#semantic maps

[linguisticillustrations]

Table with the partinioning of the TREE-WOOD-FOREST semantic domain.

Georgakopoulos, Thanasis & Stéphane Polis. 2018. The semantic map model: State of the art and future avenues for linguistic research. Language and Linguistics Compass 12(2). e12270. https://doi.org/10.1111/lnc3.12270.

[linguisticdiscovery]

The many senses of run

How do you define the word run? You probably think of something like ‘fast pedestrian motion’, but what about the use of run in these examples? There are three boats that run from the mainland to the Island On my way to the elevator, I ran into Pete the bench, which numerous times rebuked the Attorney General for letting his witnesses run on The tears ran down my face Colors on the towels…

[anxiousapplepie]

And because it's New Years eve with only a few hours left of Australian 2024, might as well treat myself and upload some Researcher!Sif concept art too!

[reengeen]

Planning

(click for better quality + sketch under the cut)

I ramble in the tags btw :D

[processes]

“diverse christianity”

are you fucking….

Religious Diversity Across the USA

[rachelchinouriris]

currently debating if i should use semantic mapping or the frayer model to teach vocabulary to the 4th grade class

[adventism-atheism-orthodoxy-me]

Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski

"A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

One day, Korzybski was giving a lecture to a group of students, and he interrupted the lesson suddenly in order to retrieve a packet of biscuits, wrapped in white paper, from his briefcase. He muttered that he just had to eat something, and he asked the students on the seats in the front row if they would also like a biscuit. A few students took a biscuit. "Nice biscuit, don't you think," said Korzybski, while he took a second one. The students were chewing vigorously. Then he tore the white paper from the biscuits, in order to reveal the original packaging. On it was a big picture of a dog's head and the words "Dog Cookies." The students looked at the package, and were shocked. Two of them wanted to vomit, put their hands in front of their mouths, and ran out of the lecture hall to the toilet. "You see," Korzybski remarked, "I have just demonstrated that people don't just eat food, but also words, and that the taste of the former is often outdone by the taste of the latter."

-- R. Diekstra, Haarlemmer Dagblad, 1993, cited by L. Derks & J. Hollander, Essenties van NLP (Utrecht: Servire, 1996), p. 58.

[inflagrante-delicatessen]

me: [gets degree in linguistics then proceeds to only use it for the increasingly rare online baby fight, word crimes, and creating The Horrors]

also me: hehehe puns

[maniculum]

Medieval Scorpions Effortpost

So yesterday I reblogged this post featuring an 11th-century depiction of the Apocalypse Locusts from Revelations, noting the following incongruity as another medieval scorpion issue:

The artist, as you can see, has interpreted "tails like scorpions" as meaning "glue cheerful-looking snakes to their butts".

Anyway, it occurred to me that the medieval scorpion thing might not be as widely known as I think it is, and that Tumblr would probably enjoy knowing about it if it isn't known already. So, finding myself unable to focus on the research I'm supposed to be doing, I decided to write about this instead. I'll just go ahead and put a cut here.

As we can see in the image above, at least one artist out there thought a "scorpion" was a type of snake. Which makes it difficult to draw "tails like scorpions", because a snake's tail is not that distinctive or menacing (maybe rattlesnakes, but they don't have those outside the Americas). So they interpreted "tails like scorpions" as "the tail looks like a whole snake complete with head".

Let me tell you. This is not a problem unique to this illustration.

See, people throughout medieval Europe were aware of scorpions. As just alluded to, they are mentioned in the Bible, and if the people producing manuscripts in medieval Europe knew one thing, it was Stuff In Bible. They're also in the Zodiac, which medieval Europe had inherited through classical sources. However, let's take a look at this map:

That's Wikipedia's map of the native range of the Scorpiones order, i.e., all scorpion species. You may notice something -- the range just stops at a certain northern latitude. Pretty much all of northern Europe is scorpion-free. If you lived in the north half of Europe, odds were good you had never seen a scorpion in your life. But if you were literate or educated at all, or you knew they were a thing, because you'd almost certainly run across them being mentioned in texts from farther south. And those texts wouldn't bother to explain what a scorpion was, of course -- everyone knows scorpions, right? When was the last time you stopped to explain What Is Spiders?

So medieval writers and artists in northern Europe were kind of stuck. There was all this scorpion imagery and metaphor in the texts they liked to work from, but they didn't really know what a scorpion was. Writers could kind of work around it (there's a lot of "oh, it's a venomous creature, moving on"), but sometimes they felt the need to break it down better. For this, of course, they'd have to refer to a bestiary -- but due to Bestiary Telephone and the persistent need of bestiary authors to turn animals into allegories, one of the only visual details you got on scorpions was that they... had a beautiful face, which they used to distract people in order to sting them.

And look. I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum, but I would say that a scorpion's face has significant aesthetic appeal only for a fairly small segment of the population. I'm sure you could get an entomologist to rhapsodize about it a bit, but your average person on the street will not be entranced by the face of a scorpion. So this did not help the medieval Europeans in figuring out how to depict scorpions. There was also some semantic confusion -- see, in some languages (such as Old and Middle English), "worm" could be a general term for very small animals of any kind. But it also could mean "serpent".* So there were some, like our artist at the top of the post, who were pretty sure a scorpion was a snake. This was probably helped along by the fact that "venomous" was one of the only things everyone knew about them, and hey, snakes are venomous. Also, Pliny the Elder had floated the idea that there were scorpions in Africa that could fly, and at least one author (13th-century monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus) therefore suggested that they had feathers. I don't see that last one coming up much, I just share it because it's funny to me.

*English eventually resolved this by borrowing the Latin vermin for very small animals, using the specialized spelling wyrm for big impressive mythical-type serpents, and sticking with the more specific snake for normal serpents.

Some authors, like the anonymous author of the Ancrene Wisse, therefore suggested that a scorpion was a snake with a woman's face and a stinging tail. (Everyone seemed to be on the same page with regards to the fact that the sting was in the tail, which is in fact probably the most recognizable aspect of scorpions, so good job there.) However, while authors could avoid this problem, visual artists could not. And if you were illustrating a bestiary or a calendar, including a scorpion was not optional. So they had to take a shot at what this thing looked like.

And so, after this way-too-long explanation, the thing you're probably here for: inaccurate medieval drawings of scorpions. (There are of course accurate medieval drawings of scorpions, from artists who lived in the southern part of Europe and/or visited places where scorpions lived; I'm just not showing you those.) And if you find yourself wondering, "how sure are you that that's meant to be a scorpion?" -- all of these are either from bestiaries or from calendars that include zodiac illustrations.

11th-century England, MS Arundel 60. (Be honest, without the rest of this post, if I had asked you to guess what animal this was supposed to be, would you have ever guessed “scorpion”?)

12th-century Germany, "Psalter of Henry the Lion". (Looks a bit undercooked. Kind of fetal.)

12th-century France, Peter Lombard's Sententiae. (Very colorful, itsy bitsy claws, what is happening with that tail?)

12th-century England, "The Shaftesbury Psalter". (So a scorpion is some sort of wyvern with a face like a duck, correct?)

13th-century France, Thomas de Cantimpré's Liber de natura rerum. (I’d give them credit for the silhouette not being that far off, but there’s a certain bestiary style where all the animals kind of look like that. Also note how few of these have claws.)

13th-century England, "The Bodley Bestiary". (Mischievous flying squirrel impales local man’s hand, local man fails to notice.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (A scorpion is definitely either a mouse or a fish. Either way it has six legs.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Wait, no, it’s a baby theropod, and it has two legs. (Yes, this is the same manuscript, that’s not an error, this artist did four scorpions and no two are the same.))

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Actually it’s a lizard with tiny ears and it has four legs.)

13th-century England, Harley MS 3244. (Now that we’re at the big fancy illustration, I think I’ve got it — it’s like that last one, but two legs, longer ears, and a less goofy face. Also I’ve decided it’s not pink anymore, I think that was the main problem.)

13th-century England, MS Kk.4.25. (A scorpion is a flat crocodile with a bear’s head.)

13th-century England, "The Huth Psalter". (Wyvern but baby! Does not seem to be enjoying biting its own tail.)

13th-century England, MS Royal 1 D X. (This triangular-headed gentlecreature gets the award for “closest guess at correct limb configuration”. If two of those were claws, I might actually believe this artist had seen a scorpion before, or at least a picture of one.)

13th-century England, "The Westminster Psalter". (A scorpion is the offspring of a wyvern and a fawn.)

13th-century England, "The Rutland Psalter". (Too many legs! Pull back! Pull back!)

13th or 14th-century France, Bestiaire d'amour rimé. (This is very similar to the fawn-wyvern, but putting it in an actual Scene makes it even more obvious that you’re just guessing.)

14th-century Netherlands, Jacob van Maerlant's Der Naturen Bloeme. (More top-down six-legged guys that look too furry to be arthropods.)

14th-century Germany, MS Additional 22413. (That is clearly a turtle.)

14th-century France, Matfres Eymengau de Beziers's Breviari d'amor. (Who came up with that head shape and what was their deal?)

15th-century England, "Bestiary of Ann Walsh". (Screw it, a scorpion is a big lizard that glares at you for trying to make me draw things I don’t know about.)

I've spent way too much time on this now. End of post, thank you to anyone who got all the way down here.

[prokopetz]

"Turn-based roguelikes going graphical is bad because old school ASCII user interfaces are so much more transparent and accessible" yeah, I love guessing which of three or four completely different things a given ASCII character represents this time. Having the screen transform unrecognisably between one turn and the next and trying to figure out what the fuck just happened by combing through a log file which somehow manages to be both cryptically terse and exhaustingly verbose at the exact same time is fun and enriching. Being forced to choose between navigating a menu system that puts hyper-specific commands you will literally never use at the top level while nesting commands you'll be using constantly four layers deep, and resorting to non-rebindable hotkeys whose semantic mappings were evidently designed by someone whose native language is Klingon? Genuinely the highlight of my day.

[linguisticillustrations]

A semantic map of the knowledge domain - different types of knowing/not knowing. Figure 1.2 on page 9 in:

Sjöberg, Anna. 2023. Knowledge predication: A semantic typology. Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University. https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-221698.

[mostlyghostly42]

language learning websites list

Endonym Map: World Map of Country Names in Their Local Languages 

Dropbox - linguistics - Simplify your life 

Dropbox - language textbooks - Simplify your life 

Ethnologue | Languages of the world 

Etymonline - Online Etymology Dictionary 

spanish

Spanish (Mexico) Vocabulary 

spanish_grammar.pdf 

Spanish 1/The Basics - Wikiversity 

portuguese

Portuguese Language/Introduction - Wikiversity 

Portuguese/Contents - Wikibooks, open books for an open world 

asl

Learn How to Sign - YouTube 

American Sign Language 1 - Fall 2023 

other languages

Native American Language Net: Preserving and promoting First Nations/American Indian languages 

Arabic from the Beginning - YouTube 

Urdu/Hindi language and literature: resources for study 

Learn Urdu online, Urdu language & alphabets learning | Aamozish 

translation

DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator 

World Free Translators Dictionaries Encyclopedias 

ipa/pronunciation

Interactive IPA 

IPA i-charts (2023) 

IPA Chart 

Forvo: the pronunciation dictionary. All the words in the world pronounced by native speakers 

writing systems

ScriptSource - Writing systems, computers and people 

World Writing Systems 

toki pona

Toki Pona 

sona pona

CEFR Analysis for toki pona

mun! - Learn Toki Pona!

lipu Linku

lipu pi jan Ne

lipu sona pona

sitelen sitelen

Toki Pona Dictionary

lipu lili pona

Wikipesija

lipu pi ijo pi toki pona

printable dictionary

sike pona

nasin toki pona—a good way to speak

lipu nimi

semantic spaces dictionary

toki pona | lipu pi soweli nata

Toki Pona

telo misikeke

[d0wnb4df0rf1cm3n]

Still be here in the morning?

Nikolai Lantsov x F!Reader

Summary: You drive Nikolai wild. You want him to see you, to see you, but you're scared. If you give in to your desires and you let yourself fall, will he still be there in the morning?

Word Count: 2.9K

Warnings: SMUTTY SMUT, LOTS OF SMUT, lots of teasing, a lil bit of angst, and some fluff. Also the reader's nickname is Mouse - but it's not a size thing, it's an occupation thing *thumbs up emoji*

Author's Note: This started off as a smut thing but became a whole story thing so enjoy ;D

It was safe to say you drove Nikolai wild. You hardly listened to his rules, questioning your Captain in his every decision and driving him crazy with your constant bickering. You knew that you could, you were Nikolai's star crewmate and he would never risk firing you. No one was a better diplomat, marksman, or sailor - except perhaps Nikolai himself. You were a good detective too - you were the only one of his crew to have figured out his true identity.

You had teased him about it on a brief visit to West Ravka - an old family painting had given it all away.

"You'll never guess what I found, Cap." You said, waltzing into his quarters and jumping up onto his desk. He tilted his face up to you - indicating that he was listening - but kept his eyes focused on the maps laid in front of him, studying new routes out west. You were only docked in Os Kervo to collect a round of new supplies - enough to keep you afloat to Novyi Zem or even further.

"Tell me, Mouse. What have you found that is so worth sharing that you break into my quarters?" He used the affectionate nickname you had picked up since joining the crew - you were quiet, almost undetectable when need by. Of course, Nikolai knew how annoying and boisterous you could get when you were comfortable. Still, the nickname had stuck. In fact, you were almost certain that aside from Nikolai, and the twins, no one could remember your true name. It didn't matter. You had moved on from that life.

"Well, Tolya and I spent most of our afternoon in the galleries in Os Kervo-"

"-leaving Tamar to collect the supplies? Yes, I heard about that. Just because you keep us out of trouble with the law does not mean that you get to delegate all your duties to someone else. We work together, Mouse, you'd do well to remember it."

"Yes, yes, she said she was fine with it. Something about getting Tolya's poetic arse off her back for a few hours," Nikolai chuckled at that, "And anyway, the interesting thing is what I found in the galleries. You see, despite the Fold, West Ravka is still a united nation-"

"I'm aware."

"Stop interrupting me!" You swatted him with a loose piece of paper on his desk, "It's rude. You'd have thought that you had some manners - what with your pretentious nature."

"Is there a point to this, Mouse? Because I suggest you get there soon."

"Well, what I was saying was, I came across a portrait. A new one - well, sort of. It had the King - Pyotr, that is - and his wife, and their sons. Did you know that they had 2? I had simply forgotten." A cheeky grin had snuck onto your face and Nikolai was now looking directly at you. You leaned in close to his ear, "I'd say they did the younger son a disservice, wouldn't you? Your Highness?"

Nikolai moved swiftly, clamping his hand down over your mouth. "Does Tolya know?"

You move his hand off your mouth, "Of course not. I'm not one to be going around spreading rumours that are not mine to spread."

"Good. And you're going to keep it that way. Especially if you want to stay on this ship."

"Oh, Nikolai. You're not going to fire me. You won't risk having the biggest threat to your secret not on your side. I'm a diplomat - I know how intimidation works," Nikolai fixes you with a stare, "Ok, I was a diplomat, whatever. Semantics. Point is, you're not going to fire me. Your secrecy depends on it."

After that day, your teasing had increased ten-fold and Nikolai's patience with you had decreased just as much. He hardly spoke to you if he didn't have orders to give you. And it pissed you off.

To be perfectly honest, you made his blood boil. Nikolai didn't know what it was about you, but you knowing who he was had tipped him over the edge. He thought that he was untraceable - a new persona, a new look. He'd made a point to never dock in Ravka - but needs must and there was no way they'd survive a trip to Kerch. They'd been running on fumes. To be honest, the trip had gone better than expected. But of all the people to find out, it just had to be you. He stewed alone in his chambers. They were currently in Novyi Zem, planning to head further west. Ravka had no power further west than Novyi Zem, a notion which many - including you - were grateful for.

He'd never taken the time to understand what you were running from - almost everyone in his crew was running from some demon, but you had never once let slip who you were before you joined Sturmhond's crew. He knew that you were a diplomat of some kind and that you were half-Ravkan, but beyond that, you were a mystery to him. Perhaps that's what pissed him off. That you knew exactly who he was and who he had been and he knew nothing about you.

A knock came at his door. Who the fuck could that be? To his knowledge, everyone was out partying in the taverns. Who could resist a peaceful night out when you spent every other night on a ship sailing in the middle of an ocean? Nikolai could. And so could this mystery person apparently. Nikolai opened his door before the guest knock again, groaning when he caught sight of who it was. You were standing at his door - coat and boots discarded and your shirt haphazardly untied. You pushed past him and made yourself comfortable in his chair, smiling as he ran a hand over his face.

"Awhh, don't look too happy to see me, Sturmhond. Or should I say, Nikolai?" You'd taken to teasing him in the privacy of his room, where you were sure no one could hear you.

"What do you want, Mouse?"

"I just wanted to see how my dear Majesty was holding up. It has been a rough week for us all."

"Cut the bullshit. I know you're here to piss me off. Not tonight, Mouse. Please."

"Ooh. I like it when you beg. Do it again." You grinned at him. You knew you were getting under his skin.

"I said not tonight. Get out, Mouse. Go piss off some drunkard in a tavern." Nikolai said, nearly pushing you out of the door. "Maybe he can fuck the attitude out of you," he whispered under his breath.

"Make me."

"I'm sorry, what?" Nikolai said, turning around to face you again.

"I said, make me, Lantsov."

"I told you to stop fucking using that name," Nikolai growled, pushing you up against the wall, his arm pushing under your boob. You flushed pink, heat pooling in your stomach.

Nikolai grinned, "Oh, I see." He looked you up and down, scanning your figure. You could feel your underwear soak with every second of his gaze.

"What do you see, Captain? Need me to get you a spyglass. Could help you-" You were cut off by Nikolai's lips on yours. They were soft, gentle, and yet demanding at the same time. It was nice. This was nice.

"Is that what you wanted, Mouse? Attention from your Captain?" The honourific felt dirty coming from his mouth. You felt the desire to push him further - to piss him off until he gave you what you wanted. What you needed.

"Are you sure it's not what you wanted Captain? You seem to be a lot more excited by this than I am."

Nikolai nearly growled at that, attaching his lips to yours again, before slipping your belt off. He slipped his hands down to your core, feeling the wetness and smirking.

"Not as excited as me, huh?" He rubbed a circle around your clit and watched your defenses crumble. You grabbed a fistful of his jacket in your hand as your hips bucked away from him.

Nikolai lifted you up easily, depositing you on his desk, "I wanted to fuck you that day. When you hopped up on this desk and threatened me the first time. Should've done it. Should've shown you exactly who the boss is around here."

He grabbed the small knife he kept in his breast pocket off the desk and flicked it open. You gasped. Nikolai grazed the knife against the outside of your hip, slicing cleanly through your underwear. You were glad you'd taken off your stays earlier - you weren't sure if you could survive him ruining your most comfortable stays.

He placed a gentle kiss on your throat before pulling your shirt off. He gazed at you, momentarily starstruck, before latching his mouth onto your nipple. A hand came up to toy with the other, and you dissolved into a moaning mess.

He pulled away from your nipple to grin at your state. You looked at him breathlessly, grinning, "Is that all you've got, Lantsov."

His stare turned dark. He dove down and buried himself in your pussy. He licked and nipped, flicking your clit with his tongue. He played you like a well-tuned instrument. He fucked your hole with his tongue - alternating between stroking your walls with his tongue and sucking on your clit.

Your orgasm washed over you unexpectedly, sending waves of pleasure through your veins. You clamped your thighs around Nikolai's head, throwing your head back as you cried out.

Nikolai lifted his head up, eyes glinting dangerously, wetness smeared all around his lips. He looked devious. In that moment, he was not Nikolai Lantsov, spare to the Lantsov name, but Sturmhond, masterful privateer, Captain of Volkvolny. You loved him for it.

"You've caused me a lot of trouble, Mouse."

"What are you going to do about it?" You bit your lip, hiding a smirk.

He threw his coat off, carrying you towards his bed. You were lucky that no one else was on board - if they heard what was going on you'd never live it down.

Nikolai laid you on the bed, stripping his clothes off at extraordinary speed. He was quickly inside you, eliciting whimpers from you at every movement. He gave you a moment to adjust before he started to thrust. His hips snapped into you at an ungodly pace and it was all that you could do to not fall apart on his cock.

Nikolai grinned at your silence, his eyes scanning over you. Your face was blissed out, eyes rolling to the back of your head every so often. Sweat glistened on your skin, as you rocked forwards at the force of his every thrust. He couldn't help the small praises that fell from his lips as you moaned lowly.

"Look at you, so fucking beautiful under me, spread out for me like a whore. That's what you are, my beautiful little whore." You moaned at the filth dripping out of his mouth, "What's wrong, sweetheart? Have I fucked the little mouse stupid? No words left to taunt me now, huh?" You moaned softly, your mouth almost stuck in the shape of an 'O'. "Maybe I should do this more often, keep you quiet for longer." You nodded your head, head too foggy to come up with another smart-ass response.

Your second and third orgasms crashed over you in quick succession - Nikolai clamped his hand over your mouth as you screamed 'Nikolai' over and over again. He promised that next time he'd fuck that name out of your brain, before pulling out and cumming all over your chest.

You lay on his bed - dazed from the intense fucking you just received. You were surprised to find yourself alone in Nikolai's bed - he'd disappeared moments after cumming. He'd said something but you were still coming down from your last high when he moved away. You began to spiral. Of course, he was only fucking you to teach you a lesson - why else would he be interested in you? You idiot! He's the prince of fucking Ravka and the Captain of this ship. What do you have that would interest him, apart from your bratty mouth and attitude? He said it himself - the attitude pissed him off.

You were startled when something cold made contact with your chest. You looked up to find Nikolai with something in his hand - a wet washcloth, maybe? - and a sheepish grin on his face. He was still naked, his hair still tousled and his face still flushed. An involuntary beam broke out across your face. He didn't leave you after all.

Nikolai was taken by surprise at the tears that gathered on your lash line. He pulled you up into his chest when you were clean, sitting on the edge of his bed with you held tightly in his arms.

"Hey, hey, hey." He said, drawing mindless shapes on your back as tears streamed down your face, "What's wrong? Did I hurt you?" He was confused - surely, if he hurt you, you wouldn't be seeking comfort in him.

His heart slowed slightly when you shook your head, but the confusion remained.

"Talk to me, Mouse. What's going on in that pretty little head of yours?"

"It's stupid."

"It's not. If it matters to you, then it matters to me. Tell me, whatever it is, I'll fix it." Another wave of emotion washed over you. You climbed into his lap and he wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into his chest.

"I thought you were mad." You whispered quietly, almost hoping he wouldn't hear you and that he would let it go.

"Why would I be mad?"

"You left." You shrugged, "You left and I thought you were gone for good." He pressed a kiss to your temple and pulled your head into his chest.

"Oh, Mouse. For all your genius, you are oblivious." You looked up at him, confused. "I love you, Mouse. I always have." You shook your head, "What?"

"You're just saying that." You said, tears filling your lash line again as you tried to pull away, "You're just saying that 'cause you fucked me and you don't want me to leave." You tried to move out of his arms but he held you firmly. You hit his chest, trying to force yourself off him, but he stood his ground. Eventually, you just melted into his arms - he held you as you cried, hands stroking your hair soothingly.

You calmed down slowly, chest heaving as you tried to replenish your lungs. You stayed relaxed in his arms. He laid his head on top of yours. "Wanna tell me what that was about?"

You shook your head.

"Do you trust me?"

You nodded your head.

"Do you trust me enough to believe me when I say I love you?"

You hesitated.

"Well, we've found our problem."

"You don't love me."

"How do you know? You been inside my head? Pretty sure even Grisha can't do that." You chuckled.

"You hate me. You can't even look at me - let alone talk to me for long enough to fall in love with me."

"I can't look at you because if I start looking I'll never look away. I can't talk to you because I look like a fool every time I try and string two words together in front of you. Ask Tolya - he'll tell you how hopelessly in love with you I am. And for someone who's not interested in romance, he's a fucking hopeless romantic." His words involuntarily brought a smile onto your face.

You looked into his eyes, "You're sure you love me?"

"Honey, you drive me wild."

You nestled into his arms, and he leaned you both back onto the bed. Your head hit his pillow and suddenly you're surrounded by him. His arms wrap around you tightly, his pillow smells like him, his face is right next to yours. It's nice. Comforting.

You looked up into his face, studying his features while he slept. He was pretty - objectively. His face was long - pointy. Someone had done a terrible job of fixing his broken nose - but it seemed off at a second glance. He seemed so different than the paintings in the gallery - more difference than age alone could bring. His eyes were the giveaway - they were muddy green at first glance but under the right light and if you stared long enough, they were the same hazel green as the ones in the painting. You reached up to stroke his face. How long would this all last? How long until he wouldn't be able to play pretend anymore? How long until he had to go back to being Prince Nikolai Lantsov of Ravka? How long did you have with him in this beautiful bubble that you had created? You could already hear the rest of the crew filtering in from their nights out.

A hand came up to wrap around yours, "Sleep, Mouse. I'll still be here in the morning."

You smiled. He'd still be here in the morning.

fin.

[squidthoughts]

why doesn't shin leave?

that's the question, right? there are secondary ones, of course – why didn't she kill sabine/was she sandbagging their duel/did she intentionally perform a nonfatal stabbing/was she sent there to interact with sabine at all, or just for the map.... but really, my question at the end of ep1 was:

why is she waiting here at all?

"we've been looking for this," shin says, and that's what, an accusation? conversation-starter? she's here to talk? maybe, okay – except she's actively thieving, so what can she be expecting by sticking around but a fight? so she secures the map and she waits for sabine. to fight her. but the question is still why and in my unqualified opinion i think the answer is found back here:

"ahsoka tano's former apprentice is on lothal."

what do we know about baylan? he was a jedi, once. he witnessed the purge of his order and adapted to a life of survival – he maintains certain jedi traditions, he passes these traditions to his padawan: the braid, the traditional construction of the lightsaber, if not the crystal inside (standing mystery, though). he is nostalgic but not melancholy, connected perhaps to the more elegant and noble history of the jedi but evidently strongly opposed to assuming that title at present.

what do we know about shin? well...almost nothing. except that when baylan speaks, shin listens. she obeys unquestioningly. when morgan speaks, shin watches baylan. they are close; there is mutual trust, though clearly more dependency on shin's side. and she is likely – though not certainly – born after order 66.

i'm confident answers will be forthcoming about shin's past, but in the meantime, working with the (very!!) little we have, assuming the subtle intricacies of the shot direction and ivanna's acting are all intentional, and with the full disclaimer that im brainrotty for wolfwren......i want to answer my original question.

shin has never seen another apprentice before. beyond baylan and inquisitors (apparently), she has probably never seen another lightsaber-wielder before. and yet – her master, while scorning the label of jedi, is steeped in jedi history. he seems to be training her according to some traditional jedi principles (though...what with the mass-murder and the mercenary work, of course we don't yet know the extent of those principles), and it would follow that he would have imparted the history of the jedi as well.

baylan skoll is not a jedi. but ahsoka tano is. or, was. but the antagonist squad refers to her as a jedi, so from shin's perspective it's not just "ahsoka tano's apprentice" on lothal. she is being told there is a real, live jedi apprentice on lothal.

and the jedi are extinct.

we're into the rampant speculation part of the meta now, because what is shin thinking in this moment?

there's a green lightsaber before her – a jedi apprentice before her – or at least the former-apprentice-of-a-jedi, but shin is the apprentice-of-a-former-jedi, and at some point the semantics get in the way of the exhilaration. this is probably (again, this whole thing could get disproven in the next episode or something) the first lightsaber battle shin has ever had with someone who might actually kill her. (i assume baylan wouldn't engage in prolicide while sparring.)

this is, i think, shin at her most excited. on the one hand – it's another apprentice! it's another member of an order (her order??) that was supposed to be wiped out! this is proof of concept maybe, that shin isn't so alone! and on the other hand – this is a test, no? like, the first real test of shin's full abilities, assuming she's never dueled before? again, i wish we knew more about her motivations, but it stands to reason a padawan that powerful and devoted would constantly be looking for ways to both prove and improve herself, right?

and then. sabine. sucks.

she's sloppy and weak and doesn't use the force. she's untrained and undisciplined and slow and gets tired too quickly.

shin starts blocking with one hand. she starts sidestepping sabine's wild swings. there's no way she's is trying to kill her at this point; shin is playing with her food.

i just...think she's disappointed?? like, she was probably expecting so much more from a proper jedi's apprentice, and i think we'd need more information about her to extrapolate what exactly she wants in this scene, but i'd be willing to bet it wasn't this sub-par, former-apprentice bitch-ass fight. (love to sabine but like. she did get her clock cleaned. obviously.)

regardless, i am excited to see how this experience influences the forestfight™ we know is on the way...and also if sabine, like, feels...anything....about being skewered like a county fair corn dog?? i mean trauma or anger or fear or drive or?? bc we know shin wasn't actually trying to kill her, (this is my official stance and im sticking to it) but sabine sure doesn't!!

[absolutebl]

Hello! I saw you mention this in your post about kink in BL and I'm curious... What do you mean by "linguistically" D/s? The use of titles? Or something beyond that?

Ah yes. So the use of something like phi or hia in Thai BL can be "daddy" coded. Not exactly but similar. If the characters are making a fuss about it in the BL as part of the plot, there's probubly something significantly intimate, sexual, or kinky going on (or all 3) with the language.

Also, if an older uke character swaps down registers (so suddenly uses own name or pom for the I pronoun) that's a sign of sexual submission. See LeonPob in Don't Say No.

You'll see friends tease each other in a flirtatious way with nong as well. Bad Buddy does this. (That a demotion of the person being called nong if they aren't a nong, and sometimes even if they are.)

Similarly hyung in Korean BLs has great power when sunbae is primarily in use prior. I call this "hyung slinging" when the use of the "older brother" honorific is pretty much weaponized for intimacy.

You want to see some serious hyung slinging? Watch Semantic Error.

The way JaeYoung melts whenever SangWoo uses hyung is KEY to their romantic arc. Then during yaja time when JaeYoung gets to use the word hyung on SangWoo, it is DRIPPING with sex appeal. No accident this is right before they kiss.

It's so linguistically kinky it's practically a master class in using a register shift for seduction.

Additionally, different application in the names, registers, and formalities in KBL or JBL (esp in terms of suffixes) is also in play (or given name vs family name) to drive intimacy and sexual tension.

For JBL I go into this grappling in Minato's Laundromat. That's a younger character blatantly courting an older character and the language use goes all over the map in a push and pull of seduction and resistance.

I recently noticed in The 8th Sense (after they become boyfriends) the younger character JiHyun uses JaeWon-ssi (NAUGHTY BOY)- but not to his hyung's face, only when talking about his new lover to himself. It's VERY cute. He does slip in a "ya!"" (in front of his friend), gets reprimanded for it, but not severely. I think this is somewhat allowed in a country bumpkin, but there is definitely an extreme intimacy edge of ownership going on too.

It's a "my boyfriend can use casual language because he may be a brat but he's MY brat and he's the only one who's allowed" kind of thing.

[jellybeanium124]

Hello I'm a schengen zone resident and I love it! I cannot imagine what it would be like to have borders that are actually for keeping people in? I am young enough to not remember a time with closed borders in Europe. My parents remember it though, and they also only have bad things to say about borders. Europe isn't big. European countries aren't big. At least, not on American scales. And there are a lot of countries, some of them tiny, and a lot of goods and a lot of people constantly move between them. Economically, open borders have enabled an open European market that was beneficial for all countries in the schengen area.

And for the people? Some of us are mostly only affected if we choose to travel for a holiday (my most recent holiday had a drive through three countries and there wasn't a holdup at any borders, nobody searched my car etc). But for people living near borders? It is life-changing. There are towns and villages that had borders go right through them. You couldn't go visit your aunt or go to the bakery down your street without going over a border, which might involve fun stuff like being searched for weapons or smuggling (or just, you know, generalised border authority discrimination and harassment). And on the way back, whee, you can experience this again!

No-one who lives near a border wants it back. Even among Europeans who don't live near a border, the overwhelming majority does not want to go back to having borders. Now some people live in one country and go to work on the other side of the border. They have friends and family across the border. Nationalism is a thing that exists as a right wing movement, but, the average person you meet on the street? Hates borders and never wants nothing to do with them. Because like, borders are so stupid?

Have you been in a border region? I have been to many. And at some point, you're sitting on a big rock on an alpine summit (the Alps are one single big border region, and as such also have a long history of wars being fought to move these borders a few kilometres here or there). So you're sitting there, admiring the view, and you compare your map, and look, that mountain with the white top over there? That's France! That one there? Switzerland! You are currently in Austria, but your hike will take you to a bit of Italy later. And you sit there, in this magnificent landscape, and you're hiking through it, and there are no borders. There is nothing there in the real world that would make a border. Borders are fake! I can see this mountain, this lake, this village full of people down there! They are not far from here, I can walk there in a bit, and the trees beside the roads willl be the same, and we're in the same landscape, and these are the same people. The trees and the mountains and the humans too have been here for millions of years (or at least tens of thousands for the people, but, semantics). You want to make up a line dividing something that has been one undivided Earth and tell me everything has to stay in this made up cage? Laughable. Ridiculous. These are my neighbours over there! They have been able to go over here and we have been able to go over there (again) for longer than I have been alive now, and nothing bad has happened.

There's a lot of right wing pushing in Europe right now to close borders again, primarily to make it harder to get into the schengen space by closing the "outside borders" more tightly, but also by reinstating border controls within states, born out of racism and fear of the "evil foreigners coming to destroy our culture, steal our jobs and reap the benefits of our social welfare system", and I hate it so much. People aren't like that! The people behind the border, any border, are people like you! Sure, some of them are bad, but some people inside your country are bad too, that's the nature of humanity, some people are dicks, and it doesn't mean all the people who are not dicks can't have freedom and nice things. Thirty years of open borders have proven that crime does not go up, that people travel more, that some people choose to move to a different country when that's easy enough, for economic reasons or for personal reasons, but that most Italians actually want to stay in Italy because that's their home and people tend to feel connected to their homes. And the same is true for people all over the world, I think. People like to travel and experience different places, some people like to go out into the wide wide world and make a life somewhere far away, but most of us actually prefer living in our home places most of the time, and the global problem is that through shit like colonialism and wars and exploitation and destruction of resources for a lot of people their homes aren't safe to live anymore. Those are the problems, and borders don't solve any of them, in fact they make them worse. So maybe politicians could stop building more fucking borders with more fucking border installations intended to hurt people, and instead use all this border enforcement money to make things suck less all over the world. Build wells and school and solar panels and pass out vaccines and medicine and teach our children more about "all of us humans" and less about "those guys over there behind the fence". The guys behind the fence are like you. The average person anywhere in the world is concerned with living their own lives, they want to have a safe home and enough to eat and to spend time with their friends and to watch their children grow up. They are not out to get you. Their living behind a made up line does not increase their likelihood to be out to get you. So we should work on getting rid of the made up line, and the inequalities between the different sides of it, and of the hate and the racisms and the prejudice.

It sounds like a ridiculous dream, when you say you want a whole borderless world, when you say you dream of a world that's peaceful and where people are safe and free. But 70 years ago, Europe's countries had just fought a big war. Everything was in ruins. My grandfather talked about growing up amongst ruins and fear. But only a few decades later, people were able to travel between the countries that had been at war, and move from one to the other to work and live there, and then they basically got rid of the borders. It can be done! There is proof, I'm living in it, and so are millions of others! And I'm not going to let right wing assholes take these freedoms away from me and everyone else here because they made a boogieman out of people who come here as victims of a deeply cruel and unjust world. No, I want the freedoms I have for everyone on this planet. Fuck wars and hate and borders. Walk down this hill and meet your neighbours at the other side of the made up line!

I think more politicians should go out hiking and see the real world and the real people who live in it.

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