#my ps skills do not include this BUT since i'm talking more about this wonderful man

[batfall-a]

𝙱𝚁𝚄𝙲𝙴 𝚆𝙰𝚈𝙽𝙴 + 𝙻𝚄𝙲𝙸𝚄𝚂 𝙵𝙾𝚇 𝙲𝙴𝙾 + 𝙲𝙵𝙾 𝙾𝙵 𝙵𝙾𝚇𝙰𝚁𝙺

[lemonflavoreddishsoap]

Hello!!, I saw that you were accepting requests so I wanted to ask for a LS with a S/o who is a member of a punk band!!

PS: sorry for my bad english… I'm using a translator to send this:(

Since I already kiiiind of did similar headcanons for Formaggio and Risotto, I won't include them in these headcanons, I hope that's okay!!

ADDITION IM ADDING NOW AS I FINALLY WORK ON SOME DRAFTS HOOOOOOLY SHIT AM I SORRY I'VE NEGLECTED MY DRAFTS FOR SO LONG I'm going to try to get back into a writing groove!!!!

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La Squadra with an S/O in a punk band

Illuso

He makes everyone and their grandma listen to your band. He's boasting about how good your music is, he's practically a living advertisement. If you don't want people to get sick of your band's music, please try to ask him to stop

If you're the singer of the band, he'll sometimes start singing your songs, hoping you'll start singing with him.

Hell, even if you aren't the singer, he'll do it.

Makes his way into as many concerts as he can - his stand comes in handy here as he sneaks in pretty damn easily...I mean I don't really know if he needs to but he does anyway?

Prosciutto

Music-wise, it's not exactly something you two connect on, however, he recognises talent when he sees/hears it.

And while he may not listen to your band's stuff on his own time, he will never turn down watching you practice a song or an instrument either on your own or with your band.

Your sheer concentration and skill captivates and attracts him, he loves it.

If you ask for it, he's willing to give feedback when you play him works in progress - he's very fair with his comments, never too harsh, never too soft.

Pesci

He is CONSTANTLY praising you. Number one fan all day every day, supporting your band as much as he possibly can.

I've said before that I think Pesci's music tastes are a bit of everything, so he has a good appreciation for the kind of art you make and you two can bond over music pretty easily.

He's very nervous about talking to any of your bandmates, but he always asks you to pass along compliments to them. Appreciation for everyone! aughghghg i love him

If he has the time, and you're okay with it, he loves to help with performances!!! If you need help setting ANYTHING, he is willing to help out

Also...be prepared for a very proud, mushy Pesci after any of your performances

Melone

"You've been playing together for how long? And your biggest inspirations are...?" idk why I just think he would like. Be a major contributor if you guys had like a wikipedia page or something. He's interviewing you and tippy tapping away (there's a post showing off how silly he types, I need to find it again)

He's asking about all the instruments, all the equipment - if you'd be so gracious as to possible teach him how to use any of them he will be thrilled.

He's just generally super curious about it all, he possibly asks too many questions...as in, you're wondering if he already knows the answer and just wants to listen to you talk.

Similar to Pesci, Melone spreads the appreciation all throughout your band!! No one's talent goes unnoticed to him, and in time he'd like to befriend the other members of the band.

Ghiaccio

Watching you perform does something to him. He's completely fucking silent and his eyes are GLUED on you. It's kind of scary from an outside perspective but to you it's absolutely adorable.

He's listening to your band all the time. Ghiaccio, at least in my thoughts, has such a deep passion for music and pays deep attention to how each individual in a group plays their instruments, how it all comes together to create a unique sound. Obviously, this is a million times more special for him listening to your stuff because well...it's you.

In previous headcanons, I mentioned that he blasts music into his ears when he listens as a sensory thing. With yours, he likes to close his eyes and imagine you and your band are right there.

No because now I can't stop thinking about it. Ghiaccio would love to have a musician s/o. He would love that so much holyshit?

You find him in heated arguments against random people in the comments of videos of your songs. Classic Ghiaccio.

[gggoldfinch]

Genuine questions I have about my dear Swedes, and I think you're the best with the headcanons about them.

• How were they recruited?

(I wondered about that.)

• What era are they from?

(They look old-fashioned for even the 60s, they seem to have come from a much older time considering the family photo and also the outfits and the "strangeness" they have with the 60s and America.)

MY FRIEND YOU CAME TO THE RIGHT PLACE for I am the keeper of the Elder Knowledge and the Mind-Vault of Fanon (aka I've been rotting about these guys since the ikea fam was live and kicking circa 2020 and haven't let go). I am TICKLED to finally be asked about them because they are My Guys and i love writing exorbitant amounts of information about them!!!! Especially their clothes!!! Needless to say I will not be brief, so strap in 😁

(PS Tumblr ate my first draft of this after hours of research and paragraphs of writing so I had to rewrite all of the content here from memory 🥲) (PPS I used this as an excuse to talk about their clothing for 3 hours. this is the most deranged I've been in ages ! )

First off: there is no canon information regarding either of your questions. So let's just put that out there. They are tragically underdeveloped for being potentially some of the most interesting characters on the show (or maybe i'm just biased because I prefer the Commission characters lol). Basically everything we know about them is based off inferences and vague canon implications, and everything aside from that is widely-accepted fanon that we discussed way back when + my own personal headcanons (which are basically canon to me). I might have to do some deep-diving into the tumblr archives of my old blog or my mutuals for the information I'll get into here, but all of it will be stuff I either came up with myself or bore witness to the research of & agree with.

1. How were they recruited?

Generally, the accepted theory is that the brothers were recruited young, likely after some sort of event which resulted in their first kill. From what I recall, several fandom authors (myself included) have incorporated this storyline into our own work, roughly following the same theme of capable woodsmen Axel & Otto protecting Oscar and killing someone as a result, hence inviting attention from Commission recruiters who trawl the timeline for skilled individuals.

Also, I believe it is fairly accepted within the fandom that the Commission seeks out and hires people who are down on their luck or in otherwise bad circumstances, then organizes them into employment statuses from there (office workers, hitmen, etc.). I tend to think Axel & Otto were recruited first, then Oscar was roped in later on, playing into my theory that they are triplets, just separated by large periods of time-travel.

2. What era are they from?

YIPPEEE you came to the right ! person ! because actually lowkey I kinda perpetuated the headcanon that the Swedes are Victorian-Edwardian back in the day (on a prev blog). I personally hc they were born ca. 1880-ish, with their “natural” timeline falling somewhere around 1901-1910 (Edwardian period), and picked things up from different decades along the way, as is the way of time-travel. However, I know others preferred the idea that they were from ca. 1930-1950, which is also fairy plausible.

Now, time for me to be insane:

I have a copious amount of proof that they are from the early 1900's ! based on their clothing + the photograph Axel carries. It’s also worth nothing that their clothing is visibly that of working class men, which makes it slightly more difficult to research (because the working class always gets the short end of the stick). I base most of my research & beliefs on cross-examining Edwardian photographs of workmen, as well as my own knowledge of historical fashion. I won't delve that much into their culture as Swedes and the fashion implications of that, since it honestly wasn't taken seriously enough in canon to be visible past Otto's haircut.

Proof in their regular clothing:

Trousers: Otto’s high-waisted trousers & suspenders are Edwardian, down to the very patterning. Oscar’s too, to a less obvious extent. It’s also worth noting that according to bts images, Axel also wears suspenders. His pants with the laces at the shins are baffling though...

Shirts: Oscar's turtleneck isn't not Edwardian; men have been wearing collared knit shirts like that as winter wear for a long time. Otto's green shirt, though it has those odd clasps, is somewhat reminiscent of arrow collar shirts worn in the Edwardian period. I have also found proof of three-button wool undershirts similar in style to Axel's henley, though these were more popular towards the 20's

Shoes: While Otto and Oscar's steel-toed boots weren't invented until the 1930's, Axel's boots are at least somewhat more reminiscent of those worn by workmen in the 10's. Though, the side zip and weird flap are… not.

Outerwear: Axel's blue vest is more akin to a double-breasted waistcoat, though it doesn't have lapels and the buttons are too large; it is... an outlier. Likewise, his canvas duster has a zipper and no lapels, and the pattern cut of it makes me think it's fairly modern, just like Oscar's canvas/corduroy jacket which is practically a Carhartt. Oscar's vest is baffling bc it looks different in every shot of it I analyze. Otto's trench coat is the oldest style. (Fun fact, the modern zipper was invented by a Swede in 1913)

Misc: The union suit was popularized in the 1860's (as women's wear, actually!), so Otto's wearing of it would be believable for the period. All their clothes are patched up, implying years of wear and tear.

Misc Pt 2; Weaponry: Though ofc I'm a gun girl, I have already spent 3 hours writing about clothes and cannot make myself research weird weapons. So if you're interested in their guns, PLEASE read this post by my old fandom pal!!! It's much a more intelligent and in-depth analysis than I can manage rn, and also discusses the context of weaponry within the Commission.

Proof in the photograph:

They're really a ragtag crew, which makes it hard to date any of their garments. Here's some things I've noted though:

Headwear: Newsboy caps (which are what Oscar and Axel are wearing) were at their peak around the late 1910s, especially with working class men. Otto's hat looks like it could be an oilskin fisherman's hat, which were popular in 1880s America, though his looks more like the later 1950's design of the hat. Additionally, workmen in the Edwardian period often wore neckerchiefs, not unlike what Oscar wears around his neck in the photo.

Shirts: Oscar appears to be wearing another knit sweater. Axel's blue shirt appears to me to have a band collar, which was a style popular in the 10's (from what I can tell one of Otto's shirts also has a band collar). Beneath that, his undershirt (likely linen) has a string closure, which was popular even earlier than the Victorian era

The Woman (mother? grandmother?): Historically, older women tended to wear headscarves/ head coverings. The style of her dress/smock/apron is hard to determine because of its concealment beneath her cardigan. She's got a sick rifle tho

Misc: Oscar's workman's gloves aren't inaccurate; leather gloves like that were worn in the Victorian era. So have leather belts. Like I said earlier, from what I can tell from my cursory search (after sifting thru dubious "Viking" hairstyles), Otto is sporting a fairly historically/culturally accurate he-man haircut from the Nordic area. Oscar's hair is the second-most historically relevant, as most men in the Victorian/Edwardian era had short, groomed hairstyles (though perhaps his is a little messier than usual). Axel is the outlier here with a modern slick-back.

ANYWAYYYYYYYYY

yeah. yeah. if you couldn't tell I am. fucking insane ? about them ?

since you're still here, you survived this long, have some bts stuff I dragged from the trenches:

[study-like-you-mean-it]

hello!! this is absurdly specific but i'm a first year linguistics undergraduate at cambridge this year, and i was wondering if you have any insights into the exam for li2 (structures and meanings) - i'm currently pretty disheartened after receiving a supervisor report which noted in one line that i was hard-working, great to teach, and my technical work for syntax was generally good, but then spent the rest of the report talking about all the ways the syntax essay i wrote was terrible! is essay-writing an important part of the exam for this paper? i can't currently access any past papers to find out, and it'd be helpful to know if this is something which i can put behind me and move on with my life, or whether i need to stick with it and figure out the key to writing syntax essays!

Hello!! These are my favourite kind of asks to receive I love helping first year Cam linguists 😍

Firstly, there is no reason to worry about supo reports from first term! My first supo reports were kind of similar, and often it takes more than 8 weeks to get used to the Cambridge essay style (frankly, it took me until the end of second year Lent term for it to really click- I got a pretty ok 2.i in first year and just treated the whole degree as progression towards peaking in third year which I did)

Full disclosure, I had exactly the same issues with Li2. I was great at the trees and getting how the things fit together, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to write the essays. I also did my first year entirely pre-pandemic, so this advice may not be entirely up-to-date with the new exam format (we voted to keep the pandemic-style assessment of two week exams where you can choose which order to hand in papers because it's SO much better than doing it all from memory and is a much fairer assessment of your research skills and intelligence)

When I went through all the past papers that I practiced on before my exam, every single one asked a question about X-bar versus PS-rules, so I just made sure I had a really strong response on that and prayed it would come up in the exam (spoiler- it did, and there's only so many foundational syntax questions you can ask so chances are it'll come up). If you have new-format exams you won't need to memorise it, but it'll help a lot if you have a really strong set of points that you can weave together to write a good essay on it- don't be afraid to ask your supervisor for help, because the worst that they can say is no!! For genuine help, and I'm sure John has tried to get everyone to take a look at this already, the essay writing toolkit can be quite useful. My way of improving was having the balls to ask the people in my supo groups who were better than me if I could have a look at their essays, which I did all the way up to final year- completely terrifying and intimidating, but everyone wants academic validation and so is normally completely happy to help you out. Overall, though, especially this term, just practicing writing essays for supervisions will help more than anything!

To answer your question properly, no- none of the first year papers are majority essays. When you get on to Part IIA/IIB, you'll get entirely essay papers (I think Phonology was the only one that I had that had a data question, not including the Phonetics practicals), but for first year you get data/technical questions (so like "draw trees for these structures" and "point out any elements of semantic or pragmatic interest" for Li2). My college kid said that during the pandemic she only had one of these plus an essay (but this was when we were all being prepped for traditional exams and the we got locked down), and pre-pandemic I had two plus an essay, so I'm not sure what they're doing now in terms of the number of data questions since everyone's being prepped for the new format, but the papers will all be at least 50% data, if not 67%. Remember also that you have a full 6 weeks in Easter term to practice essay writing and style- for the new format for the time being, just make sure everything you're reading and learning is organised well so you can access it during the exam, and make sure you've got a list of extra reading that you can sprinkle in to evaluate or use as counterpoints to the traditional stuff (I can't be massively useful for syntax bc I firmly left that in first year but I have some good stuff particularly for phonetics!) And general tip- if you buckle down to revise for the whole of the Easter holidays, you'll run out of stuff to do and you'll lose motivation when it matters most- unlike school the 'study leave' part is the whole term, so give yourself a break over Easter!!

If you can't find the past papers on Moodle, they're in the Faculty of MML Past Papers rather than on the individual Moodle pages, if that helps. If they've not made them available yet I can try and dig up some old questions for you from my folders!!

Also, as a final point- I think if you enjoy the technical work of Li2 but not the rest so much, don't do Li9- even the true syntacticians generally disliked it (some wrote syntax dissertations but that was a minority of the li9-takers). I was in that position, and was considering Li9, and thankfully didn't take it- I realised that because my strengths were in this kind of technical side, my best fits were phonetics, computational, and semantics/pragmatics. Li9 is suuuuper theoretical and complicated and Li2 syntax is enough to understand the syntax needed for any other field (e.g. computational or psychology).

(I did Li1/2/3/4/5 (general ling in IIB)/6 (phonetics)/7 (phonology)/10 (semprag)/16 (psych)/18 (computational) and Fr13 (like Li4 but for French) over the course of my undergrad, did my diss on the phonetics of empathetic speech, and now I'm a computational phonetician looking specifically at sincerity detection in empathetic speech using machine learning- much more sciency than theoretical syntax and much more grounded in practical work (although I chose to add in bits of semprag because I'm super into the philosophy/semantics/pragmatics of emotions in speech)- if you have any questions on the papers I did or anything more generally, do ask! I'm always willing to help out 😊)

Hope this helped a bit!

(also, I'm no pro at syntax, but I wrote hundreds of essays over the course of my degree, so I can take a look if you need help with structure and stuff! dm me and I can give you my crsid)