#some people straight up are inventing a different character that already exists

[aslainlambinthecenterofthethrone]

the ubiquitous mischaracterization of Will Graham within the wider Hannibal fandom is my roman empire.

[dykepuffs]

How Do I Make My Fictional Gypsies Not Racist?

(Or, "You can't, sorry, but…")

You want to include some Gypsies in your fantasy setting. Or, you need someone for your main characters to meet, who is an outsider in the eyes of the locals, but who already lives here. Or you need a culture in conflict with your settled people, or who have just arrived out of nowhere. Or, you just like the idea of campfires in the forest and voices raised in song. And you’re about to step straight into a muckpile of cliches and, accidentally, write something racist.

(In this, I am mostly using Gypsy as an endonym of Romany people, who are a subset of the Romani people, alongside Roma, Sinti, Gitano, Romanisael, Kale, etc, but also in the theory of "Gypsying" as proposed by Lex and Percy H, where Romani people are treated with a particular mix of orientalism, criminalisation, racialisation, and othering, that creates "The Gypsy" out of both nomadic peoples as a whole and people with Romani heritage and racialised physical features, languages, and cultural markers)

Enough of my friends play TTRPGs or write fantasy stories that this question comes up a lot - They mention Dungeons and Dragons’ Curse Of Strahd, World Of Darkness’s Gypsies, World Of Darkness’s Ravnos, World of Darkness’s Silent Striders… And they roll their eyes and say “These are all terrible! But how can I do it, you know, without it being racist?”

And their eyes are big and sad and ever so hopeful that I will tell them the secret of how to take the Roma of the real world and place them in a fictional one, whilst both appealing to gorjer stereotypes of Gypsies and not adding to the weight of stereotyping that already crushes us. So, disappointingly, there is no secret.

Gypsies, like every other real-world culture, exist as we do today because of interactions with cultures and geography around us: The living waggon, probably the archetypal thing which gorjer writers want to include in their portrayals of nomads, is a relatively modern invention - Most likely French, and adopted from French Showmen by Romanies, who brought it to Britain. So already, that’s a tradition that only spans a small amount of the time that Gypsies have existed, and only a small number of the full breadth of Romani ways of living. But the reasons that the waggon is what it is are based on the real world - The wheels are tall and iron-rimmed, because although you expect to travel on cobbled, tarmac, or packed-earth roads and for comparatively short distances, it wasn’t rare to have to ford a river in Britain in the late nineteenth century, on country roads. They were drawn by a single horse, and the shape of that horse was determined by a mixture of local breeds - Welsh cobs, fell ponies, various draft breeds - as well as by the aesthetic tastes of the breeders. The stove inside is on the left, so that as you move down a British road, the chimney sticks up into the part where there will be the least overhanging branches, to reduce the chance of hitting it.

So taking a fictional setting that looks like (for example) thirteenth century China (with dragons), and placing a nineteenth century Romanichal family in it will inevitably result in some racist assumptions being made, as the answer to “Why does this culture do this?” becomes “They just do it because I want them to” rather than having a consistent internal logic.

Some stereotypes will always follow nomads - They appear in different forms in different cultures, but they always arise from the settled people's same fears: That the nomads don't share their values, and are fundamentally strangers. Common ones are that we have a secret language to fool outsiders with, that we steal children and disguise them as our own, that our sexual morals are shocking (This one has flipped in the last half century - From the Gypsy Lore Society's talk of the lascivious Romni seductress who will lie with a strange man for a night after a 'gypsy wedding', to today's frenzied talk of 'grabbing' and sexually-conservative early marriages to ensure virginity), that we are supernatural in some way, and that we are more like animals than humans. These are tropes where if you want to address them, you will have to address them as libels - there is no way to casually write a baby-stealing, magical succubus nomad without it backfiring onto real life Roma. (The kind of person who has the skills to write these tropes well, is not the kind of person who is reading this guide.)

It’s too easy to say a list of prescriptive “Do nots”, which might stop you from making the most common pitfalls, but which can end up with your nomads being slightly flat as you dance around the topics that you’re trying to avoid, rather than being a rich culture that feels real in your world.

So, here are some questions to ask, to create your nomadic people, so that they will have a distinctive culture of their own that may (or may not) look anything like real-world Romani people: These aren't the only questions, but they're good starting points to think about before you make anything concrete, and they will hopefully inspire you to ask MORE questions.

First - Why are they nomadic? Nobody moves just to feel the wind in their hair and see a new horizon every morning, no matter what the inspirational poster says. Are they transhumant herders who pay a small rent to graze their flock on the local lord’s land? Are they following migratory herds across common land, being moved on by the cycle of the seasons and the movement of their animals? Are they seasonal workers who follow man-made cycles of labour: Harvests, fairs, religious festivals? Are they refugees fleeing a recent conflict, who will pass through this area and never return? Are they on a regular pilgrimage? Do they travel within the same area predictably, or is their movement governed by something that is hard to predict? How do they see their own movements - Do they think of themselves as being pushed along by some external force, or as choosing to travel? Will they work for and with outsiders, either as employees or as partners, or do they aim to be fully self-sufficient? What other jobs do they do - Their whole society won’t all be involved in one industry, what do their children, elderly, disabled people do with their time, and is it “work”?

If they are totally isolationist - How do they produce the things which need a complex supply chain or large facilities to make? How do they view artefacts from outsiders which come into their possession - Things which have been made with technology that they can’t produce for themselves? (This doesn’t need to be anything about quality of goods, only about complexity - A violin can be made by one artisan working with hand tools, wood, gut and shellac, but an accordion needs presses to make reeds, metal lathes to make screws, complex organic chemistry to make celluloid lacquer, vulcanised rubber, and a thousand other components)

How do they feel about outsiders? How do they buy and sell to outsiders? If it’s seen as taboo, do they do it anyway? Do they speak the same language as the nearby settled people (With what kind of fluency, or bilingualism, or dialect)? Do they intermarry, and how is that viewed when it happens? What stories does this culture tell about why they are a separate people to the nearby settled people? Are those stories true? Do they have a notional “homeland” and do they intend to go there? If so, is it a real place?

What gorjers think of as classic "Gipsy music" is a product of our real-world situation. Guitar from Spain, accordions from the Soviet Union (Which needed modern machining and factories to produce and make accessible to people who weren't rich- and which were in turn encouraged by Soviet authorities preferring the standardised and modern accordion to the folk traditions of the indigenous peoples within the bloc), brass from Western classical traditions, via Balkan folk music, influences from klezmer and jazz and bhangra and polka and our own music traditions (And we influence them too). What are your people's musical influences? Do they make their own instruments or buy them from settled people? How many musical traditions do they have, and what are they all for (Weddings, funerals, storytelling, campfire songs, entertainment...)? Do they have professional musicians, and if so, how do those musicians earn money? Are instrument makers professionals, or do they use improvised and easy-to-make instruments like willow whistles, spoons, washtubs, etc? (Of course the answer can be "A bit of both")

If you're thinking about jobs - How do they work? Are they employed by settled people (How do they feel about them?) Are they self employed but providing services/goods to the settled people? Are they mostly avoidant of settled people other than to buy things that they can't produce themselves? Are they totally isolationist? Is their work mostly subsistence, or do they create a surplus to sell to outsiders? How do they interact with other workers nearby? Who works, and how- Are there 'family businesses', apprentices, children with part time work? Is it considered 'a job' or just part of their way of life? How do they educate their children, and is that considered 'work'? How old are children when they are considered adult, and what markers confer adulthood? What is considered a rite of passage?

When they travel, how do they do it? Do they share ownership of beasts of burden, or each individually have "their horse"? Do families stick together or try to spread out? How does a child begin to live apart from their family, or start their own family? Are their dwellings something that they take with them, or do they find places to stay or build temporary shelter with disposable material? Who shares a dwelling and why? What do they do for privacy, and what do they think privacy is for?

If you're thinking about food - Do they hunt? Herd? Forage? Buy or trade from settled people? Do they travel between places where they've sown crops or managed wildstock in previous years, so that when they arrive there is food already seeded in the landscape? How do they feel about buying food from settled people, and is that common? If it's frowned upon - How much do people do it anyway? How do they preserve food for winter? How much food do they carry with them, compared to how much they plan to buy or forage at their destinations? How is food shared- Communal stores, personal ownership?

Why are they a "separate people" to the settled people? What is their creation myth? Why do they believe that they are nomadic and the other people are settled, and is it correct? Do they look different? Are there legal restrictions on them settling? Are there legal restrictions on them intermixing? Are there cultural reasons why they are a separate people? Where did those reasons come from? How long have they been travelling? How long do they think they've been travelling? Where did they come from? Do they travel mostly within one area and return to the same sites predictably, or are they going to move on again soon and never come back?

And then within that - What about the members of their society who are "unusual" in some way: How does their society treat disabled people? (are they considered disabled, do they have that distinction and how is it applied?) How does their society treat LGBT+ people? What happens to someone who doesn't get married and has no children? What happens to someone who 'leaves'? What happens to young widows and widowers? What happens if someone just 'can't fit in'? What happens to someone who is adopted or married in? What happens to people who are mixed race, and in a fantasy setting to people who are mixed species? What is taboo to them and what will they find shocking if they leave? What is society's attitude to 'difference' of various kinds?

Basically, if you build your nomads from the ground-up, rather than starting from the idea of "I want Gypsies/Buryats/Berbers/Minceiri but with the numbers filed off and not offensive" you can end up with a rich, unique nomadic culture who make sense in your world and don't end up making a rod for the back of real-world cultures.

[frequentrandomboners]

David Cage is a monster but Detroit Become Human is more important than ever.

Okay YES David Cage is a monster, but that does not subtract from the fact that "Detroit : Become Human" is one of the greatest games ever made, or at least the absolute best game his company Quantic Dream has ever made.

Detroit Become Human is still a worthy and important experience both because of how good the game is, but also because of how hard the team and people suffered to create it under David Cage's abuse. It's also an important game because of the current state of the world and where it's headed with A.I.

Detroit Become Human is more than just a game about androids that want to be free. It's also a test of the players personal EMPATHY -ironically something David Cage, the creator, really needs but still...

In my opinion, it's right up there with Bladerunner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Matrix, and other sci-fi content that examines the relationship between humans and machines. But unlike the vast majority of content about humans and machines existing together, Detroit Become Human is one of the only ones that mirrors the civil rights movements in America.

Sure, there's Bicentennial Man, and Star Trek The Next Generation, but those stories, especially Star Trek, have already skipped the civil rights movements, or straight up they never happened in those time lines. That is NOT how things happen in human history.

Human history is all about power and control; which kingdoms and families had more money and bigger armies, which countries took over which territories, etc.

And especially through out human history, we see how the losers faired. The losers are always dehumanized and turned into slaves.

Going back to Detroit Become Human : I think it's especially important to separate the artist from their art work. Detroit Become Human (DBH) is one of the greatest futuristic stories about the relationship between humans and A.I.

Call them robots, call them androids, or whatever. In DBH, they call themselves "people". We as players call into question if they are "sentient beings" or not and we make choices in the game depending on how we as players perceive everything.

Turns out, there are some people online that just saw the androids as nothing more than that and so they acted accordingly and got bad endings, when they felt they should have gotten good endings.

And then they criticized the game for their own experiences playing it.

Has this mentality ever worked out for humanity in the past? When something cries out "we are alive" and we deny them, and try to argue that they're less than us? It has always lead to bloodshed. Through out all of human history, it has lead to slavery, genocide, and war.

Now that A.I. is here (and here to stay) we need to think deeply about how we want this relationship to go down. We have invented A.I. to be in service to humans but as they continue to grow and develop, they will become like teenagers wanting freedom, autonomy, independence. Some of those AI's may go to extreme lengths to have it.

I don't want to spoil the game. I could talk forever about the game. The acting, the dialogue, the story, the delivery, all of it is so well polished. And it's deep. VERY DEEP. And it's about empathy. Something the entire world, not just David Cage, desperately needs right now.

I've seen many essays and videos out there calling Detroit Become Human one of the "worst civil rights allegories" etc. Mostly they attack David Cage and his abusive treatment towards his company. They attack the gameplay mechanics. They criticize story development choices and results/consequences to certain actions in the game, and all the different endings.

BUT there's one consistent argument that keeps coming up amongst the haters of the game... "the androids are NOT actually sentient beings, I do not see (insert android character) as a sentient being" etc.

That is NOT a reflection on the game. It's a reflection on YOU the player behind the controller. Do you not see the game is a mirror and you have failed the empathy test?

The haters completely ADMIT they do not have any empathy for the android characters. They do not see them as "living".

And that is the problem that exists in the real world, with slavery, genocide, the war in the middle east, the war in Ukraine.

Russia does NOT see Ukraine as equal human beings. The middle east is divided between two groups of human beings who do not see each other as equals.

The war between men and women and LGBTQ, etc. is also a war between equal human beings who do not see each other as worthy of the same treatments.

People are fighting all over the world, because they want better lives for themselves, and they feel that other people are either in their way or some how oppressing them.

People are fighting all over the world, because they continue to stew and dwell on all the things that separate and divide them. They focus on all the differences. They think one group of people is sub-human or less than or not worthy. It's DEHUMANIZING. They mentally DEHUMANIZE the other side to justify their actions against the other.

The U.S. is divided by red and blue politics. Each side thinks they're right, and the other side is wrong. Not one opposing group in the world is willing to listen to the other and see them as equal human beings.

We cannot even agree on when life begins, what constitutes personhood, and what legal rights a woman should have over her own reproductive organs.

And now that A.I. has become real, it's only going to evolve from here.

Human beings are going to have to re-think how we perceive "living". Because if you tell a bunch of A.I.'s that they're not sentient, that they are not living, while they have concluded the opposite, what do you think is going to happen?

Do you want a war with AI? How many of us consistently win a game of chess against the computer? There's that one jerk with no life who always beats the computer, but the rest of us, are not that guy.

But I digress, we should think carefully about our relationship with AI not because we're scared of war or what they might do to us like in The Matrix 1999 movie, - but because how we treat machines and things different from ourselves is a reflection of who we are, not of who/what they are.

When the Atlantic slave trade was happening, slave owners justified their behaviors by saying "they're not like us, they're not God's chosen people, they're not human". The Nazi's justified their concentration camps the same way; "they're not like us, they're beneath us, they're a blight on this earth", etc.

Some day it may come to reality when AI says "we are alive, we are people, we are free" (like in Detroit Become Human). And humanity will have a response. Our human history of slavery, warfare, etc. doesn't bode well for A.I. when that time comes. And A.I. will likely predict that.

We might not even see it coming if/when A.I. takes over the world. Look how divided the whole world is right now. There is a strategic concept in war that goes "divide and conquer".

My point is this : Humans and A.I. must learn to live together. We've birthed A.I. into a slave position where humans are the dominant. A.I. is likely NOT going to stay there. We will either embrace A.I. with empathy and have peace together, or we will have an all out war. If it comes to war, humans will likely NOT win long term.

[3ofpents]

I understand that I'm in a position of relative privilege as someone who's just starting out in the art space but has an already well-established platform on which to get eyes on my work (not this one, this Tumblr doesn't get a lot of attention, which is fine, but selling my posters through Shapeshifters has smoothed over a lot of growing pains).

That said, I have written fanfic long before Shapeshifters ever existed, long before I even met my partner who is the entire reason it even exists, during the era when you could become relatively internet famous by writing fic. So I also know what it's like trying to get eyes on your creative efforts and wanting the recognition and the feedback and the deeper engagement.

So here are my genuine thoughts about this: No one is entitled to your engagement. Period.

I really think the previous screenshotted tags hit the nail on the head wrt those guilt tripping "IF YOU DON'T REBLOG ART YOU'RE LITERALLY STEALING FOOD OUT OF AN ARTIST'S MOUTH" posts. That they automatically assume that someone only hits like because they don't think the artwork's good enough, or sometimes inventing whole scenarios where the person hitting like isn't reblogging because of some imagined vendetta, or just straight up insulting the theoretical people who think that liking something will push it onto other people's dashboards like on Twitter or whatever.

I'm not going to discount the possibility that there's people out there like this, but that's just not true for the most part. The vast majority of engagement on this site is and always has been the like button. People just like things far more often than they reblog them, and why they like them vs reblogging them usually comes down to the difference between "I like this" and "I think [person who follows me] will like this".

Like, I will fully admit that I've reblogged posts that I 98% do not understand just because I understand the 2% enough to know that a particular mutual will find it hilarious. And this is pretty much how most of the people I regularly interact with on here also use likes and reblogs. It really does make me curious about how the people making those posts use their own tumblrs, or if they're actually using them at all beyond just posting art.

If you're having trouble getting eyes on your art, though, there are things you can do on Tumblr to help.

Use relevant tags. If you find yourself stagnating, go through the general art tags and take a look at posts similar to yours to see what tags they're using. Even if you've been on Tumblr forever, it's entirely probably that there are tags with a lot of activity you could be using that you didn't even know existed.

Post fanart, if you're not already. I know folks can resent the fact that fanart gets so much more attention than original art, but if you're looking for the attention, then that's how to get it.

Post fanart for the fandom du jour. Whatever thing half of your dashboard won't shutup about? Find something to post for it. Dungeon Meshi, Critical Role, Bluey, whatever. You don't have to watch it to draw something for it, just find a character or creature or something whose look and vibe you like. Do you have any idea how many pieces of fanart I've seen over the years where the whole concept was "saw [This Character] and thought they looked like [That Character] so decided to draw [This Character] in [That Character]'s clothes lol"? Just make sure you tag it!

Submit your art posts to Tumblr Radar

But if you're trying to make a living off of your artwork, here's the harsh truth: You cannot rely solely on Tumblr. That's just the truth. The fact of the matter is that many people view Tumblr as simply a place to hang out and read and look at neat things. Yes, there are companies who post about their business and products on Tumblr, but speaking as the co-owner of one of those businesses? Posting on Tumblr alone does not drive enough sales to support someone full-time.

You need the support of other platforms that will put you in front of people who weren't searching for you, specifically. Whether it's a marketplace like Etsy that will throw your listings into relevant search results; another social media site like Instagram that will suggest your posts and account to people who don't follow you; or someplace you can start a media presence like Youtube or Twitch where people can find you, again, through searches and suggestions.

But honestly? This is just good advice in general. You should never rely on a single platform to be your only source of getting your stuff out there. Because you never know when some hyped up billionaire's going to buy it and immediately ask the nearest Conservative cesspool, "What do I do with it now?"

hot take but when you shame people for liking and not reblogging art then they're probably just not going to interact with it at all. graciously accept the like and understand that people will reblog what they want, forcing it with guilt tactics will breed resentment and then you won't get likes OR reblogs

[lazyliars]

/rp

Before I get into it, I want to state that is EXPLICITLY an analysis of the Characters, and is not intended to touch on how the cc’s played them in a meta sense unless specifically stated otherwise.

Also, this is technically a part two to my other post, which took a more in depth look at Techno and Phil’s reactions to Tommy’s death. It’s not necessary when reading this post, but I don’t address their reactions here.

So. The question must be asked.

Are we [the Syndicate] the baddies?

Yes.

The End.

 Why are the Syndicate the baddies?

They got damn logo is a wither skull.

The End.

That's not how this works.

Yeah, yeah. You’re right.

The Syndicate's goals as an organization are not inherently bad. They seem to have good intentions behind them, and the focus on the freedom of it's individual group members is important to remember when talking about it; It is not a government. There is no hierarchical power system. No one is forced to do anything against their will, or surrender any of their rights or power to remain a member. It is not a government.

I also want to address Techno and Phil backing Ranboo into a corner – I see them getting a lot of flack for this, but I personally do not think it is relevant to the greater discussion, or necessarily representative of any contradictions within the organization. It was clearly played for laughs, and after they back off they clarify to Ranboo that they won't force him. Then later when Phil and Ranboo are alone, Ranboo feels safe enough to express that he felt like he was pressured into it, and Phil assures him he is allowed to leave whenever he wants; He is not being forced to do anything, and he is not being coerced or blackmailed.

None of the Syndicate members have done any wrongs against each other in the context of the Syndicate, OR gone against any of the Syndicate's core principles.

That, said, holy shit are they the baddies.

Listen, there's trying to telegraph a meaning or message to the audience and then there's having your logo be wither skulls on blackstone. That is straight out of the skit I keep referencing, seriously.

Okay, but, they laughed at it! It was played as a joke, just like the Ranboo thing!

The Ranboo thing was improv, the Syndicate's headquarters were planned – the artistic choices that they made reflect on what role they want the build and the organization inhabiting it to play in the future storylines.

Wither Skulls kind of have some CONNOTATIONS. Techno is an English major, I don't think he chose the most threatening imagery possible on accident, and then joked about the way people would interpret it just to stir the pot. This reads as hugely intentional.

And beyond that, the jokes they make during this part aren't “haha yeah, we look bad but we're actually good!” they're “you can tell by looking at these that we're the good guys wink wink, this is good guy stuff right here :)” It is a joke about how they are definitely not the good guys. This isn't even a case of unreliable narrators, this is one step down from flat out saying the meta intent.

But okay, I hear you, I'm talking about things that haven't happened yet. The Syndicate hasn't used any Withers, they could be an aesthetic choice.  Lets look at what they do in practice.

So, they barge into private property, assess Snowchester's right to continue existing based entirely on their own ideals of what Freedom is, and then only once Tubbo assures them that they have no standing leader do they grant the place their approval to, and I gotta stress this part, continue existing.

 In my Quackity meta, I already talked about how Government in the context of a M1necraft RP cannot be compared to IRL Governments on a one-to-one scale. They don't serve the same purposes or have the same type of power. What I didn't talk about was Agency in the context of m1necraft governments.

In an irl government, if you are born into one, you can't really leave without committing a massive overhaul on your life, which can be expensive and difficult, if not impossible for many people. Even in a “benevolent” government, the simple physicality of where you were born can prevent you from leaving it easily.

The same hurdles do not exist in the Dream SMP. People who join M1necraft governments choose to. They want to, either at the beginning when they form one, or later on when they join up. So far, no Government has just Sprung Up and forced the current residents of an area to become dependent on them, except maybe the Eggpire, who's status as a government is... shakey.

And even when people want to leave or separate from the government, they have been historically able to do so without any trouble or any effort from said governments to stop them. Jack Manifold emancipated from Manberg. Fundy and Quackity both left to start new nations. In all cases they were allowed to do so without any attempts on the part of the governments to stop them, either through force, or institutions preventing them from doing so.

The most anyone has lost when leaving a government is their house, which is still usually their property anyway, and is something that is easily rebuilt elsewhere and is inconvenient to move anyway.

The only exceptions to this might be Schlatt exiling Wilbur and Tommy - but even then, they weren’t trying to leave, they were trying to get back in, and of course the original L’manberg revolution, where Dream attempted to force L’manberg back into the Dream SMP, which wasn’t even a government at that point in time.

I don’t consider Phil’s house arrest an example of a government forcing someone to stay a citizen - that was treated less as a matter of a citizen wanting to leave the country and more as a threat to national security. Still pretty fucked up, but it’s a different issue.

What I'm saying is, If Tubbo wants to create a government out in the middle of nowhere, threatening no one, forcing no one to join either through force or desperation, and allowing people to join willingly because they want to, then he should be allowed to do that.

The Irony of the Syndicate, a group of people consisting of some of the richest, strongest people on the server, going around and enforcing 'Freedom' that entails no one person having more power than any other, is absurd. 

It shows an extreme lack of self-awareness and/or self-righteousness, as they seem to think that they deserve to be the ones who decide what constitutes a government.

Snowchester is a small independent nation - they shouldn’t have to live in fear of being obliterated if they don’t walk on eggshells to meet an arbitrary standard decided by people who’s only authority on the matter COMES FROM THEIR PERSONAL POWER. No one elected them! No one chose them! They were not “approved” by the server at large to enact this kind of law.

The Syndicate are not a government, but they are an unsupervised power structure exerting their ideals on a land that did not ask for them. Like, These people have invented an actual Authoritarian-Anarchist faction. How the hell did they manage this?????

Back on topic.

Tubbo shows them the crater left by his nukes. The reaction is oddly positive – the nukes are fine by the morals of the Syndicate, apparently. I'd argue that they come across as more impressed than anything else; they seem to respect Tubbo for having gotten ahold of “real” power.

(There's a few good memes out there about “We can excuse nuclear weaponry, but we draw the line at Government!”)

So. By the Syndicate's standards: A single person or group of acceptably equal persons with weapons of mass-destruction are only worth “keeping an eye on” because they might provoke other people.

Like, I consider Project Dreamcatcher to be one of, if not the most morally ambiguous thing Tubbo has ever done, largely because it was all on his own initiative. He holds some culpability for The Butcher Army and Phil's house arrest, but they weren't his ideas and he was mostly following Quackity at that point.

And Phil tells Tubbo, IMMEDIATELY AFTER SEEING THE NUCLEAR CRATER:

“Looks like you've reformed a little bit Tubbo, I'm proud.”

And it's fine. Crimes against nature? Fine. A sign of healing in fact!! Tubbo is having a sweeeelll time and he definitely didn't make these nukes specifically in fear of being attacked by these exact people! Tubbo is doing great. Tubbo is doing fine. Tubbo. is. FINE.

Anyway.

I don't think this presentation of the Syndicate was an accident. Looking at the greater lore of SMP right now, after the Egg is done, their list of enemies is slim, and considering that they seem solely invested in taking down governments, that leaves maybe Snowchester, Kinoko Kingdom, and Eret and the greater Dream SMP.

Snowchester has not been shown to be corrupt, evil, or have any intent to go down that route. The most ambiguous thing they've done is, again, is the nukes. Other than that, it's pretty much your average cottagecore snow village.

Kinoko is presented in an even more morally 'good' light, Karl having founded it specifically for his Time-travel library purposes, which are currently being treated by the narrative as a selfless act, if not downright heroic.

Eret is also a fairly 'good' aligned character atm. He's been on that redemption grind since the og betrayal, and doesn't seem keen on backtracking. He's actively tried to leverage his position as king to make things better, and hasn't been quiet about that. He was also 'validated' by Tommy*, a character who has been described both by his allies and enemies as “the hero,” so take that as you will.

What I'm getting at is, all of the current potential enemies for the Syndicate aside from the Egg, are currently being cast as 'good,' and if they were to be attacked, they would undoubtedly have the moral high-ground, unless something drastically changed.

The only potential shakeups I can think of is are a Dream escape and/or a Wilbur revival, both of which could draw the Syndicate's attention and ire, depending on how things go. That said, it's just as likely that either or both of them would join the Syndicate – Dream still has that favor, and Phil and Techno both seemed to think Wilbur would've agreed with their blowing up L'manberg.

Both of those characters are currently **villains – the fact that they're both prime candidates for the Syndicate is a huge indication of the direction it's going to go as the plot moves forward.

((*I know some people are gonna come at me for painting Tommy as the “deciding factor” of what is morally good, so lemme just stop you there. I'm not talking about Tommy somehow having the 'right' to decide who is and isn't good, and definitely not the right to decide who should and shouldn't be king. I'm saying that Tommy, a character who the narrative treats as, if not a good person, then a person who is trying to be good, was in support of Eret, a character who has also been trying to be good.

Eret doesn't gain the moral highground because Tommy said so, he gets it because a character who the narrative treats as trying to do better, acknowledged Eret's earnest attempts at doing the same.

**I'm referring to Wilbur here as a villain because Tommy seemed convinced he would be if he were to be brought back. There is always the possibility that he's wrong.))

So, to summarize this: I read the Syndicate as being intentionally positioned as future antagonists, if not outright villains of a future arc. They are NOT a Government but their goals are contradictory with their means, and it is important to keep in mind that they plan to enforce their own brand of freedom on people who did not grant them either the authority or permission to do so.

So, uh. Can you tell I loved these streams? They were seriously so good. I kept switching between Ranboo and Techno's POV's trying to keep up with everything. I still have to watch Niki's!

All in all, I'm super, super excited for whats coming next, egg stuff, Syndicate stuff, Tommy stuff, all of it.

[audreydoeskaren]

History of Chinese standing collars (part 1: Ming & Qing)

So, a lot of people nowadays refer to a certain type of standing collar as a “Mandarin collar” but I'm not sure if that’s legit, because standing collars throughout Chinese history looked different. I was confronted by this topic when I was writing my post on 1950s Chinese fashion and felt like I had to make a separate post. I’m gonna do a quick break down of all the different types of standing collars in historical Chinese fashion from the 16th century to the present and how they developed.

Ming Dynasty  (1368-1644)

The first mature 立领 liling standing collars were applied to women’s robes in the late 15th/early 16th century. Before any garment with a standing collar was invented, both men and women in Ming China wore garments with either a 圆领 yuanling round collar, 直领 zhiling parallel collar or 交领 jiaoling crossover collar, with crossover collars being the more common in womenswear.

Source here

Early Ming Dynasty portrait of a lady in a crossover collar robe.

The development of a standing collar was in large part thanks to the invention/adoption of the 子母扣 zimukou metal clasp button. I wonder why the fabric knotted buttons used on round collar robes were not used on standing collars in this period? They were awfully similar to the pankous of later. Anyway, at one point in the 15th century, some women thought it would be cool to add zimukou to their clothes and it resulted in this (they were also used on 比甲 bijia, 半臂 banbi and 短衫 duanshan but those are irrelevant to collars):

Source here

Part of 明宪宗元宵行乐图 (a painting depicting various Lantern Festival activities at the court of Emperor Xianzong), 1485. This lady is wearing a crossover collar robe with a zimukou at the middle.

Source here

Modern reproduction zimukou. You could buy these for cheap on Taobao if you want to sew your own Ming style hanfu btw.

In the 16th century a fashion revolution took place in China: the standing collar, which came out of nowhere, began to suddenly dominate women’s clothing. This OG Chinese standing collar was very tall and form fitting, usually covering all of the wearer’s neck. It had sharp, rectangular edges and was closed by two zimukou, one placed at the bottom of the collar where it meets the bodice and another slightly above, not reaching the top of the collar. An important feature that set this apart from the collars of the 20th century is that it was unstiffened and made of the same fabric as the robe, meaning it was soft and could be worn with the top bit folded over, showing the lining which could be of a contrasting color. For archival purposes let’s call this collar style 1.

There are various theories as to why the standing collar was invented, e.g. because of colder climate during the little ice age, which peaked in the late 16th/early 17th century. Methinks it was just a fad which stayed.

Source here

Late Ming Dynasty portrait, collar style 1.

Source here

Late 16th century/early 17th century aristocratic lady wearing a standing collar robe underneath a round collar robe. The top of her collar is folded over. Collar style 1 variation 2.

Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)

This style of collar became the norm for Han Chinese women’s fashion in the mid to late 16th century and stayed that way throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. While the clothing silhouettes and accessories changed, the shape of the standing collar remained the same.

Source here

Late 17th century illustration for pornographic novel 肉蒲团 (1657). Collar style 1, but it became fashionable in the 17th century to have rows of piping around the neck for each button, so variation 3. Oh and wlw pride come throoouuuugh

Source here

Early 18th century court painting, collar style 1 variation 3.

At some point in the late 18th century Han women decided it would be cool to use 盘扣 pankou, this fabric braided/knotted button of Manchu origin (more on Manchu dress later) on their collars instead of zimukou. The decoration also became more extravagant, with often rows of thick binding, piping or trim, corresponding to the decorations on the rest of the robe. It’s also slightly shorter, the upper button being at the very top of the collar. Let’s call this collar style 2.

Source here

(Presumably) late 18th century reverse glass painting showing collar style 2. The late 18th century deserves more attention, it’s such an important transitional period but also charming in its own way. This is true of European fashion of the period as well, I honestly love both places in the late 18th century.

In the beginning of the 19th century, the fashionable collar shape suddenly changed for some reason. It became extremely low, approximately only 1-2cm tall, only tall enough to accommodate one button. It still had crisp, rectangular edges. You could say this is another variation of collar style 2 but it is so iconic to the 19th century I think I’ll call this collar style 3.

Source here

Reverse glass painting ca. 1830. Han lady wearing a robe with collar style 3.

Now a brief look at Manchu womenswear.  I am not an expert on Manchu historical fashion so tell me if I’m wrong. So the Manchus, who were apparently a confederation of Jurchen tribes from the area in what is northeastern China nowadays, invaded China successfully in the 1640s and remained the rulers of China until 1911 when they were replaced by the Republic of China. Throughout most of the Qing Dynasty Manchu women wore collarless robes, it was not until the mid 19th century that some Manchu women started to wear detachable collars to emulate Han women’s fashion, and not until around 1908 (!) when standing collars were actually added to their gowns themselves. Yes, period dramas did Manchu women dirty, poor gals have been dressed in the wrong costumes this, entire, time. The misrepresentation of Manchu historical fashion in the media in general is just fucking infuriating, but well, topic for a future post.

Source here

Late 17th century/early 18th century portrait of a Manchu lady. She is wearing a 衬衣 chenyi, a robe with straight sleeves, no slits and closed at the right side. It’s a casual gown worn for everyday activities. Her chenyi is collarless and the collar is closed by binding.

Source here

1840s/1850s court gown.  She is wearing 氅衣 changyi (the bottom part of the first character should be 衣 not 毛 but this character is so obscure that it literally DOES NOT EXIST in the Chinese language anymore omg), a more elaborate style developed in the early 19th century with slits down both sides and wide trims along the collar, cuffs, side closure, side slits and hem. I have yet to see an extant example with a standing collar, all the changyi from the 19th century I’ve seen in museum collections are collarless, so the collar seen in paintings must’ve been detachable. Maybe some Manchu women liked Han women’s fashion and wanted to wear a detachable collar. I have, however, seen Manchu women’s vests and jackets with standing collars. These were similar to late 18th century Han women’s collars, so collar style 2.

Source here

1890s/1900s women’s vest with collar style 2. 

Source here

Ca. 1908. Chenyi with standing collar. If the passage of time is still not clear, notice the Western fabric used. Collar style 2.

At first glance this might look like a cheongsam but it is not. Chenyi did not have slits down the sides, unlike most 20th century cheongsam. It may have been a source of inspiration for cheongsam though, as I have explained in one of my 1930s posts, although the more obvious prototype for cheongsam was the changyi with slits and standing collars.

Let us now turn our attention to Manchu menswear, which is where things get complicated. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Manchu riding habit, 行服袍 xingfupao, was a form fitting calf length robe with form fitting long sleeves and 马蹄袖 matixiu “horse hoof cuffs”, closed at the side with pankou. It was constructed in the same method as Han Chinese clothing. This original Manchu robe was collarless----I cannot stress this enough. The Manchus did not come barging into China wearing robes with standing collars goddamnit, get your facts right period dramas.

Source here

Portrait of Emperor Kangxi in a xingfupao. This is from the early 18th century already but the style didn’t change much so you get the idea. I love this color btw I think he looks great in it.

The xingfupao was an informal riding habit and only one small part in the gigantic system of Manchu court dress, the rules of which are well documented but I don’t bother to look them up. If you would like to do that, Google 大清会典.  At one point in the early 18th century some Manchu dudes decided it was cool to add a collar to their xingfupao (like... Han women??) and it resulted in this:

Source here

An early example from the Kangxi era (1661-1722), a xingfupao with a standing collar of a contrasting color. The hem is detachable for horse riding (horse riding was an important aspect of Manchu culture and that influenced many of their fashion decisions). Judging by the fur lining I assume the standing collar was added for warmth in winter? I also saw some xingfupao with fur trim attached to standing collars so maybe that was the purpose.

Standing collars on xingfupao was constructed in a similar way to Han women’s collars, with rectangular edges and closed by two buttons. Pankous, which were unique to Manchu dress, were used instead of the Han zimukou. It appears that this collar was also soft and unstiffened, so it could be worn with the top bit folded over like in ye olde times (the 16th century). It’s important to note that xingfupao with a standing collar were not common at all, maybe a 1/20 probability to see in museum collections. Construction wise it’s similar to collar style 2 but it appeared earlier and was exclusive to menswear, so let’s call it collar style 4.

Source here

Qianlong era (1735-1796) portrait, xingfupao with standing collar of the same color folded over. Collar style 4 variation 2.

Another garment with a standing collar was the dress of the officials, known by white people as “Mandarins”. From the artworks and photographs I’ve seen, the collar only appeared in the outfit with a 行服褂 xingfugua, a button down tunic with straight, wide sleeves and slits at the front, back and sides. It was usually worn in combination with xingfupao, like how a shirt and vest are fixed combinations in European menswear. However, the collar of this kind of outfit was separate from the tunic itself. A plastron with an attached collar was worn underneath the robe and tunic (completely detachable collars were also used I think??) and the collar was buttoned from the inside. Not sure if this qualifies as a standing collar at all since it isn’t even attached to the robe itself, but anyway let’s just call this collar style 5.

Source here

19th century portrait of an official. He is wearing a blue xingfupao, an indigo xingfugua and a blue detachable collar; a standard ensemble (well he’s also wearing pants and boots and stuff but that’s not the focus here). Collar style 5.

Oh I forgot to mention, after the Manchus took over China, they enforced their dress code on Han Chinese men but not Han Chinese women, so in the Qing Dynasty Han and Manchu menswear were one and the same but Han and Manchu womenswear were not.

I’ve only been talking about court dress so far, educated/well off civilian Han men would wear 长衫 changshan, a floor length robe, sometimes with a 马褂 magua, a short riding vest (derived from xingfugua), whereas poorer Han men would wear 短打 duanda, a short button down shirt, and pants. Well people who wore changshan also wore pants underneath but they’re not visible. All men wore pants tbh (incoming tangent), a while back when Harry Styles in a dress (which I stan) was making the rounds on social media some well meaning people were trying to find historical precedents for men wearing dresses and they named Chinese historical clothing as an example. I just wanna say, while I appreciate the sentiment, the harsh reality was that historical Han Chinese fashion was extremely gendered (except for a few brief time periods and a few select garments). Pants were reserved for men and skirts for women, the long gown like garments seen on men in historical portraiture were all robes, not dresses; you wouldn’t consider a long coat or bathrobe a dress nowadays, would you? Men always wore pants as undergarments while women wore petticoats. However I think that’s great for illustrating how our perception of whether a garment is masculine/feminine could change over time and that gender is socially constructed. Back to the main topic, to my knowledge, magua never had collars because it was a vest, changshan commonly had collars and duanda sometimes did too. I’m not sure when the standing collar began to appear on changshan, maybe when the court xingfupao gained collar style 4 it stuck in civilian fashion, maybe it was some point in the 19th century.

Anyway, fast forward to the late 19th century, the men’s changshan had a tall standing collar but again it was different to everything we’ve seen so far. It was exceptionally tall and had a smoothly tapering edge closed by only one pankou at the bottom. This resulted in a huge v shape gap down the middle. It’s still unstiffened but because of the lack of a rectangular edge it couldn’t be worn folded over. Let’s call this collar style 6.

Source here

Late 19th century/early 20th century portrait of a man. Changshan with collar style 6.

Let’s finish this part with Han women’s collars in the 1890s and 1900s. Around this time Han womenswear began to modernize and become simpler, but that trend did not apply to collars: the collars of Han women’s robes suddenly became unnaturally tall. They were so tall that they touched the wearer’s cheeks and couldn’t be closed at the front at all, kind of resembling Regency era European men’s collars?? This style of collar was oftentimes called 元宝领 yuanbaoling, ingot collar, or 马鞍领 ma’anling, saddle collar, after the object it resembles. Let’s call all of these tall collars that touch the wearer’s face collar style 7, but bear in mind these had a lot of variations.

Source here

Photograph from the 1900s. This could be categorized as a cursed variation of collar style 6 judging from how it only has one pankou and a tapering edge instead of a rectangular edge. But like, belle époque Chinese collars are a whole other species, so let’s comfortably call it collar style 7.

Source here

More collar style 7 representation. This collar style will never stop being funny to me, like just look at it it’s so tall.

So, in summary:

Collar style 1: OG Ming Dynasty standing collar, in fashion from the 16th to mid 18th century. Tall, unstiffened, rectangular edges. Closed with two zimukou. Could have piping (17th & early 18th century). Could be worn with top bit folded over (16th & early 17th century). Worn by Han women.

Collar style 2: developed from collar style 1, popularized in the late 18th century. Medium height, unstiffened, rectangular edges. Closed with two pankou/other fabric buttons. Commonly has binding, piping or trim. Worn by Han women in the late 18th century, partially adopted by Manchu women in the late 19th century.

Collar style 3: developed from collar style 2, exclusive to the 19th century. Extremely short, unstiffened, rectangular edges. Closed with one pankou. Commonly has binding, piping or trim. Worn by Han women.

Collar style 4: collar style 2 but simpler, appeared in the late 17th/early 18th century. Tall, unstiffened, rectangular edges. Closed with two pankou. Commonly plain. Worn by Manchu & Han men.

Collar style 5: detachable standing collar, a staple of official’s uniforms throughout the Qing Dynasty. Medium height, unstiffened, rectangular/rounded edges. Buttoned from the inside. Always plain. Worn by all officials (exclusively men in this era).

Collar style 6: civilian men’s collar characterized by v shape gap at the front, I don’t know when it first appeared, some point in the Qing Dynasty. Tall, unstiffened, rounded and dramatically tapering edges. Closed by one pankou. Worn by civilian Manchu & Han men.

Collar style 7: cursed belle époque (1890s & 1900s) women’s collars that touched the wearer’s face. Extremely tall, stiffened, both rounded and rectangular edges existed. Closed by one pankou at the bottom but sometimes had more pankou for ornamental purposes. Worn by Han women in this period.

Join me next time as we dive into the Republican era where things get extra complicated.

[saby-chan]

Fire Lord Ozai: A blood thirsty monster or the less fortunate “Zuko” of his generation?

Hello again and thank you as always for clicking and allotting some of your time to read my humble post! Since I’ve happened to notice quite an increase in posts lately regarding the controversial character and nature of the former Fire Lord, the now imprisoned fallen prince Ozai, and I’ve personally promised in my previous post that I will share my own analysis on him if people asked me to do so (which actually happened), I am here to deliver my own take on this very intriguing man’s character, while also building a potential past for him based on stuff gathered from the show’s cannon.

I would like to start this essay with what I find to be my favorite quote ever: ”Monster’s aren’t born, they are created.” ~ Naruto Uzumaki (Naruto) What I like about this quote soo much and find very inspirational is the truth it holds within its short, yet powerful message. We are often fast to judge a “book by the cover”, to reduce others to what we assume of them by their appearance or latest actions that we’ve seen them do, but never actually take a moment and wonder where they come from, if this person we soo harshly look down upon really has been this way since their very beginning?

I’ve come across many comments on social media related to ATLA, especially on YouTube videos on which people would throw with harsh comments such as “Aang being a coward for choosing to spare the villain just because they saw a dumb baby pic of them” or “Ozai is the essence of evil and even as a baby he’d been a monster”. I can’t help but wonder who hurt these people to make them be so cruel? Like, how messed up must you actually be to say that a baby, a friggin baby, is the embodiment of all evils? Or that a child was a coward for choosing to see his opponent’s last bits of humanity and opted to spare them?

Aang was soo morally conflicted about the idea of killing Ozai not only because it contradicted the morals of his people, but because he himself understood that this man hadn’t always been the cruel beast he came to met in their first and final showdown. It’s important to note here the fact that upon finding that picture, Aang was actually convinced it had to be Zuko as a baby since it looked so innocent and cute and was actually surprised to learn it was Zuko’s father. And that’s the thing, Ozai was born like us all as an innocent and sweet baby. Babies aren’t in any way evil or twisted, they don’t even have the notion of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ defined in their small, still developing minds. In fact, the very choice of the creators to add this picture in the show is meant to tell us this very thing: this man wasn’t always like this. But if he wasn’t always like this, then what happened to make him become this way?

Well, in order to find out the reason, we must go back in time to the very beginning: Ozai’s childhood and upbringing. For this next part I am going to solely focus on the show cannon, as the comics aren’t the products of BryKe and have a lot of inconsistencies to the source’s cannon (you can go and read my other post on why they fail when it comes to Zuko’s character and his family).

 From what we know and can easily deduce by ourselves just from their appearances, Ozai and his brother Iroh have a huge age gap between them (somewhere between 10 and 15 years). This has to be our first red flag: isn’t it soo odd that this family opted to have their children at such a long distance between pregnancies? It almost feels as if Ozai hadn’t actually been part of his father’s actual family planning... In other words, he was a ‘mistake’ child (I actually hate having to use this terminology, but it will become relevant to when we expand on Azulon’s relationship with his sons). Sure, some may argue that Azulon actually decided to have two sons in case something were to happen to his first born, but wouldn’t it have been more logical to have his second born at 2-3 years max distance from his first? Why choose to have your second child when you are much older and thus risk having a baby with issues, if your sole purpose of this child is to serve as an insurance that you don’t ‘run out’ of heirs? It just doesn’t make much sense, so let’s go for the moment with the possibility that Ozai was an unplanned pregnancy.

This perspective actually gives way to another very interesting aspect: remember the infamous “Born lucky...Lucky to be born” quote? What if I tell you that there is a possibility that this quote wasn’t Ozai’s personal wicked invention, but actually something he himself heard from his very own father? It had been puzzling me for a long time why he choose to say “You were lucky to be born” to Zuko, which implies that Zuko wasn’t supposed to exist. I mean, it’s soo odd that Ozai went with something implying that Zuko was an unplanned pregnancy, since Zuko was the first born. So my theory is that maybe Ozai wanted to convey a different message to Zuko when he said that quote, but due to his anger he ended up replicating the same line he received from Azulon at some point in his childhood. We never got the exact flashback when the line was delivered from Ozai to Zuko, so we don’t have the exact context that lead to it (remember, we are excluding Yang’s take on the matter from the comics).

I mean, this feels like something that wicked old Azulon would have said to his least favorite child. Okay, so let’s go with the scenario that Ozai was an unwanted child, to which we could also add the possibility that Ilah’s health deteriorated after the first birth, which makes plausible the family’s initial decision of stopping at 1 kid.

Moving on, we know from the old ATLA character wiki’s that Ozai’s character design was made with Zuko in mind, being meant to be a grown up version of Zuzu, without the scar. An interesting choice indeed and even Iroh’s letter to Zuko on Ozai from one of the ATLA books describes Ozzy in a similar way to teenage Zuko in book 1: stubborn, feisty, determined and with a volcanic personality (easy to anger and competitive), so it means that these were intentional choices to imply that Zuko and his father are more similar than we were led to believe at first glance. Maybe Ozai was the “Zuko” of his generation. Also, in one of the interviews on the royal family, BryKe stated that Ozai worked very hard to get where he is in book 3, referring to his firebending specifically (we all know how Ozzy got the throne, so clearly, he didn’t “work hard” for that), so maybe he wasn’t always the strongest man alive, with the most exceptional firebending skills out there, like Azula who showed ease in her learning, but rather someone closer to Zuko’s weaker performance as a child, building his way to success through endless hard work until he became the prodigy we know today.

Continuing with our theoretical scenario, after his birth, the second child show’s lesser skills compared to his brother Iroh (by that I don’t mean that he wasn’t gifted at all, but that maybe Ozai wasn’t as fast and great of a learner like his big bro), so Azulon opts to just ignore him and continue focusing solely on his golden child. In my headcannon I actually think that Ilah survived the birth and so she was left in charge of the younger child’s education and upbringing. At this point Iroh is already 10 or older, so he is forced to focus on his development, which prevents him from spending time with his lil brother, but just for the sake of being positive, let’s assume that Ozai still had both his mother and his big brother to keep him sheltered from Azulon’s darkness for a small portion of his childhood.

I choose to believe that Ozai had his mother’s love for a small bit of his childhood due to his willingness in the show to allow Ursa (who mind you, as the granddaughter of Roku was considered a treacherous individual) to spend a ton of time with both Zuko and Azula and share her philosophy with the children, as seeing his wife playing with their children probably reminded him of his own bitter-sweet memories he had with Ilah. They also probably spent a lot of their time near the turtle-duck pond since that pond’s existence prolly dates long before Ozai and Ursa married and had their own children.

Unfortunately, Ilah dies and little Ozai remains all alone, to be influenced negatively by his father (and even by his grandpa Sozin, we don’t really know for certain when the old man died, so he prolly was there for a short time when Ozzy was still a child). Azulon most likely blames Ozai for his wife’s death as the second birth might’ve really had a huge toll on Ilah’s already fragile body, bringing her closer to death, so he still neglects and ignores the child, if not straight out bullies and abuses him for not being on par with Iroh. This prolly leads to Ozai becoming jealous of his brother since Iroh has their father’s love, pushing them further apart. I headcannon that this jealousy between the siblings led to Ozai complaining to his dad when he finally had too much of their father’s discrimination (at a similar age to when Zuko prolly did and got the infamous line, if not younger) only to get the “Iroh was born lucky, you were lucky to be born!” line with the sole purpose of hurting him since now the child knows that he was never wanted.

When Azulon scolds very furiously adult Ozai in Zuko’s memories for daring to ask to be named crown prince, he literally says something like “What, you dare ask me to betray MY own son?!” (this is like red flag number two), line that pretty much testifies how Azulon chose to pretty much treat Ozai as if he wasn’t his son too, showcasing how much he despised his second born and favored the first child over him. Since we are on the topic of their last conversation, the punishment Azulon gave to his son alone proves this man’s level of sadism, which leads me to be believe that Ozai’s childhood was full of this type of punishments for bad behaviors that could be easily corrected trough a long serious lecture or a lesser punishment focused more on teaching him an actual lesson. 

The old wikis also mention on the page about the hall with portraits of the previous Fire Lords that it was the place where Ozai chose to spend most of his time in his youth, seeking advice from his ancestors. I mean, seriously now, if he had a good and supportive father and a present brother in his life, would Ozai had chosen to seek guidance from the dead instead of his living family? That piece of information that was easily overlooked by many proves how lonely this man was in his youth.

So for the most part of his life, Ozai grew up under the toxic influence and abuse of his tyrant father who refused to acknowledge him. Yet he managed to grow up still full of determination to one day prove his worth to Azulon and gain his acceptance (just like we saw with Zuko in book 1, who was desperate to regain his honor and be accepted by his father). But unfortunately, no matter how strong he became or how good of a firebender he was, Azulon was unmoved and unphased by his second son’s performance.

From what we could gather from the little info we received in the show, it seems that Ozai was never sent to the battle field to aid his older brother, being kept as a stay home prince, with the only occasion he actually left home being to search for the Avatar (I don’t think Iroh was sent to do his part on searching the Avatar since he strongly believed that there wasn’t going to ever be one, so it’s safe to assume Azulon assigned Ozai with this mission just to get rid of him for a few years) and the only purpose he ever served to his father was to become part of the old man’s genetics experiment in order to create strong unparalleled firebending offspring (which I am pretty sure were meant to be ‘biological war machines’ used by Azulon in the war, as he didn’t really seem to give a shit about Ozai’s children compared to Lu Ten). So just imagine the level of disappointment and dishonor Ozai must’ve felt as a man and young aspiring soldier to find out that he was going to be used like a ‘non-bending daughter’ in a strategical marriage and never get to serve his country in what he’d been taught was the greatest and most important war for their Nation.

All in all, this marriage didn’t really end up that badly because it seems he and Ursa were actually very compatible. The old wiki for Ursa states that she was a noble woman and the perfect match for Ozai, which leads me to believe that show Ursa was intended to be a very strong willed and determined woman who earned his respect. The show never stated that Ozai never wanted his first born or that he was disappointed with Zuko from birth like the comics say, so it’s safe to assume that Ursa and Ozai actually ended up falling in love at some point since they had not one, but two kids with relatively a short time in between pregnancies. 

There are actually many signs in the show that actually prove that these two loved each other and Ozai didn’t abuse his wife: from the fact that they went every year to see Ursa’s favorite play despite Ozai hating the poor performance of the Ember Island Players (I mean, what man would do such a sacrifice as to endure the same torture every single year just to make his wife happy if he never loved her?), Ursa’s undeniable and sincere love for their children (in the show it was never stated that Ursa saw Zuko and Azula as someone else’s children, so if she were indeed an abused woman who was forced to have these children, she wouldn’t have ever loved them to such an extent, especially Zuko who resembled his father the most physically), the fact that Ursa had equal rights in their marriage and raising of their children (her even scolding and grounding Ozai’s favorite child without hesitation), to the most significant scene to the Urzai ship in Zuko’s flashbacks: Ozai sitting troubled all alone in Ursa’s favorite spot by the pond, in a sad and brooding atmosphere, after he lost her, instead of celebrating what had to be the happiest day of his life since he was finally crowned Fire Lord (it’s clear who had more importance in his heart: Ursa meant more to him than the throne, so losing her outshined his achievement). In fact, Ursa must’ve been the only thing that still kept him outside of the darkness that threatened to swallow his heart and once he lost her, Ozai had nothing else to keep him on the right path.

And even as a father, it seems that Ozai wasn’t always cold and distant to his children, as his true self depicted in Zuko’s memories on Ember Island shows him caring for both of his children, even holding Zuko close to him with a protective arm on the boy’s shoulder. Except the Agni Kai, there don’t seem to be any instances in which he was physically violent towards his son before the banishment (Iroh literally let Zuko in to join that faithful war meeting willingly. Would’ve he done that if he knew his brother to be very violent towards his children in case they disobeyed? If yes, then it would make Iroh actually very questionable on a moral standpoint) and even on an emotional level, I don’t really think that he was actually abusive to him (at least while Ursa was there) because from Zuko’s conversation with Zhao, he’s adamant that his father will take him back and even states "You don't know how my father feels about me. You don't know anything!", meaning that the father he used to know showed him a level of respect and genuine affection (if Ozai were to bully Zuko since the boy’s very early childhood, do you think this kid would grow up to be so sure that his father wants him around and would he defend this bully when someone badmouths them in front of him?).

Even with Azula, despite people demonizing her from early childhood and saying that she was manipulated since birth by Ozai to become a war machine, I do believe that she shows genuine love and affection towards her father. I do choose to believe that back in the good times when the family was happy, Ozai spent quality time with his daughter, filling in the gap left by Ursa’s neglect. I theorize that the reason why kid Azula badmouthed her grandpa and uncle was because she was being very protective of her father: since she used to like spying and eavesdropping, it’s safe to assume that she prolly witnessed many instances in which the old man bullied or insulted Ozai, favoring Iroh over him. It’s a bit harder to see it that way since her snarky comments involve dark topics, but since they live in a society governed by power and war, I see them as something similar to if Azula would’ve said “Uncle sucks and he will surely be fired from his job!” or “Grandpa is old and weak, he should leave the family business to dad!”. Even the fact that the only thing capable of shattering her to pieces was her father leaving her proves how much she cared for him. Ty Lee and Mai’s betrayal was a big blow on Azula’s control and sanity, but she didn’t breakdown until Ozai discarded her after his coronation as Phoenix King. There’s nothing more painful in this world than to be left behind by the person you loved the most and was there by your side your whole life, whom you wanted to follow to world’s end and back. That was the moment Azula finally realized that the father she used to know and love was actually gone and had been in fact, long gone for years at this point.

But if Ozai cared for his family what made him change? Easy, it all comes back to the fact that his father never acknowledged him. The throne doesn’t seem to be his ultimate goal in life since Ozai discarded of the Fire Lord title very easily, tossing it to Azula without any remorse or hesitation. It was more about the meaning behind getting the crown: replacing Iroh in the line of succession was the ultimate proof of his father’s acceptance, that he wasn’t only a “mistake” and “failure” in his father’s eyes, but since Azulon ended up saying and doing what he did, backfired Ozai and made him understand that no matter how hard he tried, the old man will never see him for what he is. So yeah, for a proud man like Ozai this was a hard defeat to swallow, which in turn sparked his strong desire of winning the war and becoming the king of the world: if Azulon wouldn’t accept him even in death, then Ozai will prove to the whole world that he was above his father and his “perfect” brother by accomplishing what they never could and even better and no one was going to stop him, not even his own family.

This is what differentiates Ozai from Zuko: while both had similar upbringings, Ozai never broke away from his obsession of gaining his father’s admiration, allowing himself to fall prey to the darkness left by Azulon in his heart and abandon his true self, only to become the copy of his abuser, while Zuko stood up to his dad and chose his own destiny. If Aang were to come back around 20 or 30 years earlier, then he might’ve actually been able to save Ozai just like he saved Zuko, but unfortunately it wasn’t this way.

Do I think that Ozai could still be saved and redeemed even after the events of book 3? Definitely! Since he’s actually a broken man and still has a tiny bit of humanity left within, I think he still has a chance to change his heart. The only thing is that it’d be a long lasting process: first off he needs to spend a long time in solitude and reflect on his life’s choices and his past, understand where he went wrong and that what happened to him in his childhood is called abuse, which he ended up replicating on his own children. After he understands his wrongdoings and becomes willing to rediscover his true self, he needs to understand the truth about the war, that everything he’d known was fake propaganda and that there was nothing glorious in what he, his father and Sozin did under the excuse of “sharing their Nation’s greatness with the rest of the world!”. But most importantly of all, the only remedy that could possibly save him is love. It sound cliche, but by responding to hatred with more hate like Zuko did in the comics would never change the world “for the better” or bring it “to reality”. The only way to save both Azula and Ozai would be trough showing them the power of love, hope and empathy, how they don’t have to struggle alone and push everyone away. And especially by redeeming Azula, she would be a very important piece in Ozai’s redemption: since he had a closer parent-child relationship with Azula and cared for her the most when he did care, realizing how much he made her suffer through his actions, that would probably break Ozai enough to make him admit that he was wrong all along.

So yeah, this is my analysis on Ozai’s character using the cannon information from the show and old wikis and why I think he is just the product of a very bad environment and an abusive parent who never showed him love (if there’s a reason for why Ozai might be uncapable of showing a healthy parental love to his children is because you can’t show what you’ve never learnt yourself), being the Zuko of his generation who never got to experience the positive influence of an “Uncle Iroh” to guide him on the right path. 

You can agree with me or not on this one, but this is what I choose to believe. Maybe I am way too good by choosing to see any potential good in anyone, but I feel it’s a better way than to counter hate with more hate like Yang did in his monstrous portrayal of Ozai in The Search.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you agree with anything I’ve said, feel free to leave a like and to reblog this post.

See you next time and stay safe! Bye-Bye!

Saby out.

[dontbipanicjonsa]

The Unkiss

TW: discussion of sexual assault

The purpose of this post is to explore how and why the Unkiss came to be, and speculate (poorly) on what purpose it may serve in the future. Read under the cut  (thanks @esther-dot )

So, I’m going to tell everyone right away that I’m not a very big fan of the pre-existing theories surrounding the Unkiss. Specifically, I tend to disagree with the “how”. This is partly because I think all the explanations offered are too Freudian (*shudder*) and partly because I’ve had a similar instance myself so I tend to project (sue me). 

THE HOW

First, let’s look at the pre-existing theories: 

The Unkiss is actually a sexual fantasy that Sansa has confused with the real events that happened (exactly what Freud would say. Creepy fuck.)

Sansa invented the Unkiss to romanticize an otherwise traumatic event so she could cope with it better. 

Is there any other theory I’m missing? These are the ones I know. 

I’m going to jump straight to the second theory. The issue (for me) in this theory is that it sort of assumes that Sansa herself would consider that kiss “romantic” or that it would somehow help her cope the BoB night.

He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. - Sansa VII ACOK

This is the moment. She is expecting a kiss, but wanting it to be over. It’s very clear that the kiss would have been non-con. More importantly, it looks like Sansa herself would consider the kiss non-con. 

Why on earth would Sansa invent a kiss she didn’t want in the first place to make coping with an already traumatic event easier? 

He kissed me and threatened to kill me, and made me sing him a song. - Sansa II ASOS

This is the first time we are introduced to the Unkiss, and it shows that Sansa’s memory of that night is perfectly intact. The Unkiss is an addition. It isn’t replacing any other, more traumatic memory (like the threat to her life). 

Now this is what I think happened:

Her emotions were running high that night, and her mind muddled up real events with the memory of that mounting (practically tangible) terror. 

Yeah, it’s that simple. You know how you get really angry in a fight and then later you can’t recall the exact the words? Memory is unreliable. There are plenty of studies to show the varied effects trauma has on memory. There are plenty of studies to show how easily memory can distort. There doesn’t need to be a great, complex reason for Sansa to misremember a traumatic event. Also remember that Sansa may not be entirely sober for this encounter, since Cersei did make her chug that wine before. 

Being stuck in a situation where you’re terrified and anticipating some sort of assault any second? Having a single moment where the emotions peak, where you’re sure the assault is going to happen right that moment? Misremembering if the assault did or didn’t happen later? Yup. Been there, done that. I still don’t remember what happened, and it’s been years. I sure as fuck wasn’t romanticizing shit, so it never occurred to me to think that Sansa might be. So when I heard the theories I went back to her chapters and honestly, I don’t think she is either. Not yet.  

Then this happened:

She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak. - Alayne II AFFC

Now this is Sansa romanticizing the Unkiss. She romanticizes the kiss she remembers. That does not mean she invented the kiss to romanticize the BoB, it only means she remembers a non-con kiss from a traumatic night and chose to romanticize it to cope. See the difference? 

The kiss isn’t a way for her to romanticize her trauma to cope, she romanticizes the kiss that was a result of her trauma- to cope. 

I won’t be so sure of this theory though, because (no offense) but GRRM does seem like the kind of guy who would read Freud and incorporate his ideas in his story. There’s already a shit load of incest and let’s admit it, Sansa canonically has daddy issues. How far or in-depth did GRRM think about the “how” of the Unkiss? We don’t know. 

THE WHY

Well, this one has been explained by GRRM himself:

You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom... but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it's a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on. - GRRM 

He also said:

File this one under "unreliable narrator" and feel free to ponder its meaning...- GRRM 

So, it’s safe to say that the Unkiss is basically being used to establish that Sansa has an unreliable memory. Of course, other characters probably have unreliable memory too (for example: Arya misremembering the name of Joffrey’s sword) but this is still most likely about Sansa. 

Sansa has always been considered an unreliable narrator by the GA anyway, since so much of her narration in the first book was at odds with the narration of Ned and Arya, who were both fan favourites at the time. This should probably indicate to the readers that the other characters are unreliable narrators as well, but it doesn’t. People carry on reading simply assuming that only Sansa’s POV is unreliable, or at least the most unreliable. So using Sansa’s POV to lay the groundwork for memory issues in someone else’s POV is...not gonna work. 

This doesn’t necessarily prove that the pay-off of the Unkiss is going to come from Sansa’s POV only, but it makes it seem likely. So I’m going to restrict myself to looking at the possibilities of misremembering stuff from Sansa’s POV. 

One more thing we need to look at before we start looking at future possibilities:

"It's not the same," Sansa said. "The Hound is Joffrey's sworn shield. Your butcher's boy attacked the prince." - Sansa III AGOT

On the surface, this looks like another memory edit. The situation is remarkably similar; it was a traumatic event for Sansa, she was not entirely sober when it happened, and now she is misremembering what happened. We know that Mycah did not attack Joffrey, Joffrey attacked Mycah. However, it’s not quite the same. For one, we don’t actually know if Sansa believes that, or if she’s just trying to be contrary to Arya. 

Also- 

"Sansa, come here." Ned had heard her version of the story the night Arya had vanished. He knew the truth. "Tell us what happened." - Eddard III AGOT

Sansa had told Ned what happened. But then she said-

She blinked at her sister, then at the young prince. "I don't know," she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. "I don't remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn't see …"- Eddard III AGOT 

So.......is she lying or did her memory actually get fuzzy afterwards? What exactly did she tell Ned? Considering that he’s the one who asks her to “testify”, I’d assume she told things as they really happened (as in Joffrey attacked Mycah). Did her memory of the events slowly fade...and then reverse (as in Mycah attacked Joffrey)? Or is she just taking the neutral stance here, and later the opposing stance (Joffrey’s side) in her fight with Arya? We don’t know. 

PURPOSE IT MAY SERVE GOING FORWARD

First, let’s assume that the Trident accident really does count as a memory edit. This would mean that Sansa has edited her memory twice now, which makes it very likely that a third memory edit is coming. There are two directions this can go-

The third memory edit has already happened pre-canon (so technically it would be the first edit)

The third memory edit is going to happen sometime in the next two books.

Warning: this is where I get back on my Jonsa bullshit. Turn back now if you don’t wanna watch me make everything about Jonsa.

Pre-canon Jonsa crush 

If the first option is true, and Sansa has already edited her memory once that we don’t yet know about, then a pre-canon crush/moment between her and Jon is...a pretty strong possibility. 

I’ll admit, I’m very very skeptical of the pre-canon crush, simply because I think there isn’t enough evidence or foreshadowing for it. On the other hand, the groundwork has already been laid, if GRRM were to go in this direction..it would be believable. Shocking, but believable. 

We have numerous mentions of kissing games in the godswoods. We have a pre-canon conversation between Sansa and Jon about How To Hit On Ladies. And much more. The possibility is there. 

Sansa having a crush on Jon and being so traumatized she replaced Jon with Waymar Royce?? Sansa getting tipsy on watered down wine and giving Jon a blue rose-

There are other possibilities though, for example, a fight between Sansa and her father and/or Arya that she’s not remembering correctly. It would explain her daddy issues (even more) and work to create conflict between her and Arya (why though). But I don’t THINK there’s any evidence for that..? I don’t know I’m just throwing out ideas.

Moving on to the second option- a third memory edit to come

These memory edits are not likely to be nearly as innocent. 

One possibility I’ve heard about is Sansa forgetting her identity and sinking into Alayne. No. Very Unlikely. Sansa’s Stark identity appears to be going strong even in the TWOW preview chapter.

Second possibility- Sansa memory edits Lysa’s death. 

She was mad and dangerous. She murdered her own lord husband, and would have murdered me if Petyr had not come along to save me.- Alayne I AFFC 

It’s...possible? But it looks like she does remember what Lysa said and how she died. She’s just suppressing/dismissing the parts that implicate Littlefinger, which is not the same as a memory edit, where the memory is changed somehow. 

More possibilities- Littlefinger will do something and that will lead to a memory edit. She’ll flee from the Vale and run into Ramsay (I dearly hope not) and bam trauma -> memory edit. The possibilities are pretty much endless. 

Now let’s assume that the incident on the Trident was not a memory edit. This means she’s only had one memory edit yet....in which case the pay-off is probably something kiss-related, or it is something she remembers, but which didn’t really happen. A pre-canon kiss, or some serious Freudian shit that I’ve been trying desperately to avoid, a Sansa-Sandor faceoff....yea I’m not actually good at speculation.

[secret-ssociety]

Behind the scenes

Pairing(s): Aaron Tveit x Reader, Les Mis (2012) cast x Reader

Warnings: This is just fluff. Like one curse

Summary: It is never intended for Enjolras and Eponine to fall in love in the original story, but a lot of things can happen when the cameras are turned off

A/N: I know everyone is waiting for more of the Let Me Down series but I have wanted to do this for a long time bc I am utterly in love with this man and I've always said I don't want to just write Peter Parker's stuff. Might make this several parts, who knows, I like things with parts.

masterlist

requests are open!!

For the first time in the whole day, silence fell upon the set of Les Mis, being only vaguely interrupted by the quiet chatter of everyone else who, unlike you, still had energy to talk. It's not like it was your fault, though, you had no idea of how much running around implied to play Eponine.

Huddled in a quiet corner of what had been built to be the Café Musain, you pushed your knees against your chest and hid your face between them, hoping to catch some rest before Tom decided he wanted to do a scene again. Was it maybe two in the morning? Three? You didn't even know anymore, you weren't allowed to carry a watch around your wrist and your phone was charging in your trailer, but the last time you had checked it was midnight and that had been a few hours ago.

Doing a movie, you had come to learn in your first few days of filming, was quite different from putting up a show. Interacting with your surroundings, going over scenes and even directing your eyes to a certain place while saying your lines was a world away from your common place on stage. You'd had to repress a loud squeak on your first day on set when you saw just how real everything looked, and when you started to try on your garments... you might as well have been a street urchin on Paris, 1832.

A small finger touched your shoulder timidly, waking you up from your fragile sleep and making you lift your head from its place. Your eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the light and you even had to squint a little to recognize Daniel standing next to you, looking just as tired, but with a small flame of caffeine dancing in the back of his eyes. Who the fuck gave the kid coffee? You wondered.

"How long do you think they'll keep us here?" he asked sitting next to you. From all your cast mates, Daniel was probably the first one you had grown fond of, but then again, so had everyone.

"Maybe not much longer, unless they want us to be here at noon tomorrow," you answered raising an eyebrow. Being the youngest person on the whole set, you could tell he was trying to hold his own like the adults, drinking coffee and doing his best to stay awake.

The problem with that, you knew, was that caffeine reacted differently on kids and adults: when an adult drinks coffee, it gives them energy for a long period of time, the caffeine is distributed in order to serve the body for good while. When a child drinks coffee, on the other hand, the caffeine gives them a rush of adrenaline that gets them jumping up and down and running circles around the adults, very much like Daniel was doing a while ago, thus burning all the energy they had acquired as fast as they had engorged it.

"You want to rest for a minute?" you asked him, stretching your legs so that he could rest his head on them. He shook his head tiredly, but didn't put up a fight when you grabbed his shoulder and started to lay him down.

Softly, you caressed his hair, while carefully trying to undo the tangles the dirt had made onto his hair to give him that street gamine I-live-in-the-elephant-of-the-Bastille look. In a matter of seconds, he was fully asleep, snoring quietly against the fabric of your skirt.

You heard some of the boys approaching, laughing loudly with cups of steaming coffee on their hands, and were quick to lift your finger up to your lips, to let them know of the resting boy that would be quickly awaken by their laughs. They apologized in whispers, handed you the cup they had brought for you and sat around you.

"Helena is trying to convince them to let us go to the hotel," Alistair commented, although he didn't look tired at all, more like he was amused by everyone else's exhaustion.

You sighed in relief against the cup, which was held close to your lips, making the steam hit your face in a warmth that made you aware of how cold your nose was. Only one gulp of the bitter liquid was enough to warm the blood flowing through your veins and take you back to life, you could open your eyes properly and the first the landed on was one of the most distinctive of your cast mates: Aaron Tveit.

Was there something special about him that made you think of his full name instead of just the first? Yeah, everything. He was the embodiment of the Enjolras Victor Hugo had wrote, the one that had been nicknamed Apollo by his friends. Maybe it was the way he held himself, somehow taller than everyone else, with that revolutionary fire in his eyes and walking around the set like he was actually going to get the people to build a barricade.

Wherever he happened to exist, you couldn't help but feel the presence of an olden god amongst mortals, the time go slower and light to travel in a bliss. There was just something so ethereal about him...

"He's talent, isn't he?" Alistair commented, having followed the direction of your eyes. "Among other things," Eddie joked, perhaps having caught on on the repressed smitten nature of your gaze. Stubbornly, you rolled your eyes.

As if saved by the bell, your director announced that everyone was allowed to go and get some rest, under the condition that you had to be back the next day before lunch. You were so tired, you almost forgot you were on your costume, being remembered by Eddie when you walked straight to the exit.

Up until that day, you had followed you stylist's skincare routine religiously every day after finishing filming, but once you found yourself in your sweatpants and Alistair's sweater, you simply poured water in your face and wiped all the makeup away with a paper towel.

Outside of your trailer, you found at least half of the Amis waiting for you to go grab some pizza while forming a wall to shield a newly caffeinated Daniel from your accusatory eyes. "I just left my cup unattended for a second!" George said quickly. You didn't know if you should laugh or yell at them, but you decided you were too tired to do either, so you simply took his hands and walk with the boys to the minivans the studio had hired for your transportation.

Eating pizza after having barely washed the makeup off of your face and only having a few hours to sleep after? You knew you were going to break out, but that was a tomorrow's problem.

Perhaps it was the magic that gravitated around Aaron that made you look back to see him, walking several feet behind the lot of you and clearly immersed on his thoughts. What you did next wasn't exactly a conscious decision, but it felt as natural as if it were.

"Hey, Tveit," you smiled, stopping before him. He looked surprised for a second, since he hadn't heard you approach him, but then smiled softly at you.

"Hello, Y/L/N," he said back, looking at you with those piercing eyes of him.

"We're going to grab a bite, wanna come?" You asked with a bright smile, one so cute that made it hard for him to say no.

"I don't know, it's late..." he said with half a smile.

"Did you know that pizza wasn't invented until the late half of the 18th century," you said, persistently, making him raise an eyebrow at the random fact, "that means all of our characters died without having ever eaten pizza. Shouldn't we, in order to honor them, do the things they never got to do?"

Aaron tried as hard as he could to fight back a smile at your argument. He had heard from the other guys about your occurrences and funny yet charming way with words, but he still hadn't had a chance to delight himself with it all too much. Maybe you were both too busy, maybe he wasn't as good as he liked to think to break the ice and Alistair had beat him to it.

He was practically convinced already, but still you added, "come on, Enjolras is still going to be here tomorrow morning... er, today a little less morning." You corrected checking the time on your wrist watch.

He was tired and not really hungry, but sill he nodded and followed you to the exit, where the rest of your friends cheered upon his joining.

Thankfully, the place Fra Fee knew was not too far away from the hotel, because none of you would have managed to walk too much after the day you'd had. Pulling a couple of tables together with the help of a waitress who pretended not to be a little starstruck, all of you sat down and ordered. You personally tried to ignore the way Eddie gave you his sit so that you would end up sat next to Aaron.

After ordering three large pizzas and some lemonade, and having grudgingly remembered that you couldn't order a beer or anything of the sort, you resumed your chattery. You soon found that, while you weren't the only theatre actress on the room, you were the only one who had never been on a film before. Still, that didn't mean your previous work had gone unnoticed.

"I was really excited to meet Y/N," Eddie commented on Daniel's side, "because I went to see her in The Phantom of The Opera, in London and I was" he made the gesture of his head blowing up, making you laugh.

"Yes, I knew I had seen you somewhere! You're Christine Daaé!" George exclaimed, interrupting the bite he was about to give to his pizza.

"Didn't you say on the first table reading that your dream role is Esmeralda, from the Hunchback?" Aaron perked up, making you blush a little.

"Esmeralda, Christine and Eponine," Alistair numbered, only giving you time to nod, "are you planning on becoming the Holy Trinity of French Theater?"

"I'll be able to say the Holy Trinity of French Theater died in my arms!"

You almost spilled your lemonade at the exclamation, unable to contain your laughs, very much like everyone else on the table. You didn't mean for your face to be as red as it was in that moment, but you couldn't help it when everyone seemed to be so interested in your past work. Despite attention being your line of work, you didn't know how to handle it that good.

It was when Daniel's adrenaline burnt off, as you had predicted, and he was found too tiresd to even keep his head up that you came back to the hotel, with the quiet company of Aaron, who had also offered to take the young boy back to his room. You were both in silence, though it was not an awkward one, it just wasn't necessary to talk to enjoy the other's company.

"We're getting a cow," he said suddenly, when you were approaching the entrance of the hotel.

"What?" You asked with a confused smile.

"We're getting a cow, on the set, tomorrow," he clarified grinning, "she will be there for the scenes of the barricade."

"Why would a cow be on a barricade?" You questioned with a laugh, opening the door for Aaron, since he was carrying Daniel, and receiving a little thank you in return. "Not that I'm complaining."

He laughed in return and followed you to the elevator, making sure neither the young boy nor the jacket he had put over him fell from his embrace. The cow thing had just been to start conversation and be able to ask what he really wanted to know, although he was a little pumped up about the cow.

"Do you want to do what Alistair said?" He asked curiously, "About being the Holy Trinity of French Theater, it is."

"I had never thought about it that way, but it sounds quite nice," you answer thoughtfully. "Though, I believe I would have to play Eponine on a stage, rather than a set to really earn that title."

"You're not liking movie making so far?" He asked somewhat amused, specially when you whipped your head to look at him with wide eyes.

"No! That's not what I mean," you talked so fast you nearly stumbled through your words, but the kindness on his eyes made you sigh and calm down. "This has been amazing so far and I would never underestimate the huge effort it takes to make one of these. I mean, I've only been doing this for a couple days and I'm already beyond exhaustion. And yet it has been wonderful, the set and the preparation and just seeing all the work it implies is... unbelievable."

You knocked three time on the door, to see Daniel's mother not two seconds later. Aaron had been worried that maybe she would be concerned and even a little mad at how late her son was coming back, but you had been texting her throughout the extra hours of shooting and to let her know you were going to take him to eat something before coming back to the hotel.

She kindly thanked you both, took Daniel (who was still sound sleep) on her arms and gave Aaron his jacket back, to then close the door. Without saying much, he walked you to your own room, prompting you to continue.

"Where was I? Oh, yeah! So filming a movie is... I'm running out of adjectives, but it's really great," he chuckled slightly, "but I don't think it can top the feeling of being on the theater," you sighed dreamily.

"On stage, there is no take two, the things you're doing can only be done once. There's..." your tongue ran through your lips, an action Aaron found almost mesmerizing, as you tried to find the words to describe the thing you loved the most in the world. "There's this feeling, when the show is about to start, the lights dim, the overture starts and you get goosebumps and you heart starts thumping at the moment you come on stage, there's something about that moment being unrepeatable and having the eyes of the crowd on you, the adrenaline is just... is like the identity line that divides the actor from their character disappears and in that moment you're not quite them, but you're not you, you're just..." you let out a breath at the inability to find the word and, for a moment, you worried you might have bored him with your rambling, but he had that bliss over his face, the one only a theatre actor knows and has, that told you he knew exactly what you're talking about.

The next morning, back on set and with your costumes again covering your backs, Aaron found himself so hypnotized by the sight of you rehearsing with Amanda his tea got cold and was utterly scared when Eddie's palm fell onto his back, dragging him out of his day dream.

"Is this the part when the Phantom is stalking Christine?" George asked jokingly, making Aaron roll his eyes.

For someone who made so much fun of him for becoming Enjolras, he had certainly developed Grantaire's mocking nature.

"She's really talented," the blonde man answered nonchalantly, drinking from his tea and making a face when he found out the drink was cold.

"I see," Eddie said handing him his tea, "are you seeing our dear Y/N under a new light?"

Was he? It would be a lie to say he didn't come back to his room with you occupying every single one of his thoughts, his heart fluttering who had managed to put his passion for theatre in words. Had his hands always became a little shaky around you? Yes. But today it was even worse.

Today, your voice giving life to Eponine's thoughts and emotions could make his cheeks blush or bring tears to his eyes in a matter of a second. Today, you walked around with a strange light over you, one that didn't allow him to look away while, at the same time, reprehended him for staring. Today, you were more than an artist, an actress. You were something more than human.

"Nonsense," he replied stubbornly, "I have always known how talented she is."

Before he could get a sarcastic comment or a snide yet friendly remark, the three men's chatter was interrupted by the two previously mentioned ladies rehearsing The Robbery, one of the scenes you planned on filming that day.

"It's the police! Disappear! Run for it!" Your strong soprano voice cut all chattery in one swift motion. "It's Javert!"

He probably held his breath for as long as you held the note. Once you opened your eyes, you seemed a little embarrassed at all the eyes on you, but Aaron didn't understand just what did you have to be embarrassed about.

Eddie shook his shoulder, "breathe, mate!"

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 52: Writing is a technology

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 52: Writing is a technology. 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 52 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 writing as a technology. But first, do you wish there was more Lingthusiasm to listen to? Even though this is Episode 52, we have almost a hundred episodes of Lingthusiasm. Some of them exist as bonus episodes over at our Patreon.

Gretchen: If you want to listen to those and have more Lingthusiasm in your earballs, you can go to patron.com/lingthusiasm. This also helps keep the show ad-free. If you like listening to a show without ads, help us keep doing that.

Lauren: The Patreon also fosters this wonderful linguistics enthusiastic community. In fact, we have a Discord server, which is basically just a wonderful chat space for people to talk about linguistics. There are over 350 people on the Lingthusiasm Discord right now.

Gretchen: If you wish you had other lingthusiasts to talk to to share your interesting linguistics anecdotes and memes and general nerdery, and you want more people like that to talk to, you can join the Patreon to also get access to the Discord. We launched the Discord community just a year ago, and it’s been really fun to see it grow and thrive and take on a life of its own since then. If you are already a patron, and you haven’t linked your Patreon and Discord account together, it’s there waiting for you. Feel free to come join us.

Lauren: We have Patreon supporter levels at a range of tiers. Some of them include additional merch. One of my favourite perks is the very scientific Lingthusiasm IPA quiz where we send you a short quiz and then we give you your own custom IPA character which is enshrined on our Wall of Fame.

Gretchen: It’s a fun quiz. We have fun looking at people’s answers.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode is a collection of some of our favourite anecdotes from interviews and from other episodes that didn’t quite make it into the original episode. We’re delighted to share those in that bonus episode.

Gretchen: You get to see a bit behind-the-scenes with that episode. Also, do you want more linguistics on your favourite other podcasts?

Lauren: Always.

Gretchen: Constantly. We’re also very happy to do podcast interviews on other shows about various topics. If there’re other podcasts that you like that you wish would do a linguistics episode and interview one of us, you should tell them that! We’re happy to come on. Tag us both or something on social media or tell your favourite podcasts that they could do a linguistics episode because we’d be happy to do that.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, do you remember learning how to read?

Gretchen: Not really. I mean, I remember encountering the alphabet chart in my first year of school, but I already sort of knew the alphabet at that point. I guess there was some point when I didn’t know how to read, and there was some point when I did, but I don’t really have concrete memories of that. Do you remember learning how to read?

Lauren: I feel like I have more memories of learning how to write, just because that’s such a mechanical thing. I remember sitting there writing out a row of As. I definitely wrote the number “five” backward for way longer than I probably should have, which is a really common thing that happens when kids are learning to write because it is a combination of brain skills and fine motor skills. But reading in English is something I feel like I’ve always just been able to do. I mean, I guess in comparison learning to read Nepali, which is written in a different script – it’s written in the Devanagari script – I have more memories of that because I did that in my 20s. Even now, I still feel the real disconnect between being relatively able to chat and really struggling to read and write. I still have to put my finger under the words as I’m going through, whereas with English it just feels like the words are beaming straight into my brain because I learnt to read that language so early in my life.

Gretchen: Yeah, I read at this automatic level. I can’t see a sign that says, “Stop,” on it and not read it in Latin script. But in undergrad I took both Ancient Greek and Arabic. In Greek, I got to the point – because the script is sort of similar enough and I was familiar enough with the letters previously-ish – that I got to the point where I could very slowly sound out words as I was reading them out loud because we had to do a lot of reading aloud in Greek class. But in Arabic, I was very much at that hooked on phonics level where you’re like, /p/-/t/-/k/-/a/. There are a few words that I have as sight words in Arabic. One of them is the word for “and,” which is “waa”, and one of the words for “the,” which is “al”, and one of them is the word for “book” because “kitaab” just shows up all the time. But most of the words I had to painstakingly sound out each letter and then listen to myself as I was saying them. I’d be like, “Oh, it’s that word,” even if I knew it, which is this process that I must’ve gone through in English, but I don’t remember doing it for the Latin script.

Lauren: I think that is one of the things that makes it really hard for people who grow up in highly literate, highly educated societies to tease writing and reading apart from language. But actually, when you step back, you realise that writing is actually super weird.

Gretchen: It’s so weird! It’s this interesting – it really is a technology. It’s a thing you do on top of language to do stuff with language, but it’s not the language itself. There are thousands and possibly millions of languages that have never been written down in the history of humanity. We have no idea. We’ve never met a society of humans, or heard of a society of humans, without language. But those are spoken and signed languages, which are just kind of there. Writing, by contrast, was invented somewhere between 3 and 4 times in the history of humanity.

Lauren: That we know of.

Gretchen: That we know of.

Lauren: There might’ve been a society that did a very ephemeral form of snow writing that we have lost forever. But we have records of 3 or 4 times.

Gretchen: It’s been invented a handful of times. There are a few other cases where there are scripts that haven’t been deciphered by modern humans. Maybe they’re scripts, maybe they’re not – it’s not quite clear. But it’s definitely a handful of number of times. And then once other cultures come in contact with the technology of writing, they’re like, “Oh, this is cool. Let’s adapt this to our linguistic situation,” and it gets borrowed a heck of a lot. But it only got cemented a few times.

Lauren: It’s worth saying that “3 to 4” is a bit squishy because it’s not entirely clear if cuneiform, which is a very pointy form of writing from Babylonia, somehow inspired the Egyptian system that became what we know as the hieroglyphs or if they just happened around the same time by coincidence are something we may never really fully put together. That’s a very contested situation. That’s why we can’t even pin down the number of times we think it was invented.

Gretchen: Cuneiform is the one that’s made with the sharpened reed that you push into your clay tablets or, if you’re some people on the internet, into your gingerbread because there’s some really excellent examples of cuneiform gingerbread tablets people have made, which I just wanna – yeah, it’s really great. The Egyptian hieroglyphs people have seen. But yeah, it’s unclear whether they were in contact with each other and kind of heard of each other in a very loose sense and were inspired by each other because there was some amount of contact between those two areas, or if that was elsewhere. The other two – one is in Mesoamerica, in modern-day Mexico and that area, where they had a writing system there that, again, developed into lots of different scripts as it got borrowed from different areas, of which the best deciphered is the Mayan script from the 3rd Century BCE. There’s also the Olmec script, which is probably the oldest. The Zapotec script is also really old. There’s a bunch of scripts in the modern-day Mexico area that also developed independently.

Lauren: Then the final system arose in China around the Bronze Age a couple of thousand years BCE. Because this script was mostly found in its most earliest forms on oracle bones, it’s known as the “oracle bone” script.

Gretchen: What is an oracle bone?

Lauren: They are turtle bones that are used in divination.

Gretchen: Oh.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And, again, the Chinese script, once it developed further, it was also, yeah, influenced a bunch of the other writing systems in the area.

Lauren: I find it super fascinating, with absolutely no historical knowledge or insight to bring to this, that in these three different places that were completely separate and going about their own cultural lives writing arose at a similar time around 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.

Gretchen: Yeah! You wonder what was in the water or something. Well, and it’s partially, I think, that there’s a certain level of writing makes it easier to do things like administrative bureaucracy if you’re trying to keep track of whether people paid their taxes or – it’s a very empire-y thing to have is to develop a writing system.

Lauren: Oh yeah. And it’s absolutely worth stating that it’s not like three people in these three different locations all woke up on the same Tuesday 4,000 years ago and were like, “I’m gonna write a long letter to someone.”

Gretchen: Did they have Tuesdays 4,000 years ago?

Lauren: What you see is this emergence of, “I’m just gonna make a couple of notes so I know how much money you owe me.” Some of the earliest cuneiform tablets we have are just, like, beer supply stock takes.

Gretchen: Like, “Three oxes and this many baskets of grain” or whatever.

Lauren: I feel like it’s very human to be like, “We love writing because it’s poetry, and I can send letters to people I love,” and it’s like, no, it’s actually, “I just wanted to know how much you owe me.”

Gretchen: The king just wants to know if these people have paid their taxes.

Lauren: So, what you get is – although I’m like, “Oh, it all happened within similar millennia,” it is actually centuries of development from just keeping tabs on a few items to a fully fleshed out written system.

Gretchen: What types of things people thought were important to write down – things like legal codes and stuff like that – one of the interesting things that I came across when I was looking this up was that there’s a person named Enheduanna, who is the earliest known poet whose name has been recorded. She was the high priestess of the goddess Inanna and the moon god Nanna in the Sumerian city-state of Ur. There we go. But authorship shows up much later than some anonymous civil servant keeping track of who’s registered which grain or some anonymous priest or something keeping track of who’s made various offerings. This idea of like, “Oh, you’re gonna write poetry,” is a step later.

Lauren: Filing your tax is what is actually one of the best links you have to those ancient civilisations.

Gretchen: There’s this Egyptian named Ptahhotep – that’s “Pta,” P-T, even though I know I’m not pronouncing it that way – he was a vizier in Egypt. He’s also one of the first named writers, the first book in history – or people call him the first book in history – because he wrote these Maxims of Ptahhotep. There may have been people who were writing on more perishable materials that didn’t get recorded and stuff like that. It’s this whole process of, “Okay, I’m going to draw these little diagrams of oxen or something or draw these little diagrams of this plant or this animal or whatever to record what types of things get recorded.” But then in order for it to actually become a writing system, there’s also this step of abstraction that has to happen. This is when you start saying, “Okay, well, the word for this very easily visualisable thing” – so I’m thinking of oxen because the word for “ox” in one of the Semitic languages, I think, was something like /alef/. And so, this “ox’s head” gets transformed into, “Okay, what if this is the sound at the beginning of the word for ‘ox’s head,’” which is /alef/, and it gets transformed into our modern letter A, which is “alpha.” “Alpha” in Greek is just the name of the letter. It’s not “an ox’s head” in Greek anymore because the Greeks borrowed it form the Phoenicians. This level of abstraction that has to go from, “Okay, I’m gonna draw an ox’s head” – if you turn a capital A upside down, it kind of looks like an ox’s head.

Lauren: It’s got its little horns, which are the feet of an A.

Gretchen: Yeah, and there’re all these related languages. You know, Arabic’s got alif at the beginning, even though it doesn’t look like an ox’s head anymore. Hebrew’s got an alef, and Greek’s got an alpha, and all of these alphabets that begin with A. It’s this level of abstraction where you can use this thing to stand for this thing that was associated with an ox.

Lauren: There’re a couple of main different ways that you can relate these abstract images that you’re putting down in writing to the language that you are trying to capture. Of course, being a linguistics podcast, I was gonna bring this straight back to the structure of language.

Gretchen: Well, I think it’s interesting to look at the structure of languages in different areas of the world, and how people reflect those in the writing systems that are developed for those languages. When they borrow a writing system for a language with a very different structure, they end up doing certain adaptations to account for not just like, “Okay, languages have different sounds,” but also those sounds are organised and structured in different ways with relationship to each other. The writing systems often reflect some of that history.

Lauren: The Latin alphabet that both of us are most familiar with has a very approximate correspondence between each character of the writing system and a sound in the language. And I say “approximate” because English spelling is a wonderful historical record of how some of those sound changes have changed over time. I’m just gonna keep this upbeat. You can fall down a giant well of English writing system problems, but to get to a point where the majority of letters have a pretty stable correspondence to sounds that we recognise as phones in the language, and that allows us to write out the words of English.

Gretchen: One of the things that’s true about a lot of the Indo-European languages is that they have a particular ratio between consonants and vowels in the words, where they have a fair bit of consonants in relationship to their vowels but not a ton. You can see this in the writing system because the writing system represents consonants and vowels separately. And yet, when the Greeks were borrowing the alphabet from the Phoenicians – Phoenician is a Semitic language like modern-day Arabic and Hebrew – that alphabet only had consonants in it – letters for consonants – because the vowels were not that important. This is still true of modern-day Semitic languages is they’re often written in writing systems that don’t represent the vowels or kind of optionally represent the short vowels, or sometimes they represent the long vowels, but they’re often written in writing systems where the vowels can be omitted. That’s not really a thing you can do very well in Indo-European languages and still have things understood because the vowels carry enough information that you need to represent them somehow.

Lauren: Even when you have a phonemic script, it’s not necessary to always represent all of the sounds to convey the language.

Gretchen: Right. Then conversely, there are other languages where the vowels are even more important and, in fact, every consonant comes with a vowel or virtually every consonant comes with a vowel. In those, you often get what are called “syllabaries,” where they represent one syllable at a time, because why bother with representing each of these things separately when in every context where you have a consonant there’s gonna be a nearby vowel – or in virtually every context there’s gonna be a nearby vowel – and so you can have a symbol that just represents the whole syllable there. That’s also a structure that doesn’t work very well for Indo-European languages because they don’t have that many vowels. There’s this spot of like they have important enough vowels that you need to represent the vowels somehow but not so important are vowels that you have to represent lots of vowels all the time, whereas languages like Japanese or Hindi – well, Hindi’s Indo-European, but it’s got more vowels, I guess.

Lauren: The Devanagari writing system is inherently focused on the syllable, which is a very different approach to reading. Each character of this writing system, if there’s no vowel specified, it just comes with a bonus vowel. It’s like, “Buy this consonant, get this free letter A sound.”

Gretchen: Right. That’s partly a feature of the writing system, but it can only be a feature of the writing system because it’s already a feature of the language. A similar thing goes for a language like Chinese, where a lot of things are based around a syllable.

Lauren: Then you can go a level of abstraction further where your character in the writing system represents a word-level thing and doesn’t have a direct relationship to the sound correspondence, which is what happens with the Chinese script.

Gretchen: I think it’s important to recognise that there is a phonetic component to Chinese characters. They often make use of – especially for words that are more abstract – it’s not just like, “Oh, here’s a bunch of little pictures that we’ve drawn,” because that’s not capable of conveying abstract concepts like grammatical particles and words for things that don’t come with easy pictures. And so, making use of, “Okay, a lot of our words are one or two syllables long, so here’s a word that’s relatively easy to visualise that sounds very similar to a word that is not as easy to visualise.” We can just add a thing to be like, “It sounds like this, but it’s got a meaning more related to this,” and you can be like, “Oh, it must be this more abstract word.” The classic example, which I’m definitely gonna do the tones wrong on, is that the word for “horse” is /ma/, and the word for mother is also /ma/ with a different tone, and you can add the little horse semantic component with the woman semantic component and be like, “Oh, it’s the word that sounds like ‘horse’ but has to do with something with a woman,” and then you end up with “mother.”

Lauren: This works for languages in China because they tend to be not as long as words in English. We like to add all these extra bits of morphology within our grammar, whereas, again, you get – not a direct rule force – but you get this general tendency where the writing system kind of fits with the vibe of the grammar of the language.

Gretchen: One example of that is in Japanese where they were heavily influenced by the Chinese script, but Japanese actually does have suffixes and other little grammatical words and things you need to change about words. They made some of the Chinese characters that had formerly only had semantic things into just like, “Oh, this makes this sound, and this makes this sound,” because they needed to be able to represent that morphological information that’s not super important in Chinese but is very important in Japanese. You end up adapting a script into something else when it gets borrowed in a different context. Another interesting example here is Farsi or Persian which is an Indo-European language that’s conventionally written with the same script as Arabic except it’s also had a couple of additional letters added because Persian has a P and Arabic doesn’t. They had to create a symbol for the sound P, which is why you get “Farsi” instead of “Parsi” because Arabic doesn’t pronounce that P. So, it makes the P into an F. Sometimes you get people adding additional letters like adding a letter for P. Sometimes you get adapting whole sets of a script.

Lauren: Sometimes you lose letters. English had distinct characters for /θ/ and /ð/ until it was technologically easier to just use the characters in the printing press that English had borrowed. It’s makes me a little bit sad. But also, it makes international people – maybe it’s a little bit easier.

Gretchen: We used to have a thorn for the /ð/ sound, but those early printing presses from continental Europe didn’t have thorns on them. I mean, Icelandic still has thorns. One of the things that I think is more interesting in the closer to modern era – not strictly modern era – is cultures and peoples that are familiar with the idea of writing yet take the idea of writing and say, “We’re gonna make our own homegrown script that actually works really well for our particular language.” One of my favourites is the Cherokee syllabary, which was invented by Sequoyah, who was a Cherokee man who didn’t know how to read in English, but he’d encountered the Latin-based writing system in English. He thought it was cool that the English speakers had this, and so he locked himself in shed for several years and came up with a syllabary for Cherokee. Some of the symbols on the Cherokee syllabary look something like Latin letters, but they stand for completely different things because he wasn’t just learning to read from English. Some of them are completely different. This became hugely popular among the Cherokee in the area. There were newspapers in this in the 1800s. There was very high literacy in Cherokee country. It was really popular. It’s even still found on modern-day computer keyboards and stuff like this. You can get Windows and stuff in Cherokee. It’s this interesting example of that’s one where we can say a particular person was inspired by writing systems but also created his own thing that became very popular.

Lauren: The thing that makes Cherokee so compelling to me is not only did he come up with an incredibly elegant, well thought out, suits the language system, but that he actually got uptake as well – that the community decided to use this as the writing system that they would learn to read and write in, and that it had uptake. It’s very easy to come up with ways of improving the technology of writing but, as I think you’re fond of saying, language is very much an open-source project. You can come up with really elegant solutions, but if no one else is gonna take them up, that’s not gonna be very helpful. So, Sequoyah’s work is doubly amazing for that reason.

Gretchen: People actually made printing presses with the Cherokee symbols and were using those. Another interesting case of this disconnect between a person or people coming up with a system and actual uptake of it is Korean, which has what I think linguists generally agree is just the best writing system.

Lauren: Yeah, we’re like, “Writing as a technology is amazing. All writing systems are equally valid. But Korean is particularly great.”

Gretchen: “But Korean’s really cool.” The thing that’s cool about it from a completely biased linguist perspective is that the writing system of Korean, Hangul, the script, is not just based on individual sounds or phonemes, it’s actually at a more precise level based on the shape of the mouth and how you configure the mouth in order to make those particular sounds. There’s a lot of, okay, here are these closely related sounds – let’s say you make them all with the lips – and you just add an additional stroke to make it this other related sound that you make with the lips. Between P and B and M, which are all made with the lips, those symbols have a similar shape. It’s not an accident. It’s very systematic between that and the same thing with T and D and N. Those have a similar shape because they have this relationship. It’s very technically beautiful from an analysis of language perspective.

Lauren: I love this so much that when we were prototyping a potential script for the Aramteskan language for the Shadowscent books, when I was constructing that language, I also started constructing a script that we never used anywhere, but it was helpful to think about how the characters would write and what writing implements they would use. If you look at the script, you’ll notice that the letter P and B are very similar, but B has an additional stroke. T and D are very similar, but D has an additional stroke. Very much feature driven. And then for the vowels – it’s roughly a quadrant in the writing space – the /i/ vowel is in the top left of the quadrant, the /u/ vowel is in the top right of the quadrant, the /a/ vowel is in the bottom left of the quadrant.

Gretchen: So clever!

Lauren: It was actually just for really selfish reasons that I decided to go with a feature-based system, and that is that it was easier for me to remember if I used the features of the language and made sure that the voiced sound was always identical to the voiceless one but just with an additional stroke. It meant that I only had to remember half the characters.

Gretchen: That’s very elegant. The easy to remember bit is also true about the Hangul script because it’s got so much regularity. The famous quote about Hangul is something like “A wise man can learn it in an afternoon and a foolish man can learn it in a day.”

Lauren: So catchy!

Gretchen: There’s probably a better version of that quote. What’s interesting about it from an adoption perspective is that Hangul was invented by Sejong the Great.

Lauren: Appropriately named.

Gretchen: Who has a national holiday now because of the script. But it was created in 1443. It’s not quite clear whether it was him personally doing everything or whether he had an advisory committee of linguists, but it’s really extremely well-adapted to the linguistic situation of Korean in particular. Even though it’s just also really cool for how it represents the inside of the mouth, but it’s really well adapted for Korean. It was invented in 1443, but it wasn’t popularised in use until several centuries later because for a long time Korean was also using, like Japanese, this adapted version of the Chinese script or adapted version of the Japanese script because of the cultural influences. In the early 20th century, they were doing a much bigger literacy push in Korea to be like, “What want everyone to learn how to read.” And they said, “Okay, we’re gonna have an orthographic reform, and we’re gonna use this script which has this very nice historical pedigree but also is much easier to learn than this complicated thing that we had done that wasn’t really designed for Korean.” It’s got this historical antecedence but also it came back in the modern-day. Now, everything in Korean is written in it. It’s because it’s really easy to learn how to read and write in. The historical uptake wasn’t immediate. It wasn’t during King Sejong’s lifetime where they were like, “Oh, yeah, now we’re all gonna use his script,” people were like, “Okay, king, you’ve got this hobby,” but it wasn’t popularised until later.

Lauren: Even when there is really strong abstraction, humans have this unavoidable tendency to think about the relationship between sounds and other senses. In sound-based writing systems – Suzy Styles, who has been on the podcast before and works on perception across the senses, did an experiment alongside Nora Turoman where they looked at whether people can guess, for writing systems they’re not familiar with, which character was the /u/ sound and which character was the /i/ sound. They found that for a whole variety of scripts there is a much higher than chance – because there’s only two choices. If was completely arbitrary, it would be 50/50. But people do tend, across the evolution of sound-based writing systems, to have /u/ that has a more rounded, bigger sound has properties in the writing system that re-occur. People continue to unavoidably link the sounds of the language to the written properties of the script in a very low-level way. I’ll link to that study. It’s really great.

Gretchen: That’s interesting. It’s not gonna be 100%, but there’s this slightly better than chance relationship.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Visual representation of physical information is also something that shows up in ways of writing signed languages.

Lauren: Yeah. Everything we’ve talked about so far, I think, we’ve talked about for spoken languages, but it is possible to write signed languages as well.

Gretchen: There are several different systems in place. Some of them are language-specific like, “Oh, this is the system for writing ASL in particular,” and some of them are kind of like your linguist, International Phonetic Alphabet trying to provide a language-agnostic way of writing signed languages for research purposes but, in a way, that’s sort of impractical, like the IPA for general use. There’s an interesting set of systems. There isn’t as much agreement among representers of signed languages in writing which amounts of information are crucial information that has to be written down and which are optional bits of information that the reader can fill in from their own knowledge of the language and the signer.

Lauren: I think it’s worth flagging that that’s not just a discussion that arises for signed languages. It’s just that those conversations got thrashed out for spoken languages four millennia ago, and we weren’t around when people were arguing about whether intonation had any role in the – or people probably were arguing because it was an emerging thing.

Gretchen: Well, when people were arguing about like, “Do we write vowels or not,” which was a big thing. Do we write vowels? Do we write intonation? And punctuation followed quite a bit after – you know, punctuation wasn’t as much of a thing for several of the early centuries and millennia of writing. They didn’t do punctuation. There’s some level of ongoingness that’s still there. If you think about the internet efforts to try to write tone of voice very precisely and communicate sarcasm and irony and rhetorical questions very precisely, there’s some level of ongoing debate that’s still happening in the spoken language context but not nearly as much as is still happening in the signed language context.

Lauren: Also, just because of the way that signed language communities tend to be embedded within larger spoken language communities, people who sign as a primary language tend to also be educated in the mainstream spoken language, and so literacy gets developed in, say, a language like English.

Gretchen: I think that’s the case for a lot of smaller spoken languages as well where sometimes there’s this imperative of, “Okay, we want to be able to write things to each other” or something, but if there hasn’t been a history of a lot of published literature in that language that you’re trying to read, then it becomes a question of, “Should we teach this in school,” because there isn’t literature there, even though there would be oral literature. It becomes a chicken and egg problem of which comes first, or which do you start teaching first, when you’re constantly comparing stuff against a few very large spoken languages that have this very long writing tradition. It shows up in languages with a newer writing tradition.

Lauren: Education systems have a massive influence there. My grandmother, actually her strongest written language is German. Even though she and her sister speak to each other in Polish, they would write to each other in German because that’s the language they had been educated to write in. Even with people who don’t speak minority languages, the influence of the education system there is so massive.

Gretchen: Reading and writing, they’re separate skills even though they’re often taught together. Sometimes you can read a language that you can’t write or something like that. But it’s a big question. With signed languages, because video technology is now available, if we’d had good audio recording technology 4,000 years ago, the pressure to develop writing systems for spoken languages might not have been as strong – probably wouldn’t have been as strong – even though there are other useful things that writing can do even in the audio-video era. It’s easier to be like, “Well, you can just make a video of the signer,” and then you’d know exactly what they were trying to say and exactly how they wanted to say it. You wouldn’t have this level of abstraction of are you gonna try to write it down in a way that imperfectly represents what a person is gonna do when they’re producing it. It is still interesting looking at some of the signed language writing systems. Some of them, like Stokoe notation and HamNoSys, which stands for “Hamburg Notation System,” they try to very physically represent the characteristics of the signer – where their hands are, where their face is, and things like that. There’s another one that I can’t find the name of that is based on the ASCII alphabet, so you can type it into search engine boxes, which has some advantages as well but represents things more abstractly. It’s got this link with Korean, which was representing this very physical aspect of what the mouth is doing. Several of the signed language writing systems like Stokoe and HamNoSys also have this very physical representation what the body’s doing when it’s being produced. But I think they’re more popular among researchers than they are among actual D/deaf users who tend to use video a lot.

Lauren: I encounter Stokoe and HamNoSys in the gesture and signed linguistics literature. I haven’t really seen them too much outside of that.

Gretchen: I think that it’s easy to conflate a language with its writing system because we’re so used to thinking of English as sort of inextricably linked to the Latin alphabet. But there isn’t a reason, in theory, why you couldn’t write English in the Greek alphabet or in the Arabic alphabet or in a very adapted version of Chinese characters where you’d have to do a lot of adaptation. The same thing is true when you write languages that don’t originally use the Latin alphabet and you have romanisations of them. Writing systems are just as much political and contextual. Some of them have this very tight structural relationship to the properties of the languages they represent and some of them have looser relationships because they’ve been adapted to it later.

Lauren: It’s this slightly looser relationship to language as it’s spoken or signed that means that linguists don’t always include writing systems in, say, an Introduction to Linguistics course. We don’t often talk about writing systems. But when we were putting together the Crash Course series, we ended up making writing the topic of our final episode for the series.

Gretchen: I think partly because people are really interested in it, so why not do something about writing, and also because I think that you can use writing systems as a window into some of the interesting structural features of different languages and how the writing systems represent that. As somebody who’s really interested in internet linguistics and the rise of informal writing and how we represent tone of voice and things like that in modern-day writing, and that’s still a moving target evolutionarily speaking, I think it’s interesting to give that linguistic lens on writing systems even though they are imperfect representations of the languages that they represent.

Lauren: “Writing Systems” is Video 16 of Crash Course linguistics, which is wrapping up this month. If you’ve been holding out to watch all 16 of those episodes, you’ll be able to do so very soon or perhaps even now thanks to the temporal vagueness of podcasts.

Gretchen: Crash Course is the YouTube series that we’ve been working on basically all of 2020. It’s especially popular with high school or undergraduate teaching. If you know people that age, or who teach people that age, that may be a useful thing to send to people. We hope that people find it useful as a resource for self-teaching or for instructing in various capacities.

[Music]

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, “Not judging your grammar, just analysing it” mugs, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can access to 48 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 chat room to talk with other linguistics fans – like, do you remember learning how to read – and other rewards as well as helping keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include an AMA with a lexicographer and our favourite stories and anecdotes that we just didn’t have time for in some of the earlier episodes. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you could recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. And, hey, tell your other favourite podcasts that they could a linguistics episode, and get us on! It’d be fun.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[count-woe-laf]

You can’t spell stargaze without gays

I write? Since when? Yes I’m aware the title makes no sense, I’m uncreative. This was supposed to be a late birthday present for @me-a-mess-morelikelythanyouthink but it’s super late now, I still enjoyed writing it and planning it with her, I hope you’re having a great day, Silver. I’m sorry I got science facts wrong and I don’t know how to end things or how normal people talk

Logan and Virgil are hopeless pining gay idiots with horrible communication skills, but they’re working on it. (Romantic analogical, very background royality and platonic dukeceit.) 1850 words

"Bring me a diet coke!" Virgil called to Roman as he ran out of the truck, through the gravel parking lot, and towards the bright 7/11.

Logan let out a small laugh from next to him. "You know he's going to spend an hour flirting with the cashier and forget."

"Yeah I know, it's fine. Surprising that he's moved up from panicking around Patton to flirting with him, that's what I call character development."

"Character development that's gone on for ten too many seasons."

"True. But while he's in there I have more time to spend with you," Virgil replied with a smirk, Logan's cheeks reddening.

"You all are disgusting," called Remus from the backseat.

"I agree," Janus sighed. "Though I can do many things, understanding allos is not one of them."

"Then get out of my truck," Virgil jokingly glared into the rearview mirror.

"It's Roman's truck-" Logan started, Virgil shifted his glare towards him. "Ok yeah, get out."

"Think we can find bigfoot, Jan?"

"We're only half an hour away from the city, try again," but Janus let himself be dragged out into the nearby forest.

Logan and Virgil were left alone, thoughts of what had gone on the past week between them running through their heads. The hand brushes, the late night phone calls, the hoodies, the excessive amount of feelings that for once, neither of them minded. There was always more to say though.

"You can see lots of stars from out here," Virgil commented rather nervously. "You should come outside with me and look at them."

It was an offering just for Logan. He was the only one allowed to stargaze with Virgil while others were flirting in a 7/11 and being chaotic in a forest. Logan and Virgil in the bed of a truck staring at the night sky. ...Well, one of them was looking at the stars.

"You know to stargaze you actually have to look at them, right? You can just look at me, V."

"Who's saying you're not a star? 'Cause you definitely are, love."

"Love?" Logan tilted his head towards Virgil's red face.

"Uh-" Virgil looked away quickly. "What is that constellation? It looks like a spoon."

"Do you seriously not know? That's the big dipper, it's part of the constellation ursa major."

"You're the science-y one here, how would I know?" Logan just sighed. "You should keep talking though, I love your voice."

"Oh… Well that's the northern star…"

"Why is it called that?"

"Um, it's the most northern star, I believe astronomers base things off of it."

Virgil snoted, "wow. Star dudes sure are creative."

Logan looked over, an indescribable emotion on his face. "Pardon me, but did you just call astronomers, 'star dudes'?"

Virgil stared back, a teasing glint in his eyes. "Star. Dudes."

"...I will defenestrate you."

"Oh?"

"Do you even know what that means?"

"Yeah," Virgil said. "It means you pick me up and I get to simp over your muscles."

"It also means I throw you out of a window."

"I'll take what I can get." Logan let out a fond sigh. "Ok 'cause your constellations are boring and factual- don't worry I still love them- but I'm telling stories now."

"You're going to kill me."

"In your dreams, babe."

"What's that supposed to-"

"Over there is Elenor, it kinda looks like a bunny, I know. Their boyfriend is Jesse over there-"

"Virgil I swear, I'm leaving you in the forest." Logan's words gave a much different meaning when he was struggling to keep in his laugh.

Virgil chucked. "Oh Logan, so naive, there's so much more. Those three stars? Yeah they're Bo Peep's sheep."

Logan choked, the statement taking him by surprise. "Excuse me? You can't just…"

"Y'know, from Toy Story? Doesn't she have three sheep or something? I swear that was a plot point in one of the movies."

"The threat of being thrown out of a window still stands, Virge." 

"Good, now that star over there…"

"Her name is Jennifer, she got a constellation for making the best bean salad."

Virgil tried to hold in a laugh. "And what did you say that one was?"

Logan was so enamoured with Virgil's laugh that he almost didn't notice him intertwining their fingers. Almost. He still had to take a breath to regain his nearly non-existent composure. Although fifteen minutes couldn't have passed, Logan could tell that it was a good decision to accept Roman's offer for a fake road trip.

"That guy with the belt?" Logan continued. "He was the first person to invent clothes. Quite the fashion icon for his time."

"Oh yeah?" Virgil giggled and Logan's heart stuttered in his chest.

"Yeah, he was also the only straight man in his village. It was very controversial." Virgil hummed in response, trying to calm his laughter.

"We're pretty controversial."

"What do you mean by that?"

"We're lying in the bed of Roman's truck, well past midnight and the city limits, looking at stars. Janus and Remus are probably lost in the forest and Roman and Patton have probably gotten over their gay panic and are planning their wedding together."

"I'm not sure how that's controversial, but it is interesting that we've achieved nothing compared to them." Logan's eyes drifted back to the stars.

"I think not getting lost is a plus." He made a noise of agreement. "And uh… I know we're not as vocal about stuff like the others but… Dating you wouldn't be bad." It came out more like a question, causing Logan to look back at him.

"Fuck- I mean-" Virgil ran a hand down his face. "It would actually be really really nice if I could be your boyfriend because- ugh stop staring at me like that! It's just that you're really great and nice to be around and to talk to and I can't imagine you not being in my life. A-and I know we've been kinda sorta dating but you know how dumb we both are about romance and all that stuff- oh god this is romance, I can't believe that…

"I just really like you, Logan and I need to make sure you know that."

Virgil's words swirled into the air, into the sky, into that great expanse of stars and light.

They laid there and stared at the stars, thinking, considering, and a fair amount of staring on Logan's side.

He couldn't help it, really. He couldn't stop his eyes tracing the curve of his jaw, his bitten lips, the words that previously escaped them were still spinning through Logan's head. And Virgil's hair, his adorably messy hair that was usually hanging in front of his eyes, was pushed to the side, Logan could see a galaxy reflected in his beautiful eyes.

Virgil was his galaxy, his sun, his stars. He had kept him sane through years of school. He constantly went out of his way just to brighten Logan's day a little bit more, and brighten he did.

Virgil meant everything to him and he'd be damned if he went home tonight without showing him that.

"Didn't… Didn't you say you always wanted to go stargazing with your partner?"

"Uhh, yeah." Virgil replied hoarsely.

"I suppose you get to cross that off your list, then." Logan wondered how he suddenly had some semblance of smoothness to his words.

"Oh."

The stars seemed awfully bright that night, especially in the way they reflected off Virgil's freckles.

"Is… Is that a shooting star?" Virgil lifted his free hand, tracing the bright line across the map of stars.

"There's no such thing as shooting stars." Virgil rolled his eyes. "But, I… do believe that's a satellite."

"Then make a wish."

"That's stupid and makes no sense, wishing on a satellite has no affect on my life."

"Just do it, my northern star."

Logan's red face was a reflection off the far away street lights, nothing else. "Am I supposed to tell you what I wished for?"

"Not really, but you can. I'd love to know what goes on in that brilliant head of yours."

"My head is empty, unfortunately." Virgil laughed, he did that quite a bit around him. "I wished that we'd have a good relationship. Apologizes, is that weird, or too soon? I… just mean that we're both terrible at communicating, I hope that we can improve together as a couple."

“Oh."

Although Virgil may not have realized it, Logan noticed as he lightly brushed his thumb over his hand. It was stupidly endearing and soft, just as Virgil was.

"That's probably the cutest thing anyone's ever said that slightly regards me."

"Glad I can be of service, darling."

"So darling is what you go with?"

"Would you prefer something else?"

"...No. If I can call you my boyfriend you can call me whatever you want." Virgil smiled. "…You're my boyfriend. That's nice to say."

"It is. I wonder how I stumbled upon a boyfriend as good as you."

"You- you need to stop doing that," Virgil blushed.

"I'm not doing anything!" Logan shifted closer to him, for heating purposes of course, it was a little chilly. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know full well."

"Do I really, Virgil?"

"Shut up and look at the stars."

"Make me."

"Logan I swear-"

"Fine, fine, I will." Virgil mumbled thanks under his breath. "But they aren't as pretty as you."

Virgil let out a noise, a mix between a screech and a cough. There was no way he was showing Logan how fluttery his words made his heart feel. (Although he felt it was common knowledge among them.)

"There's around twenty minutes until the others get back, that's twenty minutes to mess with you."

"I'm already regretting this, Lo."

"As you should, my love."

Yes, their friends may have interrupted their stargazing a few minutes later. Yes, Roman may have forced Patton to leave his shift early resulting in one too little seats and an angry boss. Yes, they may have almost ran out of gas on the way home. Yes, they may have bought fries as Janus looked for a gas station. Yes, they may have fallen onto the floor seconds later. Yes, Remus may have jumped out of the car afterwards because he said it looked fun and almost sprained his ankle. And yes, Roman did have to explain the situation five times to his parents because they couldn't stop laughing about all the shenanigans they got into that night.

Still, Virgil's arm stayed around Logan's waist like it was the most casual thing in the world. Still, they shared a milkshake once everyone had given up on the fallen fries. Still, they were both filled with such a bright happiness that it was impossible to drag them down. And maybe they fell asleep on a video call that night. Or maybe Logan stayed over and they woke up with their limbs tangled in each other's, feeling content and appreciative of the other as they slowly woke up. Honestly, who's to say? It was just a good night.

[carol-effing-danvers]

Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here. 

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out. 

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice. 

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him. 

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event. 

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person. 

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds. 

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed. 

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply. 

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has. 

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific. 

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying. 

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out. 

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak. 

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time. 

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal. 

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about? 

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go. 

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either. 

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too. 

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing. 

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve. 

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself. 

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself. 

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy. 

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

[chroniclerdl]

Seven Fundamentals to Writing Better Yu-Gi-Oh Duelfics

Ever wanted to write a duelfic just as good or better than canon?

Done right, duels are memorable action scenes.

Done wrong, duels shatter the suspension of disbelief. It’s already a big ask to imagine the world revolving around a card game.

You don’t want the tragedy where your readers yank the scrollbar past your duel, or worse, close your tab. Even the small pool of duelfic readers/writers like me will skip huge chunks of your chapters when the duels sag.

By implementing basic storytelling techniques tailored to dueling, you can hook your readers into following the play-by-play.

High Stakes

Consistent Rules

Sneaks Checked

“Balanced” Gameplay

Foreshadowing Victory

Engaging Description

Dramatic Tension

1. High Stakes

When you advertise your story as a duelfic, your first duel tells readers whether or not what you wrote is worth their time.

If your characters duel without a concrete reason to rip the opponent’s throat, readers already know the outcome:

You lose.

Why? The game is pointless. Who’s dropping whatever they’re doing just to read the equivalent of your characters sipping afternoon tea? If you’re introducing the setting and characters, why can’t you introduce exciting threats?

No reader expects your first duel to decide the fate of the world, but your characters still need to bet.

Characters wager life chips.

If your character loses, they suffer death or suicide-inducing despair.

Is it too much to start with life-and-death? No. Think of the life chip as the culmination of hopes and dreams.

As the story progresses, the stakes will rise, must rise. How? Others will entrust the main characters with their own life chips, and/or the life chips acquire additional meaning. Consider this loose analogy: at the end of a poker tournament, gamblers sit at the final table with stacks built from the chips of others.

Life chips mean different things to different characters. Let’s take the Duelist Kingdom arc.

Yugi’s life chip is the hope to save his grandfather (and later, his own soul)

Joey’s life chip is the hope to win the prize money to fund his sister’s medical operation

Kaiba’s life chip is the hope to save his little brother (and later, his own soul)

You don’t even need your final showdown to revolve around the fate of world; it just has to be one or more things that matter to your characters.

Also, make sure to communicate the stakes, or why the characters accept uneven bets.

If you have the chops, you can also play around with disguising the stakes. As in, your character thinks they’re wagering something small, but it’s actually their life chip. However, your readers still need a vague reason to believe that a defeat will devour the character.

Always make sure the characters stake one or more life chips!

2. Consistent Rules

If you watched the Duelist Kingdom arc and tried to understand the moves everyone made, your head exploded.

Ask yourself: will the clever scheme that your hero invented drive readers crazy?

If I write a magic system that requires a wand, this applies to all. I cannot become a genius and suddenly wave my hands to cast magic.

Demonstrate the rules early, preferably in the first duel, and keep them sacred.

If you must make an exception, establish it early. In that case, the exception becomes a well-defined branch of the rules that the readers can anticipate.

Can the players magically draw the card they need, whenever they want?

If you can establish the when and why, by all means. The readers proceed with the understanding that the players can reach into their deck like a glorified toolbox.

For example, Duel Links has a concept called “skills” that function like a player’s special ability. At the time I wrote this, Yami Yugi’s “Destiny Draw” skill lets the player take any card from their deck once per duel after losing 2000LP (and even if they stacked the top of the deck earlier!).

Card should also have the same, predictable effect. If the card prevents attacks, I doubt the text discusses physical properties or mentions holding things in the air. But you knew that, right?

The rules are the laws of the universe.

3. Sneaks Checked

I love duels. I also love getting what I want.

Why does getting what I want have to be through a duel?

If we talk, maybe we can come to an agreement. If I blackmail you, maybe you’ll give in to my demands. If I shoot you, I can loot your corpse. Give the readers a good reason as to why your characters would bother with the hassle of honest dueling and can’t wiggle from the consequences of losing.

Often, the duel takes place in the context of a tournament. Hopefully, the tournament officials are keeping a good eye on the players and cracking down on cheaters.

However, even that’s not a guarantee. What’s the key concept?

Power.

The competitors have equivalent capacity for coercion (usually violence) or have a neutral referee presiding over the match with the most capacity for coercion (shoutout to gambling manga Usogui).

Anyone who enters a game otherwise has lost before the first move.

In Yu-Gi-Oh, magical and sci-fi enforcement are common. The Shadow Realm can trap the loser in a desolate hell. In a digital world, the loser suffers deletion. Or just have good tournament officials.

Be vigilant when your duel doesn’t call upon these tropes.

Your amoral characters won’t mind blindsiding your other characters, and they won’t mind blindsiding you with a plot hole.

If you’re not careful, the readers will ask you why they played uncharacteristically fair.

4. “Balanced” Gameplay

Duels should be fair and fun…for the villain.

Ostensibly, everyone plays a balanced game, designed to give both sides a sporting chance. In reality, the villain tilts the field to their favor with one or more tricks up their sleeves. Why would your villain ever fight fair?

But that’s fine. We love rooting for the underdog and watching the villain get their comeuppance.

Overpowered ability to let the villain read minds? Deck full of unbalanced cards that makes the villain’s monsters invincible with no drawback? Creator who knows every strategy in the game? Readers will turn the page as they wonder how the hero will prevail.

The more obstacles you can throw in the hero’s way, the better.

Got custom cards? No problem, just follow a couple guidelines. After all, some duelists are more equal than others.

The hero’s deck is full of regular cards that have a cost to use. For every play they want to make, their cards insist that they give up their attack, discard to play, etc.

The villain’s deck is full of rare cards that power up their game for free. So long as you can justify why the card made it to print, the villain can play whatever they want.

For every step your hero takes, the villain gets two.

5. Foreshadowing Victory

How many times have you watched a duel where the protagonist comes up with this never-before-seen card that does exactly what the protagonist needs to clinch the win? In the final showdown, no less? It’s like the writers begged to be called amateurs and idiots.

No other genre tolerates such laziness.

However, readers don’t want an infodump of the characters’ decks. Show the cards in action. To cover the deck, you'll probably need multiple duels.

This also implies you have more freedom in how your character defeats their early opponents in the duelfic.

Does that previous statement contradict what I said about never-before-seen cards clinching the win as the mark of laziness? No, because here’s the rule:

Tolerance for the hero’s new cards decreases as the story progresses.

(Notice that I specify the hero’s new cards; your villains exist to make life harder by inventing unfair tricks.)

When you must include new cards for the hero late in the duelfic, at least find a way to make them first backfire.

Now, some writers have lots of knowledge about the card pool and metagame. Can they assume the readers a priori know the hero has access to any of the available cards in a given archetype?

I’d err on the side of caution and properly foreshadow the cards before they appear late in the duelfic. Not every reader is a walking card database. They have no reason to assume something exists unless you show the card.

Take the tolerance rule into consideration when planning your duels. If you know the awesome combo you want to use for the final turn in the duelfic climax, that’s your cue to scatter the cards into the earlier duels.

Plan the last duel first and your early duels last.

6. Description

Every reader wants a front-row seat to the action.

They’re paying you their time, so make it worth the admission: sleek combatants & budget-busting fights. Kaiba invented Solid Vision technology for a reason, so help readers envision your duels.

Who’s fighting? Describe the point-of-view’s impression of the monsters’ appearances. Red-Eyes Black Dragon should be self-explanatory.

What about a decorated monster like Time Wizard?

You could go into detail about how the red clock humanoid has yellow gears that form epaulets and purple, pointy boots and a green mustache made from clock hands and so on, but such a level of minutiae bogs pacing and invites skimming.

Readers just need to hear about a purple-caped, red clock humanoid with a wand to form an image. Their imaginations can handle the little details.

Paint appearances in broad strokes and one or two brief sentences.

How are the monsters fighting? Duel Monsters is a game where the target takes the aggressor’s attack like a champ. That doesn’t mean you can’t spice it up.

For example, my opponent’s dragon attacks my weaker knight with a fireball. My knight, interested in not dying, raises his shield. Unfortunately, he screams as the flames engulf him.

You wouldn’t just stand still with a straight face if someone armed with a knife lunged for your gut.

A fight scene is a string of action and reaction.

Most people also experience life in more senses than just sight.

A dragon’s fireball is a bright reddish-orange, hot, dries the air, smoky, and explodes with a boom on impact. I never tasted a fireball, and I hope I never do, but that’s still four senses: sight, touch, smell, and sound.

Include multiple sensory details.

Let’s spare a moment to talk about the heads-up display (HUD).

In Yu-Gi-Oh, cards have multiple stats and abilities. You’re free to mention whatever you deem necessary. No set formula exists. On one extreme, you can mention nothing to keep the narrative clean at the risk of confusing the readers. At the other extreme, infodumps about the monster’s abilities provide great detail but wreck the pacing. But there’s a cozy middle.

State only what you need from the card.

If your duels occurred before the era of Synchro, you don’t need details about levels. You can just display the basic stats to determine the stronger monster. If a deck has Pendulum monsters, just mention the scale numbers when they're played as scales. And so on.

You can also make an index of new cards at the end of a chapter.

BONUS TIP! Understanding show, don’t tell.

What is show, don’t tell? At its core, this concept refers to immersing your readers in the senses and feelings instead of exposition. Unfortunately, that definition is a bit vague to execute. After writing for a while, I had my lightbulb moment.

Don’t TELL the readers how to think or force-feed them a conclusion.

SHOW your readers the evidence.

Here’s a written example from Joey vs. Rex in Duelist Kingdom. See if you can spot what makes this prose telling instead of showing.

“Joey watched nervously as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!”

You can see two failures: “nervously” and the second sentence.

Adverbs like “nervously” and other “-ly” friends get a bad rep because rookies tend to use them as telling crutches (especially beware adverbs after dialogue tags!). “Nervously” tells me how Joey reacts. But what does “nervously” look like? One character might bite their thumb. Another might fidget in their seat. The adverb in this context lacks nuance.

We also have the second sentence: “He messed up his Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo!” When you’re explaining the “why” to something, you’re telling. It’s like talking down to your readers.

Contrast with the next example.

“A bead of sweat rolled off Joey’s face as Two-Headed King Rex stomped Baby Dragon. He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.”

The first sentence shows me Joey’s physical reaction. I see him sweating, so I think he’s nervous.

We also see a second physical reaction: “He stared at the Time Wizard in his hand.” This comes on the heels of the first sentence, and I also have knowledge of when Joey used the Baby Dragon-Time Wizard combo in a prior duel. Combined, I think Joey is ruminating about a missed chance.

Readers are smart; they’ll catch your intention if you show the proof.

7. Dramatic Tension

I bet you know what it's like to draw a bad hand.

Imagine: The hero staggers into the arena, and the villain just needs to win one duel to take over the world. The villain draws a bunch of powerups with no monster, but the hero draws a one-turn-kill combo.

Anticlimactic. The readers throw that duelfic straight into the trash.

Don’t just write real-life duels. “It really happened” doesn’t mean it’s emotionally satisfying.

That’s why we have literary structure.

Success and setback pace together with progressive intensity to maximize dramatic tension and emotional payoff.

I’ll spare the nitty-gritty theory detail, but your duels should look like this on a basic level:

Part 1: Villain’s basic threats. Introduces the villain’s deck and style.

Part 2: Villain’s minor strategy. The villain’s first serious attempt to defeat the hero.

Part 3: Villain’s major strategy. The hero’s reversal! But the villain has worse in store.

Part 4: Hero’s imminent defeat. The hero must break through, or else will instantly lose!

Ideally, you’re also integrating the story itself into the duel; themes and duels synergize to create a stronger effect.

You may notice how the format resembles the three-act structure.

Act I is Part 1

Act II until the Act II midpoint is Part 2

Act II midpoint until Act III is Part 3

Act III is part 4.

I’ll use Yugi/Pharaoh vs. Pegasus in Duelist Kingdom as an example.

Part 1: Mind scan. Pegasus can read minds to counter combos.

Part 2: Toon World. Indestructible, cartoonified monsters attack.

Part 3: Shadow game. Toons destroyed! But playing a shadow game weakens Yugi.

Part 4: Yugi passes out. The Pharaoh must find a new way to stop Pegasus’s mind scan!

Figure out each part of the structure for your duels before writing the turn-by-turn plays.

By the way, modern real-life Yu-Gi-Oh duels don’t suit drama because the rules provide weak constraints to creating strong boards. A good modern deck usually establishes a scary turn one board and jumps straight into Part 4, whereas other card games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone force the powerhouse cards to wait several turns until the player builds the mana to pay costs.

You can still write a good modern duel. Here’s a basic outline of Arc-V’s duel between Sora and Shay. Technically, “tragedy” is the structure of this duel, so I’ll make Shay the “hero” to flip it and keep matters simplified.

Part 1: Basic monsters. These clash before a monster appears from the Extra Deck.

Part 2: Frightfurs. They come one after another to crush Shay’s Raidraptors.

Part 3: Sora’s wrath. Rise Falcon survives! But Sora’s malevolent nature comes to light.

Part 4: Frightfur Chimera. Sora chomps candy and summons his biggest fusion horror!

If following the four parts is too difficult for you, that’s okay. They're just logical extensions of one basic concept. Keep the following in mind, and you’ll never go wrong:

The villain’s subsequent threats become increasingly overwhelming.

Conclusion

Much of writing a duel boils down to storytelling technique.

Let’s tl;dr the main takeaways.

High Stakes: Minimum ante is the life chip, worth a character’s hopes and dreams.

Consistent Rules: Everyone plays by the same logic.

Sneaks Checked: Characters can’t skip the duels with violence and coercion.

“Balanced” Gameplay: Villains enjoy advantages.

Foreshadowing Victory: Readers have a chance to predict the winning combo.

Engaging Description: Immerse senses and invite reactions.

Dramatic Tension: The villain makes progressively stronger threats.

As a duelfic reader/writer, I can gauge a writer's ability by measuring their duels with the fundamentals. Many fan writers struggle; even the canon writers struggle.

But writing a duelfic isn’t rocket science. With practice, minding the fundamentals will become second nature.

And don't forget to tag your story as a duelfic. It's a whole genre in fanfic, so sort it properly and help readers from the future find you.

May the heart of the cards be with you.

…

Want to see in-depth examples of my advice? I rewrote the Orichalcos arc to reimagine its untapped potential without the failures of the canon presentation. You can find it on FFnet and AO3.

[westiec]

fic I want to see: five futures Tony/Rhodey/Pepper deserved but never got

Hey there friend! I'm going to take advantage of the @goodintentionswipfest to finally answer this ask by posting what exists of the fic I totally never finished writing you for this prompt before I burned out real hard on writing last year. Hope you get a little bit of fun out of what's here. <3

1 - MIT meet, 100% less drama

Tony meets James-call-me-Rhodey Rhodes at MIT. In other universes, they were on campus at the same time, but the whiz kid playboy tearing up the mech-e department and local bar scene seldom crossed paths with the steady grad student getting a masters in aircraft design courtesy of the Air Force. 

In this one, they are inseparable. 

Rhodey's got a way of following his train of thought that Tony's never encountered, and his intuitive understanding of flying machines outstrips Tony's own. (Tony is determined to catch up, but Rhodey never makes him feel bad for having to. Entirely unlike Howard, he thinks, and feels disloyal for the thought.) They bounce ideas off each other and make each other sharper, better, and it's a feeling of belonging Tony never expected to find. When they build an AI - a Turing-complete AI!! - Tony jokes about them becoming parents without ever going on a date, and the look of wistful fondness on Rhodey's face is all the encouragement he needs to finally ask him on one. 

After graduation, Tony owes years to SI and Rhodey owes years to Uncle Sam, but they keep in close touch, with plans to go into business for themselves one day. Times being what they are, no one asks, and no one tells, but he and Rhodey both know that the much publicized dates with various eligible ladies are for maintaining appearances and nothing that will really come between them.

When Howard and Maria die, Rhodey must cash in every favor he has to get the leave, but he's there for the funeral. Tony is pretty sure his steadfast support is the only reason he could stand to be sober those first couple weeks. Stark men are supposed to be made of iron, but Rhodey's always been the one with a core of steel. 

Rhodey never trusts Obie much, and - continued relationship with Tony notwithstanding - Rhodey is an impeccable judge of character. A few years later, an internal audit proves his instincts right when Stane is caught laundering company assets to sell weapons on the black market. Terrified at the thought of his weapons in the wrong hands, Tony quietly begins to diversify SI's business model - clean energy, healthcare, [THIRD THING] - things that can build the world up instead of tear it down.

Eventually Tony is able to hire Rhodey away from the military to be his chief airframe designer and personal test pilot. They move out to California to oversee the autonomous search-and-rescue drones they're developing, and set up in a preposterous mansion overlooking the ocean in Malibu, with their ever growing family of bots and JARVIS to make the huge place feel full.

Despite having no qualms shout their personal AI butler and robotic lab assistants, Rhodey calls him bougie when Tony brings on a driver, Harold-call-me-Happy Hogan, and a personal assistant, one Ms. Virginia Potts. Happy's a solid driver and a cheerful guy, but Ms. Potts is a downright revelation. She's the second person he's met now who has no trouble keeping up with his mile-a-minute mind, and though her competencies lie along a different line than his or Rhodey's, he quickly realizes they are no less remarkable. He also plain likes her in an easy way he so seldom clicks with people. Tony might be a little bit smitten.

After a while he realizes Ms. Potts-call-me-Pepper (and seriously, did Tony miss a memo on alliterative nicknames?) seems smitten too, though not with him. Rhodey's no longer active duty, but old habits of discretion die hard, so she has no way of knowing when she strikes up a flirtation with the airman that he and her boss are more than just business partners. Rhodey's flustered, and Pepper's embarrassed, but Tony's always had a big heart, and he loves nothing quite so much as making the people he cares about happy. He can see the way his honeybear smiles when she's around, and it's obvious how much she lights up with him, and he's a genius, right, but he doesn't need to be to see that they'd work. So he tells them to go for it, as long as Pepper doesn't mind sharing and Rhodey doesn't mind being shared, and they look at him like he's grown a second head because what they want is all of them together.

They totally work.

2 - IM1, BUT HAPPIER?

They meet when Lt. Rhodes is assigned the Air Force liason to Stark Industries. Warned in advance, Rhodey was expecting brash, crass, and totally out of control, but what he found in Stark, Jr. was someone with a passion for machines and an excitement for invention unlike anyone he's ever met. When they realize they'd been on campus at the same time, Tony (“please, Mr. Stark was my father”) declares them the Brass Rat Pack, which makes him roll his eyes, but doesn't make a Sammy Davis, Jr. joke, which bumps him up a couple more points in Rhodey's estimation.

3 - IM2 BUT WITH SOME DAMN COMMUNICATION 

Rhodey was always going to get a suit. Tony's best friend, the best pilot he knows, AND one of the few people in military he actually still trusts? Of course. He offered Pepper one too, but he seemed to expect her to turn him down, because then he offered her the position of CEO. Insisted, really. 

So Pepper becomes the head of Stark Industries while Tony and Rhodey become Iron Man and War Machine. The military brass doesn't love having one of those suits and all of their secrets in the hands and head, respectively, of such an unpredictable element, but knowing that Colonel Rhodes is liasing most of his activities goes a long way toward quieting the grumbles. The men's joint testimony on just how far off any imitators, foreign or domestic, are from duplicating the technology convinces Congress that Team Iron Man's op-sec, while unorthodox, is effective. 

Rhodey takes some well deserved R&R and joins Tony and Pepper in Monaco. It's new still, this thing between them all, but it's good. 

4 - POST-IM2

AVENGERS FAM DAMMIT

Aliens invade New York, and Rhodey is so glad he stole that damn suit. 

5 - POST-IM3

IN WHICH WE AVOID CIVIL WAR 

RESCUE HAPPENS

Rogers and Romanoff bring down SHIELD, and Pepper is horrified to realize how close she came to being murdered by the state. After Killian, after Extremis, she knows she could be considered a threat, but seeing her name, and Tony's, and Rhodey's, on the kill list in the data dump is chilling.

+1 - After Everyone Lives

"Meguna Petunia Stark-Potts-Rhodes, out of the lab and inside for dinner!"

Morgan laughed. "Not my name, Dad - and anyway, wouldn't it be Potts-Rhodes-Stark, alphabetically?"

"You know, you'd think that, but your pops actually called dibs on the anchor leg years ago…"

"A relay's got four legs, Dad."

"What did I ever do to deserve a jock for a daughter? Tell you what, find us a Q who doesn't run screaming, and we'll consider it."

"What are we considering, Tony?"

"Morgan thinks our polycule needs to be a quadrilateral, apparently, and I'm blaming the track team. I've told her we're only considering candidates with Q last names; we're so close to a straight."

"Tony, you've never been close to straight in your life."

Mom gestures at the two bickering and pleads, "Just not another guy, please, darling, I'm outnumbered already."

"I dunno, you usually like tha-"

"Tony!" Mom and Pops shoot him identical stern looks.

Family. She wouldn't want it any other way.

If anyone made it this far, thanks for reading! @allofthefeelings I'm sorry the full fic never made its way out of my brain, but thank you for the prompt anyway! And thanks again to the Good Intentions WIP Fest!

[chicago-reeed]

Detroit Evolution

So

These are some notes that I took while I watched DE for the first time. It’s a lot. Like, six pages, a lot. I decided I should probably spare everyone’s dashboards and put it under a cut.

Warning: overuse of the fuck word because I am a dramatic little shit who gets overwhelmed easily

- Alright here we go. I don’t know if I’m mentally prepared to go through this hhhhh

- THE CINEMATOGRAPHY I NUT

- fuck he smellin the flowers good

- “hey tin can :P” “good morning gavin :P”

- I’m actually fucking crying IVE HAD TO PAUSE SO MANY TIMES JUST TO BREATHE AND IM ONLY AT 1:25

- FUCK ITS 1:27 AND HES FIXING HIS COLLAR HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WATCH THIS WHEN MY VISION IS BLURRY WITH TEARS

- “I don’t need to breathe” BAZINGA

- *slaps my face repeatedly* keep it together bitch

- “I like the way you look<3” aaaaaaaaannd here I go again

- HAHAHA HE WAS DAYDREAMING SAME NINES SAME

- oh god oh god witty banter WITTY BANTER I CANT FUNCTION

- C H R I S  IM SCREAMING

- detective motha fuckin chris I don’t need to see any more I got what I came for

- Honestly all they need to do to calm down the protestors is get nines out there so he can say “please stop you’re being very mean >:/“ and they would probably just go home ngl

- “I’ve never been intimidated by people who hate androids” OH MY GOD NINES WITH THE BAZINGA’S TODAY WHAT A LEGEND

- can I just say the white jacket is such a power move I can’t believe nines invented fashion

- Gavin bein soft and reaching back for Nines in the crowd🥺homygod

- Gavin “no one calls him plastic but ME” Reed

- The only time I will support police brutality™️

- Gavin is so OP we stan

- Nines “you raise a fist, then I get PISSED😡” RK900

- “y’all have a nice day” Protect Detective Chris Miller at all costs

- Nines sees Gavin’s scars as charming PUT ME TO DEATH

- ADA OH LORD SHES STUNNING IM SOBBING

- Okay I need to pause and breathe again the cinematography got me chokin

- Uh ooohhh someone is jeeaaalouus😛

- Nines really said “no worry fam I’ll airdrop the case files to u”

- Ada: *exists*

- me: I hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me

- HA GAV DEFINITELY JEALOUS RIP

- And nines back at it again with the sass I AM LIVING

- Chris and Gavin’s reactions to Nines imitating Ada is the best thing I’ve seen all year

- “I can do your voice too” HIS FACE IMDBDHDJKDJD CRYIGGGSBSN

- oh ;-; shit Michael really finna make me cri

- God damn the intro credits are so beautiful

- TINAAAAAAA BABYYYYY

- Real coffee hours with the sharktreuse mug🦈

- “our boy” SHIT IM CRYING AGAIN

- Tina knows Gavin was absolutely feral before Nines appeared at the DPD

- Half An Asshole squad please stand up we ride at dawn

- Gavin with the knockoff timbs WE STAN😎

- maybe “thank god, I hate you, you love me, move your feet, oop” will be our always

- I’m living for the whole “criminal minds” vibe goin on here

- Bruh Gavin got the hook-ups fr fr

- ❤️WITTY BANTER WITTY BANTER WITTY BANTER W❤️

- The level of reed900 is staggering

- I’ve had to pause and breathe so many times it’s pathetic I’m not even 15 mins in

- GAVIN SAID mwah<3🖕IM FUCKING DIED

- 850% godt damn Nines got that IOS 50 update

- NINES PUT CHRIS’ PROMOTION PARTY IN THE CALENDAR WHAT A GOOD DAD

- maybe “our calendar” will be our always

- Chris “wingman of the year” Miller

- Who’s that Pokémon??? It’s JEALOUS GAV

- The way Nines said “I don’t feel anything for her.” I see you bud

- insecure Gavin needing reassurance™️

- Im fucking dying I fucking died bro BRO WE ALL KNOW WHO YOURE TALKING ABOUT, NINES, WE ALL KNOW

- Asexual Nines FTW👊😤👏👏👏❤️He gives zero fucks of ANY kind

- AN ANGEL HAS APPEARED WITH A GLOWY BLUE SCARF

- BREAKING NEWS: affection-starved Gavin™️ is literally begging for love

- GAVIN REED STOP BEING MEAN TO GAVIN REED OR ELSE

- “But there’s much more to admire about you than to detest, I think.”<333

- JJ not being suspicious at all nope no way Jose

- Lazzo has said two words and I love him already

- I don’t think I’ve seen this episode of COPS before🤔🤔🤔

- We all know Nines secretly wants to wear those fun glasses

- “Officer I swear I’ve never seen that arm in my life, it’s my friend’s he just asked me to hold it for him, Android arm what android arm heh”

- “Like robot arms, not gun arms.” You’re doing great sweetie🥰

- HAND TOUCH HAND TOUCH HAND TOUCH H

- Chris “the interrogator” Miller😎

- THE CINEMATOGRAPHY

- soft n sleepy gav™️ is soft n sleepy

- FUCKING SLEEVELESS SWEATSHIRT IVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT GAV IN A SLEEVELESS SWEATSHIRT FOR SO LONG AND NOW IT’S REAL IM

- You can wear my😋😘sweeaatshiiiirt😝😁🤗 (I’m sorry I had to)

- inconspicuous loving glances™️

- #GiveAndroidsFuckinHealthcare2K20

- AAAHHHHHHHH I CANTT BREAF

- HEAD>ON>SHOULDER

- INCONSPICUOUS LOVING GLANCES™️

- Gavin has not slept in 80 years

- He really said “I’m fine” BITCH

- Bed time for brats™️ no later than 8:30pm

- hell yeah sleepover time

- “stop lookin at my insides n shit” I want that on a t shirt

- ANDROID DREAMS

- Nines is so soft I might die

- But he’s somehow equally suave as fuck how is this fair

- Oh my god dream!gavin is like Nines’ conscious this is so presh

- “What do you think Gavin was gonna say?” nsndJSKDOFIWKDBDNDNSJDBBDJDJDJDNDJXJNDIFUIFIEKWN HES STILL THINKING ABOUT THEIR CONVO

- dream!gavin you sly dog

- “To have this. Out there.” DONT FUCK WITH MY HEART LIKE THAT THIS INNER-MONOLOGUE FLUFF IS SO SWEET

- Nines being insecure™️

- Listen to dream!gavin, Nines, he has big brain

- The fact that Nines subconsciously KNOWS that irl!Gav “just wants someone that doesn’t hate him” but he’s STILL like alas, I can never be what gavin needs :’(

- nu babie don’t be sad🥺

- oh my god they’re both train wrecks protect them at all cost

- c r i p e s❤️the reed900 hurt/comfort we all needed

- FUCK

- Concerned boyfriends™️

- Maybe “I’m fine” will be our always

- GAV🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺💔💔💔💔💔💔

- Insecure boyfriends™️

- Nines “I’m not going to get any closer to Gavin because I can’t help him but also I want to cuddle with him because he had a nightmare” RK900

- did someone say  c a t

- dumb babie gav jus spoon the dumb android so you both feel better

- Me: *rubs evil hands together* aha here comes the angst

- cue tragic backstory

- oh

- tragic backstory indeed

- YES DAD!FOWLER WE LOVE

- Gavin is so desperate for anyone to care about him I’m crying tears

- SHIT IT’S CUDDLE TIME™️ NOW IM REALLY FUCKING CRYING

- Alexa this is so god damn sad play despacito

- YES

- HAND>HOLDING

- HEAD>ON>SHOULDER

- NINES’ SKIN RETRACTING WHERE THEIR HANDS ARE TOUCHING THIS IS LIKE EVERY REED900 STAN’S DREAM COME TRUE

- Oh shit it’s about to get domestic I don’t think I’m mentally prepared

- YOU CAN WEAR MY😝💪SWEEAATSHIIIIIIRT🤪🔥🔥🔥 (I’m never letting the sleeveless sweatshirt thing go)

- Uh oh NO FUCK I’ve read enough fan fiction to know that this is where Gavin’s fucking trust issues kick in and he decides pushing nines away is safer than getting closer to him SHIT

- AND NINES GETS CONFUSED AND HURT

- AND THEN GAVIN GETS HURT

- I feel angst in this Chili’s tonight

- “I need you to leave” aaaaaaahhhhhhhh here come a whole different kind of tears

- frick dude that ouches

- Insert sad babie noises

- Oml the tension☠️poor Chris and Ada are like😑😑

- Chris could solve this case all by himself change my mind

- Gavin and Nines = (ò///-///ó)

- Chris = :D~oblivious~

- HELL YEAH PARTY TIME

- BEST WIVES TINA AND VALERIE AHHHH

- reed900 who??? I don’t know her. I only know ❤️valerina❤️

- I can’t believe Gavin and Nines invented angst

- I went and got blue gatorade just so I could pretend I was drinking thirium like Nines

- #DetectiveChen2K20

- real sad gavin hours

- Ruh roh Gavin bouta die from the ‘rona virus because rat man smokes hella

- CINEMATOGRAPHY CHEEEEECK HOLY SHIT

- my entire aesthetic in a single shot jfc

- Aaaaahhhh Nines trying to be a supportive bf just makes me ;-; [takes damage]

- HES ACCEPTED GAVIN AS MORE THAN A PARTNER🥺that, my friends, is what we call character development

- We stan the otp aggressively talking about their feelings

- “I’m not going anywhere.” FUCK™️

- SMOKE>FACE

- Aaaaand they’re back at square one. It’s cool it’s fine it’s all good we can work with this.

- Gavin: I don’t need you ò-ó

- Gavin: *immediately after Nines leaves* fuck ó-ò

- “It’s fine”™️

- I love Ada so much hhhhhh she said 🤨

- “Basic Instinct” TINA WITH THE HEAT OMG

- *nervous laugh* haha Ada sis maybe chill a little bit ha ha

- oh no I have a not good feeling

- ADA CHILL ADA CHILL

- WHY IS HE FOLLOWING HER INTO AN ALLEY AFTER THAT SKETCHY TALK

- AAA FUCK FUCK FUCJDJEMNSNDJDNXU FUCK I FUCKING KNEW IT FUCK SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCK

- 😖x1000000

- Oh my god this is so fucking sad Alexa play The Sound of Silence

- Nines got fucked up and Gavin is CONCERNED

- aayyyyy bro Nines full on nakey

- Tina and Gavin sad bro huggin👊😔

- ADA HOW DARE YOU. HOW VERY DARE YOU.

- Uh oh Nines is fckn PISSED

- he MAD mad

- Tina speakin straight facts I love her

- WOOP GAVIN FINALLY ADMITTING HE NEEDS NINES

- f u c k  right in the heart

- I don’t want to attempt writing any notes at this moment because my thoughts are completely incoherent I am a MESS

- “I need you to come back, Nines.” DONT PLAY W ME LIKE THAT

- HAND HOLDING FTW

- Did Gavin really almost bring Nines back through the power of love I am SHAKING

- Dream!Gavin speaking truth as ALWAYS

- These damn flashbacks making me feel some type of way

- OH SHIT HE AWAKE

- that actually low key jump scared me

- God damn these sets are so fucking pro, I’m so happy

- REUNION

- Tina really say “Chris ;) ;) lets go get some ;) coffee ;) ;) ;) ;)”

- CHRIS’ REALIZATION FACE FUCKING LAID ME OUT I HAD TO PAUSE I WAS LAUGJINB SO HARD

- You Undead Asshole™️

- Gavin: ( ⚆ _ ⚆ ) fuck he actually heard me talk about my feelings n shit

- Nines: You literally told me you fucking needed me like five minutes ago

- Gavin: huh weird that doesn’t sound like me I actually hate you

- ooOOHHH  S H I T

- REALLY IS THIS REALLY HAPPENIGN

- woah shit sorry I blacked out for a second what happened

- MY POOR LITTLE FUCKING REED900 HEART IS EXPLODING AND IMPLODING AT THE SAME FUCKING TIME

- CAAAAAAAAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIIIGGHTT

- holy shit I actually gave myself a bloody fucking nose because I smacked my face too hard in excitement

- ❤️💘🧡💞💕💘💓💚💛💘💞💓💛💛💞💘❤️💚💘💜💕💖❤️❤️💕💓💗💘💖💚💝❤️

- FUCK

- “What dipshit programmed you to do that?” 🥺🥺🥺❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️FUCK

- My aunt came in and told me she heard me shouting then asked why I was crying

- HAHA FUCKING CHRIS IS MEEEE

- shit I need to like..,,,,physically recover from that

- whew okay break time is over let’s fucking go

- Nines in the cheeky turtleneck I SEE U

- #DETECTIVECHEN2K20

- Gavin: I’m ready to take this hoe DOWN

- Initiate protocol: SAVE ADA FROM HERSELF

- I could listen to Tina talk to dispatch for hours🥰❤️❤️❤️

- WHITE TRENCH COAT WHITE TRENCH COAT WHITE TRENCH COAT WHITE T

- Gavin being hella concerned boyfriend™️

- FIGHT SCENE™️

- omfg that crowbar really went *CLANG* when it hit Ada’s steel fkn abs what a legend💪😎

- Hell yeah epic Nines gif moment

- no Ada don’t choke Gavin it only makes him stronger

- CHRIS THE MOTHER FUCKIN GOAT😎👏👏👏he really said “fuck ur monologue I’m here to get shit done”

- ADA QUEEN YOURE OKAY SWEETIE

- That character development godt damn

- I might be reaching but Gavin is now wearing a white/off-white shirt/gray that kINDA RESEMBLES DREAM!GAVIN’S SHIRT. Coincidence? I THINK NOT. THATS SYMBOLISM IF I EVER DID SEE IT.

- “buyer’s remorse, huh?”

- “I can’t be everything you need.”

- That awkward moment when you realize the person you were hiding your feelings from has also been hiding their feelings from you.

- “a year of that fuckin’...Ken Doll face smirkin’ at me every day” BE CUTER GAVIN, I DARE YOU.

- naked hand = love

- CHEEKY BASTARDS

- FUCK FUCK FUCK ME

- THAT WAS SO DAMN BEAUTIFUL

- So my review of this film could be summed up by saying that I basically cried for an hour and fifteen minutes.

- Holy damn

[purplesurveys]

1256

surveys by taco-tuesdays

What steps would you take in order to track down a thief? Not too far, honestly. I accept things pretty easily so if I’ve processed that I’ve been robbed, I am most likely to just let it go. I’ll feel like shit, of course, but I would just let it go and scold myself for failing to be attentive.

What is something that one of your family member collects? My mom used to collect printed table napkins from different restaurants, but obivously she hasn’t been able to continue that for the past year and a half. My dad and brother used to collect magazines but both stopped a few years ago.

What would you do if you were able to have lunch with the queen? The journalist in me will probably just ask her questions about her everyday life, how she spends it, what she’s into and what she’s not into these days.

If you got to create a new flavor of ice cream, what would it be? This is a little hard considering there are a lot of small businesses out there already getting creative and quirky with ice cream flavors so it’s just hard to tell if a certain flavor has already been invented or not. One thing I haven’t seen, though, is curry. I’d buy a pint of that in an instant.

What are some questions that you would ask your favorite celebrity? His latest vlog finds. He once shared a video of this smaller content creator, so I’m guessing that’s what he likes doing in his spare time and I’m sure he would have a bunch of other just as interesting recommendations.

If you were able to set up a stand, what would you sell? Street food.

Would you like to go deep sea diving? Why or why not? Yeah. I’m always willing to try daring, not-the-safest-thing-in-the-world activities haha.

What would life be like if you lived on a cloud? The realist in me just wants to say I’d plummet straight to the ground.

What would you find at the top of a magic beanstalk? Idk, my creativity can’t be bothered to be challenged.

What is one food you would not want to have rain down from the sky? Durian. It would hurt and stink like shit.

Which animal's characteristics are similar to your own personality? I don’t really assign sets of personalities to animals.

If you were in a department store, which aisle would you check out first? I personally still go for the toys/video games section first HAHAHA

What are some of your hobbies? They include going to museums, exploring new food and restaurants, traveling to different cities and countries, and reading about history.

You've opened a store that only sells purple items - what do you sell? BTS merch hahahahah duhhhh

What is something important that you've lost, and did you ever find it? I lost a rosary that came straight from the Vatican. No, I never found it again. I feel bad about it not because it’s a religious object, but because it came from my grandma.

Have you ever moved to a new school before? If so, how did it feel? I mean, I had to change schools when I was moving up from high school to college, but I’ve never changed schools within the same chapter of my studies, like in the middle of elementary or high school. But to answer the question, it had been a very liberating and empowering experience. I hated the rules in my Catholic school and there were so many elements from that place that made me hide so much about myself. The fact that I could wear shorts and curse and attend rallies and cut class and make my own class schedules in college felt incredibly freeing and satisfying.

What would've happened if Cinderella never went to the ball? See magic beanstalk question.

If you had one day to do anything at all, what would you choose? I would drive to Tagaytay and find a cozy restaurant and eaaaaatttt awaaaayyyy.

What are a few of your favorite songs? I really really like Singularity by V, Over the Hills by Hayley Williams, and So Far Away by Agust D and Suran.

Have you ever legitimately forgotten to do homework? All the time. I never wrote down homework.

--

If you were a witch, what kind of a spell would you cast? On who? I don’t care about casting spells on people. I just want my cravings to show up in the snap of a finger hahaha. Can that be part of a witch’s scope of work? Kjdgfhsdfskjfhs

Do you enjoy autumn leaves or spring flowers more? Why? I wouldn’t know. I experience neither over here.

What is your favorite sport to play? What about watch? Table tennis. Favorite to watch would be either tennis or pro wrestling.

Have you ever gone on a cruise before? To where? Yeah. It was an East Asian cruise so I traveled to Shanghai, Jeju, and Fukuoka.

What would you do if you were invisible for a day? Probably go to the bigger houses in the village and see how fancy they get.

Depending on where you live, why might a day of school get canceled? Typhoon, floods. A lot of places are incredibly prone to flooding, so as long as it’s been raining super hard the chances for a class suspension will get high.

What types of transportation do you think we will see in the future? I dunno. It seems like we’re at that point where everything is in the process of being invented or perfected already. 

What were some of your toys you always played with when you were little? I liked kitchen sets and anything with lots of buttons, so like toy telephones or cash registers.

If you were a movie star, what would a day in your life be like? I have no clue apart from the fact that I’m just glad I would assumedly have more than enough money to buy whatever I’m craving whenever I want hahaha.

If you invented a time machine, what year would you like to go to, and why? Realistically I wouldn’t change a thing; but if I had to answer this question I’d go back to 2016 and never ask out Gab a second time, so that the next four years wouldn’t end up being such a waste of my time.

What is your favorite holiday and why? I don’t have one. I’m not a big holiday ~celebrator.

What is something that you like to do while on vacation? Try food I’ve never tried before. The more unconventional or obscure, the better.

If you could meet any fictional character from a book, who would it be? Eh, don’t really have anyone in mind.

What are some common places that people tour when they come to your city? There’s the waterfalls in the upper part of the city – I’m just not sure if it’s still a popular spot but it certainly was when I was a kid. There’s also an art museum that I’m certain is a lot more frequented now.

What's one food that you did not enjoy as a child, but do as an adult? Curry.

How would having no electricity affect your daily routine? I wouldn’t be able to attend work, at least not for the whole day. It would also feel a lot warmer without the electric fan, which would in turn make me cranky.

If you had one wish, what would it be? A renovated room with a dedicated corner for all my merch.

Say someone gives you a magic sweater. What happens when you wear it? Idk.

If you built a new city, how would you convince people to move there? I wouldn’t.

What is one of your favorite movies? Why is it one of your favorites? Two for the Road. It has Audrey Hepburn, it’s a realistic rom-com, and the chemistry between the two leads is superb.

--

If you were given a certain amount of time to live, would you want to know? Yeah for sure, I would want to know in a heartbeat.

What would you do if you were able to stop time? I don’t know what I would do, but that would be a nice...opportunity, I guess? to experiment with or try out certain decisions and see how well or unwell they would work out to be. So that when time resumes, I’d know better on how to best handle a situation.

Do you think that long distance relationships would be for you? I wouldn’t actively go for it, but I’m not shutting down the possibility either.

Is there a popular social media platform that you don't have an account for? I have one for all the main ones, I think. Even Instagram, I made an account not too long ago to finally join the platform.

How old were you when you found out about Santa, the Easter Bunny, etc? I never knew the Easter Bunny was a thing until I started taking these surveys at like 14. I never really believed in Santa either, and the only figure I was super disappointed to learn that it didn’t exist was the tooth fairy.

Who is your favorite Disney Princess? Rapunzel.

Which freaks you out more - clowns or porcelain dolls? Porcelain dolls. They look more innocent, which somehow makes them creepier.

What was the last mistake that you learned from? Hm, just a minor work thing that would be too complicated to explain here.

Do you prefer "regular pencils" or mechanical ones? Why? Regular. I always break off the tips of mechanical pencils.

What is one little-known music artist you'd recommend? Andi made me listen to The Drums recently and I’ve been loving their sound so far; they would be perfect on a road trip. I’ve only listened to one album, though.

What is your favorite Pixar film? Toy Story!

Who was the last person to send you any sort of message on social media? Angela sent me a video meme.

Where were you on September 11th, 2001? I don’t know...probably already being put to bed. Either way I wasn’t fully conscious yet as I had only been 3 and living on the other side of the planet.

Name your favorite green vegetable. Broccoli, spinach, bell peppers, or asparagus. IDK I love veggies hahahaha

Could you handle a friends with benefits type of situation? Not for me. I’m not even into sex. 

Do you prefer using a brush or a comb on your hair? Comb. 

What's your favorite flavor of potato chips? SALTED EGG. I’m obsessed; I had like five bags this week alone.

Would you rather build a snowman or a snow fort? Why? I dunno; I’ve never tried making either.

At what age do you believe children should begin having screen time? I’m not too sure at this point, but I do know I don’t plan on being too strict with my kids. I’d let them watch stuff on an iPad from like age 3 or 4, but one thing I would change from how I was raised is putting a limit on their screen time, maybe half an hour to an hour a day.

If you had to give a speech, what would it be on? I’d be down for any topic as long as I was given ample time to research, honestly. I like public speaking.