#the bit in one of my podcasts about how he tends to blame others in the moment and then once his clearer head comes out apologize or own up | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bluejayblueskies · 3 years

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Please say more abt how Martin fits the closed off trait I'm begging 👁👁

Okay, so I got a bit carried away with this and it got quite lengthy....

I've put a TLDR above the cut and the details, transcripts, and general discussion below the cut!

TLDR: Martin is at his core a closed-off character who keeps his vulnerable feelings hidden and close to his chest. He instead focuses on caring for others and considering their feelings above his own, particularly in the case of Jon, who he cares for (sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice) throughout the podcast. His arc with the Lonely in season four and his interactions with Jon in season five demonstrate this lack of emotional vulnerability, and it's really only during the moments he spends by himself that we get significant insight into Martin's emotional state and inner thoughts.

Martin, to me, is a character who is very used to hiding how he feels. He tends to care for others at the expense of himself, has low self-esteem, and has a predilection towards the Lonely, all of which go hand-in-hand with somebody who is very used to hiding their emotions--particularly the negative ones--because they either think they're not important or that they're inconvenient and inappropriate for the situation. On a textual level, that's probably due to growing up with a sick (and likely unsupportive) mother who he had to take care of, where there was 'no time' for his emotions to get in the way or for him to prioritize himself in any way, shape, or form.

Martin is self-destructive, dislikes moments of emotional vulnerability, and (I would argue) genuinely struggles when he doesn't have somebody else to prioritize over himself. (His mother at first, but as the series goes on, Jon settles comfortably into this role for him.) Additionally, the biggest way that we, the audience, know anything about Martin's emotional state is when he's alone and self-reflecting (such as in MAG 170 and 186 or when talking to the tapes) or when he's forced to talk about something vulnerable (such as when Jon confronted him about his CV).

We don't get much insight into Martin's character between seasons one and three (at least not as much as we get in four and five), but I find myself drawn to this bit in MAG 118, when Martin is talking to Elias:

MARTIN

So what? I don’t get to be angry? I don’t get to burn things? Just, just run around, making tea, while everyone else gets to actually have feelings?

I think two things are important to note here. The first is that Elias is surprised (or least intrigued) that Martin is acting in this way--specifically, acting on his emotions in such a dramatic way. (And given that Martin is doing this as a distraction, rather than actually acting out because of his own emotions, maybe he's right to be surprised.) The second is that this line very much implies that Martin doesn't talk about how he's feeling, not like 'everyone else' does. He doesn't talk about it, doesn't act on it--just 'runs around, making tea.' And when Melanie comes back in after Elias is done, Martin immediately focuses on the plan and whether it succeeded, ignoring Melanie when she asks if he's okay or not. He closes himself off, and as far as we know, doesn't talk about it at all after that.

And then Jon goes into his coma, and we reach season four.

Martin is incredibly closed-off during season four. He's self-isolating, self-sacrificial, and approaching a state of genuine emotional numbness by the time he's cast into the Lonely. There's a lot to unpack there, but I'm going to focus on a few main things, many of which can be drawn from this bit in MAG 158:

MARTIN

It’s not him! It’s not anybody. It’s just me. Always has been. I…

When I first came to you, I thought I had lost everything. Jon was dead, my mother was dead, the job I had put everything into trapped me into spreading evil and I… I really didn’t care what happened to me. I told myself I was trying to protect the others, but… honestly we didn’t even like each other. Maybe I just thought joining up with you would be a good way to get killed.

And then… Jon came back, and… and suddenly I had a reason I had to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control so you didn’t take it out on him. And if that meant drifting further away, so what? I’d already grieved for him. And if it meant now saving him, it was worth it.

When you started talking about the Extinction, though… you had me actually, then, for a while. But then – (laughs sardonically) then, you tried to make me the hero. Tried to sell me on the idea that I was the only one who could stop it. And that I’ve never sat right with me. I mean, I mean, look – look at me, I’m not exactly a – a chosen one. But by then I was in too deep. So I played along. Waited to see what your end game was, and here we are.

Funny. Looks like I was right the first time. It’s probably still a good way to get killed?

This monologue is a big insight into Martin's thought process during this season, and I'm mostly going to focus on two parts: the self-sacrifice and the prioritization of Jon.

Self-sacrifice

There's quite a bit of discussion about Jon's self-sacrificial tendencies, but less so about Martin's, both in this season and in season five. In my opinion, Jon's self-sacrificial tendencies originate from (among other things) survivor's guilt from his traumatic childhood experience with Mr. Spider, his increasing belief that he's less than human, and the fact that he prioritizes the lives of others over his own. Martin's self-sacrificial tendencies, while very similar, come from the fact that he thinks he only has worth if he can help and care for someone else and the fact that he doesn't think he's important enough to live. (For example, he says in MAG 158 that he's 'not exactly a chosen one' and says in MAG 198 that he's 'not important enough to kill.')

It's a subtle difference between these two things, and I would argue that while Jon's tendencies are more rooted in the 'help' (ie, 'I want to help other people and I will sacrifice myself to do it'), Martin's tendencies are more rooted in the 'hurt' (ie, 'I will sacrifice myself and other people will be helped in the process'). There is, of course, overlap, and it's not a black-and-white distinction between the two, but ultimately, I think Martin is so used to prioritizing others' emotions and needs above his own that when he's left mostly alone as he is at the end of season three, with the only person left to hold onto being in a coma (possibly forever), he falls back into the same patterns of self-destruction and closed-offness, only without the 'help' to go along with the 'hurt' because there is nobody left to help (especially after his mother dies). Ultimately, he joins up with Peter because he thinks it 'would be a good way to get killed.'

Prioritization of Jon

But then Jon wakes up from his coma, and now Martin has justification for his self-sacrifice again, because he can protect Jon by continuing to work with Peter!

... Maybe.

Jon isn't harmed by Peter during season four, sure, but he does climb into the coffin and visits Ny-Ålesund and is tracked down by Julia and Trevor and struggles emotionally and morally with his own humanity and is hurt, in a way, by the distance Martin puts between them. And I hesitate to place blame for the apocalypse on anybody but Jonah, but if we're going to argue in-canon that Jon was responsible for the apocalypse (he wasn't, but that's not the point of this post), then Martin contributed to that blame and responsibility because it was his actions and decisions that ultimately drew Jon into the Lonely and resulted in him getting the 14th and final mark. (Again, I don't think Jon or Martin are at fault for the apocalypse, but if we were to blame Jon, we could blame Martin as well.) It was only after getting that mark that Jonah was able to use Jon to end the world, something that was hugely hurtful for Jon. So did Martin really protect Jon at all by staying away from him and continuing to work with Peter? Or was that just a convenient excuse to keep self-destructing?

Jon and Martin, in my opinion, had very similar arcs in season four. Martin was sinking further into the Lonely and Jon was sinking further into the Eye. We hear a lot more about Jon's emotional struggle with this given that he's the POV character, sure, but Jon also talks about this with other people. He talks about it to Helen (MAG 152):

JON

…

When does it stop?

HELEN

(impatient) What?

JON

The guilt. The misery. All the others I’ve met, they’ve been – cold, cruel. They’ve enjoyed what they do. When does the Eye (inhale) make me monstrous?

And to Daisy (MAG 136):

JON

My – (large sigh) My memories of the coma are not clear, but I know I made a choice; I made a choice to become… something else. Because I was afraid to die. But ever since then, I – I don’t know if I made the right decision; I’m stronger now, tougher, I can – (he cuts himself off) If I do die, now, or get sealed away somewhere forever? I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. And I don’t want to lose anyone else, so if I can maybe – stop that happening, and the only danger is to me, I – I’ll do it in a heartbeat; worst case scenario, the universe loses another monster.

But all we really get from Martin are the things he tells the tapes when he's alone and the monologue he gives in MAG 158. It makes sense that he wouldn't be as open, yes, given the nature of the Lonely, but I can't help but think of (MAG 154):

JON

The Lonely’s really got you, hasn’t it?

MARTIN

(no hesitation) You know, I think it always did.

Jon was always curious and hungry for knowledge; the Eye amplified it. Martin was always closed-off and isolated; the Lonely amplified that as well.

But then Jon pulls Martin out of the Lonely, they flee to the safehouse, and three weeks later, the apocalypse begins. Martin isn't as consumed by the Lonely as he was in season four, he's with Jon--the person he loves--for extended periods of time, and they're in an extremely stressful situation that's sure to be incredibly emotionally charged. There's a lot to be said about Jon's emotional vulnerability during season five and how Martin both pressures him for it and rejects it in different ways, but for the purposes of this post, I won't go too far into detail about the motivations behind how Jon is feeling and acting.

I will say, however, that in season five, Martin still continues to place a lot of focus on asking Jon how he's feeling, encouraging (or pressuring) him to share, and getting frustrated when Jon can't or doesn't (MAG 167):

MARTIN

Okay, so how exactly would you describe your current emotional state regarding all of this?

JON

I –

MARTIN

(overlapping) Go on, I’m all ears.

JON

I feel…

MARTIN

(go on) Mhm.

JON

(sigh) I feel… sad.

[Brief pause.] MARTIN

(flat) Sad.

JON

Very sad.

MARTIN

(*very* flat) Very sad.

[He sighs slightly as he says it. Their bags jangle.]

A few moments prior to this, Martin expresses displeasure that Jon is Knowing things about him, specifically pointing out his emotions (MAG 167):

MARTIN

It’s just – it’s weird knowing that you can know literally everything I think and feel. E-Especially since you’re not exactly the most open of people – emotionally, I mean.

I think Martin is making an effort to open up more to Jon. But I still think it's difficult for him to talk about how he feels so openly, and while he is completely in the right for not wanting Jon to Know things about him without his permission, I think it's interesting that the focus is on his feelings and that he brings up how Jon isn't emotionally open immediately after. It scares Martin to think that Jon could know, at any given moment, how he's feeling, and I think it's partially because he's not used to that level of vulnerability. He turns the focus on Jon, away from himself, and doesn't really make an effort to talk about how he's feeling about all of this, instead prioritizing Jon's feelings and mental state like he's grown comfortable with.

And when Martin bottles up his emotions--of which there are a lot, in such a stressful environment, they can explode out in hurtful ways:

MARTIN

(overlapping) I know! I know, okay, I just – (bracing exhale) Look, I j,just – don’t want to get burned, all right? It’s, it’s like my least favorite pain ever.

JON

Is that – a joke?

MARTIN

(a bit faster, a bit shaky) No, no, okay? I, I legitimately hate burns, alright? They’re, they’re awful, and they scar horribly, and they just – it – it just makes me sick; I, I hate it. Hate it!

I don't think Martin really thought about what he was saying when he told Jon, who has a large burn scar on his hand, that burn scars make him sick, and I don't think he meant it maliciously. But he'd spent the greater portion of the conversation talking around the fact that he didn't like burns and that was why he didn't want to go into the building, and so when it finally ended up coming out, it did so in an explosion of emotion rather than a conscious decision to share. Martin doesn't have a good handle on his emotions, and he doesn't have a good handle on sharing them.

(Is it too much for me to say that Martin was more emotionally vulnerable with himself in MAG 170 than he was with Jon when Jon finally found him?)

Throughout season five, Martin asks Jon questions, he expresses frustrations with Jon, he shows discomfort or fear at times, but for as much as Martin feels frustrated that Jon isn't talking about how he feels about their situation, Martin really isn't doing so either. The most he talks about his feelings is in MAG 170 and MAG 186, when he's by himself, and I remember MAG 186 in particular because before that, we really didn't know what Martin was thinking about for the majority of the season! And in this episode, we find out a lot of very important things about Martin's character. Like (MAG 186):

ALSO MARTIN

Look, I know what you know. Maybe I’m just a bit more… open about it.

Also-Martin acknowledges that Martin often doesn't say what he means and hides what he really feels, telling him that it's 'hard to be vulnerable,' and Martin is initially very resistant to the idea. And then, when Also-Martin suggests that Martin wants to stay so that he can be 'quietly sad,' we get (MAG 186):

MARTIN

We could talk to Jon about it.

ALSO MARTIN

We could. But we both know that loved ones make the worst therapists. They’re too wrapped up in trying to stop you hurting to actually help. But hey, we know all about that, am I right?

MARTIN

There’s nothing wrong with comforting people.

ALSO MARTIN

A cup of tea isn’t a resolution. At best it’s a… a plaster. At worst… a muzzle.

This is very interesting to me, because for all that Martin tries to help other people, he also believes that comfort doesn't always help and that you can't be your loved one's 'therapist.' I think this gives a lot of insight into why Martin doesn't share his emotions with the people he cares about, especially Jon; he doesn't want to put Jon in the position where he'll become his 'therapist,' and he doesn't necessarily think Jon can help. So instead, Martin just chooses not to be vulnerable at all, because he doesn't want to burden the people he cares about. But, when it's just him (MAG 186):

ALSO MARTIN

Don’t lie. You don’t need to. Not here. It’s just us.

He doesn't feel like he needs to pull his emotional punches. He can't accidentally hurt somebody or put them in an awkward position; it's just himself. But what's said to himself remains with himself, and (at least on tape), he doesn't discuss any of this with Jon. Not even the bit about, if it came down to it, Martin would have rather had Jon smite him than continue to rule over a domain. He goes right back to being closed-off around Jon, but now we, the audience, know what lies underneath, and how little of it reaches the surface.

In fact, the thing Martin's probably most vocal about is how Jon's feelings about himself bother him (MAG 199):

MARTIN

I guess that’s why it really bothers me, you know? I try, but I can’t actually imagine ever making a decision that I knew meant losing you.

And it… It hurts to know you can.

And I think he has a tendency to use anger and frustration to cover up hurt, shying away from the admission that something Jon's done has hurt him (an incredibly vulnerable thing) and instead relying on the less-vulnerable and more external anger to cover it. This is more speculation than true analysis, but I think that's a lot of what's happening in MAG 200, when he discovers that Jon has already assumed the position of the pupil and has, in Martin's eyes, broken his promise.

#tma #the magnus archives #martin blackwood #tma meta #jonathan sims #(because i do talk about jon a bit in this too)#i actually think martin isn't good with emotions at all #both his own and others'#i think he doesn't quite know what to do with them so he puts on a mask and defaults to things he knows will work #*thinks about the low empathy autistic martin high empathy autistic jon post with love in my heart*

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babyboy-cody · 3 years

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HI ALYSSA!!! 😃 What you wrote for grayson was beyond BEAUTIFUL. can you write something where they’re in a new relationship and she gets introduced on the podcast??? 🥰

i’m gonna try really hard to not go overboard this time 😭

The atmosphere was lighthearted and playful. Since 7am to the early afternoon, you’ve been extremely nervous and fidgety. Grayson recognized the early signs of an anxiety attack and made to bring out one of your sensory toys, the ones that make the popping and clicking sound. He brought you to a secluded corner of the house, away from everyone and all the noise, and blocked them with his body until you calmed down. The scent of him, the overall height of him, the gruffness of his voice, and the soft teddy bear vibes Grayson was giving off had you feeling more at ease.

“What if… What if they don’t like me, Gray? I mean, I’m not like the other girls you’ve hooked up with before. I’m not some insta baddie or a bad bitch. I’m me and they’re gonna hate it,” you quietly rambled to him while frantically popping and clicking your sensory toy, all the while keeping your eyes on your hand movements. Grayson allowed you to rant, not stepping in until you were fully finished. “I mean, Kris is different because she’s perfect for Ethan and she never really got any hate - not that I know of. She’s like a soft baddie, I’m not even 6% of a baddie.” This made Grayson smile as he crossed his arms and stared down at you. “Like, I’m not Tyson and it just… sucks feeling like this.”

“Look at me,” he told you, his voice low enough for only you both to hear. When you nervously peer up at him, no longer using your sensory toy, he places his large hands on your warm cheeks, thumbs gently stroking back and forth. “You’re not Tyson and that’s why I’m in love with you. You think I care about insta baddies? You’re the fucking queen, you hear me?” When you start looking down again, he quickly lifts your head. “Aye, I’m not done talking to you. You’re nothing like those girls and that’s what made me fall for you. Your kind soul, pretty eyes, and good vibes made me feel so comfortable that I always wanted to be around you 24/7. Ask Kris.” He smiles at the sound of your soft giggle and the way your eyes crinkled at the corners. “If I love with all my heart, the people who support us and want us to be happy will love you too.”

“Yo,” Ethan called out from across the room. “You ready?” He was looking at you, more so worried about your reputation than Grayson’s. “There’s no going back.” His tone was teasing and his eyes held no malice. You looked up at Grayson and he gave you a small nod and grin, as if telling you, ‘You got this.’ When you gave Ethan an enthusiastic nod, he excitedly claps his hands. “Lets do this shit!”

When you followed them to the room where they do their podcasts, you felt that anxious wave crash over you again. Grayson, being the extremely observant man he is, made sure you had your sensory toy in your hands as he rubbed your arms gently. He pressed soft kisses to your cheeks that felt like butterfly wings fluttering against your skin because of his growing beard. Kristina shot you a thumbs up from her spot in the kitchen as she ate some avocado toast. You felt more at ease as Grayson and Ethan shot playful jokes at each other back and forth. You took your spot beside Grayson on the swivel chair and took the headphones he hands to you. After setting up the mics and cameras, you got yours comfortable and sat a foot or two away from Grayson so that they’re able to do their intro without you in the frame.

“It’s now or never,” you quietly mumbled to yourself.

“Good evening, everybody!” Grayson enthusiastically speaks into the mic. “Welcome back to Deeper with the Dolan Twins. I’m one of your hosts, Grayson.”

“And I’m your other host, Ethan. If it’s a little harder to tell who is who, I wore white today and Grayson wore black,” Ethan states confidently. “Grayson is always wearing his greasy ass trucker hat.”

“It’s not greasy, shut up.” Grayson sucked his teeth and rolled his eyes, sending a look to the side as you covered your mouth to stifle your laugh. “So, today we are doing things a little bit differently.” You sat up straighter in your seat. “As all of you know, we had Kristina on our podcast to furthermore introduce herself as Ethan’s girlfriend.”

“And today,” Ethan rubbed his hands excitedly. “We have a very, very special guest. We are introducing… drum roll, please…” Grayson quickly tapped his fingers against the table. “Grayson’s very own girlfriend, Y/N!”

Grayson was quick to pull your chair closer to his as you held the mic and laughed quietly as they both cheered loud and clear. “This is my very lovely and very beautiful girlfriend, Y/N. Say hello to the audience.”

“Um… hello,” you awkwardly said, causing Ethan to snort. “Shut up, E! I’m nervous.” You shyly covered your face, groaning when Grayson pulled your hands away and placed his hand between yours. You immediately started playing with his fingers; a sense of calm washing over you. “Well as nervous as I am, I am extremely excited to be a guest on your podcast and I hope it receives good reactions.”

“On a lighter note, lets dive deeper into how the relationship between you and Gray… developed,” Ethan said and got comfortable in his seat.

“You tell the short story and I’ll tell the long story,” you told Grayson and lightly patted his shoulder while looking at him with such love-filled eyes that even Ethan can see from across the large table.

Grayson cleared his throat and never once move his hand from between yours. “Well we met a few years ago and started fully dating, I’d say, almost a year ago. And we met through Kristina because you’ve been really good friends story.”

“Okay, guys, people that are listening and watching,” Ethan interrupted. “Remember to get very comfortable because this story is going to be a fucking rollercoaster of emotions.”

“Oh god,” you facepalmed. “Now, for the long story. I’ve been really close friends with Kris since our childhood. I moved to Australia at a young age with my dad after my mom passed away, and we were just two peas in a pod. The way you and Grayson are with each other is the exact same way Kris and I are with each other.” Grayson leans his chin on his hand and never once looks away from you. His attention was all on you… and your lips. “And then, back in 2017 is when she started telling me about Ethan. And she had mentioned that you had a younger brother-”

“Younger by, like, 20 minutes,” Grayson interrupted with a scoff.

“Younger brother,” you emphasized a little louder, causing both twins to laugh. “And she had asked Ethan stuff about Grayson, to which she transferred back to me. So, she was like a bird messenger.” You giggled as you said that, causing a big grin to form on Grayson’s lips. “And then no sooner after that, we started talking more frequently and getting to know each other. And it just.. grew after that.”

“Didn’t Gray ghost you?” Ethan suddenly asked. Grayson groans loud beside you and covers his face embarrassingly. “I remember you freaking the fuck out because of it.”

“Yes, the motherfucker did ghost me for a few weeks. Wanna explain why, hm?” You teasingly asked him with a raise of your brows. Grayson blushed fiercely.

“So within the first three months of us talking, that was when I fully started developing strong feelings for you. And at the time, I had been fucked over so many times by so many people and was never really able to hold a long relationship. And I partially blamed myself for that because I tend to.. rush things, if that makes sense. I’m a romantic and when I fall for someone, I fall hard.” As Grayson passionately spoke and opened up his feelings, your eyes went from his eyes to his lips to his hands and back and forth. The way he spoke with his hands made you hide a smile by biting your lip. “And I was terrified because I automatically assumed that I was gonna fuck it up one way or another. The only way for me to cope was to push my feelings aside, and it just effected us both so negatively.”

“Yeah, from past experiences, it can be really difficult for someone to come to terms with the true emotions they felt. I was the same way with Kristina, you know. It felt like I had to walk around eggshells out of fear of fucking up the one thing that was good for me.” You and Grayson nodded in agreement. “I remember when we came to Australia after what happened and Gray was running back and forth, just writing what he wanted to say to you and he almost cried because his pencil broke.”

You quickly looked at Grayson. “Really?” You weren’t teasing him, you were shocked. Your voice was soft and you had a pout on your lips that he kissed away. “Stop, you’re gonna make me cry.”

“Nooooo!” Grayson yelled out and threw an arm around your shoulder to pull you into his side.

“That’s so sweet!” You whined and pouted some more. “I never knew that, Gray. I know that in the past, there were some hardships that we were able to overcome and the way we communicated with each other, it just made our relationship stronger.”

The conversation ranged from topic to topic. Your life growing up, the death of your mother, your dad’s rescue farm in Australia, your college degree, and some moments between you and Grayson. You felt so comfortable and carefree that Grayson noticed a changed. You laughed more and spoke louder. You playfully bantered with Ethan and provided your own insight on serious topics regarding the negative effects of social media and about mental health. He’s so sure in his heart that people who love and support him and Ethan are gonna love you the same.

#this was really cute 🥺#i kinda lost my flow halfway #idk if you can tell #grayson dolan x reader #grayson dolan #grayson dolan fluff

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damn-behzinga · 4 years

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Damn-Behzinga’s Masterlist

angst - 🌧️

fluff - ☀️

favourite - 👑

⚡ The Eboys ⚡

Will Lenney (Willne)

The Veteran - The reader surprises Will at a panel after fighting in another country for a year. (X Reader) ☀️

Kissing In The Rain - Will’s friends meet his girlfriend for the first time but the couple is to busy having an argument. (X Reader) ☀️

Pancakes, Anyone? - You make breakfast for everyone after a night out and Will realises how much he loves you. (X Reader) ☀️

Nail Polish - You and Will have a pamper night (X Reader) 👑☀️

Moving In - Will and Gee get a new neighbour and Will happens to find her very cute. (X Reader) ☀️

Get Better - Will helps you through a bad day of depression. (X Reader)🌧️

A Little Bit More - Will and Reader recite their vows at their wedding. (X Reader)☀️

Tough Guy - Will and Reader are complete opposites but somehow have a strong bond. (X Reader)☀️

Will’s Friend Otis - Will gets a dog to help with some problems he’s having, Will can’t find his confidence to talk to his friends. (Centric) 👑🌧️

Toxic - Part Two of WFO, a look through social media as Will deals with his mental health 🌧️

Hometown - Part Three of WFO, Will goes home to take care of himself but re-lives the worst memories possible 🌧️

Will Comes Home - Part Four of WFO, Will comes home and tries to do a Livestream. Stephen doesn’t let it happen for obvious reasons. 🌧️

Taking A Leap - You are scared of love, Will isn’t (X Reader) 🌧️

Deserving - You get fired from your job and Will comforts you (X Reader)🌧️☀️

Alex Elmslie (ImAllexx)

First Kiss - You have your first kiss with Alex after he lists the things he loves about you. (X Reader ☀️)

Hurt Me Once - Alex knows what his partner has been getting up to (X Reader)

James Marriott

Enough - Reader is content with the relationship they have with James, they decide to go public. (X Reader) 👑☀️

You Walked In And My Heart Went Boom - Reader and James have a heart to heart at 3am (X Reader)☀️

Grow As We Go - Reader thinks they need to break up with James in order to figure themselves out. Part of the Ben Platt Writing Challenge (X Reader)🌧️☀️

George (Memeulous)

Protective - George gets protective when Reader gets assaulted, he decides to do something about it. (X Reader) 🌧️☀️

Temporary Love - George doesn’t want this to be a one-time thing… Part of the Ben Platt Writing Challenge (X Reader) 👑🌧️☀️

✨ SIDEMEN ✨

Ethan Payne (Behzinga)

Baby Behzinga Meets Her Uncles - The Sidemen meet your month old daughter (X Reader) 👑☀️

“Dad, Can’t you hear me?” - Ethan opens up about his dad, the sidemen don’t realise how truly scary it is. (Centric)🌧️

Hush Hush - You are JJ’s best friend, he warned his friends not to date you, Ethan doesn’t listen. (X Reader)☀️🌧️

After Meeting A Little Early - You and Ethan have a son at the age of seventeen. the sidemen love him to pieces. (X Reader)☀️

Happy Hours - Ethan talks about you and your son on the Happy Hour podcast. Part 2 of AMALE (X Reader)☀️

Hooked - after a little too much drinking after JJ V Logan Paul, you and Ethan hook up (X Reader) ☀️

Doubt - Ethan has his doubts about being a father but you easily soothe him. (X Reader) 🌧️☀️

Top - Ethan sees you wearing his top and he decides to tell you something. (X Reader) ☀️

Losing The War Against Himself - Ethan is losing the war against his depression but other soldiers are going to fight beside him and help him win. (Cenric) 🌧️

Falling On The Battle Field - Ethan tries to take his own life, the sidemen try to cope (Centric) Part Two of LTWAH 🌧️

I Can’t Wait For Forever - The Sidemen film your’s and Ethan’s weddings, here are the fan favourite bits (X Reader)☀️

Secrets Always Come To Surface - Ethan’s secret gets revealed when someone appears out of the blue. (Centric)🌧️

Together In Isolation - Ethan loves to spend time with you in quarantine (X Reader)☀️

A Painful Memory - The Sidemen Roast is all fun and games until someone jokes about Ethan’s friend who passed away. (X Reader)🌧️

Fitting In - Ethan introduces you to his friends, you get a bit insecure because you’re a bit bigger then other girls (X Reader) 🌧️☀️

To Be Free Again - Ethan gets into a car accident and has to learn to walk again. There are moments where he wanted to give up but he quickly had his friends help him feel better again. These are some of those moments. (centric)🌧️

Dumb Ass Love - If Ethan had to chose between men being horrid to you or a bloody nose, he would chose the latter. (X Reader) ☀️

Unclear - Ethan’s addicted to heroin, the boys have to find a way to help him (Centric)🌧️

Best Couple On YouTube - You and Ethan take part in Simon’s Best Couple On YouTube series. (X Reader) ☀️

Unconventional Family - Ethan meets his half sister for the first time and he decides she should meet his family, the sidemen.(OC & Ethan Centric)☀️

Heart Pains - Ethan has a lot of things that he wanted to do before he hit thirty, having a heart attack and almost dying was not one of them. (Centric) 🌧

Harry Lewis (Wroetoshaw)

Tranquil - You and Harry are soft when others aren’t around. (X Reader)☀️

livestream - harry watches your livestream and realises you’re not okay (X Reader)🌧️☀️

What He Thinks - Not What He Is - Harry finished filming with the weight gained video and he feels terrible about himself so you have to teach him otherwise (X Reader)🌧️☀️

Moment To Moment - This is Harry’s story of his relationship with an abusive woman. (Centric) 👑🌧️

Flustered - Harry gets flustered when a pretty girl comes in for a speed dating video (X Reader)☀️

Medication - Harry suffers from bipolar disorder and has medication, it’s awkward when his friends find out. (Centric)🌧️

Surprise - Harry thinks the biggest surprise of the day was the boys forgetting his birthday, little does he know. (Centric)🌧️☀️

Waltzing - You teach the Sidemen to waltz, Harry gets partnered up with you (X Reader)☀️

Date Night In Isolation - The activities you and Harry get up to in quarantine. (X Reader)☀️

Unexpected But Adorable - You and Harry are famous Youtubers, no one expects your relationship (X Reader)☀️

Nightmares - You have vivid nightmares, thankfully, Harry knows what to do. (X Reader) 🌧️☀️

Cuddle Time - Harry wants to cuddle, the boys happily oblige. (Centric) ☀️

Taken Over - Harry has a seizure after a shoot, the guys help him. (Centric) 🌧️

JJ Olatunji (KSI)

Helpless - You perform your first show as Eliza Schylur for the music Hamilton and JJ supports you. (X Reader) ☀️

Jealous, Babe? - You watch Jaackmaate, JJ is jealous (X Reader) ☀️

Caring - JJ takes care of you whilst your sick (X Reader) ☀️

Not To Blame - You go to a party with all your friends, the night takes a twisted turn and JJ tries to understand it. (X Reader/platonic or romantic) 🌧️

Josh Bradley (Zerkaa)

Not Your Anxiety - The Sidemen don’t know how to handle Josh’s panic attack, luckily Freya is the best. (centric) 🌧️

Hard Worker Shouldn’t Over Work - Josh tends to overwork himself but luckily has amazing friends surrounding him. (centric)🌧️☀️

Mine - You love Josh. Josh loves you. If only love were that simple. (X Reader) 🌧

Vik Barn (Vikkstar123)

Not Just Banter - Sometimes, Sidemen banter goes too far and Vik needs comforting (X Reader) 🌧️☀️

Meeting On Minecraft - You and Vik met online playing Minecraft and now you meet in real life (X Reader) ☀️

Tobi Brown (tbjzl)

Small Comments - You and Tobi promised each other that you wouldn’t go public, so why was the comment left in the video? (X Reader) 🌧️☀️

Falling - You and Tobi were on the lowdown, but what is he doing with that other girl? (X Reader)🌧️

Simon Minter (Miniminter)

Antics - You and Simon have a fun night out and have to get your drunken selves home (X Reader) ☀️

Simon In The Bathroom - Simon gets ditched by his one friend at a party, now he’s alone in the bathroom (Centic) 🌧️

THE GROUP

Acceptance - You come out to the sidemen as a bisexual (Sidemen & Non-specified reader)

🔥 + FRIENDS 🔥

Stephen Lawson (StephenTries)

Brother’s Best Friend - You are Will’s twin sister and Stephen might be developing an itsy bitsy, small crush on you. (X Reader) ☀️

Callum McGinley (Callux)

The Most Confident - Cal meets Harry’s old school friend, he likes her immediately but is she too cool for him? (X Reader) 🌧️☀️

Talia Mar

Strawberries + Cigarettes- Talia reveals her relationship with the reader through her music video for her song Strawberries + Cigarettes (X Reader) ☀️

444 notes · View notes

notesfromthepalace · 4 years

Text

The cost of being Sought After?

“I am high valued... I am Top Tier...”

“I am healthy. I am wealthy. I am rich..” Right?

Is it not fun to be young and beautiful? Having doors held open for you, drinks paid for, and unlimited shopping sprees? When you walk into a room and it goes silent due to the crowd being enamored by your beauty, the luxury of it all.

I mentioned in a previous post that when people also view you as a High Valued woman, they tend to listen when you speak because your thoughts, your opinions, and your feelings are heavily weighted. But in my experience over these last few weeks, I have also come to find out that people just want to know what’s going on in your life.

I love the mystique that follows me; People are always trying to guess what I’m up to and what’s going to happen next in my life. But the downside to this is as an attractive woman, people always try to pair me, or connect me to the attractive men that may run in the circles that I do.

I knew that people may wonder what I do, but I didn’t think the topic of who I may choose to share my bed with (and on the contrary, who I choose not to share my bed with) would be a topic amongst the commoners (they might as well be commoners if they’re going to keep talking about the Queen).

When someone asked me a few weeks ago was I dating one of my friends, I was beyond flabbergasted. I was like “Are you serious?”. So I brought the accusation up to my friend, and he was also confused by the statement due to us never exhibiting the behaviors of people who could possibly be romantically involved with one another.

Now, as the weeks have gone on, I have asked a few other people around the both of us their opinions on the situation and what their perceptions of my friend and I are. The first person I asked said “No, you and him are like brother and sister”, which a few people said. But then when I asked a few other people, their responses were, “We know the both of you personally, so ‘we’ don’t think that, but if we didn’t know you both personally, we would have thought the same thing”. Then I inquired as to why that would be their perception, because I didn't believe that we could possibly be seen that way.

Then the crux of it all was revealed: TWO ATTRACTIVE PEOPLE (of the opposite sex) CAN NOT BE FRIENDS WITHOUT PEOPLE THINKING THEY ARE SEEING EACH OTHER!

What made it worse is my demeanor, my alluring mystique, my femininity is also to blame (this is not me blaming myself, this is what I have gathered from a few conversations I have had) for people to always think that. My voice, my beauty, my capability to command a group’s attention is inviting to people who want to know more, for the simple fact that they don’t have access to everything that is ME (and I do that on purpose). But people are always ready to be Inspector Gadget when it does not pertain to themselves.

As I was pondering all of this during the Holiday weekend, I realized that one of my faves, the LORI HARVEY is always the topic of conversation for celebrity blogs, podcasts and posts. I’m not saying I’m the Lori Harvey of the suburbs or the circles I dibble and dabble in from time to time, but there are a few similarities in both situations. But one thing I am going to do that this amazing woman has done, is to not speak on it or be bothered by it. People have linked Lori Harvey to a plethora of men, and she has never addressed it because she feels like she doesn’t have to and it’s NO ONE’S BUSINESS!

Although I was bothered at first (yes, it ruffled my feathers a little bit), I just remembered how much people talk about Lori Harvey, and how she does what she wants and responds when she wants to.

So like my good sister Ms. Harvey, I will enjoy the luxuries of the Top Tier life, but I will remember to not let the little things like people gossiping about me, especially when it’s not true, to cause me any feeling of dismay, because in reality, those people are so bored and unfulfilled in their lives, that they have to worry about mine (sorry not sorry).

From one Queen to another, keep living your best lives ladies.

Keep hanging with out with your friends.

Keep being beautiful and alluring.

And keep your personal life a mystery to the people who wish they could be you.

Cheers xx From the Top Tier Coach

xoxo

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canonicallysoulmates · 4 years

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Jensen was, once again, on Rosenbaum’s podcast; he had been on it last year it was a really good interview if you haven’t heard it I highly recommend it I also recommend checking out this new/more recent appearance it’s up for free on youtube I’ll leave a link at the end of this post in case you wanna check it out. I will say they don’t talk about the content of the final two episodes - this came out today (edit: yesterday, Sep 8th, since i’m posting after 12am) but the interview happened when the boys were starting their Canada quarantine - so if you’re looking for info regarding the final episodes of the show you’re not gonna find it here, however, just like with the first time he was in the podcast, if you wanna hear two people who have known each other for a while talk then check it out. This was a bit more structured imo than the first time he was on the podcast.

I, personally, am glad Jensen was on the podcast again because I really enjoyed his first appearance in it and I like Rosenbaum’s more laid back interview that’s more like a conversation style I think he gets people to open up more than they usually would in a more formal interview.

There were some things that stood out to me so this is going to be a semi-recap type opinion post. Also, for the sake of convenience, from henceforth Michael Rosenbaum will be referred to as MR.

- Even before the interview starts there’s something I loved and it’s MR saying/stating that j2 are the leads of the show, thank you MR for knowing what so many in this fandom fail to ❤

- Jensen spend a good chunk of this interview being fond over Jared and making them sound super married, and it started right at the beginning around 4 minutes in when after mentioning that some changes have been done to the final two epi scripts and that there were some things they could no longer do due to covid, MR - for some reason....(do you know something rosenbaum 👀😂) - goes “like you and jared can’t make out” and Jensen without missing a beat replies that corona or no corona he and Jared are making out...😏

- After some, actually pretty cool talk about how things are currently working bts and such, Jensen, once again, talks about Jared. MR and him were having a conversation about some changes that have been made for filming due to covid including the longer lunch breaks which turned the conversation on to food on set and MR asked if there was some go-to that catering knew to make for him like when he arrived on set in the morning so of course Jensen replied by talking about what Jared usually has for breakfast on set which is a breakfast burrito and he couldn’t resist mentioning the fact that Jared and him bicker about it because Jared likes to say he doesn’t eat breakfast to which Jensen points out the burrito and Jared insists that it doesn’t count- they sound so married I can’t fucking deal. Also, I love Jensen’s...fond laugh when he mentions that he and Jared get into “arguments” about it, he’s so soft for his boy 🥰 When he does get around to answering the question of what he usually gets he once again brings up the burrito, he says he usually gets breakfast on his way to work, a coffee and a simple, breakfast sandwich...so when he goes to the studio he won’t be tempted to go to catering and order a giant breakfast burrito. I wonder how many times they’ve argued over that damn burrito 😂

- MR asked Jensen if, after 15 years, he and Jared have their ups and downs and annoy the shit out of each other or if they’re like ‘I love him’ all the time. Jensen replied that over 15yrs there are moments when he’s like ‘I don’t need to see him right now’ but that for the most part the majority of the time “they’re buddies hanging out”

- One of the most interesting parts comes after MR asks who has the shortest fuse on set. And, Jensen, unsurprisingly to me, replies that it’s Jared who has the short fuse. I say unsurprisingly because while we as a fandom have gotten used to seeing Jared being silly, kind, sweet and caring to the point where some think of him as completely helpless, he can actually be very serious and professional, and I’ve always been of the thought that he is sweet up to a point reach that point and you’ll be in trouble. So, I wasn’t surprised to hear Jensen say Jared is the one with the short fuse, I also wasn’t surprised by him say that he likes to light Jared’s fuse, or that he knows how to get under Jared’s skin.

Jensen also said that his and Jared’s frustrations tend to line up, so if something isn’t working or frustrating he’ll quickly bring it up to Jared or Jared will quickly bring it up to him; he also knows how depending on the severity whether Jared will get wound up and heads will roll or whether he’ll be able to diffuse the situation. That’s...a lot to unpack. Him saying that if something ain’t working or is frustrating they’ll quickly bring it up to one another makes me think of all the times they’ve said that they made each other a promise back in s1 to never let things escalate between them to the point it did when they had that big fight back then, it’s kind of in the same line but like because of him saying depending on the severity and if heads will roll it also sounds like he’s referring to maybe problems with a crew members or something maybe someone stepping out of line (which actually later on he does say they have had some situations over the years where new people will come in like guards and not treat their crew member the right way) and like just them having each others backs at work and protecting each other. Also, I think it says a lot about how well Jensen knows Jared that he knows whether Jared is going to snap about something or if he’ll able to calm him down. And it sounds like he’s the one in charge of cooling Jared down if something does happen that winds him up.

He also said the few times that he has snapped Jared tends to be behind him ready to help with the insults if need be in others words Jared has his back.

He also mentioned that there have been situations where they’ve had new people come in and not treat other crew members well so he and Jared have had to step in and let that person know the behavior that is expected of them, that makes me respect them even more like it’s no surprise spn truly is their show and for years guest stars have praised them specifically, for the environment that they have created and maintained on set- the way Jensen puts it is that they have had to put their producer hats on that they don’t actually own, I’ll forever be bitter that they never got a seat at the writer’s/producers table because they fucking deserve producer credits for this show with all the work they put into it that goes beyond acting in it. [timestamp]

- MR pretending to be Jensen: “you know Daneel- your wife”. I don’t know why this made me loose my shit, there’s just something hilarious about MR bringing up D and pointing out to Jensen that he’s talking about his wife as if Jensen had forgotten who he was married too 😂 (although considering how many times Jensen said Jared’s name and the whole making out thing I can’t blame MR for thinking Jensen had forgotten, silly rosenbaum he didn’t forget that’s why he kept talking about jared 😜)

- Jensen gave a cool funfact! Originally, the production wanted to get Bruce Campbell to play present-day John, back in s1, since JDM wasn’t that much older than the boys but for some reason or the other they weren’t able to get him so they decided instead to gray up JDM a bit and have him play an older version of himself! I wish Bruce Campbell would have appeared on the show because that would have been awesome but I’m glad they kept JDM playing John, I can’t imagine anybody else bringing that character to life.

- Another interesting moment- or I guess not really interesting just something that stood out to me is that when MR asked if it had been hard to isolate and quarantine with D and the kids for 5 months Jensen said that it had been hard but he and D had a solid partnership, friendship, relationship....instead of just saying marriage. Which encompasses those three words. He went with three words that could be used to describe a relationship with a romantic partner, or just a friend which actually- it sounded less like he was talking about his wife and more about a friend who he’s raising his kids with.

- They talked a little bit about Jensen’s album with MR even playing a bit of it and praising Jensen for his voice 🥰

- At the end Jensen opens up a bit about his mental health and how quarantine affected it and while he doesn’t go into detail he does say his kids kept him from falling into a depression and that there were days where he found himself lost.

I am going to sound like a little bit of a *censored* because while he was talking about this at one point he mentions how his kids give him purpose and push him to find something to do and he starts listing things and one of them is making the kids dinner, setting them up with a movie then having a date in the kitchen with his wife which got a snort out of me because a couple months ago he did the How Are You Today interview and said he and D hadn’t gone on a date in months and yes, you could make the argument that he meant gone out as in to a restaurant but it sounded like he meant in general so when he brought that as an example of something he could do I just went *snort* yeah right. That being said, I think he brought that up more as an example than anything else but it did make me go ‘sure jan’.

That moment aside, I think this might be the first time I’ve seen him open up about his mental health and struggles he might be having with it, I’m proud of him for talking about it even though it does seem like a topic he doesn’t feel fully comfortable sharing with the public which is completely valid.

Jensen on Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum September 8th 2020

#j2 tinhat #jensen related #mine #jenneel critical #just cause i make some slightly bitchy comments #this too me way longer too type up than I thought it would #i'm exhausted and it's almost 4am my ass is going to bed

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masterthespianduchovny · 4 years

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Tragedies often fracture families and, at worst, tear them apart completely.

A comment a few days ago made me reflect on Mulder’s family tragedy and just how deeply it traumatized him.

I have a three year old nephew and me and my twin, his mother, constantly talk about support systems and how parents are their children’s first support system. How they should feel comfortable and safe to go to their parents.

‘Should’ is the key word here.

We don’t have the full story of what happened after Samantha went missing, but it’s heavily implied that Mulder was left to deal with the tragedy on his own, his parents split up, and even if they didn’t verbally say it, they blamed him. To top it all off, Mulder repressed the event.

Imagine growing up with a sibling, it’s just the two of you, then one day, they’re missing. You were there the night they were abducted, but you don’t remember shit and you know your parents blame you. And, instead of being there for you, you have to deal with a missing sibling alone and are literally alone. Your mother is drugged up and your father is gone or just not around.

Mulder experienced emotional abandonment and, most likely, didn’t get any professional help in addition to not getting any emotionally support from his parents.

And before anyone assumes I’m being unfair to Teena and Bill, I believe the series does briefly mention she took drugs around this time, presumably due to her distress (and she admits this time is hazy/she doesn’t remember). And Bill was bound to have erratic, insistent hours due to working with the Consortium. But, most importantly, Mulder’s reaction about when he “lost” Samantha in exchange for Scully and how his father spoke to him indicates that, in some way, they held Mulder responsible for what happened to his sister. Mulder had to comfort his mother and father and neither thought to see how he was doing or comfort him.

Does that spell parents who supported their child the best way they could when the other sibling went missing?

I’ll admit, that had to be devastating for them, but they still had a remaining child to tend to and help cope with his sister’s disappearance. And yet, they didn’t.

This explains why Mulder both craves attention and validation AND doesn’t mind being alone. He craves attention and validation for those who are genuinely interested in him whether it being romantically, platonically, or professionally. If it’s not genuine, Mulder could do without and is content being left to his own devices.

...because that’s what happened when he was a kid.

Mulder doesn’t care about taunts and ridicule because he most likely experienced that as a child as well. A missing sister under mysterious circumstances and Mulder was there??? He was definitely teased and bullied in some capacity. (Hell, I personally remember two brothers trying to tease me because my grandmother died and me looking at them like ‘what the fuck is wrong with you???’)

Mulder being forced to emotionally support and fend for himself molded him and, subsequently were behaviors he carried into adulthood.

It is said that families with missing relatives can’t move on and are “living in limbo.”

In the first season, Mulder essentially described this feeling when we hear his regression therapy tapes. Him walking into rooms and expecting to find Samantha there. When we first meet him, he cannot move on and live a complete life because he doesn’t know if she’s dead or alive and what happened.

IMHO, Mulder was going through the motions before this life changing session. He was the golden boy and challenged authority a little bit, but a Boy Scout. And then, he had a flash of a memory of that night and, suddenly, he woke up as if he'd been asleep since he was 12. That session changed him. And little by little, he found his way to the X-Files. Once he stumbled cross those files, he found his life’s mission: the search for the truth.

What’s interesting is that Mulder’s obsessive behavior isn’t that abnormal in context. Look up Sarah Turney and how she obsessively investigated her sister’s disappearance until her father was finally charged. She spent years of her life searching for answers and trying to prove he murdered her sisters. Made a podcast, I believe, made a Tiki's Tok, gave interviews, tried to catch her father up in lies, etc.

Mulder didn’t feel helpless anymore after realizing his sister was abducted by aliens. He felt empowered and as if he could get answers now. He wasn’t at fault anymore, but he still felt guilty (he still felt responsible because he was the big brother).

So much of Mulder was shaped not just by his sister being taken, but also his parents totally failing him by not being there for him when he needed him most, By essentially blaming him for something that was completely out of his hands, which Bill knew. By having him completely rely on himself, and then use him as a source of comfort.

It explains why Mulder can be totally empathetic and gullible in certain areas and assholish and selfish in others. Many of the people he cared about either abandoned or exploited his emotional needs and, at times, flat out abandoned him.

Interestingly enough, Mulder is finally able to move forward in his life after he gets his answers about Samantha.

So, I often think about this when people are critical of Mulder. Not to say that he is above criticism, but he has a lot of unaddressed trauma that fueled him for years. Some of his behaviors are defense mechanisms and what he did to survive.

All kid Mulder wanted was someone to tell him that everything was going to be alright and, in the end, he had to reassure himself that as he waited years for a clue to his biggest questions.

#The X-Files #mulder #fox mulder

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cloveroctobers · 4 years

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ELLADINE SARABI

IG info/bio: @/ellasardineabi | 18.5k followers | Artist | i was born with glass bones and paper skin♡

25 years old

Born & raised in Cardiff, Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Father was in the n*vy and moved his family around a few times until he and his wife came to a agreement that it would be best for the family to grow up in one solid place

whereas he would leave for months at a time living elsewhere

Which was hard on the family at times since he is viewed as the rock of the family

He eventually left the n*vy after serving 20 years & was so thankful to, he hated it and how it messed with him mentally

He’s also of Iranian heritage

Her mother is of German heritage

Has her own restaurant that serves authentic German food

Both of her parents instilled hard work, discipline, generosity, and how to be practical in their children

Elladine is the middle child

Has a brother that is ten years older than her and then a younger sister who is seven years behind her

Canon: there is currently a discussion going on if they are going to bring their (maternal) nan/mam-gu home since the nursing home isn’t providing the proper care their nan needs

Her mother has a rocky relationship with her mother that she doesn’t like to discuss with her children but her husband knows all about it

Her nan has Alzheimer's and is becoming violent

it has become difficult seeing her most days

Elladine came into glassblowing after being involved in many classes in secondary such as workshop class

which became her fav since she was able to manipulate many materials such as metal, wood, and glass

She also took a auto body class which was interesting but she wasn’t too thrilled about it. Got away with a B- but knew she could do better if she really wanted to but she didn’t need the class to graduate so allow it

Currently works in a glass studio where her work is displayed/sold and she’s one of the main ones that makes great profit

has bought her own space for her own studio and is slowly making it to her liking with her assistant, yes she’s got one!

Hopes to be in that space within the next 6 months...it would have been a little sooner if we weren’t dealing with a global p*ndemic!!! but ya know life f*cking sucks sometimes!!!1!!:) especially if people don’t gaf

Moved back in with her parents so that she could not only help with her nan but get her studio ready, her parents approved since she was working towards something and realized her talent

I definitely see elladine going through a grunge phase and it probably still slips out every now and then lol

Her childhood room is still in shades of raspberry, gray, and a deep purple

always been plus-sized/fuller than the rest but it’s literally hereditary since her mom is built the same way who got it from her dad

Her family never made her feel ashamed as they shouldn’t and none of her true friends made her feel different since they were all of different sizes!!! besides who’s really friends with someone because of their bodies? Ur really ugly if that’s how u roll js

Always a respectful student and not too afraid to spark up a convo with you but can be a little nervous if the person is more of a “I have to warm up to you first” since she’ll feel like she’s annoying you if she carries the convo at first

Takes her time in relationships because she’s scared of getting hurt, cause breakups are not fun! Especially if theyre your friend on top of that

Although Friendship breakups are much worse let’s be honest here!!!

Has noticed that a few of her exes like to bring up that she’s controlling or too bossy in relationships and that makes her a little insecure since she doesn’t view it that way??

She knows what she wants and likes things a certain way, and she can see how it can kinda come off that way based on how she approaches/says things and tries to be better at toning it down and not being offensive to her significant others

Always has a plan and likes to follow it, she definitely keeps to-do lists on a daily

Takes trips to see Nicky often and vice-versa, every moment they spend together feels like it’s meant to be, even when it’s them just simply chilling in each other’s spaces, he’s truly one of her best friends and he feels like the missing part of her life

He offered for her to move in with him but elladine didn’t accept it since she wanted to be there to help with her nan and in fact—she wanted to be the one to ask HIM to move in with her

but if they make it long enough, they’ll go house hunting together...maybe

I get Shawn/Angela relationship vibes from them (boy meets world for those who aren’t aware of this couple and I’m not just saying this because they’re interracial as well lol) did I say this already about someone else? Brain fart lol

everyone relationship has their flaws so when they hit a bump in the road...elladine immediately wants to fix it but it comes off as more critiquing, moodiness/blaming the other

while Nicky can be defensive/argumentive/a little condescending on his end

To get through it, they normally go on a walk together in complete silence until they’re ready to speak again or they take a break from each other

I think words of affirmation is her love language

Taurus sun + Virgo moon + Capricorn rising?

“The girl on the motorcycle” is one of her fav films — no this is not metaphoric to her love life

Loves watching things with captions on since she always finds herself doing something else while watching anything (which irks Nicky a little bit but that’s just the way elladine is and he loves her so he deals with it)

Will rewind something if she missed it too

Canon: never had morning sex before

but can now say she has ;) & understands the pros people say about it and it outweighs the cons in her book

Will start the whole song over too if she missed her fav part in it

She also enjoys billiards since her brother used to work in a pool hall and when he had to watch her because she was “too young” in her words to stay home by herself he would take her there even tho technically she wasn’t supposed to be there but he was screwing his boss’s daughter so it was quite fine

her sister has a crush on Gary & ships elladine with him, which they joke about every now and then + he doesn’t follow her back, which is okay! Not a big deal but her sister keeps sliding in his dms (he’s now single)

She NEVER thought she would be on THE love island and wasn’t that confident that she’d find a real love that carried on outside of the show but Nicky has proven her wrong 🥲

She’s 5’5–5’6

Probably shops at Zara & top shop and has no issue picking pieces that flatter her “pear” figure, she loves all that is of her body: the pudge, love handles, cellulite and all (she’s very confident and won’t let anyone see her moments of doubt when it comes to her frame)

Loves mythology but will tell bill stfu if he comes near her trying to argue about anything in that subject

Very competitive and will rush through certain things, leaving one to think that she’ll fail somewhere but rarely does

If she’s not near or away from the mountains or the sea for long period of time she gets very moody!!! Guess that’s the Welsh in her huh?

Loves fireplaces, they’re super cozy and very romantic if you catch ella’s drift 😏

Probably smells like jasmine & pink pepper idk

Wants to travel to Iceland one day

Knows her way around a car but dreads having to get it fixed or fixing it herself?

Loves driving until her road rage kicks in? Oh you’re gonna go around her to get in front of her? Never that. She’ll always be in front of you and will break check you if you try her “Drewgi” she mutters

Early riser and goes to bed early too lol

She’s the crying drunk lmao

Automatically vieve has become one of her best friends from the villa but it deff didn’t feel forced like it normally would have just because their bfs have a podcast together, they talk about everything together. EVERYTHING! It feels like she’s the big sister she never had, yet they’re only a year apart lol

They have ft sleepovers and man is it fun!

Forgave lily but at the same time can’t fully see herself being friends with her like vieve tried to encourage before they went on the yacht...sorry everything can’t be Kumbaya over here sis

It sucks to say but it was easier? She doesn’t know if that’s the right term or not... for her to forgive rafi than it was lily and it’s fucked up but that’s the way it is. It’s not like she contacts him on seperate messages or anything like that! She’ll talk to him via group chat and that’s pretty much it. She knows it was all part of the show and production’s bs for ratings but that doesn’t mean it still didn’t hurt

Wishes him success on his shows/movies but doesn’t engage/watch them

What does she post? I feel like she posts maybe three times a month and a lot are outfit pics but tends to go live more so to chat with the people! She’ll also show all what glassblowing entails while chatting away! She loves that part and is pretty open about things but knows how to keep some things private

Personally wasn’t the biggest fan of season 1 but admits she wishes she had mc’s balls in terms of what she would have done if she was in elladine’s place when lily picked Nicky, “ugh! I wish I had her strength rising through my veins in that moment. Absolute riot. Adore her.”

‘“Licky” is a ugly ass ship name anyways so who’s really winning here?!’

Celeb crushes? Iwan Rheon, Henry Zaga, Anthony Welsh, jason derulo, & LaRoyce Hawkins

Listens to: soleima, Marisa Maino, Ava Max, poppy, Caroline polachek, Donny Hathaway, Phil Good, & SAINt JHN

Anthem — M.I.A. “Bad Girls”

#litg #litg3 #litg s3 #litg elladine #litg Nicky #litg genevieve #litg oc #litg mc #litg headcanon #litg headcanons #litg rafi #litg boat party #litg lily #litg moodboard #I like elladine and I’m in love with her design #wish they did more with her and many of the other characters too!#I hope this was sorta satisfactory lol!#can you tell I’m running out of artists and celebs/well known ppl lol!

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amysubmits · 4 years

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Amy,

I do see domintant traits in my husband but we are venturing into DD to kind of bring that out more as well as bring out my desire to submit to him. My question for you and your partner is, do you have any advice to offer on how to speak (tone wise, words/sentences) that could give him more ideas? Obviously he and I don't want him to he a robot, but just a general idea to get him to understand the importance of phrases and tones. I read one your blogs and I so related to you saying you get off on the tones and words he uses. Sometimes my husband does that and it's nice because it came natural, but I would love more of that.

(ask #2)

I was looking for some advice from you and your partner. My husband and I have been married for 5 years. We've struggled with me respecting him because he doesn't normally come across as authoritative. I have seen that side maybe once or twice but I think because of the lack of respect I've shown he really lost confidence in himself which I really hate and blame myself for. I grew up in a pretty chaotic house so arguing comes natural to me. Whereas for some who grew up the same way are intimidated easily and shy away from conflict, as it sounds like is the case for you, which I'm glad you are more naturally submissive. In my heart though, I want to submit to him. We have decided to give DD a trial though and I'm really grateful for that but also feel guilty for even wanting it. I relate so much to some of your posts. For example, just how a phrase or tone can be exciting. Do you and your partner have any suggestions or advice on how a man can come to understand why it's appealing to us? And maybe even some tips on what kind of phrases work. Lol 😆 . I would love if you guys could sit down and think about how your partner came to understand the importance of the words he said and the tone he used when it came to backing up his commitment to this lifestyle. To your boyfriend, do you know the affect you have on Amy when you say certain things? What do you think about having that affect?

---------------------------

It’s always hard to know what someone who has read some of my blog posts has envisioned about me/us as a result of reading my posts. So I guess to start with I just want to try to explain how I perceive our relationship to work when it comes to word choice and tone, to make sure we’re on the same page to start?

CD using certain tones of voice, or certain phrases or wording, can definitely have an immediate impact on my headspace. I know I’ve written about being in a bad attitude and him saying something, or using a tone, and it basically being an immediate attitude adjustment. Those things happen sometimes. They’re quite rare, though. They really only happen if I’m out of line to begin with.

Most of the time, he knows that I will listen to him regardless of how he words things or what tone of voice he uses. More often than not, he uses his regular speaking voice, and just whatever working comes naturally to him when speaking to me. Most of the things he has me to are pretty simple acts of service. Get him a drink, cook dinner, a specific chore around the house, etc. Those are sort of the ‘bread and butter’ of our normal instructing and submitting, day to day.

I think when it comes to food or drinks, he almost always asks. Would you make me X? Will you bring me a drink? Etc.

With chores, he sometimes asks but often will just express it as a want. “I’d like you to vacuum the living room today.” for example.

I say all of this to say, I don’t feel like CD is always speaking to me in a stereotypically authoritative way. He speaks to me quite similarly in front of other people as he does when we are alone, and the way he speaks to me in front of others never turns heads and has never upset anyone. It comes off as socially acceptable, polite, respectful of me, etc. We have a podcast together and while I don’t think he ever gave me any instructions while recording, some of the most common feedback we got from the podcast was that it as really insightful to hear how we talk and interact with each other. We got feedback on both ends of the spectrum, I guess. A couple were upset that I tease him, for example. I think some feel that doesn’t belong in D/s relationships or that it’s not appropriate for a submissive to do, i guess. Others told us we were ‘Sooo obviously’ Dom and sub in the way we speak to each other. So, how it will sound to you..i have no idea. But I think it does show how we talk to each other so that might give you some insight into us that might be helpful for adding context to my relationship, anyway.

Anyway. At the same time as I say he speaks to me very casually, I feel his authority over me with the way that he speaks to me. Because I know that when he asks me to get him a drink, he fully expects me to get him a drink. It’s worded as a question, but it’s not really a question. But it also just doesn’t seem like a harsh, stern or rude thing. He expects my obedience and my service but not in a harsh way. It’s not...I know you will listen to me because if not...’ it’s just...”i know when i ask you this you will do it because i know you listen to me.” It’s closer to being a compliment than it is to being a threat. But it’s not really either. It’s more of just knowing who we are and how we work. And that takes time, to get comfortable in seeing yourself as dom and sub, in trusting your D/s as far as really believing it’s who you are.

Gosh I feel like i’m talking in circles. I hope you’re able to follow me, haha. I guess I say all this to say..while I have many anecdotes on my blog about tones CD has used with me, or specific things he’s said...some of those were said casually but still were very powerful on me because of how our relationship works. Others were specific tones. Off the top of my head, I recall one post I shared a non-compliant mood I was in, he was sitting on our bed, I was standing so we were the same height, eye to eye, and he just looked me in the eye and quietly said ‘stop’, and my mood totally flipped. I know i’ve shared others where he uses “Dom Voice” to catch my attention or correct my course. Those types of things happen sometimes, and when they do, I tend to write about them because they feel like a big deal. They aren’t the norm though, and they’re frankly, kinda the result of failures on my part. He only gets authoritative with me when I’m not listening very well to begin with. For us, it wouldn’t be sustainable if he had to always be like that with me to get compliance. Yes, I need him to be stern with me when I get out of line. But that can’t be the norm. If he did have to sort of ‘force’ my submission all the time, it would be putting way too much responsibility for my submission onto him. I have to take responsibility for it first. His sternness is the backup plan.

The way that CD speaks to me, whether casually or when being more stern, is just how it comes natural to him. I think the authority I Feel from his casual language comes from feeling his assertiveness and confidence, in part? And in part it’s just knowing our D/s and how it works as I said a bit higher up. I think when he’s stern with me that just sort of comes naturally after more casual tone doesn’t work. Not to compare myself to a dog, lol, but if my dog doesn’t listen to me the first time, i’ll change the one of my voice a bit to sound like ‘i mean business’ and I think most people just naturally do that. So he just naturally gets more stern with me if I’m being a turd when he asks nicely. Though I think it somewhat comes back to having confidence in your D/s, too. He has to be confident in his authority over me in order to push for obedience/compliance if I resist a bit at first. I think part of that naturally improves with time as the dominant gains confidence in their position within the dynamic.

We’ve never discussed the way that CD speaks to me, that I can recall. I just wouldn’t want to have that much say in how CD acts as my Dom, to be honest. I think it’s good to talk openly with each other about what makes you feel submissive or him feel dominant, for sure. If he says something that really made you feel submissive, its great to let him know that. But for me, asking him to speak a certain way or giving him suggested phrases just is too far. I think it would be really tough for a dom to feel dominant if they’re trying to speak in the way that their sub wants them to. I think it would be better to let him find his own tones and wording, etc over time.

Back to how I have to take responsibility for being submissive even when he isn’t speaking super authoritatively...with you saying that your partner has low self confidence, I think it’s extra important for you to take responsibility for your submission. I think confidence is built when someone feels accepted, appreciated and trusted as they are. So, I think it would be potentially counter-productive to ask him to change how he acts to get more submission or respect from you. I imagine that could easily read as ‘if you want my submission or respect, you have to change’ and that is going to lower his confidence even more.

I’m not prone to conflict the way you say you are and I know that when you’ve had patterns of behavior since childhood that’s really, really tough to overcome. I think that really is a key way that you’ll show him that you respect his natural Dominace, though. Is to work to overcome your instinct to challenge him when he isn’t being super authoritative. Once he’s able to feel that respect from you, it might increase his confidence in himself in general and in his position as your Dominant to where he will be more comfortable being more overtly authoritative. So in a nutshell, I think you’re sort of looking at it a little bit backwards. Instead of trying to change his way of speaking so that you will respond more submissively, I think what should come first is you respecting his “softer” leadership to build his confidence, so that he can then embrace more of his natural dominance.

#asks #domestic discipline

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playmebackwards · 5 years

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hey y’all, i’m velouria and i’m always late to the frickin party! well, better late than never, right? i’ll introduce you to all my kids but first up, binyamin ‘benny’ katzer, jewish werewolf with a whole lot of trauma!

&. 【 sh, do you hear I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF by THE CRAMPS playing ? that must mean BINYAMIN ‘BENNY’ KATZER is coming, the 23 year old CISMALE that goes by HE/HIM, currently employed as a GRAVEDIGGER AT OLDGATE CEMETERY. they’re a WEREWOLF in oldgate for eh, i’d say about TWO MONTHS. tough luck, huh ? least they got their REVERENT, INTELLIGENT, GUARDED and FEEBLE stuff to fall back on. anyway, it’s best to get out of here. their ( silver chai necklace glinting in the sun, worn comic books with the spines cracked, a bookcase filled with mel brooks films, bits of leaf found in dark blond hair nowhere near the forest ) vibe gives me the creeps !

trigger warnings: mentions of bullying, mass murder/massacre, ptsd

grew up in santa barbara, ca in a conservative jewish family (conservative as in the branch of judaism, not like republican lol); the younger brother of tovah katzer, park ranger. binyamin grew up as a regular class clown, a rather jovial kid that used humor as a defense mechanism. he was a decent student, but suffered from bullying over his small stature and religion.

because of the bullying at school, binyamin grew very guarded and only felt very close to his mother. though he had a few good friends in his social circle, he was very much a nerd and somewhat obnoxious, so he wasn’t well liked by most of his grade. he had a pleasant relationship with his older sister tovah but they were not socially close, even as children.

a stereotypical nerd, he spent most of his free time playing violent video games or at school band practice. he grew up very observant of his religion and spent a lot of time at the local jcc.

benny, as he was commonly called by his peers, wanted to be a stand-up comic as a teenager. his hero was (and still is) mel brooks, humor was the only way benny could really relate to other people and it shielded him from the world when relating to others only ended up hurting him.

as the years went on and high school was coming to a close, things lightened up at school and the bullying ceased majorly from its height in middle school and early high school. while he was never considered popular, it wasn’t so hard to get up and go to school in the morning during his junior and senior years.

he chose to go to usc santa barbara since it was a state school and not too far from his childhood home. while his dreams of being a stand-up comic had diminished, binyamin was still considering it when high school came to an end, but ultimately he picked a computer science major at his father’s insistence that he have an actual career, and if he really wanted to do stand-up comedy, he’d at least have something to fall back on if it didn’t work out.

usc santa barbara was a lot different from a small suburban high school and binyamin felt isolated and elated simultaneously. a few people from his former high school also elected to attend ucsb, so he had a social circle he could rely on but he was also able to branch out and accumulate new friendships from the people in his classes and social clubs at the school. by his junior year, binyamin had carved out a good group of friends.

benny had always known his family was different; his father, while a good man, was often quite secretive and left for weeks at a time. they blamed it on his work, but it seemed these business trips would always take place around the full moon. it wasn’t until his older sister tovah developed her shifting ability that their parents revealed that their father is a werewolf; they were unsure if, being the children of just one werewolf and a human, that the werewolf gene would pass onto the kids. while tovah had shifting ability, binyamin didn’t develop his at the same time and by the time he was 19, they were all pretty sure only tovah was a werewolf like their dad.

but that was only until he was 19. while on a road trip for spring break with his college buddies, a man sabotaged their vehicle and then hunted them down with a rifle, picking them off one by one. (think wolf creek and texas chainsaw massacre) benny was the only one to survive—all thanks to his inner wolf. halfway through the event, benny finally acquired his shifting ability, tearing apart his assailant and ending the massacre. benny doesn’t remember much about the event, only that some of his friends had animal bites on them, and he feels an immense amount of guilt over the very idea he was responsible for any deaths (besides the killer).

the nevada farmhouse massacre, as dubbed by the media, split benny’s life into parts: before, after. normal, werewolf. having developed ptsd from the event, it took years for benny’s life to get somewhat back to normal. he avoided leaving the house, taking care of himself, scaring his family. while he was cleared of all wrongdoing by the cops, benny hasn’t forgiven himself, though he’s not exactly sure what he did or did not do during that time. after a year or so, benny went back to college, but in ohio instead, trying to get as far away as possible from california as he could. he completed his remaining credits for college and earned a degree in computer science. he started to go by the name b. chayim katz.

working as an i.t. specialist for a little while, things were going good for him, but then it was discovered that he was living under an alias in akron and his location/information posted on all the true crime subreddits/blogs. fearing further harassment and having another breakdown, benny called finally his sister tovah, a park ranger in california, and they made plans to live together as benny couldn’t handle being by himself.

they decided to move to oldgate, louisiana, where tovah could continue being a park ranger and benny didn’t know what he was going to be (though he had a degree in computer science, it had been tainted by the doxxing), but he couldn’t be in ohio anymore and he vowed never to live on the west coast again. #anustart

the siblings katzer have only been in oldgate for two months now, benny picking up a job as a gravedigger at the cemetery as it would give him something to do and very little interaction with people. they haven’t registered with the local pack yet, figuring they’re the only wolves in town, but the katzers have always been on the outside of wolf society due to their religion and their general quiet nature. they’re not rogues/lone wolves, but they try to keep to themselves as much as possible. benny definitely ain’t no alcide lmao.

connections:

a fellow werewolf! the first one, besides his own sister, that benny comes across in oldgate, and really anywhere. the katzer wolves tend to keep to themselves, not exactly labeled omegas but they don’t subscribe the whole macho persona that a lot of packs have going on.

someone to recognize him! while benny was never a celebrity, anyone that’s a true crime fan would be sure to recognize him as the farmhouse case has been covered in many podcasts and blogs. as he left ohio because he was recognized, he’d be totally freaked out by someone in this new small town realizing who he is, but the connection in question agrees to keep his secret/not harass him abt it.

someone he can get close to! benny is very reserved and quiet, even before the massacre, but doubly so now. he doesn’t talk very much, rarely makes eye contact, and spends most of his time alone; it would be very nice if someone could coax him out of his shell and become a good friend to him. extra points to anyone that wants to turn this toxic later down the road and have them manipulate benny, bc i’m fucking messy lol.

someone that’s very anti-werewolf! since werewolf society is still in the dark compared to the vampires and benny doesn’t make his wolf status known to most people, the person in question doesn’t know he’s a werewolf and basically talks shit abt them all the time. benny’s too afraid to speak up and let them know how much they’re insulting him lmao.

i can’t really think of anything else right now! but message me to plot and we’ll cook up something fun :) im me on here or ask for my discord!!

#fangfmooc #hold your horses honey. i’ve got coupons for the pringles. ( ooc. )#massacre tw #ptsd tw #bullying tw #i only proofread this once lmao sry

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lingthusiasm · 5 years

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Transcript Episode 30: Why do we gesture when we talk?

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 30: Why do we gesture when we talk? (Gestures are part of language). It’s been lightly edited for readability. For this special video episode, you can watch the video here. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 30 show notes page.

[Music]

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

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Gawne. And in today’s episode, we’re getting enthusiastic about the gestures that we make when we speak. But first, welcome to our first video episode.

Gretchen: Video!

Lauren: Very exciting. Thanks to our patrons, we reached a funding goal where we were able to pay for the extra production costs to have a video. And, of course, as soon as we decided that, I couldn’t help but hope that we would do a gesture episode. And so that is our first video episode.

Gretchen: So you can see the gestures. This is also being released as an audio episode in the normal feed, so if you’re hearing this, you can listen to it audio-only, but you will miss some of the gestures. So you can go to YouTube.com/lingthusiasm to see the full gesture-y version.

[Music]

Gretchen: And now gestures. Lauren, they’re really cool. You’ve done proper research on these.

Lauren: I have, yes.

Gretchen: How did you get into gestures?

Lauren: I did a Bachelor of Arts undergraduate and, like many people, kind of found linguistics in my first year of doing an undergraduate degree and thought, “This subject is so cool!” that I was still doing it, and I was majoring in it by the end of my third year. And in the last semester of third year, I thought linguistics was cool, but I really thought that I wanted to do further study in art history. And then in the final class, the final semester, I took a subject called “Language and Culture” with Barb Kelly, who I blame a lot of my –

Gretchen: Barb Kelly is great.

Lauren: – interests on. One week of this class on language and culture was about this topic of gesture studies that she’d done some work in. And by the time you get to third year of linguistics, you kind of know about sounds, and phonetics, and syntax, and sentence structure...

Gretchen: And you think you kind of know it all.

Lauren: Yeah, and you especially think you know it all by the end of third year, and that completely changes the more that you study and the less, you realise, you knew. And learning about gesture was one of those moments where I was just like “There’s this whole part of language that I’ve never thought of before.” And within about two weeks of that set of lectures, I had changed my major and changed my future study plans. I kind of jumped in deep.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: And I have not regretted it ever since.

Gretchen: I only really found out about gesture because of you and because we were talking about part of my book that looks at emoji, and you were like, “There’s actually some gesture stuff that’s relevant to this.”

Lauren: Yes, I’m so pleased that I managed to convince you to reference gesture even in the book on the internet where there’s technically no people around to gesture. We still found that gesture was relevant.

Gretchen: Well, and I had the same experience of just – this was more recently – just thinking I knew most of how linguistics works and then walking around being like “This is so cool.” I’m slightly spying on people in restaurants and around me. I’m like “They’re using gestures so much.”

Lauren: It’s true. Once you start paying attention to gesture, it’s really hard to stop. And I really apologise to all of you watching this video who are now gonna be analysing our gestures. I’m sure Gretchen’s gonna spend half the episode watching her own hands.

Gretchen: Yeah, this is what I was doing. I was typing with one hand [gestures one hand typing, one hand raised], and I was like “Okay, so if I do this [positions raised hand] …if I do this [repositions raised hand] …” with the other hand. It was very…

Lauren: You begin to see language as being a much bigger thing and used in a whole different way.

Gretchen: Yeah, absolutely. So that kind brings us to our first big idea in gesture, which is that it helps with thinking.

Lauren: Yeah, so I think the important thing to say is, as far as we know, everyone in every culture that we’ve come across, and speakers of all languages, gesture. In the way that we think of language as something that all humans have, gesture is part of that. We haven’t come across a speech community yet who don’t have gesture in their communicative, little toolkit. Even – I mean, not “even” – but that also includes signed languages. And, you know, admittedly, it’s a bit of a grey area for some of them because both the gesture and the sign component use the same materials. For speakers of spoken languages, you obviously have two different channels happening. You have the spoken channel and the hand channel for the gestures. But signed languages do have components that really should be analysed gesturally. I remember when I was learning – I was in an Auslan class. And our Auslan professor was showing us a story that someone was telling in Auslan. And then they asked us to kind of pick out the signs. He wanted us to tell him what vocabulary we got from the story. And there were a couple of items where we were like “He opens a can.” And the sign teacher was like “Oh, that’s not a sign, though. That’s just a gesture.” You could see people in the class were really like, kind of – not confused, but there is a boundary between what is a lexical item and what is just a gestural representation from the story.

Gretchen: So the kind of thing you might find in a signed dictionary that is specifically listing the signs and how they interact with each other grammatically? And you just decide to spontaneously do that because that’s how you’d interact with the world, or…?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: That’s what you’re trying to convey?

Lauren: So that’s kind of a good example. But all languages, regardless of whether they’re spoken or signed, also use gesture as part of their communicative skillset.

Gretchen: An important part of the communicative skillset because it helps do things like solve puzzles?

Lauren: Yes, it helps you do all kinds of cognitive things. If you are doing, particularly, spacial things – so if you’re talking about directions or the relationships between objects – you tend to gesture more frequently. If you are trying to solve – you know those rotation puzzles that they make you do in IQ tests, and memory tests, and that kind of stuff?

Gretchen: “Which of these figures is a rotation of the one up here?”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And people will imaginarily gesture them?

Lauren: [Gestures holding a round object and turning it different ways] If people gesture to kind of figure out the rotation, they tend to perform better. What’s really cool is the gesture seems to activate that kind of space-y part of the brain. And so if you tell people to do it for the first set of an experiment, if you get them to do the same kind of activity five minutes later, they’ll still remember – even if they’re not gesturing this time, their brain is more warmed up for the spatial stuff. They’ll still do better the second time around as well.

Gretchen: Oh, that’s really neat.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: There’s lots of great experiments. There’s a really great summary paper that I’ll link to in the show notes about that and some other experiments.

Gretchen: And I think when kids are learning how to do math, you can tell them to gesture, and count on their fingers, and stuff like that?

Lauren: There is a lot of work in the teaching space that gesture really helps with acquiring abstract, complex mathematical concepts.

Gretchen: And I think it’s probably worth mentioning here that we’re talking about the kinds of gestures you do at the same time as speech, and they happen very much in parallel with speech. [Makes a continuous chop-like gesture with her hand] So, as I’m saying each syllable, hey, look, I’m gesturing at the same time! Now it broke. I started laughing.

Lauren: And the thing is, it’s true. What’s really impressive about that is, if you think about – if [gestures the round object] you do the rotation task, I’m starting to move my hand at the [gestures the round object] “and you do” so that it’s ready for the rotation task bit, which means that my brain knows where I want to get to, to make this gesture happen at the same time as “rotation task.” So I’m starting to move before I’ve even said that bit. The gesture and speech are really closely timed there, and we can really mess this up for people. Some of the gesture experiments often sound a bit mean.

Gretchen: Oh, no!

Lauren: But we can really mess this up for people by putting headphones on and delaying their speech by just a fraction of a second.

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: And if we delay the way someone speaks so they hear their own voice back a few milliseconds afterwards, it actually just completely disrupts their ability to gesture.

Gretchen: This sounds terrible.

Lauren: It’s really, really mean. Another thing that we can do is we can often make people more disfluent by preventing them from moving their hands while they talk.

Gretchen: Yeah, there’s this terrible, hilarious experiment where they get people, and they put them in chairs, and they say, “Actually, what we’re studying is the physiographical measurements of whether your skin is conducting electricity,” and so they strap them down, and they put fake electrodes on their skin.

Lauren: And so they get them sitting here, and then they ask them to tell a story, and it increases disfluency. It makes it harder to –

Gretchen: So they say more “um”’s and “ah”’s?

Lauren: They find it harder to remember words, and it’s usually more likely to be nouns. So there’s something about gesturing that helps us remain fluent. And I think it’s part of why there’s that public speaking training thing that trains people to use their gestures more because there is a link between fluently gesturing and fluently speaking.

Gretchen: Or trains people to do big, simple, bold gestures rather than putting your hand in pocket and jiggling with your coins, or tapping you pen, or something that can be a more distracting gesture because it adds audio. Although, I guess classically, you don’t really consider tapping a pen to be a gesture because you have an object, but…

Lauren: There’s a whole kind of relationship between what’s a gesture and what isn’t.

Gretchen: There’s a whole taxonomy. But you can substitute those kinds of repetitive movements for a proper gesture that makes you look more sophisticated as a speaker?

Lauren: Sure. And it may actually help you speak more fluently in more fluent sentences, which is a nice benefit as well.

Gretchen: I also really like the bit about when kids are learning words – so kids: They’re first learning words. And they go through this one-word stage, and they learn things like “doggy” and “mama” and “papa” and “water” and stuff like this, and then eventually they end up at this two-word stage. Before that…?

Lauren: There’s this really nice period in between where we have the – so gestures are kind of important for adults and in their ability to speak fluently. But when we look at children, we also see that between the one-word phase and the two-word phase is this phase that you may not even be paying attention to as a parent, but as a gesture-researcher, I’m paying a lot of attention to, which is the one-word plus one-gesture phase. And so you’ll often get things like [gestures straight, extended arm with fingers in a continues grabbing motion] “want,” or…

Gretchen: Or like [gestures the extended arm] “cookie” or something like this? Like, “I want the cookie.”

Lauren: Yes, well, [points to her right] we’ve got some over there. [Both gesture the extended arm toward the right] It’s “biscuit.”

Gretchen: “Bikky”?

Lauren: [Gestures the extended arm] My child will say “bikky” or “biscuit,” and they’ll do the grabbing, which means – it’s a complex little bit of language there. They’re not just saying, [generally gestures to the right with her hand] “Oh, there is a biscuit.”

Gretchen: “Lo, biscuit!”

Lauren: They are saying, “I would like that biscuit” or “I want biscuit.”

Gretchen: “Give me that biscuit” or “Eat the biscuit.”

Lauren: So they’re not saying, “Want biscuit,” which would be a nice two-word phase, they’re saying – or “Give me biscuit” or something – they’re saying, “biscuit,” and they’re doing this gesture. And the gesture acts like the verb-y bit of that sentence.

Gretchen: Or kind of classic [points center-right] “Doggy!”

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Like, “Look! A dog!”

Lauren: [Generally gestures center-right with both hands] “Mum, I am alerting you to the fact that there is a dog here,” which is a bit beyond most 18-month-olds, so…

Gretchen: If anyone could have it, it would be you.

Lauren: We have a really great, increasingly robust set of research that shows that the one-word, one-gesture phase is a really great predictor that two words are just around the corner!

Gretchen: Oooh, that’s great.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Gesture is also influenced by the grammatical structure of the language?

Lauren: Yes, so everyone does gesture across languages and across cultures. There is some amount of – there’s a lot of stereotypes about different cultures gesturing more or gesturing in particular ways. There is some evidence that some of that is true. But, actually, there’s so much variation between individual speakers in languages, and even for an individual speaker in different contexts, that a lot of those generalisations are actually quite hard to really quite capture. And that’s why I like gesture. There are so many more questions to ask, and we need to think of ways to ask them, compared to the corpus analysis you can do for spoken language.

Gretchen: And it’s a really new field, I think, definitely facilitated by the fact that we have easy access to video now. And it’s a lot easier to pause frame-by-frame than back when – even when video was film or when there was not video at all, and to go through and annotate for all the different gestures and these kinds of things.

Lauren: Even the idea of a large corpus to study in gesture is excitingly new. And being able to go back and see what people did and being able to share that with other people – it’s one thing to record it. It’s another thing to be able to pop it up on YouTube or something like that for other people to see.

Gretchen: Yeah, I mean, rather than mail VHS cassettes around the world? Oh, this sounds really painful.

Lauren: It was a thing that we had to do, so…

Gretchen: Or make line drawings so you can include them in your paper, rather than just saying, “The gestures for this can all be found at this nice URL.”

Lauren: Yeah, “Here’s a nice photographic still of it, and you can actually see all the videos,” is a really exciting development in gesture.

Gretchen: One of my favourite examples of gesture mirroring the structure of language is from a talk that I saw by Goldin-Meadow a couple years ago. She gives this example with English and Turkish, but it works in French as well. And I actually speak French, so I’m gonna use French for the example.

Lauren: Yeah, that’s fine. I won’t make you speak Turkish.

Gretchen: I know, like, a couple words in Turkish, but I couldn’t pronounce it with confidence so… So in English, if you ask English speakers to gesture [gestures a rolling motion with one hand] “The ball is rolling down the hill,” [Lauren gestures rolling motion with one finger moving toward her left] or even if you make them – [gestures drawing a circular path in the air with one finger]. Or if you make them do it without words alongside, you’ll often get something like [gestures a linear path going from her upper left to lower right] [Lauren gestures a linear path going from her upper left to lower right while indicating a rolling motion with one finger] “down,” like “rolling down the hill.” And then if you get Turkish speakers to do the gesture, or French speakers, in those languages, rather than have – so in English, the verb-part is “roll.” And then we have and additional bit that’s “down.” Whereas, in French, the verb part is “to descend,” “descendre” – “to go down.” And then you have to add on, separately, the “rolling” bit. So the [both gesture the linear path] directional gesture doesn’t necessarily have [gestures the linear, rolling path] “rolling down” at the same time – if I got that right?

Lauren: You did get that right. That is correct. Good work.

Gretchen: And so people reflect this grammatical structure difference in how they gesture about things doing these types of actions.

Lauren: And not just because I’m very well-trained, and going along with what Gretchen said, that people weren’t being called attention to for this, they would just watch – English speakers, and French speakers, or Turkish speakers would watch exactly the same video of a nice little tomato rolling down a hill. Or another study that’s very famous for this is Asli Özyürek and Sotaro Kita’s work, where they made people watch a Looney Tunes cartoon. One of the characters goes rolling across the screen. And, even though they watch exactly the same video, when they’re telling the story, their gestures align with the grammatical structure of the language. So a language like English where that way of rolling is really closely linked into the verb, [gestures the linear, rolling path] that will all be integrated. And then for Turkish or French, they're more interested in the path, [gestures the linear path] so that descent, and then [gestures a rolling motion with her finger] if there is rolling, it’s indicated separately. And so you see that the grammar of the language shape those particular gestures.

Gretchen: Which I always thought was cool because it’s not just “rolling” and “down.” All of the verbs of manner like “rolling” and “jumping” and “bouncing” in English are verb-y. And I’d been like “Oh, yeah, in French, you have to say, ‘to descend while jumping’ or ‘to descend while rolling’ or ‘to ascend while jumping.’” And even in English, if you want to say this, you have to borrow these very French-y/Latin-y verbs to be able to do that.

Lauren: And we know that this is not just because English speakers watch each other all the time and learn these gestures by habit, or Turkish speakers watch each other all the time, because there was a follow-up study by some of the original authors that looked at what happens with people who are blind from birth. And even if you’ve never seen other people gesture – the fact that people still gesture if they’re blind from birth is quite interesting in and of itself. But the people who gestured, gestured pretty much the exact same way in terms of that [gestures linear, rolling path] “rolling down the hill” or [gestures the linear path, and then a rolling motion with her finger] “descending and rolling” than other people who speak the language. So it seems to be something deeply embedded cognitively and not something that we just learn by habit.

Gretchen: Yeah, so it’s not like we learn by seeing the gestures from other people, we learn it from the grammar of the language, and we gesture that way spontaneously.

Lauren: Another nice piece of evidence for that is some of those original authors also did a follow-up looking at what happens as Japanese speakers learn English.

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: And the studies so far indicate that they do behave differently – they don’t behave exactly the same as English speakers, but when they’re speaking English, they behave more like the English speakers than their Japanese-speaking counterparts.

Gretchen: Okay, so they’ve acquired something of the gestural system as they acquire the language?

Lauren: Yeah, as they acquire the language it kind of re-shapes how they conceptualise the movement as well when they re-tell those activities.

Gretchen: I should volunteer for the French/English version of the study.

Lauren: There are increasingly some studies about what happens with your gesture in your second language, so you may be a participant in a future study.

Gretchen: All right, hit me up! I wanna do this.

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: We’re kind of heading into there already. So gesture helps with thinking, and gesture also helps with communicating?

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: It’s not just “Okay, English – I gesture like an English speaker, and that’s just how I’m gonna gesture.” It’s also that I can convey certain things with gestures?

Lauren: Yes, so we can modify our gestures the way we modify our language to be helpful. And I think sometimes it’s good to think about gesture as being good for us in our own thinking as well as being good for communication. Some people try and make a claim that it’s more important for one or the other. I think that takes all the fun out of it.

Gretchen: It’s both.

Lauren: I think gestures are so great, they can do both.

Gretchen: As the gif goes [gestures a shrugging motion with hands and arms turned upward] “Why not both?”

Lauren: [gestures the same] “Why not both?” We see with communication – so maybe just to make you hypothesise, Gretchen…

Gretchen: Okay?

Lauren: If we had someone speaking into a telephone versus someone – they’re hands-free. We’ll give them their hands – someone speaking into a telephone versus someone in a face-to-face conversation, who would you imagine gestures more?

Gretchen: Probably the face-to-face conversation.

Lauren: Yeah, because…?

Gretchen: Because the other person can actually see the gestures, and they’re useful.

Lauren: Yeah, we can increase the frequency. Even if we’re speaking into a telephone versus speaking into a Dictaphone that we think no one will ever listen to again, we’re even less likely, for the Dictaphone, to gesture because we don’t think our communication is going to anyone, so we probably just don’t try as a hard to communicate at all.

Gretchen: What if you’re talking to yourself, and you’re not being recorded at all, do you still gesture?

Lauren: Yeah, people a lot of times gesture to themselves.

Gretchen: I mean, I guess you would. But would you gesture more because I can see myself when I’m talking to myself?

Lauren: We’ll have to run an experiment.

Gretchen: We’ll have to run this study.

Lauren: So, yeah, we do gesture. We do tend to gesture more if we’re in a face-to-face situation because we know that our gestures are gonna be helpful to the other person.

Gretchen: I really loved the follow-up study to this, which was – or not necessarily by the same people, but a similar vein – where people are cooperative or feeling un-cooperative.

Lauren: Ah, yeah, so this is – we gesture more if we’re face-to-face with someone and our gestures are gonna be interpreted as useful. But if we’re gesturing to someone competitively versus if we’re gesturing to someone who we’re cooperating with – this was a study where they had people playing a game. They taught one person the rules of the game. And then they said, “We’re gonna bring in someone else.” And for half the participants they said, “This person is your collaborator. If you work together, you’ll be able to earn more points and win.”

Gretchen: It’s one of those games where you have to set some objects in an area or something like this? Probably?

Lauren: Yeah. And then other half of the people, they said, “We’re gonna bring someone in, and you’re gonna teach this person the game, but then you’re gonna compete against each other in it.” And they found that people actually made the same number of gestures. So it’s not just about the frequency. What they found differed was the quality and size of the gestures.

Gretchen: Oh, so you make bad gestures to people you don’t like?

Lauren: You might still make all these gestures, but communicatively, you make them clearer to the person that you want to help more.

Gretchen: So instead of being like [leans over and points to a spot on the table in front of her] “Put this right here” you’re like [generally gestures toward the table with her hand, palm up] “Yeah, just put it over there.”

Lauren: Yeah, that’s what they found.

Gretchen: That’s so good.

Lauren: The communication – the fact that we’re face-to-face – makes us want to help people more, but only if we want to be helpful to them.

Gretchen: I really wanted to know how they got people to be mad. I thought they were told somebody – “Oh, this person’s been spreading rumours about your behind your back,” they just told them it was a competition. That’s very simple.

Lauren: They just told them it was a good old competition, so… Yeah, next time you’re teaching someone how to play a board game, make note of whether you’re going to be playing with them or against them and see –

Gretchen: Well, there are some games that are collaborative. Like Pandemic’s collaborative, so maybe people are gonna be more cooperative in their gestures, versus something like Risk where you’re also going around the world but trying to compete.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: We’ll have to do a study.

Lauren: Gestures are also useful communicatively because they can give information that’s not in the spoken channel. For those rolling gestures that we talked about before, some of the studies have gone back and looked at – they’ve just kind of quickly counted whether people gestured in the same direction as the original video that they watched.

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: And people do this more than 90% of the time. If you watch a character go from one side [hold up left hand] of the screen [holds up right hand] to the other, you’ll represent those gestures [holds up left hand then right hand] in the same direction that you saw them.

Gretchen: In the same way, rather than spontaneously flipping it for no reason?

Lauren: Yeah, and you don’t say, “It rolled down the hill from the left top of the screen to the bottom right of the screen,” but your interlocuter – to use the fancy word – the person you’re talking to – to use the normal words – will also tend to remember that you gave that information, not consciously necessarily, but it’s part of the information – you get a slightly different set of information from gestures.

Gretchen: Does this work the same way for all languages? So, if not all languages have words for “left” and “right,” does it still do the same thing?

Lauren: It really depends on the interactional context. Again, I think this is a general thing we can say about gesture research is that there is just so much that hasn’t been done. The work that has been done has been done on a very small set of, usually European, languages. So for a lot of these things we can often say, “That’s a great question. Hopefully, someone will do this work.”

Gretchen: “Stay tuned for the next exciting three decades in gesture research.”

Lauren: Basically. And it’s part of why I get really excited about it. When my students ask questions, I say, “That is genuinely a good question, and we’d love to know.”

Gretchen: “No one has ever answered it yet.”

Lauren: “You might be the person who answers this question or helps us move slightly forward towards it.” Because we have some very narrow contexts in which we know different languages use different elements of gesture to help increase communication. There’s this lovely paper by Joe Blythe, that I’ll also link to along with everything else I’ve talked about so far, about a language called Murrinhpatha in the Northern Territory of Australia. This is a language that has relatively few directional words.

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: But when you look at how people talk about different locations, they use so many really rich directional gestures that in many ways, if you were taking a very narrow frame of mind, you might say, “Well, this language is missing all these words.” But if you take a broader few of language and gesture, the language is completely capable of doing everything that English does, it just uses gestures for some of the things that English will use spoken words for.

Gretchen: So instead of saying, as much, “right” and “left,” and “north” and “south,” and stuff like that, they’ll more likely to use gestures for stuff like that?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And if people are retelling other people’s stories or something, they’ll do it the same – that information is passed along?

Lauren: That information can be retained, yeah. And there are some languages – so English is very – we remember things in terms of “north” and “south,” usually – [Gretchen gives Lauren a look] in terms of “left” and “right,” usually, definitely not in terms of “north” and “south.”

Gretchen: [holds up hands to either side of herself] You can see my confusing gesture there.

Lauren: For many people who have got themselves completely lost while trying to read a map. But for English speakers we kind of remember things as “left” or “right.” In other cultures – Murrinhpatha isn’t necessarily one of the ones that’s been well-studied for this – but other languages of Australia tend to do all their directions around “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west.” So I’d be sitting to the “north” of you. You’re sitting to the “south” of me. And then when you’re telling –

Gretchen: My south foot and my north foot?

Lauren: Yeah, and so whenever you’re telling a story, they’ll – instead of orienting it – not matter which direction I sit, I’m always gonna do that [gestures a sweeping motion from her left to right] left to right for “from you, to me.” Whereas, a speaker of one of these languages will always gesture from south to north, regardless of what direction they’re sitting in.

Gretchen: That’s so neat.

Lauren: Again, each time we gesture, we’re bringing extra information into the discourse that we might not have from speech, but that is also influenced by the culture and the language that we speak as well.

Gretchen: So we’ve mentioned that a lot of people have mostly studied European languages and gesture, but you have not. You have studied other languages beyond Europe in gesture.

Lauren: Yes, so I started – after that initial, like, “Wow! This field is really interesting,” the first thing I did was some work with English speakers, a little paper looking at just how likely people are to pay attention to particular gestures. So we’ve talked about the kinds of things you do to represent actions or movements in the real world, but there are all kinds of other gestures as well. We haven’t talked about pointing gestures very much. We haven’t talked about the very metaphoric gestures that are not grounded in the physical world. We haven’t even talked about the gestures that have really specific names and we all recognise like the “peace sign” or the “thumbs up.”

Gretchen: I mean, you teach a whole course on gesture, so I think we could do “17 hours later…”

Lauren: Yes, so we’ve just focused on this set. But I was really interested in whether people remembered emblems more – those “thumbs up” and those “peace sign” ones – because they have really clear names. Or if people pay attention to pointing because we often think of pointing as being kind of simple –

Gretchen: The prototypical gesture.

Lauren: – prototypical. So that was some early work I did with English speakers that showed the kinds of things that we study in gesture studies people seem to treat as different from then again other phenomena like facial gestures, or the kinds of the things we do unintentionally like coughing, or those kinds of things. So there’s these whole other things that we can do with our bodies that we also have to think about in terms of these studies but aren’t always directly relevant. So that was –

Gretchen: That was the first gesture thing you did. And you also went to Nepal and did a bunch of – I mean, you did stuff with language in Nepal. Wrote a grammar or two.

Lauren: Yeah, so then, again, under the very good influence of Barb Kelly, went and did fieldwork in Nepal. And I looked at the grammar and spent some time focusing on that. And then I, finally, in the last few years, got to come back to gesture and look what’s happening with gesture in those languages, which is really exciting.

Gretchen: What is happening with gesture? Not that you can say it all now, but is there something that’s happening that’s –

Lauren: There’s so much to ask, and it’s great that we have a really rich corpus of gesture recordings and general recordings that I can now use to study gesture.

Gretchen: So you’ve got a whole bunch of videos you’re now poring through?

Lauren: Yes, and it’s a nice mix of – they do things that are very specific to those stories that they’re telling, and they help them tell the stories. But they’re also the kinds of gestures that we see cropping up in other languages as well and part of what appears to be a set of things that humans tend to be likely to do. One of these is [holds both hands up in front of her, palms facing each other, then flicks the palms in towards her body] this gesture that gets made. It can be used without speech.

Gretchen: [Gestures the same] This kind of thing?

Lauren: It’s kind of a [gestures again] – without speech, it’s a very prominent flicking up, a bit of a shrug, and it’s a like [gestures again, with shrug] “What are you gonna do about it?”

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: Fatalistic. But the fact that it can be used as a question – it can just be a tiny flick of the wrist, where people, say, are asking a question or they’re a bit unsure. Someone might be telling a story, and they’re like [gestures again, but with right hand only] “What do I say next?”

Gretchen: Is it always two-handed? Do you get one-handed ones?

Lauren: No, it can be one-handed. There’s lots of variation. And you see it across the larger – I look at it specifically how it’s used by Syuba speakers, who speak a Tibetan language in Nepal. But we see this handshape used for questions cropping up all over Southeast Asia and in India and Pakistan and Nepal. And we also see it related to a lot of other – [both gesture a shrug, hands up, palms up] palms up as question. I think a shrug is very familiar to English speakers. And so kind of looking at the very specifics of how it’s done in this culture but thinking about it in terms of the larger –

Gretchen: The larger family of shrug gestures?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: That’s super neat.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s really great.

Gretchen: Like the “I have nothing in my hands, and I’m gonna show off how empty my hands are” or something.

Lauren: Yeah, there’s a whole set of arguments around why, across speakers of English and speakers of Syuba – it’s not a like a historical, related-language thing. It just seems to be something about the way humans think, and think about space, and how they use their hands.

Gretchen: Because we’ve all got the same – mostly the same – set of hands.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: We can do very similar things with them.

Lauren: We all experience our little – we talk about the “meat puppets” sometimes. The way that these meat puppets move through space and time. We all kind of do the same thing, and we can draw on the same resources.

Gretchen: That’s really neat. I think that’s what makes gesture studies super interesting. It’s another way of looking at, not just the stuff that you can articulate outside, through your throat, which you can’t always see unless you get a little camera or something going. Gestures are very there, and you can see what’s going on with them.

Lauren: You’ll probably notice them for the next day, at least. You’ll be paying attention to what everyone is doing with their hands.

Gretchen: Have fun with that. We’ve both been there. It’s a fun position to be in. Don’t spy on people too hard, but maybe just a tiny bit.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to everything mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to Lingthusiasm wherever you get your podcasts. You can even subscribe on YouTube. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links in the description. Our patrons allow us to do things like make this special video episode about gesture. Thanks everybody! Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay too. We also really appreciate if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our audio and video producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are A.E. Prevost and Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our music is “Ancient Cities” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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

#linguistics #language #gesture #transcript #transcripts #speech #video #Turkish #Japanese #English #French #Murrinhpatha #grammar

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evilelitest2 · 5 years

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Just heard your Berserk Fatal Flaw. I agree with a lot of stuff but dude... I.. I don't know if I can follow you anymore seeing you chose to be so wrong about Casca. I need revalue everything you have said. Nah, just kidding, I love ya man. This really is the first time I'm seriously disagreed with you on something though. Not about the way she's been treated (I will add it's not JUST the rape that got to her state), but she is a complex, layered character. In my opinion.

First off, thanks a lot for listening to the Berserk review, I really appreciate it, and its fine if you disagree (nice joke btw). And thanks for asking the question politely (if people want to know what we are talking about, the podcast in question is here) Personally I think Caska has a great character design I love the way she looks especially compared to most anime women characters, (I actually designed a Casca look alike for a dark souls playthrough) and you are right it isn’t just the constant rape that makes her the way she is. With all due respect I don’t really see the complexity of Casca (is it Casca or Caska? I keep seeing alternative spellings), I mostly see people referencing complexity without really showing it. For contrast, lets talk about a different abused character, Guts (Gatz...no i’m just kidding)

Gut’s life is also defined by traumatic events which shape his personality To witAn unloved Childhood full of physical Abuse Killing his first man at a young ageBeing raped Finding out that his father figure sold him out Accidentally being responsible for killing a Fairy child who wanted nothing but to help himSeeing his father figure break downFather Figure attempting to murder himMurdering the Father FigureBeing driven out by his surrogate family Period of LonlynessKilling a child who metaphorically was Guts Having his “best friend” (AND NOTHING ELSE) betray him after Guts was nothing but faithful, murder all of their companions by leating them get tortured and eaten by demons, and seeing the women he loves get raped in front of him while having his arm and eye removed and left totally helplessMeeting Puck

(This manga is weird)

Every one of these is a horrifically traumatizing event but each one actually tells us something different about Guts, he isn’t just “Traumitized” each one of them informs us about a specific aspect about his personality. To wit, his abusive unloving and neglectful father fiture who showed just enough affection for Guts to latch unto means that Guts is also defined by his desperate need for affection and love. Guts really craves friendship and equal relationships and at his heart is a bit of a people pleaser. However because his father figure then betrayed him in the worse possible way, he associates that aforementioned desire for love to be a weakness unto itself, and he has thoroughly internalized the notion that being weak is a crime and not only hopes never to be weak, but is constantly beating himself up for “being weak”.

(pictured, hetrosexuality)

The irony of the strongest man in the world is torturing himself for “being weak” is the core of the story. Because he is obsessed with always being strong, he doesn’t allow himself access to feelings he really wants to experience, like friendship, attraction to Casca....attraction to Griffith (This story is so fucking gay) and basically tries to avoid dealing with feelings through the very popular use of horrific violence, which doesn’t work, so he keeps trying to have more violence the cycle continues. His attempt to go be by himself is an important part of his heeling process, because he is learning to actually define himself by himself, not just as a giant mass of muscles with a sword. He hasn’t really thought of himself as a person until he joins Griffith’s band, and hasn’t thought of himself as “the bad guy” until he killed a child and was like “um.....wait.....I’m the victim here.....fuck”

And that is what separates Guts from Griffith, he ultimately does accept blame for his actions.

(pictured, character growth)

So each traumatic event informs Guts as a person, and they all tie into the larger theme of Machismo What is interesting about Berserk is that it is actually about toxic masculinity, both Guts and Griffith are people who are super macho and are extremely unhealthy in how they approach masculinity. In fact what they have in common is that neither one of them is actually happy with the coarse they are pursuing, but they keep doing that because to do otherwise would make them feel weak. Griffith wants to have a castle....kinda of for its own sake, it is not like he has any political ambitions or dreams, he doesn't have reforms he wants to initiate, he just wants a castle because he made a goal when he was 7 and has a really hard time changing direction. Meanwhile Guts keeps pushing everybody away from him and all he wants is some sort of support unit. Hence why the manga is named after a Suit of armor that tears you apart as you murder people

I..don’t get this from Casca. Maybe i’m not paying attention enough and i’m missing it, but it feels like each traumatic event leaves her kind of the same until she suddenly losses her personality (I haven’t read the latest chapters yet so maybe she has had her personality restored). Each cycle of trauma seems to leave her just....kinda of the same

(I do like this scene though)

So young Casca we see in the flashback is just kinda...demure. Then Griffith makes her kill a guy (like a dick) and from that point on we see somebody who is controlling, obsessive, tense and hostile towards everybody but Griffith. And that is...kinda it. LIke I don’t really see how she changes internally and I don’t see how we go from that to “becomes a child” Why does Casa become a child rather than Guts?

My issue with Casca is that we are always viewing her from outside and she is defined by her relationship with the characters rather than with herself. Guts and Griffith both have scenes where the narrative gets us to see what they are thinking internally but beyond one or two exceptions, Casca always seems like a character who exists as a satellite. She bounces between rape threat and rape threat and never seems to be able to come into her own. The scene taht upset me the most with Casca was the Eclipse, because while Juddeau and Pippin and even fucking Corkus got there own special moment where they either fought a bunch of demons or died in a specific way, Casca, the best fighter other than Guts, goes down without killing a single demon. Her last big fight was against the comedy relief villain. And in a manga where the way people murder their fellow human beings is actually how they express there character that says a lot. I never actually see the complexity beyond the writing saying that she is complicated, just like she is built up to be a great fighter but never seems to do much.

(I kinda wish we had gotten to see more of this rather than just skipping it over)

The only time where I kinda liked Casca was the bit between her hooking up with Guts and the Esclipse, ecause then she and Guts were in a relationship and actually got out of their shells a little bit, and its the first time we see them actually show more of their humanity.

(I also like this scene)

Just to be clear, you aren’t wrong for liking the character, even if we can prove taht Casca is objectively a bad character, you aren’t wrong for liking her. The Strength of the art design and the way she is built up means that it makes sense if you like her, I just kinda feel like the narrative doesn’t, and the beset version of Casca i tend to see are the ones fans imagine rather than the one which is written. Epsicailly because she is one of the very few female POCs in anime/manga who isn’t racist or offensive in regards to race.

(.....wtf)

#ask evilelitest #Berserk #Guts #Casca #Manga #Anime #Fantasy #Griffith #Fatal Flaw

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