of the representation of a phoneme I’m familiar with (for example, the heavily aspirated Irish /t/ is a lighter blue than my /t/, and the non-aspirated Hindi /t/ is a darker version), but sometimes it’s a murky new colour based, occasionally, on place of articulation. For example, whilst <ch> should be orange and then terracotta brown in terms of graphemes, the German ach-Laut is a completely different colour to the German ich-Laut!! The ach-Laut <ch> is a dark green (which makes sense, since my velars and uvulars are usually dark green), but the ich-Laut is an orange - because, again, palatals are orange!!! Isn’t that cool? 

Features have psychological reality guys!

Another interesting thing is that I often acquire a colour-based distinction long before I consciously notice a difference even if it’s not phonemic. This is nuts!! So for instance the standard Mandarin /t/ is pronounced slightly differently to the English /t/ (both have aspiration, but slightly different places of articulation); and correspondingly, way before I learnt this or could hear the difference consciously, I noticed the colour of the Chinese /t/ was a different shade of blue!! Similarly, when I was in a Hindi-speaking environment in India I noticed that I was remembering whether words had one of (many) t-like phonemes based on colour alone; I couldn’t tell you if it was aspirated, retroflex or anything, but I could tell you, if I thought to ask, what colour it was, and so produced the correct sound appropriately - because it’s a dark blue word, right? Importantly, I wasn’t making a conscious link between those features and the colour, so if you asked me what it ‘being a dark blue word’ actually meant phonetically, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you until I sat down and worked it out myself after looking at Hindi phonology. It’s just ‘dark blue’, so you pronounce it in a ‘dark blue’ way.

I mean ultimately this is just another way of distinguishing sounds so it’s not actually that exciting, it’s just conceptualised in a different way, and still takes a long time to develop, so it’s only happened with languages where I’ve been immersed for a couple of months or more, rather than say, French or Spanish. But it’s still kind of cool. 

As for tone, tone contours also colour the word!! I don’t know if this is influenced by anything in particular (common words with those tones, maybe?) but it’s fun. The first tone is a sort of yellow; the second tone is a steely blue; the third tone is like /w/ which is a deep green; the fourth tone is a red. 

One exciting thing is also that, the more I read Chinese, the more I ‘see’ the colour of a word. This isn’t just me knowing the pronunciation; if I know the pinyin but it isn't a familiar word, I don’t see any colour. Only if I’m very familiar with that phonetic component (because guess what!! That has an affect), a similar word, or the word itself do I see the colour. Which is just wild. So, can confirm that my brain is processing phonetic components via analogy on a similar level to ‘letters’, which is really interesting. Usually the character is just the colour of the initial, sometimes coloured by the final; it’s not as detailed as the representation in the Latinate alphabet. 

In other non-Latinate writing systems, the more I’m familiar with the system, the more I see the colours. These are usually colours of the phonemes not graphemes where they differ; so for hiragana, for example, /u/ is its phonemic dark green, and not its graphemic rusty brown. 

This colour palette is really useful in conlanging btw: I don’t have to actually think up a phonological system, I just have to think ‘autumnal’, and I get words that look similar. 

Numbers are also highly coloured for me, as well as being gendered (really brain??) in a very predictable way - all even numbers are female and all male numbers are male. This is probably the strongest of all my synesthesia: I genuinely mentioned this to someone when I was about eighteen and just assumed that the rest of the world knew this too, it was so obvious. What this means is that I remember things in ‘colour palettes’ and I have quite a good visual memory because of that - I just remember the ‘shape’ and ‘colour’ of the numbers and then can reconstruct it in my head. Some numbers are also ‘higher’ than others, like if you imagine a graph, so I can map out a sequence of numbers using the ‘peaks’ and ‘dips’ in space. I was doing a psychology test looking into people with synesthesia once actually where you are flashed a sequence of numbers, and then have to type them backwards. I was able to type about 12/13 numbers backwards in after being flashed for one second, compared to an average of 4 or 5. I couldn’t remember the actual numbers; but I knew that there were purple edges, then a yellow spike and a green blob etc, and so could look at the ‘picture’ and work it out from there because the representations were so stable. 

It’s actually really helpful sometimes! I remember numbers/words in these ‘colour palettes’, and once forgot the last two digits of my PIN when in China (6 digits, not 4, which I was not used to). But because I had chosen the number myself and the other digits were a sort of gloomy heather-purple/black/grey, I knew that the last two digits had to match that palette and ‘shape’ (how high a number rests in space). So I was able to guess them both within three tries!

Other things: people’s personalities and events sometimes are associated with colours, as well as music and sounds to a limited degree, but I don’t know enough about music theory to know if what is ‘purple’ or ‘lush green’ actually has any impact. It’s not individual notes alas - that would be so useful/cool. 

The personality thing is a bit annoying - I am often terrible at remembering people’s names if they don’t match with their personality in some way. I have two friends called Liam and Adam, and to this day (despite being friends with them for years and years) I still have to stop myself calling Adam ‘Liam’. I think everybody knows the phenomenon of ‘but he just looks like a Liam!’. It’s like that, but so strong I have to correct myself basically every time. I also get names that have the same ‘colour palette’ but nothing alike mixed up: for example Henry and Carl or Mary-Anne and Belinda. 

One other thing that is difficult is that if the orthography and phonology are particularly mismatched, or use letters in ways I’m not used to, this really hinders learning. I learnt some Medieval Welsh a few years ago as part of my degree and couldn’t remember anything because it was all just green. Or I kept writing /b/ instead of, say, /t/ or a dental fricative, because I knew it was a ‘blue’ sound, but couldn’t remember exactly which one. It sometimes leads me to make mistakes that are really stupid and probably don’t make sense to anyone else - /k/ doesn’t sound anything like /j/ but because they’re both orange-coloured, I’ll often mix them up especially if /k/ is next to a high vowel. 

So, that was very long!! Thank you for the ask :D But I hope it was interesting to any fellow linguists or language-lovers out there, and if there are any psycholinguists in the room, I have made a chart of all of this and mapped it out so hmu if you want some data lmao

Do you experience synesthesia too? What’s your experience like?

[whatsbriupto]

Romance is dead

Well. After my bold declarations in the last post I've been hesitant to update on my kitchen paint progress. I followed all protocols for selecting a new paint color. I ordered Romance. I applied Romance in various patches. I declared I was thrilled even though there was trepidation and some vague allusions to calamine lotion. I committed to painting all the wall space my quart of satin finish Romance would cover to see if it was just my eyes or some lack of continuity in color that was making The One look lackluster and distinctly not-The-Onei-ish. Nope. More was decidedly not the answer. The phrase "like blush on a corpse" was used at least once and as I said before I will not live surrounded by the colors of the dead so it had to go.

ENTER: Spiced Nectarine. A warm brownish-orange with aspirations of being mistaken for pink.

It is a mild terracotta shade that look neutral on a sample spot and when painted across an entire wall makes you think, "huh, so this is what it would look like to live inside a flower pot in full sun." It is loud. To be fair though, it did look different in each of the five spots I painted it on different walls. Some it was more brown, some more orange, but in at least two spots it was perfect. I followed the same procedure in choosing, testing, and committing. This time I committed so hard I bought a full gallon and painted the whole room. I was so thrilled with my work when I finished. And then night came. The happy little nectarine let loose it's full spice and became an abrasive orange reminiscent of a traffic cone. One wall has a kind of vertical ombre thing happening. It probably adds interest, but it also adds to a sense of disorientation.

I can't live like this. So, I have changed nothing and moved onto a new project. I painted my kitchen pantry.

The color is called "Magical." And it is indeed.

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It is a purple's purple and I love it. Although it does make the pantry a bit darker. But really, if you can't find the cereal after living here for six years and it being in the same spot everyday that's hardly the paint's fault. Also, I have a solution. And that is to install a disco ball. The light in the pantry is off the to the side and leaves the whole ceiling open for creative lighting opportunities. I am not one to miss an opportunity.

Unfortunately, now that that project is done I still have to live with Spiced Nectarine. More like Spiced Suck-tarine right now. The question is do I make it work? How? Can I accept that I have failed?

Making it work would require some changes to other colors in the room. Pretty much all the other colors in the room. But that might need to be done anyway. First, I would change out my kids photos that already have a "sunset" hue. (I printed them out from my phone after messing with the color settings. It looked artistic on the little screen, but printing turned my children in to Oompa Loompas.) Instead of simple canvases we'll put the pictures into frames with a neutral mat.

Then we paint the credenza. Either "robin's egg blue adjacent" (you know the one) or a minty green. Maybe we'll even get crazy and do a Blue Green. I'm feeling wild. The only other real décor (although I think it might be classified as simply decor without the ' ) in there is my plate rack that I currently use for tiny plants and baby masterpieces. It could use some color too, but that can be figured out later. Perhaps magenta...

Lots to think about.