#it's also very important to remember that it was written in the 80's

[helendamnationx]

The thing about Equal Rites is, it's not just a book about how girls can do anything boys can do, and the only thing trying to stop her is meanie old men. It's about how girls can do anything boys can do, I suppose, if she really must, though I* can't see why she wants to.

It's about shaking off gender essentialism, not deciding who someone can and can't be as soon as you see their newborn baby genitals, and adults not telling kids to be who they "should" be instead of who they really are... while also being really super clear that the traditionally male-dominated path isn't inherently better, it's just better paid.

It explores Granny's position of trying to hold Esk back from becoming a wizard, stemming not from thinking that girls aren't smart enough or that they should only be wives and mothers, but from a contempt for the flashy and self-important ways of wizards and belief that the more domestic and practical sphere of witchcraft is more important and better. It's a pretty accurate depiction of the way some older women enforcing gender roles think.

I suppose the book is more of a critique of the whole women's intuition/men's intelligence nonsense dichotomy, as well as a reminder not to cling too eagerly to the patriarchy's priorities in the search for equality.

Men aren't better at "jommetry" than women. But "jommetry" isn't more difficult or important than Granny Weatherwax's practical, rural skills - herbcraft, midwifery, caring for and understanding goats and bees, managing people, and so on.

Sir Terry never got on with the assembly lines of formal education, which is probably an important thing to bear in mind when reading this book.

*Granny Weatherwax

[lazaruspiss]

So, I'm writing a long fanfic based around the characterizations of the various Bats in the 80s-00s time frame, and Nightwing is gonna be important but I don't have a good grasp of his personality yet. I'm currently reading through The Resurrection of Ras Al Ghul, but that and a few of the 2016 issues are all I've got to go off of right now.

Do you have any comics you'd recommend for getting a good grasp of his personality and general vibes?

I'd also be happy to read any kind of ramble about his personality/appeal you feel like writing. Having read your fanfiction I feel like (sincere compliment:) you are the exact kind of unhinged I want to get character opinions from.

(Also you mentioned Dick being in the mob which sounds Very Fun and I wanna know what titles so I can read that)

-redhoodinternaldialectical on anon cause sideblog

ok first of all. im flattered. i feel so powerful rn.

and second of all... my 'to read' list is embarrassingly long, and dick's been around and in a lot of comics so i have a lot of trouble keeping up ;-; but i will try my best!!

The New Teen Titans gets recommended a lot as a starting point for Dick as Nightwing, and while i havent read much of it, the stuff i have read has been pretty solid and i get why its so popular.

Nightwing 1996 is my personal go to comic for Dick, mainly bc it was his first real solo run. (it's often listed as "volume 2" of nightwing, but volume 1 aka Nightwing 1995 was really more of a test drive just to see if they should make a Nightwing solo series) It's also where Dick joins the mob! although that came off the tail end of a lot of different plot points.

(This is a bit unrelated, but in general I think knowing a bit of irl context to certain comic events is important. Like, at one point Bludhaven is nuked off the map. It doesn't make sense, and it was most likely due to some higher up DC nonsense. And Nightwing 1996's second annual is written by a man. etc etc.)

... I actually have a guide I've been working on, main reasons being quick reference for what happens where, and that writing these things down helps me remember them better

as you can probably tell, I still have a ways to go. looking at this now i'm starting to realize that i am really down bad for him lol

Mobbed Up (where Dick gets adopted by a random mob boss who took one look at his depressed mug as he was getting fired from the police force and said "new son?") is issues #107-111

I feel like I should get back to character thoughts.

Dick on his own is deeply serious, he has a job to do and it's incredibly important that he does it right. In the beginning this serves as an invaluable asset, but as he loses more people it starts to turn into more destructive. A trait that is morphed by his traumas into obsessiveness.

Dick when Tim comes to visit (or just when he's around people he cares about) is a bit softer, it's subtle, but it shows that he's aware of/cares for the people around him.

Dick with Bruce around seems to worry so much about proving himself, about being seen as a respectable peer, that it backfires into making him come off more insecure and as a bit of a "rebellious teen". (which is exactly what he's trying to avoid when he strikes out on his own) I've read various arcs and issues but I haven't actually read any focused on Dick and Bruce aside from the ones towards the beginning, so I'm sure their relationship must change, but this is how they were when Dick had first moved to Blud.

I feel like Bludhaven is also important to talk about. It's very much meant to be "Gotham, but worse". It's a place that even Batman wouldn't bother with, a place beyond saving. I'm... kind of breaking my own heart, thinking about how much Dick put into this city, only to. To fail? In a sense? A hero's home city isn't usually obliterated like that. The only other example that comes to mind is Hal Jordan's, and Hal literally went insane and became a space terrorist to bring it back. Dick is just... forced to move on.

And Dick goes back to NYC. Nightwing patrolling Gotham with any regularity feels very modern. He shows up when there's a major event and DC wants to capitalize on having a bunch of names in the same series, and he shows up when something drastic changes (like a new robin, or a death). Dick has however spent a lot of time in NYC, either because of the Titans or because. yknow. home go boom.

Anyways. Arc recs. Unironically I need you to read Brothers in Blood. Get past the initial gross out factor of Tentatodd and it's a great look at Jason and Dick's relationship. This is #118-122 and right after Bludhaven gets nuked. Dick has just experienced the lowest lows that one could low. Jason seems to know all about it, and tries to help in the worst way possible. Jason is right and blunt and convoluted and so so insecure about where he stands with Dick. Dick doesn't know where he stands with Jason either, on account of all the murder, and his tactless approach to trying to confront Dick on the copious amounts of trauma that Dick is dealing with. BiB is my Jaydick bible.

I'd also say to just give the first few arcs a shot. Beginnings are meant for introductions! It gives a good sense of who Dick is, why he's here, and what his goals are. Exposition baby! And I'm once again thinking about how ultimately Dick kind of fails said goals. I love him but he makes me so emo. Blockbuster has also been his main villain since the beginning, up until. Yknow. He became deader than his namesake. There's also a few fear toxin based issues that are good for. well. understanding what his fears are. There's also a fear toxin scene in Batman: Orphans, but i'll just reblog the post i made of it so u don't have to read that one. The art is fun, the story is weird and just kinda. meh.

#60 is when Dick joins the force. The beginning of the end, so to speak, but we don't meet Catalina until #71.

#93 is That Issue. The infamous rape scene. The thing about his time with Catalina is that it was almost definitely meant to be explored for what it was- an abusive relationship. But DC wanted Nightwing in an event. It doesn't have any satisfactory end, Bruce (DC) calls Dick to fight in Gotham. He does. His story falls to the wayside for the bigger title. The worst thing that can happen to a DC character IMO is getting a Batman crossover. There was supposed to be an entire arc dedicated to what would happen to Dick in this abusive relationship. But we got 2 issues. And War Games. It pisses me off to absolutely no end. DC needed more mouths to kiss the ground that Batman walks on. They don't give a damn about the stories that exist outside their cash cow.

After all that, eventually Dick is back to his utterly depressing life. He joins the mob, finds a family, bad things happen to said family. (Mobbed Up, #107-111) He wants to protect the daughter, Sophia Tevis, and then Slade holds Sophia hostage to get Dick to teach his daughter Rose how to fight. He does, but he also teaches Rose how to question authority (aka her dad). Slade is not happy about that, and nukes Bludhaven. (Renegade, #112-117) See my earlier note about IRL reasons for dumbass plot points.

Nightwing 1996 has 2 annual issues (despite running for much longer than 2 years). The first annual is a fun murder mystery and i think a good look into how Dick handles relationships. He also reads as very aromantic/demiromantic who doesn't know it yet, but maybe that's just me, lol. the second annual is dog shit. Mark Andreyko can get bent, it sucked total ass and isn't worth reading.

[nalyra-dreaming]

First off, I absolutely LOVE your writing! You capture these characters so well, and Laden as the Sea was such a treat with filling in what might have been happening between the scenes we saw on the show. Sometimes I find it hard to remember that what you wrote didn't actually happen on the show! Thank you! Now for the ask: since you're a huge book fan too, how "necessary" do you think it is to read Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle before the Prince Lestat books - specifically for someone who really isn't all that interested in the Mayfair storylines? Probably irrelevant background - I've been a huge fan of the VCs since way back in the mid-80s, but never read those two. I haven't read the Prince Lestat trilogy either, I think at the time those came out I thought the Atlantis storyline sounded a bit out there and I didn't want to end up being disappointed, LOL. But I just have to know what happened with all my vampires, and especially now that they're obviously dropping references to the PL books into the show I definitely have to read them. Just not sure if there's any necessary background info in Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle that I really shouldn't miss. Thanks for any input!

Ohhhh thank you dear, that is such a beautiful feedback, thank you sooo much!!! 💕 So glad you like! *hugs* Hope you'll continue to!

Wrt to your question (also HIIIIII to another long-time fan, I totally remember being weirded out by the story hinted in the title(s), too^^^)

Those two books... are not "necessary".

I find Blackwood Farm a fun read, and also a bit of a wild ride, but ultimately there is not a lot of "new" things in there - and they barely have a connection to the later books. There isn't even a lot of Lestat in there (but the interesting tidbit that he still "cleans up" young ones from time to time, and that people warn others from going into NOLA.) Maybe the most important thing is knowing that (the names) Quinn and Mona come from this one :) Quinn is a delight though, in his own way, and while they might draw on the connections to the Talamasca and the Mayfairs later in the show (maybe) - you can read it later, if you want.

Blood Canticle... is something of a supposed follow-up, but it's... totally OOC for Lestat, and the whole thing with Rowan... *shudders*.

The book is totally ... IDK. It was written during Stan's illness and subsequent death and... mhh. I do think that influenced things. There's nothing I really like about it. Not the Mayfair nor the Taltos connections, and thank goodness Anne dropped the whole Rowan thing like a hot potato after, too. It just feels off. There is also a very infamous rant (copied here, though the Amazon link does not seem to work anymore, unfortunately) she posted in response to a negative review. In that response rant she closes by saying that Blood Canticle was the last of the Chronicles and that she was... glad.

Fortunately, she changed her mind.

The last three books are definitely a wild ride, too.

They introduce a lot of new characters, new background stories, and a lot of the interconnections of what we supposedly knew is rearranged. I have to say I appreciate them even more now reading them for the third time... there is a lot of rearranging furniture, so to speak, but, without wanting to spoil too much... Anne went, and gave "her" vampires a home, religion (in a way), and "happy ever after" (well, as much as that can be with them^^). There's also hooks in them that I'm quite sure Rolin picked up, if the changes they made for the show are any indication^^. (It will be VERY interesting to see where and when we are in Dubai, seriously^^).

So... my advice would be: skip Blackwood Farm (for now), Blood Canticle (definitely, the rant probably tells you all you need to know^^), and go into the last ones knowing that Anne actually managed to close a lot of arcs and proverbial doors (and opened a few new ones^^), leaving the future for "them" bright open and a lot more hopeful than one could have predicted.

Enjoy 💕

PS: If you feel like talking/yelling about them while you read.... *laughs*

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

This is kind of a weird question, but do you have any tips for meeting Marv Wolfman? I remember you saying you've met him at a con in the past. I'm going to a con in the fall where he's scheduled to appear and I'm so nervous!! How did meeting him go for you?

Oh gosh, I'm not an expert on the man or anything! But he was so cool to meet! I'm excited for you!

I was super overwhelmed by the convention and also very nervous about meeting him (kinda starstruck by the time I got to his table). But he seemed understanding. I met him in cosplay of 80's Raven and he complimented it, specifically said he liked that I got the fingers on the gloves right because he felt it was very important with her healing for her to be able to touch, he didn't mention the missing rings (which I had tried to create and was embarrassed about not having), and he was happy to talk about the comics he'd written. (I wish I didn't have such social anxiety back then and had actually had a better conversation with him!)

I honestly think he spoke more words than me, genuinely half the words I got out was the word "awesome". And he seemed genuinely happy to be there.

Also, I forgot to ask for a picture at the table but I found him right before a panel he was in and asked for a picture then, and he seemed happy to do so. He was very respectful and didn't get uncomfortably close. And I think when my phone rang (aloud) during the panel and I rushed off (again, in Raven cosplay), he was the one that made a joke about the Teen Titan going to save the day.

It was overall a very positive experience, and if he ever comes to Ohio again, I'd like to meet him again! And maybe pick his brain a bit. He was happy to sign things (I became the proud owner of an autographed copy of Tales of the New Teen Titans #2!), he didn't charge for it, and he was selling scripts and issues and a few other things at his table.

If you're like me and you get tongue-tied, a trick I've learned is to come prepared already knowing what you want to say, bring notes so you don't forget, or if there's a lot or you're bad at verbalizing your thoughts, write a physical letter to give!

[purplesurveys]

1806

Are you tired? Are you taking this survey because you can’t sleep?  Not very tired at all even if it's past midnight. I finally feel the calm that's been evading me for a while because 1) I have a long weekend, and 2) I can also finally stop fooling myself about resigning 'soon,' because I did it already a week ago :)

Do you have something important to do?  Not right now but I'll be doing a lot of job hunting in the next few weeks! Also tomorrow morning I'll be heading out to get my car checked because the handbrake icon has been lighting up for a while now and I need to know what's up with that lol.

Do you like Jalapeno Cheetos?  It tastes okay but I'm generally not a fan of packed snacks.

Do you wish you had a new phone?  No but I need to start taking care of my current phone, cos I learned today that the battery capacity left on it is at 77% which is apparently already horrible haha. I'm not in any rush to replace it at least until a year or two from now as it's still a fairly new phone, so it's just a matter of watching out for how much I use it going forward.

Name one thing you ate today?  Instant laksa.

Do you like 80’s music? 60’s music? 90’s music?  I have songs I like from each decade but none of them stand out for me when it comes to music in general.

Do you find rap music annoying? Rap music, and any genre for that matter, is super broad though. There are albums I like but then there are those songs that can get superficial about drugs and sex and have a lot of autotune that just makes me go egh.

What song is stuck in your head?  I'm Fine by BTS because it was the last song I played on Rhythm Hive before closing the game earlier today lol.

Have you ever been to Germany? Never been.

Do you drink coffee in the mornings? I need to, otherwise I'd feel super disoriented and not be able to get as focused at work.

Do you become a fan of lots of things on Facebook?  Not anymore, but I remember how huge that was before. People made pages out of anything and everyone would just be fans of them.

What time do you go to bed on school/work nights? Around midnight or a little past.

Have you ever seen a therapist?  I've never had a session with one, actually. Even though there were many times in the past where I know I should've.

Do you get in trouble at school often?  No. I got scolded once for talking during a class in Grade 4 and from there made it a point to never disrupt again haha.

Do you watch videos on YouTube?  All the time. Even if I don't watch a video per se, I like having YouTube on as background noise/visuals and keep it playing all day long.

Name a song that makes you happy.  These days, Paramore's Escape Route has been giving me all the happy vibes.

Name a song that makes you want to dance. Home by BTS.

Name a song that brings back memories.  Fireflies by Owl City.

Does the song above bring back good or bad memories?  A little bit of both, but mostly good.

What decade do you think is the best musically?  I'd be the worst person to ask this as I never really was an adventurous listener. I also feel like each decade has their own styles and charms when it comes to music so as far as 'musically best' I'd find it hard to tell.

Do you take a long time to get ready in the mornings?  I need around 30-45 minutes to prep before work. That includes taking a shower, making my bed, cleaning my room, playing with the dogs for a few minutes, and making coffee.

Do you wear a lot of makeup?  Does BB cream count? That's really the only thing I apply, and foundation. But yeah in general, the answer is no.

Have you ever written poetry or fiction?  I've dabbled in both but never enjoyed it. I was always one for non-fiction writing.

Do you know how to read music?  Nope. We had drills in music class where we had to read notes and such, but I never retained those and if you quizzed me right now I'd pretty much be clueless.

Do you regularly use a blow dryer?  I don't.

When was the last time you went to church?  Three Sundays ago. The last two I missed because I watched a public Royal Rumble watch party, then had a work event to oversee.

Would you date someone who was a different religion than you?  I wouldn't date anyone who's closely tied to their religion.

What is your best subject in school?  History.

Name something you do nearly everyday.  Use a laptop.

Do you take surveys a lot?  Than the average person, absolutely. Within the community...not nearly as much as I used to. I usually have time to check in only on the weekends now.

Have you ever had sushi?  Yes, it's one of my favorite foods. I literally had sushi at least once every week in January hahaha.

[astarab1aze]

// light blue heart because my computer is old and therefore legally blind. Husbies.

muse relationship headcanon game

who curses more?

you and i both know it's garrett and why. mans is from brooklyn, and has always talked mad shit. who doesn't love to drop an f bomb all the time? he's always been a punk, and he's always had one hell of an attitude when he was pissed. but v also says fuck. :I hmmmm. hmmmm, ooze, hmmm. i think i need your take on this honestly. this one's a toughie for me. in my heart, it's garrett, but i know v's been playin' pretty fast and loose in his old age-- jshdgfs

who is more patient?

it depends on the context. garrett can sit and stay no problem, but he gets impatient and irritable too. where it comes to v, garrett is unwaveringly patient, if a little pushy at times - he can wait and take a hint, it just won't stop him from trying to get v to let him put his mouth on him-- no no, but really he is genuinely very patient with v. everyone else? no. not at all LMAO. he has a hotter temper than v, though that isn't to say he doesn't also have his moments.

who does the driving?

.....don't they walk everywhere, wdym ksdjhfsd we've never written them in a vehicle... except for just...sitting there, while it was off ofc. taxi makes more sense to me since they're based in europe iirc (red grave's in britain right? lol). i just can't see them driving. garrett can ofc but like...why. when v can just hop on his back, summon him as his teleporting demon mount since he's the only person alive who knows his name and the importance of that--

who is louder? who is quieter?

they can both be loud and quiet, this one's all context.

who is more physically affectionate?

garrett, because he literally can't keep his hands to himself when it comes to v. he is so in love, always, forever, and will show it in every way he can. verbally, physically, emotionally-- are you kidding me? it's he. v's more reserved, but relents ufufu

who is more likely to tease the other?

this is an entirely mutual affair and i don't think i need to tell you why >:)

who is better with time management?

....i think they both take certain things very seriously and are, thusly, very determined to resolve x thing quickly and efficiently as they can. that doesn't always work out, as we can see with shokolade. or the entire cult of moloch issue. they were so fucked. EVEN MORE FUCKED IN VIOSTRA. ooze. garrett is definitely freaking the fuck out over everything, urgent but also lay low then keep moving in an effort to protect-- i don't think they think about it honestly skjdfh ACK

who wins the arm wrestling matches?

garrett...... :I himbo remember. v is beefcake moronsexual skdjhfsd

who controls the music in the car ride?

i'll substitute with the bar-- um, both of them? duh. >:I they have similar tastes in music!!! 80s, punk, goth-

who covers dinner when they order in?

garrett. you know how he is. he's gotta be a gentleman!

who is more outgoing? who is more shy?

garrett has always been the more outgoing, talkitive, flirty, generally out there one out of the two. v's more reserved and aloof, but i wouldn't say shy, specifically, except in certain circumstances. like in the beginning of his and garrett's relationship? yeah.

who has the more outlandish fashion sense?

v all the way. what are those fucking sandals-- garrett's good with a t-shirt and ripped jeans ok, classic bad boy vibe for him

who starts the tickle fights? who ends them?

it would absolutely 100% be garrett who starts them, and v who ends them. i fully believe this. uncompromisingly.

who has the darker/more “edgy” sense of humor?

garrett. :I the evidence his encounter with saryn where he thought it amusing to blast him with hellish lava until his neck fucking melted. 'hehe woops! better call bianca--' >:I he thought it was concerning but funny, and all he actually cared about in the moment was if it would piss v off or not.

who is more competitive when it comes to games?

they both have competitive streaks but where v's concerned, garrett's more willing to relent.

who has the bigger appetite? the bigger sweet tooth?

garrett could eat forever. human garbage disposal. he will try anything once and you know this very well, from demonic helltree to magical grass that'll get you high skjdhf he's so dog coded

who is more likely to get in a confrontation in public?

garrett. guard dog. with a temper. also demon of wrath (and lust)--

who hosts the parties/hangouts? who organizes them?

i think it really depends, but v and bee keep in contact i'm 10000% sure, well and garrett too-- it's really vergil who doesn't want to socialize skjdhfsd but i still think about vergil and garrett cracking open a cold one and having a bro chat outside--

who is better at cooking? do they ever cook for each other?

garrett is. he be makin' blackberry pancakes every sunday with bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns unu with fresh coffee. you know how he rolls. gotta take care of pretty boy over there like a good husband should

who is more likely to engage in dangerous and/or illegal behavior?

both of them since they're devil hunter skjdfhs

who is more likely to notice when something is wrong with the other?

they're both fairly quick on the uptake when it comes to each other. i don't see them ever not immediately knowing something was up and needing to sort it through and fix it. i just know how garrett is, he can smell it on v. and v is so intuitive and aware-- they just pay attention to each other when it matters and when it doesn't. they're so good to each other, i'll accept nothing else.

who does the talking in public settings (i.e. to the waiter at a restaurant)?

they both very much are capable of speaking up for themselves each, and they respect each other's autonomy besides. simple as.

who is more likely to extend a helping hand & provide emotional support?

v and i don't need to explain ksjdfhd garrett's an ass and could generally give a shit less about other people in the grand scheme of things, unless it has something to do with v. well, and sometimes their adopted grown up children :I and bee and vergil... and fumis. but so...!!!

who is the bigger prankster? do they get the last laugh or do they suffer for it?

they can both be very mischievous but i think garrett's more likely to actually prank and then promptly suffer for it in some way ksjdhfs then v, much to his own chagrin, will be wooed in the aftermath. i'm just saying. u kno. u know how it would go.

[thisaintascenereviews]

U2’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb: 20 Years Later

My previous piece, which was about my newfound love for Irish band U2, was meant to be a precursor to this one — the 20th anniversary of 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. This record is interesting for a few reasons, namely that it’s their last extremely popular record. U2 is still a huge band, but this is the last album that got them a lot of accolades and attention akin to their early work. Not saying that their newer material is bad, as it’s not, but this is the last time the band was in the zeitgeist. Lead single “Vertigo” is a song I remember hearing in one of the first iPod commercials, but the album itself was nominated and won eight Grammy’s, so it was a big deal for the time. It was the fourth highest selling album of 2004, and for good reason.

This album also comes at the tail end of an interesting history for the band, some of which I went over in my last piece that talks about how I finally understand what this band is all about. At the time, the band was coming off the heels of the 1990s, where they decided to go into an alternative direction, due to the rise of alternative and electronic music, and due to a mixture of a case of self-indulgence from the band (they played a lot with mocking and satirizing rock’s tropes at the time, especially in the second half of the 90s), as well as mixed reactions from fans and critics, the band took a step back from the theatrics and went to a “back to basics” approach that a lot of bands opt for when experimentation isn’t quite working. 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind is the first in that vein, and it’s my favorite of the two, but How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb came off the heels of their newly (re)found fame.

While I prefer the last album, 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is a good one, nonetheless. This record has a bit of a harder edge than the previous one, which is still quite catchy and soaring, but it still has the same qualities that All That You Can’t Leave Behind did. If anything, this album’s a good case of an album that sounds the same as the last one, but with a small tweak (this album has more energy, and not quite as many ballads or softer tracks), and your enjoyment will determine how much you enjoyed the last one. This album does have a lot going for it, though, especially lead single and opening track “Vertigo,” which I mentioned earlier, but a lot of the deep cuts are great, too. Songs like “Miracle Drug,” “Love And Peace Or Else,” “City Of Blinding Lights,” and a few others, are utterly wonderful. They’re catchy, slick, and larger than life, but a few songs that slow things down, such as “Yahweh,” or the rather poignant “Crumbs From Your Table” are great, too.

One thing that makes this record so good is that Bono himself sounds at the top of his game. Even if this record isn’t quite as good as the last one, but it’s close, Bono is still a powerhouse vocalist. Really getting into this band has meant that I can really appreciate his genius. I’ve always respected and loved Bono for his very giving persona, but I also enjoy his vocals and lyrics a lot more now, too. He has a way with words, even if he isn’t saying that much, but it’s what he says that is important. Bono has written some songs with incredible lyrics, especially in their classic 80s output, and with their 2000s output, he shows that he can still write poignant and insightful songs but with a catchy and accessible edge.

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb would still be a great starting point if you’re not familiar with U2, but you can’t go wrong with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, either. That would be my first choice, especially outside from their classic material, but this is a great first choice. I can’t believe this record turns 20 this year, but it’s a record that deserves to be celebrated. If you’re new to U2, or you want a good place to start, I’d recommend this one. I don’t know if I’d call it underrated, as it was majorly successful at the time, but I think its popularity has gone down with time, yet this record is still worth revisiting.

[vipwees]

What To Gift Your Grandparents For Making Them Feel Special?

There is a special place in our hearts for our grandparents. They give us affection, knowledge, and numerous anecdotes. It is impossible to overstate the importance of grandparents in our lives. Their counsel and the affection they give without condition are invaluable.

The celebrations and presents we give them are more than just a token of our gratitude for all they have done for us. Finding the ideal present for them is a wonderful way to show your appreciation and affection. Here, we'll discuss some creative ways to honor them. 

80s T-Shirts: A Trip Down Memory Lane

Unique 80s t-shirts would make a nice present for your grandfather. The 1980s were a fantastic decade that birthed memorable works of art in the form of both music and movies. T-shirts from the 1980s might help people reminisce about their youth. 

Often, the images of legendary bands and movies from that era are used on these tees. The decade of the 1980s saw a remarkable explosion of culture, marked by seminal events and enduring trends that are still with us today. 

Getting your grandparents 80s-themed t-shirts is a fun way to pay tribute to that era and remind them of their childhood. Arcade games, huge hair, and excellent music and films all helped make the 1980s a landmark decade. 

Invoking warm feelings of nostalgia is as simple as putting on 80s t-shirts bearing the emblem of a favorite band, movie, or TV show. Your grandparent(s) and other family members can become closer to one another over the common ground represented by the shirt's design.

With so many options available, you're bound to find 80s or 90s t-shirts that feature a design that brings back fond memories of your grandparents. Everyone may find something they like, from nods to "Star Wars" to the logos of their favorite bands.

Classic 80s t-shirts are often made from durable, comfortable fabrics and have classic designs. Including these t-shirts in your gift-giving is a great way to convey that you remember and appreciate your grandparents' unique interests and recollections.

Gift Ideas for Grandparents: that Show You Care

One of the most treasured presents you can give your grandparents is a letter written by hand that expresses your deep feelings of appreciation, love, and admiration.

Create a stunning picture album filled with precious family photos. Add captions and comments to make it a one-of-a-kind keepsake.

If you're a good cook, make your grandparents a special supper. Prepare their favorite foods and have a wonderful evening together as a family.

Put some life into their home with low-maintenance indoor plants. It's a token of your undying affection that sustains life.

Treat your grandparents to a day of pampering at the spa or with a massage. They would benefit greatly from a day at the spa or a massage from a trained professional.

Give them something they can keep close to their heart forever by engraving their names or a meaningful message on a piece of jewelry.

If your grandparents enjoy reading, you can go right with a stack of books from their preferred genre or written by their favorite author.

Find out what they're interested in, and then choose a present that reflects it. Craft materials, gardening equipment, or a knitting set are all examples.

Gifts like tablets, smartphones, and smart speakers can help your tech-savvy grandparents keep in touch with loved ones and enjoy their golden years.

Conclusion

Gifts from you are a wonderful way to show your appreciation to your grandparents for all they've done for you throughout your life. You can choose from a wide variety of options, such as customized photos or throwback 80s t-shirts with a contemporary twist. 

Find something very special that will make your grandparents happy and give them a reason to smile. After all, the love and care you provide them is invaluable. Also, it will help you strengthen the bond between you and them. 

Visit : https://vipwees.co.uk/collections/action/Action

Original Source : https://bit.ly/3Q29JVv

[keeganbooks]

KNOWING YOUR BIBLE

May 7, 2023: Dear Friends, Thank you for following this blog in learning and knowing the Bible. The Bible is God’s Holy word to its reader.. Learning the Bible is a continuous process that may last a life time. The Bible has a total of 66 books, some being written by one or more authors, and being written hundreds of years apart. Because of the structure and organization of the Bible, confusion and lack of understanding can occur that limits the ability to learn and know the Bible. This blog is specifically being written to provide guidance when trying to learn the important information needed in trying to learn and know the Bible.                                                                                                           This series was started April 16 and has laid the foundation for learning and knowing the Bible. So far the focus has been on how to learn the names and locations of the Bible books, the organization of the Bible books, and how to search for and find Bible verses to read and study. Go to the website, keeganbooks.com and review these three blogs several times until confidence has been had in learning these important components of Bible learning and study.                                         The focus this week will be on the timeline of when the events written about in the Bible books occurred or when the books were written. This information will add perspective to Bible study as one is reading and studying the Bible.                                                      The dates listed below are approximate dates the events written about occurred or when the book was written. OLD TESTAMENT: Genesis: 1800 BCE. (BCE, Before the Common Era) Exodus through Deuteronomy 1500 BCE. Joshua: 1500 BCE Judges: covers a period of 300 years between leadership of Moses (1500 BCE) and the times of King David: 1200 BCE. Ruth: 1130 BCE; 1st Samuel through 2nd Chronicles: 1130 BCE and 586 BCE. Ezra through Esther: 485-445 BCE; Job: considered the oldest book in the Bible, many think Job was written by Moses: 1500′s BCE. Psalm though Ecclesiastes: 1050 through 950 BCE. Isaiah: 740-540BCE; Jeremiah: 627 BCE; Lamentations: 586 BCE; Ezekiel,586 BCE; Daniel: 540 BCE: Hosea through Micah 760-700 BCE; Nahem through Zephaniah: 640′s tp 600″s BCE: Haggi and Zechariah: in the 520′s BCE; and Malachi: 450′S BCE.           NEW TESTAMENT:     Matthew through John: The events written about, the birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, occurred in 6 BCE through the early 30′s AD (Anno Domini). The books were written in the 40′s-50′s AD. Acts: covers a period of the early church 27 AD through 67 AD. written by Luke who also wrote the gospel book of Luke. Romans through Philmon, written by Paul in the late 50′s very early 60′s AD. Hebrews: mid 60.s AD. James and Peter, written in the 60′s AD. 1st, 2nd and 3rd John written in the 80′s possibly in the 120′s? Jude, written in 65 AD.  Revelation: written in the 90′s, possibly the 120′s time frame. The time frame of when the books of the Bible were written will become more significant when studying how the books are related, a topic that will begin next week.  Going forth, when studying the Bible, searching and reading verses, once the verses are found to read, stop and remember where the book is in the organization of the Bible books, Old or New Testament, the Wisdom books or the Prophets etc so that increased knowledge of the Bible will be had.                                                    MAY GOD BLESS YOUR BIBLE STUDY THIS WEEK!                     Bible verses to read and study this week: Psalm, chapter 8, verses 1-9; Job, chapter 22, verses 21 through 28; Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verses 4-9; Matthew, chapter 11, verses 28-29; Mark, chapter 1, verses 35 through 39;  Mark, chapter 4, verses 1-20; Luke, chapter 14, verses 7-11.John, chapter 1, verses 1-5, chapter 3, verses 17-21; Acts, chapter 26, verses 12-18; Galatians, chapter 5, verse 22.

[dollarstoreartsupplies]

this whole post is also kind of supported entirely by canon? if u look into the context clues of the musical and the way space punk is written vs the other starmites? 

sorry I reread the whole libretto yesterday to get angst pics and have taken several dramaturgical classes for fun and now they are On My Mind again so like bear with me-

okay okay okay so the other three mites talk pretty consistently with regular 80′s Teen Character language: they say radical they say bummer etc etc but punk really really doesn’t 

which sort of makes sense, because he’s older and the leader and the romantic lead, but it also DOESN’T!!! because he’s ALSO A KID***!!! and in general he acts like one- but unlike the other mites he speaks like a literal Shakespeare character

and it’s not done naturally it’s written very jarringly and both the audience and Eleanor clock it as weird, and it’s played for laughs but if you look at it in the context of the mites backstory it becomes very possible that space punk is essentially quoting lost starmite history/literature and it’s reading as weird because he doesn’t remember a lot of it

it’s exactly how a kid would talk if they’re last real frame of reference for their dying culture is their memories of legends and stories from when they were nine

AND ON TOP OF THAT he’s the only one who recognizes milady, like the other mites know about her, clearly because, like you said, he’s obsessed with her and talks about her a lot but when she appears the other three think she’s an enemy 

they don’t and cannot clock her as human at first glance 

(which like is so fucking heartbreaking in it’s own right but I digress) 

except space punk not only KNOWS she’s human right away he KNOWS she’s milady 

but it’s also clear there is also a ton of gaps in his memory/what he knows! this is explicit in the text! 

he is completely unaware the banshees are also starmites, he doesn’t really know anything about shriekwood, the nuances of shak graa, or even WHAT milady can do other than ‘save the world’

it’s why a lot of his first interactions with her are SO clunky because he’s clearly trying to imitate what he was told ‘should happen’ when milady appears but the only real resources he has to go off of is his memory of things he was taught as a child: milady is good shak graa is bad and also true loves kiss is a thing

it all reads like a fairy tale because it IS ONE

(***okay so this isn’t important but I want to talk about it: so the timeline is not given to us in the text but it has to have been 8 to 10 years between the time the musical takes place and shak graa killing the humans, because it explicitly states all the starmites are teenagers. 

Since dazzle was 5 it has to be at least 8 in which case he is THIRTEEN and since punk was 9 it at most can only have been 10 years, placing him at 19. Which like, if you read Eleanor as like a senior in high school works pretty well. 

So age wise:

Punk is 17-19, which, because they’re dating by the end, clocks Eleanor and also Bizarbraa around 17-18, at the second oldest Ack Ack is 15-17, Herbie is 14-16, and Dazzle is 13-15)

Mmm, time for starmites angst!

So, we know how spacepunk and the mites escaped when they were little kids, and they’re the only ones left right?

Spacepunk on top of having to take care of the mites and keep everyone alive and well, also had the duty to carry on the starmites culture. They were the only ones left alive, and punk was the oldest so probably knew the most. If he forgot anything about their culture it was most likely gone forever.

I’m thinking that Shak Graa pulled something like a genocide, since there is no one else. So it’s not a stretch to say that he followed in the footsteps of many others and destroyed their places and culture and tried to erase them entirely.

Spacepunk was the only thing keeping his entire race of people and their history and culture and memory and from disappearing entirely. That has to be stressful, right? I’m just imagining him desperately trying to remember and preserve anything he can. Even as a little kid. He had to grow up so fast and pretend it was okay and give the mites hope. Spacepunk was fucking traumatized and holy fuck their backstory is horrifying.

Starmites angst has given me a serious brain worm.

[lancrewizzard]

This thought has been bouncing around in my head for a while now and I hope I can properly put words around it. I’ve noticed a few people online recently dismissing all of Pratchett’s work because, and I quote “Interesting Times is racist” with no further explanation or exploration.

Now to be clear, it’s not my place to say whether someone else can or can’t find something offensive, but I feel like a lot of people reading it now don’t have the context of the time it was written. If anything, it’s 100% a good thing that society has progressed to the point where people don’t get it, but I still feel the need to explain the context to people not familiar with the very 80′s-90′s tropes it was playing with.

Interesting Times was written in 1994 as a pisstake of the “The Heroes Go On An Oriental Adventure” sub-genre that was everywhere at the time. If you’ve never seen a late 80′s kids’ cartoon with wildly racist caricatures in it, thank your lucky stars that you’re too young to fully get it. So Pratchett did his usual Rincewind books thing of parodying bad fantasy tropes and stuck every stupid Asian stereotype in a blender to do it. When he did and didn’t hit the mark with it is up for debate. Personally I feel that the attempt to mix up the white saviour trope still ended up with it being played a little too straight (an issue that was also there in Jingo imo).

I personally still like it because I’m old enough to be able to go “Oh yeah I remember when that was a thing unironically. God I’m glad we’re over that.” and I love the Silver Horde and any scene with Rincewind and Twoflower. Nowadays the reaction of “Uh, Pterry what the hell? Yikes.” is way more common  and that’s very fair.

History is only going to be less kind to Interesting Times, and that’s a good sign for society, but it’s important not to forget why it was written even as it continues to age in the way that straight parodies do. Which is to say pretty badly.

[mitochondriaandbunnies]

You Should Watch Miami Vice:

A treatise on the most poorly-remembered show of the 80′s

If you’re like most people, when you hear Miami Vice outside the context of a bar, you picture the following: shoulder pads, speed boats, bikinis, and pink and teal pastel. You probably think about the worst excesses of the 1980′s, of a kind of cultural sinkhole where there was nothing cooler than Ray-Bans and masculine posturing.

However, much like Captain Kirk is (mis)remembered as a sleazy womanizer, and the first Rambo movie is (mis)remembered as a paean to how AWESOME KNIVES ARE, Miami Vice has been frozen in pop-culture memory as something it really isn’t. A funhouse mirror reflection of what it was actually all about.  Because the thing is: Miami Vice is good. Like, really good. 

At its core, it’s a show that is:

Well-written, with a coherent emotional and thematic arc across its seasons, despite being made before the era of arc-based TV

Incredibly beautiful, with cinematography, directing, and musical/sound editing choices that literally changed the way television was produced

Deeply, sometimes painfully human, with main characters who are often wrong and/or make bad decisions with real consequences, and who often ‘lose’

And on top of that, it’s not really copaganda (no, really), and it’s pretty damn queer (yes, really.) It’s also an old-school episodic show, which means the characters have a ton of space to breathe and grow and be multi-faceted, and the production has room to experiment, both with technical stuff and the writing. There are episodes that are so deadly serious your mouth feels dry as the credits roll; there are weird, silly, fun episodes where utterly bonkers things happen; there are episodes that feel like David Lynch was moonlighting as director. It’s neo-noir, it’s magical realism, it’s a workplace comedy, it’s a treatise on how there’s no reforming unjust systems, it’s a love story about two men who refuse to grapple with the idea that they’re the most important thing in each other’s lives.

You should watch it. But let me keep trying to convince you, anyway.

Vice was the brainchild of Michael Mann and Anthony Yerkovitch, and in 1984, it looked and sounded like nothing else on TV. There’s an auteur touch to the majority of episodes-- not just a unified look, but a willingness to try things that worked in the movies on the small screen. When you watch a lot of shows from the early to mid 80′s, they look the same as shows from the 70′s-- en episode of Spenser for Hire could’ve been shot on the same day as an episode of Starsky and Hutch. People talk about the legacy of shows that led to our modern era of “prestige TV--” there’d have been no Sopranos without The Wire, etc-- but in a lot of ways, with its artistic, film-like framing, melancholic New Wave aesthetics, and abnormally high production values, Miami Vice is the grandpappy of all of them. 

The recurring cast is very small: for most of the show, it’s these seven characters. (No, I don’t know why this cast photo is posed like they’re at a wedding for someone they don’t seem to like very much. Literally all of the promo photos for this show look like terrible wedding or prom shoots.)

From the top left, we have Larry Zito (Hawaiian shirt) and Stan Switek (pink stripes); they’re initially the comic relief. They love Elvis and bicker like an old married couple, and as partners they get a lot of the surveillance jobs. They do not escape the show unscathed.

The two ladies are Gina Calabrese (blue belted dress) and Trudy Joplin (palm tree dress); I adore them and they are wonderful, and each of them gets a couple of solid episodes, but they aren’t always given the most spectacular scripts. Gina is both the sweetest, most naive member of the group and the one most likely to shoot first and ask questions later; Trudy is an expert researcher and cannot be arsed to do emotional labor for her dumb male colleagues.

The man in the black suit with the moustache is the squad’s lieutenant, Martin Castillo. Castillo doesn’t show up until episode six, and when he does the show’s whole tone kind of suddenly clicks into place. Castillo is weird. He speaks very little and blinks less; he makes eye contact with no one unless he is making so much eye contact it makes you want to bury yourself in the dirt. Also he’s maybe secretly a samurai?

Then we have the two assholes in front, our main characters: Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Sonny (white guy in spring green and lavendar, the kind of man who wears a sleeveless shirt under a blazer) is a career Miami cop with a history of unprocessed trauma, a conga line of dead friends and partners, a wife who is trying her best to divorce him, and a six year old son he has no idea how to parent but loves very deeply. Rico (Black guy in grey and white, the kind of man who wears a three piece suit in 98 degree weather with 100% humidity) is a New York transplant with a dead brother, an utterly bizarre sense of humor, the world’s worst taste in women, and a terminal need to fix every broken person he’s ever come across while also probably sleeping with them. Their relationship is the emotional core of the series. Neither of them is equipped to handle this.

Sonny is probably the worst-remembered part of the whole badly-remembered series. Pop culture positions him as a wise-cracking cowboy cop who drives too fast and lives even faster, when in reality mostly Sonny is just very depressed, very lonely, and almost certainly a self-hating closeted bisexual.

He is a sad, bitchy pretty boy who legitimately thinks the only thing he’s good for is waving a gun around, and he only drives his government-owned drug dealer Ferrari so fast because he’s trying to drive away from his feelings.

Vice is a five season show, and unfortunately, you’ll often see fans arguing about the seasons and whether or not you can or should skip any of them. Here’s the thing: it’s an episodic show from the 80′s. No matter how much Mann or any of the other showrunners tried to make it consistent across its runtime, that’s not really how TV works. 113 episodes does not a movie make. Because of this, each season does feel a bit different from prior seasons, and which season you prefer is going to depend a lot on your personal tastes. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t recommend skipping any of them-- when you do watch the show from the pilot to the finale, it really does feel like one coherent storyline.

Season 1: Many people’s favorite season. A good mixture of tragedy, comedy, mystery, etc. The first six episodes are still kind of “working things out” tonally, but the whole season is worth watching. My personal favorite S1 episode (Evan, the second to last of the season) isn’t available on all sources, but is an absolute must watch, especially in terms of providing context for understanding Sonny as a closeted queer man.

Season 2: My favorite season. The show has its footing and knows what it wants from its characters and its audience. I would argue that almost every episode of this season is a good one, and it’s thematically very consistent. (Also, I think, possibly the most “fun” season despite a lot of darkness?)

Season 3: Also a lot of people’s favorite season, although PERSONALLY I think of S3 as “the police brutality is good, actually” season. Dick Wolf (yes, that Dick Wolf) was the showrunner for this one, and he wanted it to be “grittier.” I think S3 is necessary for understanding Sonny and especially for understanding the relationship between Sonny and Rico, but it’s definitely the copaganda season.

Season 4: The season a lot of people feel you should skip, because it’s “too weird” or where the show jumped the shark. There are some... real strange episodes in this season, including one about aliens and another about cow semen. For real. I’ll be honest: I kind of love S4. It backpedals the grittiness and focuses more on the characters’ inner lives again, S4 also ends with a fantastic two part cliffhanger that is picked up at the beginning of S5.

Season 5: A truncated half-season with a couple of “lost” episodes that actually fit in before the finale. Season Five is sad. The fallout from the end of S4 is heavy, grim stuff, and S5 doesn’t shy away from showing how that has fucked everyone to hell and back. The finale of the show is thematically excellent and emotionally satisfying; while the show was cancelled, they wrapped it up successfully.

“Okay, fine,” you say, sipping the cafecito I handed you while I explained all of this, “so it’s not just about a cool guy in an Armani suit driving an Italian car really fast. But you mentioned it was gay? It still doesn’t sound very gay.”

Well. Let’s see.

There’s what should be a cringey “very special episode” about gay cops in 1984 that is instead one of the most heartfelt and upsetting episodes in the series. Never once does this episode no-homo the main characters, and in fact, men being able to touch each other is positioned as healing and necessary.

Sonny and Rico are the only people who think the other is funny. Their hands and eyes are on each other all the time. Rico used to watch Sonny’s college games on TV and remembers his number. They both repeatedly throw missions for each others’ sakes. They spend all of their time together. There’s an on-screen “I love you” (there’s a ‘man’ at the end but it rings like someone hedging his bets) and a few episodes later the character who received the I love you marries a random woman he literally met less than a week ago in what can only be described as the saddest and most desperate attempt to Not Be Gay Anymore ever caught on film. They cradle each others’ heads more than once. A song about “loving the boy with the pretty green eyes” plays in the background of a conversation they have about following each other to the end of the earth in the finale.

All.

these.

prom.

photo.

shoots.

  and whatever the fuck this is.

You finish your third cafecito, shaking slightly from the caffeine, trying to prevent me from handing you a fourth. “Fine,” you admit. “But I still need more convincing. I can’t just watch something that’s good and thematically whole and about two sad men in love. It needs to also have... have some kind of, I don’t know, je ne sais quoi about it. A little extra spice.” Your hand rattles the demitasse against the saucer as you speak.

I pull off my food service uniform to reveal that underneath, I’m dressed as a carnival barker.

WELL. LET ME TELL YOU, FRIEND, WE’VE GOT:

An absolutely golden 80′s soundtrack that is atmospheric, consistently used at pitch-perfect moments, and which has been preserved in its entirety without any licensing issues

A guest cast list that includes a ton of super fucking cool genre actors, musicians, poets, and other assorted famous people playing weird, fun roles (James Hong! Earth Kitt! Pam Grier! Frank Zappa! James Brown! ...G. Gordon Liddy!?) AND many of the future stars of the 90′s before they were famous (Bruce Willis! Julia Roberts! Liam Neeson! Helena Bonham Carter!)

Sonny has an actual pet alligator named Elvis. He lives on his boat and sometimes Sonny has to take him to the vet

Jai Alai

Rico is a vegetarian, which feels like a difficult thing to be in Miami in the 80′s

Izzy. Just. Izzy. The most perfect, most ridiculous, rat-bastard con man and wannabe poet, Izzy.

Episodes directed by both Starsky and Hutch

Sonny’s pathological need to put things in his mouth

Whatever is happening here:

I watch your face carefully for signs of acquiescence, but all the frothing at the mouth I’ve been doing has made it a bit hard to see through the foam. I assume you are convinced and hand you a seventh cafecito. You have not drank the fifth or the sixth. I will drink them when you leave, that’s fine.

MY JOB HERE IS DONE, I announce.

You ask me to elaborate on the whole “not copaganda” thing, trying to grab me by the candy-striped suspenders.

I can’t totally elaborate on that without spoiling a bunch of the show, but suffice to say: ultimately, Vice is about how you can’t change corrupt systems from the inside, that the police serve the rich and powerful, the function of vice cops is basically to create the illusion of order while letting the government quietly destabilize the countries the drugs are originally coming from, and that anyone who tries to be a “good cop” ends up eaten by the system, corrupt, or dead.

There’s some backpedaling on this in the middle of the series with the whole Dick Wolf thing (that man loves his fucking cops), and not every episode is totally consistent with its messaging, but season five definitely doubles down on “this is actually a bad system that really can’t be fixed.”

The show isn’t perfect (I mean. it’s still a cop show from the 80′s)-- it’s a product of its time, for better or for worse. But Miami Vice is really damn good. It’ll make your heart hurt in the best way possible. You will want, desperately, for Sonny to figure out that he’s worth something more than his career as a police officer. You’ll come out of it with a lot of feelings about Phil Collins. I think anyone who likes a good story about people has the potential to really fall in love with Vice-- I’ll admit I literally started watching it as a joke, and realized pretty quickly that everything I thought I knew about the show was wrong.

Satisfied with my answers, you try to leave.

I hit you with a plate of cocaine.

[randomvarious]

Cathy Dennis - “Touch Me (All Night Long)” Dance Mix USA by Markus Klinke, Rawle James, Rob Rettberg Song released in 1990. Mix released in 1994. Dance-Pop / House

Found a really good article in The Guardian from 2008 that tracks the career of Cathy Dennis, a brief, early 90s UK pop-house princess who was shaped in a similar mold to Kylie Minogue, and then went behind the curtain to become one of the most successful and prolific pop songwriters of all time:

It is a measure of how disposable pop music is and how fickle listeners are that Cathy Dennis is, for many, only half remembered. We might struggle to think of one of her songs, only vaguely recall what she looks like. Yet, she was a star: she had 10 consecutive UK top 40 hit singles in the 1990s and was even more adored in the US and Japan.

For anyone still trying to remember, the lyrics "hold me baby / drive me crazy / touch me / all night long" should ring some bells.

Today she is one of the most important women in the pop industry, as one of its most prolific songwriters. She went into the history books when the song she wrote for Katy Perry, I Kissed A Girl, recently became the 1,000th number one record in the Billboard US charts. Last Sunday the single reached number one in the UK charts and has become one of the songs of the summer. Quite simply, without such talented writers as Dennis the whole mad pop machine would fall apart.

The number of pop songs that Dennis has had a hand in is staggering. To name but a few: Toxic by Britney Spears, Never Had a Dream Come True by S Club 7, Anything is Possible by Will Young, About You Now by the Sugababes, Sweet Dreams My LA Ex by Rachel Stevens, and on and on.

But there is one song she co-wrote, with former Mud guitarist Rob Davis, that will be the subject of pop culture essays for years to come. Not only did Can't Get You Out of My Head rescue Kylie Minogue's then floundering career in 2001, it is, for many, one of the greatest pop songs ever.

You get all that? This pop singer that most people thought had just faded into obscurity (including you, admit it!) is behind "Can't Get You Out of My Head," "Toxic," and "I Kissed a Girl." And so much more, actually. Those grafs don't mention it, but Dennis has worked very closely with Simon Fuller throughout her entire career. If you don't know who Simon Fuller is, I wrote very cynically of him in a long post about S Club 7 during quarantine. When Fuller discovered Dennis when she was just 17, he was the manager for Paul Hardcastle, who at the time had recently triumphed with the 1985 anti-Vietnam War UK megahit, "19." But throughout the 90s, Fuller managed to manufacture and amass himself a British pop music empire, and Cathy Dennis was alongside him in some capacity just about every step of the way.

The Spice Girls? That was Fuller's invention. And guess who wrote the B-Side for Wannabe? Cathy Dennis. S Club 7? Another Fuller project. Guess who wrote a bunch of their songs? Cathy Dennis. Pop Idol and American Idol? Guess who wrote their theme songs? Cathy Dennis. Winners of those contests, like Kelly Clarkson and Clay Aiken; guess who wrote some of their songs, too? Cathy Dennis.

You've heard so much more Cathy Dennis in your life than you probably thought you actually ever had. And that's not an exhaustive list either. She's also written songs for Celine Dion, P!nk, Ariana Grande, Christina Aguilera, Little Mix, Carrie Underwood, and David Guetta. And she's worked with Mark Ronson and has written with Primal Scream, too(?!).

So, here's the song that really set things off for Dennis: "Touch Me (All Night Long)," a marimba-laced sonic piece of cotton candy (it's light, fluffy, and sugary!) that was able to keep her on the dancefloor while also occupying the top 40 airwaves, and charted high across multiple continents. Co-produced by the one and only Shep Pettibone, this new and improved cover of a mid-80s electro-freestyle-post-disco tune by Wish and Fonda Rae has found ways to remain on gobs of early 90s playlists and mixes throughout the years. It's not an earth-shattering song in and of itself, but there is something to be said about its overall ubiquitousness. "Touch Me (All Night Long)" had very broad appeal. It fit on a wide range of radio formats, all the way from adult contemporary to contemporary dance. And there's really not that many songs out there that have had that level of versatility, much less in 1991. That's ultimately why this thing smashed; it's an inextricable piece of the early 90s, both as just straight-ahead radio pop and also for the clubs; a song that youthful dance hedonists and their fuddy-duddy parents could both find ways to enjoy. Kind of remarkable, no?

Warm, bouncy bass stabs, sets of dreamy strings that float and soar, perpetually ticking hats, a dash of wah-organ stabs, that aforementioned marimba, and a catchy, singalong pre-chorus and chorus. If I was writing for some music publication about this song when it came out and "Can't Get You Out of My Head" somehow predated it, and if I was also a really corny fuck, I might say something like, "this is a song that we just can't get out of our heads, either!" But none of those conditions I just made up are real, so I won't do that to you 😁.

[kiefbowl]

1/2 I’m not trying to be defensive, I’m trying to understand your point of view. I’m of the belief that broadening the lines between our species and others has caused a great deal of suffering for just about every animal on earth, the human animal included. We don’t know the depth of other animals communication systems. In 100 years people will know things you and I could never even conceive of. At what point in human evolution or history did the concept of rape start applying to us?

2/2 And at what age is a person capable of rape? It feels like, to me, you separate the word rape from other concepts because the issue is so grave. I understand why, but I don’t think it’s objective. What we’re ultimately discussing is evil. I don’t think, if it exists, it only exists for one species. Either it exists and applies to other animals or it doesn’t exist. We can strive for harm reduction either way. People pretending they aren’t animal is an issue, alongside anthropomorphism.

Lots of interesting thoughts here, I'm going to try to go through them point by point again.

"I'm of the belief that broadening the lines between our species and other has caused a great deal of suffering for just about every animal on earth, the human animal included" - agreed, this would be another reason why I wouldn't categorize animal behavior as rape.

"We don't know the depth of other animal communication systems" - correct in a sense. We know that animals do not communicate like humans do in many very significant ways. For example, in case it wasn't clear in the previous answer, with regards to the elephant funerals - it's not that elephants need to communicate some understanding to us, it's that they communicate the way elephants communicate, and humans communicate how humans communicate. The issue with science is that it is a method to try and prove a hypothesis objectively, but we can only communicate with the language we have. So when we see elephants mourn their dead with some rituals, we don't really have words for that except funeral, mourn, ritual, etc. It's not that it's terrible wrong, it's that the more specific and less editorial we can be, the more accurate we can describe animal behavior as it is not as we perceive it.

"In 100 years people will know things you and I could never even conceive of." I wouldn't be so certain of this. It's a nice thought, and feels true because it appears as if in the past 200 years humans have been in a "progressing" state. But, if a nuclear holocaust was to happen (god forbid), the remaining humans left would lose a lot of technical knowledge. This is of course, an extreme example, but one I use to demonstrate a point. It's also important to remember that knowledge is not understood as just facts. Knowledge indicates some sort of practiced experienced, which (1) most people do not have on most subjects rigorously and (2) requires a philosophy of some sort, which is culturally driven. If Americans en masse started became devout Roman Catholics in the next 10 years for example (who knows why), that would affect the mores of the culture, which would bleed into scientific literature, experiments, understanding, publications, etc. Furthermore, this is exactly the reasons I believe calling animal behavior as rape incorrect - most people learn their knowledge of scientific discovery about animals through skimming newspaper and magazine articles written by journalists, not through participating in scientific studies, therefore most people don't have a great handle on describing animal behavior accurately, which leads to common personifications. A great example is Koko the Gorilla, that was just in the 80's and it take mere minutes of thinking about the situation to know Koko didn't understand sign language, and yet it became popular to believe it and people still believe Koko learned ASL (a human language; a complex language with syntax and grammar) from someone who didn't speak ASL (Dr. Penny Patterson), who was in fact a devout Christian, who was merely teaching Koko signs and then interpreting them even though she did not grow up learning ASL. To loop this back to the previous point above, gorillas communicate like gorillas, no ASL required. But we need to communicate like humans to describe them, which brings bias and cultural baggage.

"At what point in human evolution or history did the concept of rape start applying to us?" I certainly don't know, I don't have the knowledge. I'm not even sure anyone knows, we're not even certain we've identified all of our homo- ancestors. But, when it comes to feminism and what women experience right now today, it doesn't matter to me. The only thing that matters is men rape now.

"And at what age is a person capable of rape?" I don't know, I struggle with this. I think many radical feminist would say however young they start to rape. I don't see how this relates to animals, human babies and children are humans, they aren't a separate species.

"It feels like, to me, you separate the word rape from other concepts because the issue is so grave." I don't think this is a fair assessment after what I wrote to answer the last anon, but okay. "I understand why, but I don’t think it’s objective." I think the word rape should be considered an objectively human behavior, like arson or murder. Animals kill, and maybe set things on fire I don't know, but arson and murder describe human behaviors.

"What we’re ultimately discussing is evil. I don’t think, if it exists, it only exists for one species." And I suppose this is where you and I philosophically diverge, because I think evil doesn't exist independently of human behavior. At least not on earth. I can't speak for extra-terrestrials because I don't know them yet. But, I would agree that we're discussing a moral issue, and I see animal behavior (outside of humans) as amoral.

"Either it exists and applies to other animals or it doesn’t exist." I find this rather ignorant. What applies to a fly applies to a dog? What applied to the tyrannosaurus rex applies to the human infant? Some animals kill their partners after matting, or their babies after giving birth, or play with their prey just to kill it and don't even eat it - and then some animals mate for life, nurse their young for two years, live in huge packs - and some animals live alone or for hundreds of years or for 24 hours. It's too diverse of a population to say "All animals must be the same to be animals." What makes all animals animals is not behavior, but that they are living, multicellular organisms, and probably a few other biological definitions.

"We can strive for harm reduction either way." I honestly don't know what you mean by this, because if you mean reduce harm that animals cause other animals, I'm not interested in that. I can't stop carnivores from eating, and animals from mating. When it comes to feminism, I only care about human females.

"People pretending they aren’t animal is an issue, alongside anthropomorphism." Speaking towards human uniqueness is not denying their animal-ness. I think it's bizarre to suggest that human beings do not occupy a space and perform behaviors on this earth so radically different to other animals. I think it's bizarre to project human morality on other animals.

[nbwriteschaos]

ACTUALLY ACTUALLY I WISH TO HEAR MORE ABT ARCHIE AND RYAN AND JUNE PLS

OMG YESSSSSS SO oKAY

there is a lot i think

archie is a complete fucking GOOFBALL!!! he's deffo one of my big faves in tswb because he's like,, the Light of it all... ive sort of decided that the vibes of tswb will be like melancholy, so i think his character will fit in really well! he's a been a part of the football team since middle school! coming out was really easy for him since everyone liked him anyway and just kind of seen it as him being an idiot. ryan is his boyfriend and he is in Deep love with him. they've been together about three years? and archie has been there to support ryan through his transition!

they're v much polar opposites as archie is super playful and goofy and dumb and ryan is very stern and smart and quiet, and i think thats honestly what makes them so fucking cute together anbd its so fun to write. v much self indulgent because thats my favorite trope ever. ryan is gonna be a be a super interesting character to write since i will be able to explore gender identity much more which is smth i'm very much interested in and also currently going through! thankfully i have many trans identifying friends who can help me with him ((and also myself LOL)) ! i want to stray away from the "kicked out cus of my sexuality" thing as much as i possibly can, but honestly, as "cliche" of a mark it makes in many lgbtq+ stories, it is a very real thing that many lgbtq+ people go through, especially transgender people.. so while it wont be his main highlight, its still a thing.

tbh i always forget about june for some reason but when i start to think about them and realize they are also apart of this story i just remember that i FUCkINGH love them and i NEED to incorporate them better!!!! i think their depth is my favorite out of all the characters. they have a history with substance abuse as i really want to draw attention to the opioid epidemic that is especially spreading widely through teenagers, and i really never see that written as a Normal thing that some people go through when it really should be recognized as a disorder/disability or whatever else one would want to consider it. i would get into detail about my opinion about that, but i won't for the sake of keeping my infodump mildly short.... plus this is only supposed to be a minor thing that has to do with their character as they have mostly gotten past it, i think its just smth very important to them and they're not at all shy about it.

june's design is also one of my favoritessss,s, they're very much inspired by like a 80s disco/arcade color palette. i think i want them to be as vibrant as possible to contrast their stoic front. there IS someone past the walls they have built up , and that someone is actually really fun and amazing and loving <333

together their whole dynamic is like two hardheaded mfs co-parenting a wild child and i think its beautiful. i think the three of them would be capable of supporting their own entire novel just bc their dynamic is so good!! and even tho ryan and archie are together, june and archie probably get along so much more because june is a big risktaker and ready for any ridiculous adventure. ((so in some weird way, june is like the chaotic dad who is only stern to their child when mom is looking SJDKGHSJKDFG))

anyways this is LONG and iM SORRY i get sososoo carried away talking about my Children and this is only like. a Little bit of insight into them LMAO but thank u so muhc for asking meeee it makes me unbelievably happy that someone is interested in my characters :] heres a kiss for u

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 54: How linguists figure out the grammar of a language. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 54 show notes page.

[Music]

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

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today we’re getting enthusiastic about how grammars come into existence. But first, we are doing a liveshow in April. We will be doing a liveshow recording on the internet so that we can all be in the same place at the same time on Saturday the 24th of April, Eastern Daylight Savings Time in North America, which will be early on a Sunday morning for us here Australia.

Gretchen: That’ll be 6:00 p.m. for me on Eastern Daylight Time. We will include a link to a time zone converter so you can figure out when that is for you.

Lauren: We’ll be doing the whole show about backchanneling, which is all those ways that you –

Gretchen: Mm-hmm.

Lauren: – actively listen to someone as they’re talking. Thank you for that excellent backchanneling, Gretchen. Something I think a lot about in our era of lots of video calls and online chats.

Gretchen: You can’t see me, but I’m doing a thumbs up right now.

Lauren: Excellent backchanneling.

Gretchen: These are some kinds of backchanneling. We’re gonna be talking about lots more. I think it’s fun to do a liveshow about backchanneling because it means that you get to backchannel in the chat while the show’s going on and chat with each other. That’ll be fun. We’re running the ticketing of the show through Patreon. If you’re a patron, you’ll automatically get a link to the liveshow to join. If you’d like to become a patron, you can also do that to get access to the liveshow stream.

Lauren: Patrons also get access to our recent bonus episode on reduplication as well as 48 other bonus episodes because we have almost 50 now.

Gretchen: That’s a lot! Lots of Lingthusiasm for patrons, which helps keep the show running.

Lauren: Our liveshow is part of LingFest, while will be taking place across the last week of April, which is an online series of events about linguistics. You can find out more about LingFest at lingcomm.org/lingfest.

Gretchen: That’s “comm” with two Ms as in “communication.” Speaking of LingComm, if you’re interested in communicating linguistics to broader audiences, you can also join the LingComm conference, which is a conference for practitioners of linguistics communication such as ourselves and many other cool LingCommers to learn from each other and help produce more interesting and engaging materials for all of you.

Lauren: LingComm, the conference, is taking place online the week of April the 19th.

Gretchen: You can also go to lingcomm.org/conference to see the schedule and other details there.

Lauren: That’s “comm” with two Ms.

[Music]

Gretchen: Lauren, how many people would you say you know who have written a grammar of a language?

Lauren: Hmm, okay, well, both my PhD supervisors. I’d say half the people in the department that I current work in. I have written a grammar of a language. This is a perfectly common activity among my professional cohort. I assume it’s a thing most people do and know about, so we don’t really have to explain it for this episode at all. This is fine.

Gretchen: [Laughs] Yeah, I would say that at least several of the people that I went to grad school with – not necessarily at my university – people I knew from conferences, professors that I knew – one professor I knew had her grammar come out the same year that her baby came out, and she posted a photo of the grammar and the baby, which were about the same size, on Facebook after that happened. It was really cute.

Lauren: Grammars definitely take longer than nine months to gestate. I can definitely confirm that.

Gretchen: I have not written a grammar. So, when someone’s going about writing a grammar, what – okay, here’s a language. There isn’t a grammar written or the grammar that’s written of it is not adequate. What do I do to start?

Lauren: What you’re talking about is taking all of the amazing complexity of how humans use language and finding the rules that reoccur within a particular language and then finding a way of articulating that concisely in written form in a grammar so that, by the end, you’ve worked through most of the common features you find in this language – all of the variations and irregularities – and you’ve put that into some kind of readable book format for other people to then learn about how the grammar of this language works. That is the overarching aim of this endeavour.

Gretchen: I’ve consulted grammars in the process of doing linguistics. I have the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language sitting on my desk. When I was in grad school, I spent a lot of time consulting Valentine (2001)’s grammar of Nishnaabemwin. There are grammars that I’ve consulted. They’re 1,000 pages, 2,000 pages long. Sometimes you’ve got a really massive grammar. Sometimes you get a shorter sketch grammar. They have certain similarities in the structure and the types of things that people cover in a grammar.

Lauren: Absolutely. You tend to start, traditionally, with smaller bits and work upwards. You’re likely to find a description, if it’s a spoken language, of the sound system or, if it’s a signed language, of the hand shape and body space phonology at the beginning of the book and then work up to word-level – you probably expect if a language has adjectives, a section on adjectives, which we’ve talked about before.

Gretchen: We have talked a little bit about adjectives.

Lauren: And then if you’re look at sentence-level stuff, like asking a question, how you do that, it happens at the level of the sentence, that tends to be more towards the end. You’re going from smaller bits up to bigger bits. It really depends on the tradition. We talked about lumpers and splitters before. If you like to split things down, a grammar is great because you can have so many sub-headings. I remember reading the rules for one set of grammars where it was like, “Please do not go beyond five layers of headings,” and I was like, “That’s actually quite a challenge.”

Gretchen: Because you have your chapter level headings, and then you’re like, “Oh, okay, if this chapter’s about verbs, you’ve got this type of verbs and those type of verbs – within the transitive verbs, you’ve got this type of verbs and those type of verbs,” and so on and so forth.

Lauren: Then you’ve got the irregularities. They might need their own subset. You can go from – the table of contents, you can get this big picture and then go down and down and down into the different sections. The grammar that I wrote of Lamjung Yolmo was a sketch grammar, so it’s only a couple of hundred pages. It makes sure to knock over – it would be very weird to have nothing about nouns in a language that very obviously has nouns – but it doesn’t go into the deep level of detail on some things that a longer grammar gets to. There’s always more to be done as well.

Gretchen: Any grammar is gonna be incomplete – even these massive doorstop-sized grammars. You’re gonna leave some stuff out where you’re a speaker and you’re like, “I know this,” but you don’t necessarily include it in a grammar. I’ve also read, in grad school – I don’t remember what language it was of – but I picked up this grammar that was written in, like, I wanna say maybe the 70s or 80s. There was clearly some sort of fad for doing this very abstract schematic thing of sentences or verbs or something. It didn’t have any complete sentences or complete verbs just written there. It drew them all on this diagram that I have never encountered before or since where everything was piece-able together. I was like, “Oh, wow. You’re participating in some sort of grammatical tradition that I’m just not aware of here.”

Lauren: I mean, I think the important thing is that grammars are written by humans, and humans are trained by other humans within particular traditions. I remember when I was building my sketch grammar, it was while I was also working on my thesis because I was looking specifically at evidentials, but you can’t know what’s happening with evidentiality without understanding how verbs work and how verbs relate to other parts of the sentence. And then I realised I was accidentally on my way to writing out the bones of the grammar of Lamjung Yolmo.

Gretchen: Sometimes you just accidentally write a grammar.

Lauren: That is how I accidentally started and very deliberately finished writing that sketch grammar. But I remember talking to my supervisors. One of them found it quite unusual that I wanted to include the methodology in my grammar. I wanted to explain specifically who I’d worked with, what I’d recorded, what kinds of elicitation I’d used. That wasn’t in that supervisor’s grammar tradition, but it was something I wanted to include.

Gretchen: A lot of grammars aren’t gonna include the gestures of the language or something, which I know is one of your things that you enjoy.

Lauren: Yes. There are traditions that do focus more on narrative structure, and you might find more about the structure of narratives in a grammar, and others that focus more on verb structure. There’s a very brief few pages on phonetics and then a really massive chapter on verbs. It’s sometimes because the language has lots of really fun, complex things happening with the verbs, but sometimes it’s just because that’s what that person was interested in.

Gretchen: This person was a verb fan.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Some parts, you know, it’d be pretty hard to do a grammar without doing some level of phonology at the beginning. But, yeah, what level of pragmatic stuff at the end, discourse stuff, or like, “How do people of this language talk to children?” or something like that – that might not be in a grammar.

Lauren: I’m doing a paper with a colleague on onomatopoeia at the moment. Some grammars will have a separate section on that. Because it’s not as central to every single sentence as, say, nouns and verbs can be for a lot of languages, it doesn’t tend to crop up as its own specific subsection in a lot of grammars.

Gretchen: Which doesn’t necessarily mean that language doesn’t have onomatopoeia. It’s just that it didn’t get the focused attention that got put there.

Lauren: This is always the question that you have while reading a grammar, right. It’s about what makes it in, but it’s also what doesn’t. Sometimes things don’t make it in because of trends or because of what people are focusing on or sometimes just because they’re important but incredibly low-frequency things that happen. Or if someone is doing fieldwork, and they come into a community as a man, they might spend a lot of time around other men and recording a particular variety. That’s where the methodology was really important for me to make clear why I was making choices. Also, the title of a grammar – I find it really interesting whether people say, “The Grammar of” or “A Grammar of.” I, very consciously, called it, “A Grammar” or “A Sketch Grammar of Lamjung Yolmo” because this is just my analysis and my take. Other people might come to exactly the same data with different conclusions. Or they might be way more into adjectives than I am, and that section is way more fleshed out in someone else’s analysis.

Gretchen: That’s an interesting side effect, as you were saying about, okay, well, if we wanna look at onomatopoeia in a bunch of languages, or if you wanna look at any sort of thing whether it’s verbs or sounds or handshapes or something in a bunch of different languages, okay, how can – if you’re making those beautiful graphs like are in the WALS database, which we’ve mentioned before, or if you’re gonna write a Wikipedia article about like, “Here’s how this language works,” or “Here’s how this phenomenon works,” the grammars turn into this input material of what gets cited there.

Lauren: Those big overviews are often built up from these grammars of different languages. That’s where having structures that are easy for people to access in the table of contents becomes really easy because, just as a human writing the grammar, there’s another human reading that grammar to put into those databases.

Gretchen: Dictionaries are often a very collaborative project where you have a bunch of people contributing words or contributing entries. You can say, “Okay, you need to take care of the letter P and see what’s going on here.” But a grammar is often written by one person, and so it reflects that one person.

Lauren: Almost, like the very overwhelming majority of the time, it’s people who aren’t members of that community. It’s a linguist who’s trained as a linguist and then come into this community and often built incredibly long-term, deep relationships with those communities and speak the language but not always. I know I’m kind of – it’s very easy to over-problematise something you do and spend a lot of time thinking about but, again, it’s worth remembering while reading a grammar.

Gretchen: Right. And what types of things you think are interesting, what types of things you think are novel or worth drawing attention to, or what types of things you think are common is a function of what you’ve been exposed to from a grammatical tradition. I’ve been thinking a lot about this question of “What do we put in a grammar” and “How is a grammar constructed by the societal context in which it’s written” because I’ve been reading this book called, Grammar West to East, by Edward McDonald. The subtitle is “The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning in European and Chinese Traditions.”

Lauren: Cool.

Gretchen: I will say, at the beginning, this is an academic book. It is a monograph. If you don’t have a background in linguistics, you’ll find it fairly dense going, potentially. But, as someone who does, it’s really interesting.

Lauren: Awesome! Pick out the anecdotes for us.

Gretchen: One of the first observations that it makes – and, when you think about this, it’s totally true – is that – so the European grammatical tradition is based on Latin and Greek. Latin and Greek are languages where you do a lot of changing the endings on words – sometimes the prefixes, but often the endings – on words to make them do grammatical things. The European grammatical tradition is a lot about making tables of all of the different ways that a word can inflect and being like, “Well, it does this and it does this,” and giving names to the different sorts of groupings and patterns that you find out of that.

Lauren: Which is great, but doing those things, it makes it a little bit confusing sometimes when you apply it to a language like English that doesn’t have the same ending changes, but we give them the same labels. That’s because the analysis of English is very much in that Latin tradition.

Gretchen: It’s inherited from the Latin tradition. There’s a pedagogical motivation for some of this because Latin and Greek were not just the languages that started out analysing themselves, although they were that as well, but they were also considered prestigious languages that you needed to learn. So, a lot of the grammatical analysis of Greek and especially Latin were in terms of how to teach them to speakers of other European languages. And it’s like, “Here’s a bunch of endings, and you need to learn them, and you need to learn what they correspond to and what their function is.”

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: What’s interesting is that the grammar of Chinese is different from that. They don’t do endings. What they do instead is you have things that have a grammatical function, but they’re considered to have the same status as full words. And so, the Chinese grammatical tradition is concerned with looking at those particles that have grammatical functions but are hard to write definitions of and cataloguing them and figuring out what’s going on with them and grouping them into groups. There are some words in the European tradition that are invariant – they’re often all lumped together in “adjectives” – words like “often,” or “always,” or something like that, which are – they just look like that all the time. They don’t have endings like the verbs and the nouns do. The Latin tradition grammarians didn’t care about those words, and they were really into the endings. The Chinese grammarians were really interested in, first of all, this fundamental duality between words that had a meaning to them, had what they called, “full words,” and words that were only for their grammatical function, what they called, “empty words.”

Lauren: That is a great metaphor. I like it.

Gretchen: Also, because culturally they were really interested in dualities, you know, the sun and the moon, and the full words and the empty words, and having a nice, mirrored duality was really appealing to them for aesthetic reasons in the same way that the European grammatical tradition is often descended from the rhetorical tradition because they were really interested in the aesthetics of rhetoric when it came to doing that sort of analysis. What your culture’s into aesthetically brings forth, okay, what are we trying to explain this. So, both of these are sort of ancient history, you know. Around 2,000 years ago they were the beginnings of this doing their own analysis grammatical traditions. You get this really interesting descriptive grammar that was published in 1898 by China’s first grammarian, Ma Jianzhong, called, Mr Ma’s Compleat Grammar, which I think is great.

Lauren: That is an excellent late-1800s name of a book.

Gretchen: It is exactly of a particular era. It’s “compleat,” E-A-T, not E-T-E, which is just –

Lauren: Perfect.

Gretchen: He was a native speaker of Chinese who had also been educated by Jesuits in French, and so he had exposure to both the French and the Chinese grammatical traditions. He writes this grammar where he distinguishes between full and empty words the way that the Chinese had – introduced these particles to be these “empty words” – but he also further subdivides the full words into the lexical categories that Europeans had been doing, which are verbs and nouns and so on. This distinction between verbs and nouns and so on was really important to the Europeans because verbs and nouns have different types of endings. You know whether something’s a verb or a noun because the endings are all different because this is a really endings-based grammatical system. The modern linguistic conception of how languages and their structures work is, to a certain extent, a hybrid of that because these full and empty grammatical categories is now reflected in what linguists call, “content words” and “function words.”

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: You have words like, “dog,” and “cat,” and “run,” and “see,” and stuff like that where you can actually write a definition, and then you have your grammatical words like “of,” and “is,” and “to,” and stuff, which just have this grammatical function. So, this category that’s still really relevant in modern linguistics is there in one country’s grammatical tradition, but also modern linguistics does also still talk about “nouns” and “verbs.”

Lauren: Absolutely.

Gretchen: The history of the contact between these two grammatical traditions and how they figured out how to adapt things to each other is an interesting way of looking at what is it that we think of as important when we’re trying to write a grammar of a particular language or we’re trying to do grammar. A lot of ancient grammar traditions were really concerned with describing one very prestigious, golden-age language – or one or two – you’ve gotta write your grammar of Latin or of Greek or of Old Chinese because that’s the one everyone thinks is fancy. And the local vernacular that ordinary peoples talk, like, no, no one’s gonna write a grammar of that. It’s a very interesting way of thinking about, okay, what were people concerned about and how did those interests derive from the structure of the language or languages that they were familiar with.

Lauren: This book sounds so great, but I wonder if actually the title of it should be, “Grammars from East to West,” because if we look where our modern tradition of writing grammars in Europe is, it’s very much motivated by those Latin grammars and grammarians of old, but it’s also very influenced by Paṇini and the Sanskrit grammarian tradition that is two-and-a-half, three thousand years old as well.

Gretchen: One of the things that I was thinking about reading this, being like, “Wow!” – I knew some of the stuff about the European tradition, not all of it, but I didn’t know most of the stuff about ancient China – thinking, “I know that there was a really interesting grammatical tradition going on in India, like, right between these two major geographical regions.” There’s a bunch of stuff going on in Arabic as well, at a slightly later time. Can I have a book that writes about all four of these, please, in comparison to each other?

Lauren: Yeah. I know very little about the Arabic tradition. Most linguists at least know the name “Paṇini” That first N has a little dot under it in English, so it has a kind of palatalised vibe, but it also means his name is great. I know more than one university that has the “Paṇini Café and Sandwich Shop” because that’s a great multilingual pun to use.

Gretchen: Who can resist a pun? I learned a bit about the Arabic grammatical tradition when I was taking a bit of Arabic in undergrad. There are a whole bunch of things that that grammatical tradition does also in the tradition of “We’re going to look at our language and catalogue it in exhaustive detail and figure out exactly what’s going on in it.” One of the things that I remember was that there’s an exhaustive catalysation of what they call the “binyan,” which are the templates that you can slot your three-consonant roots into, and how you put the vowels in between them that mean all of these different things.

Lauren: Because Arabic is very interested in what happens in shifting the vowels of the language rather than what happens at the end of a word like the Latin tradition.

Gretchen: It’s very relevant in Arabic all of the different things you can do with the vowels in between them and whether, maybe, you double a consonant in a particular context or you put this vowel here or that vowel there. The classic tri-consonantal root that everybody cites is K-T-B, /k/-/t/-/b/, which has to do with books and writing. “Kitab” is “a book,” and “kutub” is “books,” and “maktab is “office,” and “kataba” is “He writes.” You can do all sorts of things with those three consonants and how you arrange the vowels between them. There’s an abstract way of representing “Here’s what the patterns are” with a template verb that you can show all the patterns with and going through and exhaustively cataloguing the patterns. This is the exciting thing to do if you’re an ancient Arabic grammarian. I’m excited by just thinking about it. But that’s very much influenced by the structure of the language. I don’t know as much about what Paṇini was doing except for the fact that he gets cited in a lot of Intro Linguistics classes as the first grammarian.

Lauren: Part of why he gets cited a lot is because he’s excellent. I’ll talk about that. I think part of why as well is that Paṇini synthesized and brought together everything that had been happening in the Sanskrit grammar tradition. Sanskrit is kind of like the Indian linguistic area equivalent of Latin, which is that it was the language of sacred texts and religion. It’s a language that is still handed down. People still learn Sanskrit in the way they learn Latin. But in that area, languages like Hindi and Nepali, the Indo-Aryan languages, are all later siblings and children of Sanskrit. It’s a very convenient analogy to Latin to draw with Sanskrit. I think, also, the motivation for thinking a lot about the language came from a theological attempt within Hinduism to understand truth through language and understand how language works. It was one of the core areas of study within the larger religious tradition. So, that was the motivation. But Paṇini – we know his name. We know not too much else about him except that he wrote at least two-and-a-half thousand years ago. He synthesized this work, and he name drops ten other people whose work he draws on. We’ve lost the record of all of their work. I think he’s excellent. That’s not in dispute. But it’s also just a convenient prominence he receives through being the kind of earliest record we have when the work was going on for thousands of years behand.

Gretchen: The person whose manuscript survives with his name attached to it.

Lauren: Absolutely. A very convenient way to appear to be very excellent is just to have none of the foundational work you draw on exist still.

Gretchen: No. This is like the Library of Alexandria all over again.

Lauren: What made Paṇini’s approach really distinct – and distinct from what was happening with those learner-driven motivations for analysing Latin – is that there was a logical progress to how he set out his description of Sanskrit. Similar to what we talked about with modern grammars where you start with the base elements of the sound system and then build up to words and parts of words. If something goes on a word after another bit, so you’ll describe the earlier bits first and build outwards. It’s this logical order and progression.

Gretchen: In a very real sense, the order that Paṇini devised over 2,500 years ago is reflected in the order of the grammar that you wrote a few years ago?

Lauren: It’s absolutely not an accident. The early 20th Century linguists like Saussure, Franz Bopp, where directly reading Paṇini and going, “This guy was doing this stuff thousands of years before we started thinking about it” and were directly influenced by Paṇini’s approach to thinking about how the language worked and thinking about it very descriptively. This is why he’s known as the first grammarian within even the Western tradition because he was like, “Look, there’s these words and they have these histories, but actually, the important thing is that we think about how the words are being used by people now.” The funny thing is he wrote that about what we now think of as Classic Sanskrit. People have not moved on from thinking about Classical Sanskrit in that way, and it’s become a learning tool, but –

Gretchen: We should all just be speaking Classical Sanskrit.

Lauren: The motivation is exactly the same motivation we use in a descriptive grammar now. It’s not about setting out the rules of a language and how it has to work, it reflects how a linguist has analysed that people are using that system.

Gretchen: I think that’s one of the things that comes up when we talk about a grammar is, particularly because grammar in the Western tradition is associated with Latin, and, okay, you’re learning about the grammar of English only so that you can translation Latin into English better rather than learning about the grammar of English as an object of its own study. This translates into, “Okay, well, what if we made the grammar of English more like Latin because that would obviously be better.” That’s where this secondary meaning of “grammar” as, you know, “Thou shalt not split an infinitive,” does – because in Latin an infinitive is all just one word. You can’t split it. It’s just one word.

Lauren: You can’t split it.

Gretchen: This idea that grammar is a tool to beat people over the head with comes from this, “Well, you’ve got to learn this language in school because this is how you’re gonna access all these classical texts that you are supposed to access, and you need to do it a certain way because it’s dead now, and it’s not evolving, and so you’re just learning to do this very particular thing,” that’s where this additional connotation of grammar as a stick to beat people over the head with comes in.

Lauren: That’s that very Latin tradition that we still have.

Gretchen: And it’s not only English that had a grammar as a tool to stay in touch with a lost golden age. This is also what they were doing in ancient Chinese of like, here’s this older thing. One of the other interesting things that I learned about the Chinese grammatical tradition, in particular with the writing system – because the writing system in Chinese can obscure different pronunciations – you could have a poem that you could still read in the written sense that’s very old but, for a modern reader, it doesn’t necessarily rhyme. At a certain point, when they were doing more historical linguistics, they realised, “Oh, this poem actually rhymed back in the day.” The pronunciation has changed so much that we weren’t really thinking about it because the characters look the same, but it actually used to rhyme, which sometimes shows up when you’re reading Shakespeare or something, and it’s got “thrown” and “drown” or something. Like, “Wait, those probably were supposed to rhyme based on where they are in this poem.” You can use that to reconstruct what was going on.

Lauren: It can feel a bit anxiety-provoking about committing an analysis to paper because you are pinning a butterfly for a moment in time. People are still speaking the language, and it moves on. As long as you don’t think of the descriptive grammar as anything more canonical and authoritative than people’s actual intuitions, that’s an important thing to remember. Especially if you’re working with a grammar that’s more than a few generations old, it may be that the person didn’t quite capture what people were doing. It may be that the language has changed again.

Gretchen: Another thing that I found really interesting about “What are the ideas that people were thinking about at the time” – so this is from Grammar West to East again. The author points out that when Chinese characters first became known in Europe, it was late 16th Century and, in Europe, for unrelated reasons, the idea of a universal language was the hot philosophical topic. You had people like John Wilkins, who ultimately created Roget’s Thesaurus, but he was really just trying to make a universal taxonomy for understanding the world, he ended up making quite a nice thesaurus but not with making a universal way of understanding the world. What was actually going on in China at the time was that Classical Chinese was a scholarly and diplomatic lingua franca of the East Asian region. It was acquired as a learned language in the different parts of those regions. The Chinese words were given a local pronunciation. So, children in different parts of China would learn to read using a literary register of the local dialect, and there wasn’t the idea of a standard spoken language for the whole country. That’s a modern innovation. This is a situation that was a lot like Latin in Europe at the time. But Europe, you know, “Oh, you learn Latin in school so that you can do the literary thing.” But European scholars misunderstood the situation and thought that this meant that Chinese characters were interpretable by speakers of any language without them being based on one language, even though they were very much based on an ancestral language of the region.

Lauren: Oh dear. And their obsession with universality that they came to this very functional but still based on a language thing. Oh dear. I see exactly where this is going. That’s not good.

Gretchen: Also, they did the same thing with the Egyptian hieroglyphs, which had not yet been deciphered yet. They were like, “Guys, we found it! We found the universal language of ideas, and it’s not tied to a particular language!”

Lauren: Not translated adds an extra air of mystery.

Gretchen: European scholars thought this was great. Francis Bacon thought this was amazing. It’s interesting to see not just, okay, here’s this thing that was going on in China at the time, which is interesting, but also, here’s how these things get reflected and refracted, whether that’s the Europeans approaching Chinese grammar as maybe this is a thing that’s universal or this Chinese grammarian, Mr Ma, looking at it and saying, “Okay, how can I merge these two grammatical traditions of the full words versus the empty words?”, and then also “What if I have nouns and adjectives and stuff?”, and “How could I group them in ways that make sense for the grammar of the language?” Everyone’s bringing their own preconceived notions to this space.

Lauren: I think the descriptive grammar has really figured itself out as a genre in the 20th Century. A lot of the discussion around how to make sure people aren’t just bringing themselves to it has been to widen the scope of what gets included. One really big influence has been the idea that you need to have the grammar, but it has to be presented alongside the wordlists because the grammar just tells you the rules not which words go in which places and also a collection of texts that are broken down and translated so that people can access what’s happening in narratives. That solves a little bit of that what gets included problem.

Gretchen: Because somebody could always go back and look at the text again and say, “Well, what if I interpreted them differently or wrote this grammar differently based on what I can see here in this longer thing?”

Lauren: Yeah. “The author didn’t get around to a section on the use of particles in narratives, but there’s enough texts here I can see what’s happening.” This little trio of publications is sometimes known as the “Boasian trinity,” which sounds a little bit more pompous and religious than it actually is, but it’s part of this expanding what gets included.

Gretchen: This is after Boas, whose first name I have forgotten.

Lauren: Franz Boas.

Gretchen: Franz? Franz Boas. He was one of the early grammarians in this descriptive and comparative tradition where it’s not just, okay, every intellectual in this one country or this one society is devoting themselves to this one language but, “Oh, what if we looked at lots of languages? What if we compared them?” This goes along with the colonial project of like, “What if we went and conquered some people?”

Lauren: Yes, there’s a lot of scientific rationalism happening here.

Gretchen: This is not entirely unproblematic either. It is interesting how the forms of the grammars start shifting when it stops being this sort of seeking this one language of like, “Oh, everything descends from Greek” or “Everything descends from Sanskrit.” Even the Europeans, at a certain point, when they encountered Sanskrit, were like, “Oh, everything must descend from Sanskrit,” and said, “Okay, well, what if we realised that we can’t actually know what the first language was? This is lost in the midst of time,” and figured out “What can we know about relationships and what is the possibility space for what are different things that languages do?”

Lauren: I mean, I think it’s also worth pointing out a lot of 20th Century language description has happened to try and translate religious texts and political documents and that is a subset of problematic colonisation within the grammatical tradition.

Gretchen: The longest text that’s been written down in a lot of languages is the Bible, which has all sorts of really weird consequences when you start using those parallel texts as the input for something like machine translation because you can have machine translation systems start spitting out things that sound like religious prophecies because they’re just regurgitation versions of that Bible input, which is pretty weird.

Lauren: Such a weird consequence of a weird set of earlier decisions.

Gretchen: Exactly. Here was this earlier decision that maybe this was even a religious text that was created 100 years ago by some missionary, but it’s the longest text that’s available in this language, and the grammar is more or less accurate – and yet. It wasn’t trying to record the stories and the oral histories of the people who actually spoke that language that they cared about themselves, it was trying to introduce this foreign religion to them.

Lauren: Again, it’s one of those things that is hard to avoid and so it’s just important to be aware of when you’re looking at some grammars. They may have a lot of Christian religious texts. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the religion of the speakers so much as the religion of the person doing the documentation.

Gretchen: Going back to that theme of grammars that are made by people and sometimes people’s agendas for making a grammar is –

Lauren: A different endpoint.

Gretchen: It’s less about like, “Oh, I want to help this language be taught in schools and support its speakers in their own goals” and more “I wanna impose my goals on the speakers.”

Lauren: I think another important change that has happened across the 20th Century in terms of grammars is the increasing availability of recording equipment and, therefore, the ability to make recordings of the language as a fourth part of that three-part collection of what’s important when documenting a language.

Gretchen: There are some really interesting ancient recording technologies like the wax cylinders that were used –

Lauren: You say, “ancient,” but you mean, like, 150 years ago.

Gretchen: Yeah, not ancient compared to Paṇini.

Lauren: Not Paṇini ancient, just, it’s really that the story of the 20th Century descriptive tradition is the story of embracing these recording methods.

Gretchen: There was a really cool thing where they had these old, cracked wax cylinders, I think it was in the Smithsonian, and they couldn’t put them on a machine to read them because, obviously, the needle would stumble over the cracks. It’s kind of like a record.

Lauren: They just fall apart.

Gretchen: Picture it as a tall record with all the lines tall rather than a flat record. But it was cracked, so they couldn’t put it in the thing, and they eventually figured out a way with lasers to read the recordings. I got to hear, you know, here’s a song in this language that hasn’t been heard for 100 years because the cylinder cracked. If it’s online, I’ll try to find a link to it.

Lauren: With recording technology, early on, and even for some linguists, it’s mostly about doing recordings so you can go back and listen yourself and really identify that you’re correctly analysing structures. But I think the more exciting thing is that it lets you really observe more people using language in more natural ways. The “Can you say this?”, “Can you say that?”, “Does that sound grammatical?” way of eliciting stuff can lead to an unusual way of approaching the language, but really drawing on people singing songs and telling stories not only makes for a richer, more realistic grammatical description that allows you to see those fuzzier, more complicated bits of language, but it also means that you can make those recordings available for speakers who are interested in going back to an oral history of the language for people who might come in the future and go, “Ah, you didn’t look at the way people’s prosody goes up and down and their intonation changes in stories. I’m gonna look at that, and I have access to these recordings.” I think this is where grammars are more exciting as we integrate more of that richness of actual language and bringing the people who speak the language back into real prominence within the grammar document.

Gretchen: Yeah. Because there is a certain way of writing a grammar which is very old which just assumes that whatever bits you have about “Here’s how this language works,” that information just exists at this abstract level, and it’s not necessarily tied to particular speakers or particular communities, and saying, “Oh, it would be good to give credit to the speakers who were saying this, or to identify this is a particular way that a language is spoken in a particular region,” or “Here’s something that’s going on here.” There have been some initiatives to do things like pair people who are trying to revitalise their languages with linguists to try to understand what’s going on in some of these older grammars because they can be hard to decipher without the special training. The one that I’m familiar with is Breath of Life.

Lauren: There are the Paper and Talk Workshops in Australia as well where you’re coming full circle and making sure that you give people the tools that they need to access the materials about their own language because you can make grammars for many reasons, and we’ve discussed some of them but, at the end of the day, the most important reason to me is that speakers of a language can access the materials that were created for that language.

Gretchen: I think when we look at the multi-thousand-year-old history of making grammars and the very different sorts of questions that people had about language thousands of years ago, I find it very humbling because we can think about what are the questions that people might be asking in another thousand years, and how can we make things that would help with that?

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

Gretchen: I can be found at @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can get access to 49 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards, as well as helping keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include reduplication, Q&A with a lexicographer, and a Q&A with the two of us in honour of our 100th episode. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

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