#when they read the transcript of the call and said it was one of the worst calls they’ve ever seen

[yuurei20]

Summarized transcript of the Twisted Radio episode with Heartslabyul (minus Trey) voice actors!! 🥳 (all is just paraphrased, not direct quotes, and Book 7 spoilers removed!)

Highlights ・A lot of industry talk!

Last week’s opening talk that was set was “How do you want to spend New Years?”

🌹 I will have finished work by the 27th so I will be relaxing and listening to this show at home. 

♠️ Are you sure? You’re really going to listen at home?

❤️ Listen with your whole family.

🌹Yes, I will have my kids listen to it, too.

♠️ I’m going to contact you on the 27th. “🌹-san, are you listening?”

🌹 Reads a fan letter: they are being asked about things the cast learned when they first became voice actors.

♠️ Says he never went to a technical school or training school or anything so he just learned on the job. He said he learned that new hires are expected to sit near the door to open and close it for others. He didn’t know this at first and would sit in the middle or the back and other new people would tell him that he needed to be near the door. 

♦️ says he also never had any formal schooling/training and he learned by watching everyone around him, which is how he learned the shorthand that is used in the industry, and everyone talks about how shorthand can vary by person.

❤️ starts talking about an unnamed project that he did with 🌹 (they can’t say what it is). ❤️ says his character used a sword and he became interested in it and went to a trial lesson. What he learned is that that skill is not only about strength. And also the swords are very heavy.

🌹says when he debuted he was given a rehearsal video to watch on VHS instead of DVD, but he didn’t have a VCR so he had to go buy one from a recycle shop specifically to watch the total of two VHSs he would be given before his agency shifted to DVDs.

Next section:

About Riddle

🌹 He can’t speak too kindly or it departs from Riddle’s character. He’s been doing this for 5 years now and he likes everyone, but that much time hasn’t passed in the game yet. So he will be directed to be less kind. He feels that his voice has changed, too, since it has been so long, getting deeper, so the director will ask him to sound younger.

There are also what he calls the “system voices” which are maybe voice lines? He says that since they have to be accessible to everyone no matter what point it is that they start playing the game, he has to record them as how Riddle was at the start of the main story, and how strict he was. He says he has been watching Alice in Wonderland a lot in order to properly portray the angry queen. 

About Ace

❤️ He says that like 🌹 new challenges have been appearing over the past five years. There is also the change in Ace from thinking that he was better than Deuce but then Deuce got his UM first. ❤️ Ace doesn’t know his UM, and ❤️ himself is looking forward to it. He says he really doesn’t have any idea what it is going to be, he hasn’t been told.

♠️ says that fans will often comment on how well ❤️ is able to mimic other voice actors. He asks how ❤️ himself is at imitating people and ❤️ says he’s bad at it.

🌹 says that maybe ❤️ being so good at it is why Ace has been imitating people so much in the game. ♠️ says that if ❤️ was bad at it then they might have started asking him to do it less.

About Deuce

♠️ references how all of Heartslabyul recorded together for Book 1 which never happens for mobile games, and he had never recorded with that many voice actors in the same place for a game before. It was the very start of his career so he was grateful, and now they all record alone.

They talk about Deuce’s struggles in Book 5. ❤️ says he is empathizes a lot with Deuce, so he adapted his line readings in order to be really annoying. 

Now they are talking about Book 7 things, redacted for spoilers 💦

About Cater

♦️ says that Cater hasn’t really changed that much from Book 1, unlike other characters. He is always showing the same mood, with only occasional whispers of his true feelings. He is still treating everyone the same way he always has, and ♦️ 's portrayal hasn’t really changed either.

♦️ says that when he is going through a script he will ask the staff, “…but what is really going on?” beyond the words that he has been given to read. 

More Book 7 things, redacted for spoilers.

About Trey

♣️ isn’t here in person because of scheduling conflicts but he provided a comment to read on air! His comment is on the impression he gets from Trey: a dependable and kind senpai, if you have been brushing your teeth properly. He can seem mature beyond his years because of his supportive role in the dorm, and you can sense the mental strain he is under sometimes. At first glance he can appear untrustworthy but he doesn’t seem to have hidden intentions behind his words, so do not worry.

❤️ talks about Trey in Book 1 and his childhood relationship with Riddle and 🌹 says that the scenes with Trey and Riddle towards the end might have turned out differently if they hadn’t been able to record together.

Comment from ♣️ on voicing Trey: he says he tries to portray Trey’s calmness but it is difficult to do so while simultaneously not making him sound older than 18. Part of Trey’s charm is how quick-witted he is, so he tries to suggest a hidden complexity through his line readings. He reiterates that there aren’t any actual bad intentions though.

♠️ comments on how, since the characters are villains, they all have villainous-looking expressions that they make sometimes, and Trey’s in particular looks very villainous. 

❤️ says it’s funny how ♣️ is actually the youngest voice cast member in Heartslabyul, but the character he is voicing is a calm and collected senpai.

❤️ shares another comment from ♣️ asking how much Trey expects people to brush their teeth before he will be satisfied.

❤️ wonders if Trey and Cater will be graduating and ♠️ says “no I will not let them”

About Main Story

Book 7 talk~

About In-Game Schedule

Lilia birthday, Sam’s New Year Sale, Malleus birthday, Main Story Content~

Twst Fes DVD on sale~

Anime is coming~

End!

[alxclaremont]

had an absolute shit day at work, got off of work, remembered lando and oscar’s beef, almost started crying, went on twitter, saw that they ate mcdonalds and played monopoly on the plane back to monaco, almost started crying again, no longer feel like shit thank you and goodnight

[seventh-district]

not even gonna tag this properly bc i don't wanna get Involved but i do have some Thoughts i need to get out into the void so here we go

(aaa quick edit: CW for mention/discussion of Boothill leaks)

[gammija]

ive been trying for 30 mins to write a post about why the Web's plan is still confusing, but I think I should face the truth and admit to myself that it's not that it makes no sense, it's just... so convoluted

[tinsnip]

"In recent years, there has been a rush on the internet to supply image descriptions and to call out those who don’t. This may be an example of community accountability at work, but it’s striking to observe that those doing the most fierce calling out or correcting are sighted people. Such efforts are largely self-defeating. I cannot count the times I’ve stopped reading a video transcript because it started with a dense word picture. Even if a description is short and well done, I often wish there were no description at all. Get to the point, already! How ironic that striving after access can actually create a barrier. When I pointed this out during one of my seminars, a participant made us all laugh by doing a parody: “Mary is wearing a green, blue, and red striped shirt; every fourth stripe also has a purple dot the size of a pea in it, and there are forty-seven stripes—”

“You’re killing me,” I said. “I can’t take any more of that!”

Now serious, she said it was clear to her that none of that stuff about Mary’s clothes mattered, at least if her clothes weren’t the point. What mattered most about the image was that Mary was holding her diploma and smiling. “But,” she wondered, “do I say, Mary has a huge smile on her face as she shows her diploma or Mary has an exuberant smile or showing her teeth in a smile and her eyes are crinkled at the edges?”

It’s simple. Mary has a huge smile on her face is the best one. It’s the don’t-second-guess-yourself option."

--Against Access, by John Lee Clark, a DeafBlind educator

[mollyrealized]

How Michael Met Neil

original direct link [MP3]

(Neil, if you see this, please feel free to grab the transcript and store on your site; I had no easy way of contacting you.)

DAVID TENNANT: Tell me about @neil-gaiman then, because he's in that category [previously: “such a profound effect on my life”] as well.

MICHAEL SHEEN: So this is what has brought us together.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: To the new love story for the 21st century.

DAVID: Exactly.

MICHAEL: So when I went to drama school, there was a guy called Gary Turner in my year. And within the first few weeks, we were doing something, having a drink or whatever. And he said to me, “Do you read comic books?”

And I said, “No.”  I mean, this is … what … '88?  '88, '89.  So it was … now I know that it was a period of time that was a big change, transformation going through comic books.  Rather than it being thought of as just superheroes and Batman and Superman, there was this whole new era of a generation of writers like Grant Morrison.

DAVID: The kids who'd grown up reading comic books were now making comic books

MICHAEL: Yeah, yeah, and starting to address different kinds of subjects through the comic book medium. So it wasn't about just superheroes, it was all kinds of stuff going on – really fascinating stuff. And I was totally unaware of this.

And so this guy Gary said to me, "Do you read them?" And I said, "No."  And he went, "Right, okay, here's The Watchman [sic] by Alan Moore. Here's Swamp Thing. Here's Hellblazer. And here's Sandman.”

And Sandman was Neil Gaiman's big series that put his name on the map. And I read all those, and, just – I was blown away by all of them, but particularly the Sandman stories, because he was drawing on mythology, which was something I was really interested in, and fairy tales, folklore, and philosophy, and Shakespeare, and all kinds of stuff were being mixed up in this story.  And I absolutely loved it.

So I became a big fan of Neil's, and started reading everything by him. And then fairly shortly after that, within six months to a year, Good Omens the book came out, which Neil wrote with Terry Pratchett. And so I got the book – because I was obviously a big fan of Neil's by this point – read it, loved it, then started reading Terry Pratchett’s stuff as well, because I didn't know his stuff before then – and then spent years and years and years just being a huge fan of both of them.

And then eventually when – I'd done films like the Underworld films and doing Twilight films. And I think it was one of the Twilight films, there was a lot of very snooty interviews that happened where people who considered themselves well above talking about things like Twilight were having to interview me … and, weirdly, coming at it from the attitude of 'clearly this is below you as well' … weirdly thinking I'm gonna go, 'Yeah, fucking Twilight.”

And I just used to go, "You know what? Some of the greatest writing of the last 50-100 years has happened in science fiction or fantasy."  Philip K Dick is one of my favorite writers of all time. In fact, the production of Hamlet I did was mainly influenced by Philip K Dick.  Ursula K. Le Guin and Asimov, and all these amazing people. And I talked about Neil as well. And so I went off on a bit of a rant in this interview.

Anyway, the interview came out about six months later, maybe.  Knock on the door, open the door, delivery of a big box. That’s interesting. Open the box, there's a card at the top of the box. I open the card.

It says, From one fan to another, Neil Gaiman.  And inside the box are first editions of Neil's stuff, and all kinds of interesting things by Neil. And he just sent this stuff.

DAVID: You'd never met him?

MICHAEL: Never met him. He'd read the interview, or someone had let him know about this interview where I'd sung his praises and stood up for him and the people who work within that sort of genre as being like …

And he just got in touch. We met up for the first time when he came to – I was in Los Angeles at the time, and he came to LA.  And he said, "I'll take you for a meal."

I said, “All right.”

He said, "Do you want to go somewhere posh, or somewhere interesting?”

I said, "Let's go somewhere interesting."

He said, "Right, I'm going to take you to this restaurant called The Hump." And it's at Santa Monica Airport. And it's a sushi restaurant.

I was like, “Right, okay.” So I had a Mini at the time. And we get in my Mini and we drive off to Santa Monica Airport. And this restaurant was right on the tarmac, like, you could sit in the restaurant (there's nobody else there when we got there, we got there quite early) and you're watching the planes landing on Santa Monica Airport. It's extraordinary. 

And the chef comes out and Neil says, "Just bring us whatever you want. Chef's choice."

So, I'd never really eaten sushi before. So we sit there; we had this incredible meal where they keep bringing these dishes out and they say, “This is [blah, blah, blah]. Just use a little bit of soy sauce or whatever.”  You know, “This is eel.  This is [blah].”

And then there was this one dish where they brought out and they didn't say what it was. It was like “mystery dish”, we had it ... delicious. Anyway, a few more people started coming into the restaurant as time went on.

And we're sort of getting near the end, and I said, "Neil, I can't eat anymore. I'm gonna have to stop now. This is great, but I can't eat–"

"Right, okay. We'll ask for the bill in a minute."

And then the door opens and some very official people come in. And it was the Feds. And the Feds came in, and we knew they were because they had jackets on that said they were part of the Federal Bureau of Whatever. And about six of them come in. Two of them go … one goes behind the counter, two go into the kitchen, one goes to the back. They've all got like guns on and stuff.

And me and Neil are like, "What on Earth is going on?"

And then eventually one guy goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't ordered already, please leave. If you're still eating your meal, please finish up, pay your bill, leave."*

[* - delivered in a perfect American ‘serious law agent’ accent/impression]

And we were like, "Oh my God, are we poisoned? Is there some terrible thing that's happened?"  

We'd finished, so we pay our bill.  And then all the kitchen staff are brought out. And the head chef is there. The guy who's been bringing us this food. And he's in tears. And he says to Neil, "I'm so sorry." He apologizes to Neil.  And we leave. We have no idea what happened.

DAVID: But you're assuming it's the mystery dish.

MICHAEL: Well, we're assuming that we can't be going to – we can't be –  it can't be poisonous. You know what I mean? It can't be that there's terrible, terrible things.

So the next day was the Oscars, which is why Neil was in town. Because Coraline had been nominated for an Oscar. Best documentary that year was won by The Cove, which was by a team of people who had come across dolphins being killed, I think.

Turns out, what was happening at this restaurant was that they were having illegal endangered species flown in to the airport, and then being brought around the back of the restaurant into the kitchen.

We had eaten whale – endangered species whale. That was the mystery dish that they didn't say what it was.

And the team behind The Cove were behind this sting, and they took them down that night whilst we were there.

DAVID: That’s extraordinary.

MICHAEL: And we didn't find this out for months.  So for months, me and Neil were like, "Have you worked anything out yet? Have you heard anything?"

"No, I haven't heard anything."

And then we heard that it was something to do with The Cove, and then we eventually found out that that restaurant, they were all arrested. The restaurant was shut down. And it was because of that. And we'd eaten whale that night.

DAVID: And that was your first meeting with Neil Gaiman.

MICHAEL: That was my first meeting. And also in the drive home that night from that restaurant, he said, and we were in my Mini, he said, "Have you found the secret compartment?"

I said, "What are you talking about?" It's such a Neil Gaiman thing to say.

DAVID: Isn't it?

MICHAEL: The secret compartment? Yeah. Each Mini has got a secret compartment. I said, "I had no idea." It's secret. And he pressed a little button and a thing opened up. And it was a secret compartment in my own car that Neil Gaiman showed me.

DAVID: Was there anything inside it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, there was a little man. And he jumped out and went, "Hello!" No, there was nothing in there. There was afterwards because I started putting...

DAVID: Sure. That's a very Neil Gaiman story. All of that is such a Neil Gaiman story.

MICHAEL: That's how it began. Yeah.

DAVID: And then he came to offer you the part in Good Omens.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, we became friends and we would whenever he was in town, we would meet up and yeah, and then eventually he started, he said, "You know, I'm working on an adaptation of Good Omens." And I can remember at one point Terry Gilliam was going to maybe make a film of it. And I remember being there with Neil and Terry when they were talking about it. And...

DAVID: Were you involved at that point?

MICHAEL: No, no, I wasn't involved. I just happened to have met up with Neil that day.

DAVID: Right.

MICHAEL: And then Terry Gilliam came along and they were chatting, that was the day they were talking about that or whatever.

And then eventually he sent me one of the scripts for an early draft of like the first episode of Good Omens. And he said – and we started talking about me being involved in it, doing it – he said, “Would you be interested?” I was like, "Yeah, of course."  I went, "Oh my God." And he said, "Well, I'll send you the scripts when they come," and I would read them, and we'd talk about them a little bit. And so I was involved.

But it was always at that point with the idea, because he'd always said about playing Crowley in it. And so, as time went on, as I was reading the scripts, I was thinking, "I don't think I can play Crowley. I don't think I'm going to be able to do it." And I started to get a bit nervous because I thought, “I don't want to tell Neil that I don't think I can do this.”  But I just felt like I don't think I can play Crowley.

DAVID: Of course you can [play Crowley?].

MICHAEL: Well, I just on a sort of, on a gut level, sometimes you have it on a gut level.

DAVID: Sure, sure.

MICHAEL: I can do this.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Or I can't do this. And I just thought, “You know what, this is not the part for me. The other part is better for me, I think. I think I can do that, I don't think I could do that.”

But I was scared to tell Neil because I thought, "Well, he wants me to play Crowley" – and then it turned out he had been feeling the same way as well.  And he hadn't wanted to mention it to me, but he was like, "I think Michael should really play Aziraphale."

And neither of us would bring it up.  And then eventually we did. And it was one of those things where you go, "Oh, thank God you said that. I feel exactly the same way." And then I think within a fairly short space of time, he said, “I think we've got … David Tennant … for Crowley.” And we both got very excited about that.

And then all these extraordinary people started to join in. And then, and then off we went.

DAVID: That's the other thing about Neil, he collects people, doesn't he? So he'll just go, “Oh, yeah, I've phoned up Frances McDormand, she's up for it.” Yeah. You're, what?

MICHAEL: “I emailed Jon Hamm.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And yeah, and you realize how beloved he is and how beloved his work is. And I think we would both recognise that Good Omens is one of the most beloved of all of Neil's stuff.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: And had never been turned into anything.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And so the kind of responsibility of that, I mean, for me, for someone who has been a fan of him and a fan of the book for so long, I can empathize with all the fans out there who are like, “Oh, they better not fuck this up.”

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: “And this had better be good.” And I have that part of me. But then, of course, the other part of me is like, “But I'm the one who might be fucking it up.”

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: So I feel that responsibility as well.

DAVID: But we have Neil on site.

MICHAEL: Yes. Well, Neil being the showrunner …

DAVID: Yeah. I think it takes the curse off.

MICHAEL: … I think it made a massive difference, didn't it? Yeah. You feel like you're in safe hands.

DAVID: Well, we think. Not that the world has seen it yet.

MICHAEL (grimly): No, I know.

DAVID: But it was a -- it's been a -- it's been a joy to work with you on it. I can't wait for the world to see it.

MICHAEL: Oh my God.  Oh, well, I mean, it's the only, I've done a few things where there are two people, it's a bit of a double act, like Frost-Nixon and The Queen, I suppose, in some ways. But, and I've done it, Amadeus or whatever.

This is the only thing I've done where I really don't think of it as “my character” or “my performance as that character”.  I think of it totally as us.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: The two of us.

DAVID: Yes.

MICHAEL: Like they, what I do is defined by what you do.

DAVID: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And that was such a joy to have that experience. And it made it so much easier in a way as well, I found, because you don't feel like you're on your own in it. Like it's totally us together doing this and the two characters totally complement each other. And the experience of doing it was just a real joy.

DAVID: Yeah.  Well, I hope the world is as excited to see it as we are to talk about it, frankly.

MICHAEL: You know, there's, having talked about T.S. Eliot earlier, there's another bit from The Wasteland where there's a line which goes, These fragments I have shored against my ruin.

And this is how I think about life now. There is so much in life, no matter what your circumstances, no matter what, where you've got, what you've done, how much money you got, all that. Life's hard.  I mean, you can, it can take you down at any point.

You have to find this stuff. You have to like find things that will, these fragments that you hold to yourself, they become like a liferaft, and especially as time goes on, I think, as I've got older, I've realized it is a thin line between surviving this life and going under.

And the things that keep you afloat are these fragments, these things that are meaningful to you and what's meaningful to you will be not-meaningful to someone else, you know. But whatever it is that matters to you, it doesn't matter what it was you were into when you were a teenager, a kid, it doesn't matter what it is. Go and find them, and find some way to hold them close to you. 

Make it, go and get it. Because those are the things that keep you afloat. They really are. Like doing that with him or whatever it is, these are the fragments that have shored against my ruin. Absolutely.

DAVID: That's lovely. Michael, thank you so much.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

DAVID: For talking today and for being here.

MICHAEL: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you.

[yeoldenews]

Why do young kids sound so adult in old letters? Not just the ones you share, in general. It's one of the things that puzzles me about Yes Virginia, There is A Santa Claus. Were educational standards stricter? Was it actually parents writing for them?

If I had to guess, I'd say a decent part of this could be due to the fact that everyday, standard English at the time used a structure and level of formality we now associate with the elderly. It's similar to how teenagers in the past look older to us in part because we associate the styles of their hair and makeup with our parents and grandparents.

The first particular piece of syntax that popped into my head when I read this message is the placement of the word "have" in sentence structure. It used to be standard English grammar to begin questions about items or traits people possess with "have" rather than "do you have"; e.g. "Have you a pencil?" vs. "Do you have a pencil?".

If I were to hear the question "Have you any presents you'd like for Christmas?" my mind would default to imagining a formal, elderly person, as that's the only type of person I've ever personally heard use that syntax.

I think what we sometimes fail to consciously realize is that the stuffy, formal, 90 year old grandmothers we talk to didn't spontaneously start talking like that once they reached a certain age. They were taught certain grammar rules as children and continued to use them throughout their lives. We only associate that type of language with the elderly as the only people still alive to use it are now very old.

Education in the past also relied much more heavily on rote memorization and repetition, which I'd imagine caused people to more strictly adhere to the things they learned, including grammar, than we do now.

Children were taught in school how to write formal letters and those lessons were carried over even in letters to Santa.

I imagine in the future the phrase "I hope this email finds you well" is going to end up seeming (even more) oddly formal and dated, but people use it because that's what we were taught to do.

That being said, there are definitely Dear Santa letters written by parents, especially if the child is very young - but after 14 years of doing this I think I've developed a pretty good eye for spotting these. That's why I rarely post letters from children under school-age, with the exception of what I've taken to calling "toddler transcription" where the parents write down what their young child says word for word.

[nostalgebraist]

In other uncanny-valley AI voice news...

Google has this new thing called "NotebookLM," which allows you to upload any document, click a button, and then a few minutes later receive an entire AI-generated podcast episode (!) about the document. The generation seems to occur somewhat faster than real-time.

(This is currently offered for free as a demo, all you need is a Google account.)

These podcast episodes are... they're not, uh, good. In fact, they're terrible – so cringe-y and inane that I find them painful to listen to.

But – unlike with the "AI-generated content" of even the very recent past – the problem with this stuff isn't that it's unrealistic. It's perfectly realistic. The podcasters sound like real people! Everything they say is perfectly coherent! It's just coherently ... bad.

It's a perfect imitation of superficial, formulaic, cringe-y media commentary podcasts. The content isn't good, but it's a type of bad content that exists, and the AI mimics it expertly.

The badness is authentic. The dumb shit they say is exactly the sort of dumb shit that humans would say on this sort of podcast, and they say it with the exact sorts of inflections that people would use when saying that dumb shit on that sort of podcast, and... and everything.

(Advanced Voice Mode feels a lot like this too. And – much as with Advanced Voice Mode – if Google can do this, then they can presumably do lots of things that are more interesting and artistically impressive.

But even if no one especially likes this kind of slop, it's highly inoffensive – palatable to everyone, not likely to confuse anyone or piss anyone off – and so it's what we get, for now, while these companies are still cautiously testing the waters.)

----

Anyway.

The first thing I tried was my novel Almost Nowhere, as a PDF file.

This seemed to throw the whole "NotebookLM" system for a loop, to some extent because it's a confusing book (even to humans), but also to some extent because it's very long.

I saw several different "NotebookLM" features spit out different attempts to summarize/describe it that seemed to be working off of different subsets of the text.

In the case of the generated podcast, the podcasters appear to have only "seen" the first 8 (?) chapters.

And their discussion of those early chapters is... like I said, pretty bad. They get some basic things wrong, and the commentary is painfully basic even when it's not actually inaccurate. But it's still uncanny that something like this is possible.

(Spoilers for the first ~8 chapters of Almost Nowhere)

The second thing I tried was my previous novel, The Northern Caves.

The Northern Caves is a much shorter book, and there were no length-related issues this time.

It's also a book that uses a found-media format and includes a fictitious podcast transcript.

And, possibly because of this, NotebookLM "decided" to generate a podcast that treated the story and characters as though they existed in the real world – effectively, creating fanfiction as opposed to commentary!

(Spoilers for The Northern Caves.)

----

Related links:

I tried OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode ChatGPT feature and wrote a post about my experiences

I asked NotebookLM to make a podcast about my Advanced Voice Mode post, with surreal results

Tumblr user ralfmaximus takes this to the limit, creating NotebookLM podcast about the very post you're reading now

[yiddishknights]

you seem like the right person to ask about jewish knights and judaism in general in arthurian legend

Hello! Apologies for how long it has taken me to respond to this! Throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period, there were a number of Arthurian texts written by and for Jewish people in Jewish languages. The one I specialize in is an Old Yiddish text called Vidvilt, which is part of the Fair Unknown tradition and based off an earlier German text called Wigalois. This text was super popular in the Yiddish-speaking world for about three centuries or so and was reworked and reprinted a number of times. I already discussed some of those adaptations a while ago in response to this ask.

Predating Vidvilt, there was a Hebrew Arthurian text written in the 13th century which is now commonly known as Melekh Artus. This was based on Old French sources and tells the story of Arthur's birth and Lancelot's affair with Guinevere before breaking off unfinished. The most common edition of the text used today is the one by Curt Leviant, though I just read a fascinating article in the latest issue of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society calling into question some of his transcription choices and the conclusions he draws in his analysis of the text.

I also recently read that a fragment of an Arthurian text in Judeo-Catalan was recently discovered, but I'm afraid I don't know much about it as yet other than that it's apparently a late medieval adaptation of Jaufre.

Chivalric romances of both Christian and Jewish origin were extremely popular among medieval and early modern Jews in general. There were a number of non-Arthurian knight stories that were very popular as well; for example, the most famous and influential work of early Yiddish literature was a chivalric epic called Bovo d'Antona, and a survey I read of the literature in Jewish households in early modern Italy shows that the most popular non-religious work among Jews at that time was Orlando Furioso.

It is worth noting that, even though some of these texts were written by and for Jews, that doesn't necessarily mean that the characters in them were Jewish. Jewish writers generally tended to modify their Christian source materials by gliding over or obscuring references to religion, rather than depicting Judaism directly (the reasons for this are complex and could constitute a whole paper, so I won't get into it here). That being said, medieval Jewish knights did exist in real life, too! There are a few medieval historians who do research into exactly when, where, and under what circumstances Jews were allowed to bear arms, but it definitely wasn't exclusively a literary thing.

[that-cool-guy]

PARRTT 4 BABBYYYY lemme know if things don’t make sense please HUEHEHEUHE

…

…

(i can be serious sometimes) Lemme know how you feel about the colouring and the new formatttt :O

I tried to make it sorta coloured but also not, just so it’s easier on me to put out lmao

previous TRANSCRIPT BELOW

John Dory: No- How about we head back to pop village and sort this troll out Floyd: I agree Clay: I'm on to you John.. Branch: mmm.. if we have too Past Jd: WAHHHHH IN RHONDA Past Jd sniffles and Rhonda is unnerved Branch (internally): OH MY TROLL... why does this troll look so familiar. John Dory said it WASNT his kid but that doesn't explain why they look so similar- and the way John Dory acted earlier- AND THE WORM- Young Branch: Grandma? What did my brothers do when they were here? Rosiepuff: Ahh your brothers! Well.. let me think now Floyd was fascinated about leaving the tree. he'd learned that many years ago other trolls had left, so why couldn't we? Clay loved to read! I swear that boy read a new one everyday! He tended to gravitate to the sadder ones.. Spruce loved his "me time" or at least that's what he would call it. He loved to just take a moment out of the day and just relax. I really need to take a page outta his book huh? hehe Roisepuff: And John Dory oh that boy always LOVED outside. He'd be out there for hours and when he'd come back he would always look a MESS! I'd always had to pick the sticks and leaves outta his hair Branch: no... that doesn't make sense... this troll surely isnt JOHN DORY right?? a check list next to Past JD says looks a mess brozone pants? leaves/sticks in hair Johns goggles TINY RHONDA??? Branch: This cannot be the same troll that left me

[dropthedemiurge]

Let Free The Curse of Taekwondo: Things you didn't notice #1

Isn't this another K-BL where I'm internally squealing because of every single detail? You bet it is. You can read my other meta/cultural detail/Korean language posts for Love for Love's Sake, Time of Fever, Grey Shelter and Boys be Brave on my pinned post or hashtags^^ (I really need to organize it under one singly hashtag tho...)

I already talked about how impressed I am with the fact that this series has done their preparation job well, with props, settings, language, history etc.

It is about a countryside/small town in Southern province of Korea - because a lot of characters use satoori (southern dialect), almost all of them except for the main two guys. There is also a distinct contrast/conflict between 'fancy Seoul rich guys' looking down on 'Southern town'. Juyoung even was surprised Dohoi doesn't use satoori.

To which, he responded with 'You'll be uncomfortable if I use it". And Juyoung said there are plenty other uncomfortable things around here, beside understanding/listening to everyone using other accent xD Confusing Gaga translation errors, we meet again!

Actually, it's interesting because Dohoi's name is written 이도회 in Korean, which typically would be written as 'Dohoi' but pronounced as 'Dohwe' (think of surname Choi that is actually pronounced as Chwe), yet in the first episode I clearly heard them actually say 'Dohoi', letter by letter. Now I wonder if it's also related to satoori... I wish I could speak it, it sounds so cool tbh.

He actually said 'I'm not in a good condition', meaning his physical form. What do you mean, mood, when was that ever an excuse in sports..?xD

By the way, what is it with boys trying to get closer to other boys by buying them unusual ice cream?:') Okay, garlic sounds more weird than red bean one :D

Also, I tried to find the Hasong town they talked about but failed - maybe because of incorrect transcription or maybe they made up this town based on Uiseong - a small town close to Daegu which is famous for being the most famous garlic town, they produce a lot of it and garlic fame would be seen everywhere - so who knows, I bet they allude to this when Juyoung said 'why can't there be a vanilla garlic ice cream? It's like a collaboration!'

Another thing, I thought the time of this series was somewhere around 1990s-2000s (because I watched a movie in similar setting that was called 1997 year but they still used pagers, now that I think about it). It was also still the time where teachers could use physical punishment on their students, it's heavily highlighted but I don't actually know around what time they stopped... Probably in Seoul, they already were getting rid of it but in small towns it was old-school teaching, which is again why Dohoi tried to tell Joyoung out of it.

I'm not familiar when small laptops and phones appeared in Seoul but I think the series is actually somewhere around 2005-2010! Which would make sense, Juyoung got the 'cool' flip-phone and a laptop with Windows XP (released in 2001) but small town is still far from that, as they use landline house phones to make a call.

He also has mp3 player and as other tumblr folks figured out, he was listening and dancing to Jewelry song released in 2005 :)

And another thing that convinced me about the time era... the final scene!

Do you want to know why at the end of Ep 1 Dohoi smiled and laughed and ran to Juyoung even after so many exhausting days and neverending small miseries and a new loud housemate?

Because Juyoung not only came to pick him up with an umbrella in the acid rain, he also reenacted the famous umbrella scene from the classic romantic K-drama called "Temptation of Wolves" (늑대의 유혹) which was released in 2004! To make Dohoi laugh.

(Yes, when Juyoung intentionally put the umbrella down and the camera cut the shot to the framing when the umbrella slowly lifts up, showing smiling Juyoung, I was like 'you did nooooooot' xD)

(last screenshots taken from @heretherebedork post, I'm sorry I am very lazy and cannot take a good screenshot for life :'))

So that was already our very first romantic teasing-implication!

Another cute thing: optimistic Joyoung wrote a diary entry into the fake old Korean "Facebook" (they had Cyworld instead) to share his first selfie with Dohoi:

"[Excited Shin Jjuyoung]" (typing in a popular back then teenage style) "I miss you guys... But here it's nice too hehe ^___^ Come to play with me!! Together with my friend Dohoi too~~!"

Aren't they the cuteestttttt? I mean, this dynamic is not new but I love how unique the setting is. And I can't wait to watch the second episode, I'm waiting and savoring the first one for now but I'm going to make notes about other episodes as well so stay tuned! If you reply/comment in tags, I will put you in my tag list^^

Tag list: @benkaben @pickletrip @troubled-mind

[fairuzfan]

During an appearance at Vassar College in early February, controversial New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was asked about the ongoing evictions of Palestinian families from homes in East Jerusalem which Israel occupied in 1967. Israeli courts have ruled that Jewish settlers could take over some Palestinian homes on the grounds that Jews held title to the properties before Israel was established in 1948.

Bronner was concerned, but not only about Palestinians being made homeless in Israel’s relentless drive to Judaize their city; he was also worried about properties in his West Jerusalem neighborhood, including the building he lives in, partially owned by The New York Times, that was the home of Palestinians made refugees in 1948. Facts about The New York Times’ acquisition of this property are revealed for the first time in this article.

“One of the things that is most worrying not just the Left but a lot of people in Israel about this decision is if the courts in Israel are going to start recognizing property ownership from before the State [of Israel was founded],” Bronner said according to a transcript made by independent reporter Philip Weiss who maintains the blog Mondoweiss.net.

Bronner added, “I think the Palestinians are going to have a fairly big case. I for example live in West Jerusalem. My entire neighborhood was Palestinian before 1948.”

The New York Times-owned property Bronner occupies in the prestigious Qatamon neighborhood, was once the home of Hasan Karmi, a distinguished BBC Arabic Service broadcaster and scholar (1905-2007). Karmi was forced to flee with his family in 1948 as Zionist militias occupied western Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods. His was one of an estimated 10,000 Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem that Jews took over that year.

The New York Times bought the property in 1984 in a transaction overseen by columnist Thomas Friedman who was then just beginning his four-year term as Jerusalem bureau chief.

Hasan Karmi’s daughter, Ghada, a physician and well-known author who lives in the United Kingdom, discovered that The New York Times was in – or rather on top of – her childhood home in 2005, when she was working temporarily in Ramallah. One day Karmi received a call from Steven Erlanger, then The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, who had just read her 2002 memoir In Search of Fatima.

Karmi recalled in a 15 May 2008 interview on Democracy Now! that Erlanger told her, “I have read your marvelous memoir, and, do you know, I think I’m living above your old house … From the description in your book it must be the same place” (“Conversation with Palestinian Writer and Doctor Ghada Karmi”).

At Erlanger’s invitation, Karmi visited, but did not find the elegant one-story stone house her family had moved into in 1938, that was typical of the homes middle- and upper-class Arabs began to build in Jerusalem suburbs like Qatamon, Talbiya, Baqa, Romema or Lifta toward the end of the 19th century. The original house was still there, but at some point after 1948 two upper stories had been built.

Erlanger, responding to questions posed by The Electronic Intifada via email, described the residence as “built over the Karmi family house – on its air rights, if you like. The [New York Times] is not in [the Karmi] house.” Erlanger described the building as having an “unbroken” facade but that it consisted of “two residences, two ownerships, two heating systems,” and a separate entrance for the upper levels reached via an external staircase on the side.

Questions The Electronic Intifada sent to Thomas Friedman about the purchase of the property were answered by David E. McCraw, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for the newspaper, who wrote that the original Karmi house itself “was never owned even partly by The Times. The Times purchased in the 1980s a portion of the building that had been constructed above it in the late 1970s.” The purchase was made from “a Canadian family that had bought them from the original builders of the apartment.”

McCraw acknowledged in a follow-up conversation that as a general principle of property law, the “air rights” of a property – the right to build on top of it or use (and access) the space above it – belong to the owner of the ground.

Exiled from Qatamon

Ghada Karmi standing by the front door of her childhood home in Jerusalem’s Qatamon neighborhood in 2005. (Steven Erlanger)

Hasan Karmi hailed originally from Tulkarem, in what is now the northern West Bank. In 1938, he moved his family to Jerusalem to take up a job in the education department of the British-run Palestine Mandate government. Ghada – born around November 1939 (the exact date is unknown because her birth certificate along with all the family’s records, photographs, furniture, personal possessions and an extensive library were lost with the house) – has vivid memories of a happy childhood in what was a well-to-do mixed neighborhood of Arab Christians and Muslims, foreigners and a few Jewish families. The neighbors with whom her parents socialized and with whose children the young Ghada and her siblings played included the Tubbeh, Jouzeh, Wahbeh and Khayyat families. There was also a Jewish family called Kramer, whose father belonged to the Haganah, the Zionist militia that became the Israeli army after May 1948.

Karmi describes the house at length in her memoir – but she told The Electronic Intifada her fondest memories were of the tree-filled garden where she spent much time playing with her brother and sister and the family dog Rex. The lemon and olive trees she remembers are still there, Erlanger noted to The Electronic Intifada.

In the mid-1940s, the lively Qatamon social life gave way to terror as the dark clouds of what would come to be known as the Nakba approached. Violence broke out all over Jerusalem after the UN’s devastating recommendation to partition Palestine without giving its people any say in the matter. Spontaneous riots by Arabs were followed by organized violence from Zionist groups and mutual retaliatory attacks that claimed lives from both communities. This climate provided the pretext for the Haganah’s premeditated campaign to seize Jerusalem.

Poorly armed and disorganized Arab irregulars, who had nevertheless succeeded in disrupting Zionist supply convoys to Jerusalem, proved no match for highly-trained and well-armed Zionist militias which, on the orders of David Ben-Gurion, began a well-planned campaign to conquer the western parts of the city. The occupation of western Jerusalem and some 40 villages in its vicinity was executed as part of the Haganah’s “Plan Dalet.” These events are well documented in books including Benny Morris’ The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949 (1987), Walid Khalidi’s (ed.) All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (1992), Salim Tamari’s (ed.) Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and their Fate in the War (1999) and Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).

Zionist militias used frequent bombings of Arab civilians to terrorize residents into fleeing. These attacks were amplified by posters and warnings broadcast over loudspeakers that those choosing to remain behind would share the fate of those killed in atrocities.

Karmi wrote that one night in November 1947, their neighbor Kramer came to see her father and said, “I have come to tell you at some risk to myself to take your family and leave Jerusalem as soon as possible …. Please believe me, it is not safe here.” Many Qatamon families left after the Zionist bombing of the nearby Semiramis Hotel, which killed 26 civilians including the Spanish consul-general, on the night of 4-5 January 1948.

The Karmis however held on, and Ghada records in her memoir her mother steadfastly saying, “The Jews are not going to drive me out of my house … Others may go if they like, but we’re not giving in.”

Toward the end of April, bombardment by Zionist militias against virtually undefended Arab areas became so heavy, and the terror generated by the Deir Yassin massacre earlier that month so intense, that the Karmis relented and departed by taxi for Damascus, via Amman, with nothing but a few clothes. Their intention was to bring the children to safety at their maternal grandparents’ house while the adults would return home to Jerusalem. A few days after reaching Damascus the elder Karmis tried to return to Jerusalem but were unable to do so. So began the family’s exile that continues to this day.

As Arabs left their homes, Jews were moved in by the Haganah. “While the cleansing of Qatamon went on,” Itzhak Levy, the head of Haganah intelligence in Jerusalem recalled, “pillage and robbery began. Soldiers and citizens took part in it. They broke into the houses and took from them furniture, clothing, electric equipment and food” (quoted in Pappe, p.99). Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli scholar and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, wrote in his book Sacred Landscape of personally witnessing the “looting of Arab homes in Qatamon” as a boy. Palestinians also lost art work, financial instruments and – like the Karmis – irreplaceable family records, as the fabric of a society and a way of life were destroyed.

Jerusalem return denied

The Karmis’ story is a variation of what happened to tens of thousands of Jerusalem-area Palestinians during the Nakba, in which approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes all over the country and never allowed to return. (In my book One Country I describe the departure under similar circumstances of my mother’s family from Lifta-Romema.)

As of 1997, there were 84,000 living West Jerusalem refugees (23,000 born before 1948), according to Tamari. Half lived in the West Bank, many just miles from their original homes, but thousands of others were spread across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

Arab property is well-documented through administrative and UN records, but tracing the fate of an individual house or proving title is extremely difficult if not impossible for Palestinians scattered, exiled and forbidden from returning home. Some, who have foreign passports that allowed them to make brief visits, have attempted to locate their family properties. In recent years a small Israeli group called Zochrot (Remembering) has even joined in – taking some displaced Palestinians back to their original villages and homes, whose traces Israel often made deliberate efforts to conceal or destroy. But such activities are not welcomed by most Israeli Jews still in denial about their state’s genesis.

Ghada Karmi recalls an earlier attempt to revisit her family home in 1998. The residents were unwelcoming and would not give her the phone number of the landlord, though a plaque outside bore the name “Ben-Porat.”

The owner of the original, lower-level house at the time The New York Times bought the upper levels was Yoram Ben-Porat, an economics professor who became president of the Hebrew University and was killed with his wife and young son in a road accident in October 1992. According to Erlanger, the house remained with heirs from the Ben-Porat family who rented it out until it was sold in 2005 to an Israeli couple who did some remodeling. It is unknown when the Ben-Porats acquired the house or if they were the ones who had the upper levels built.

During Karmi’s 2005 visit, Erlanger invited her to see his part of the house and introduced her to the Israeli tenants in the lower level who gave her free access while Erlanger took photographs. For Karmi, revisiting the house was disconcerting. She described to The Electronic Intifada its occupants as “Ashkenazi Jewish Israelis, liberals, nice people who wanted to be nice.” She felt like asking them, “how can you live here knowing this is an Arab house, knowing this was once owned by Arabs, what goes through your mind?” But, she explained, “in the way people have of not wanting to upset people who appear to be nice, I didn’t say anything.”

The New York Times

In the early years after their original residents left, many of the former Arab neighborhoods were run down. But in the 1970s, wealthier Israeli Jews began to gentrify them and acquiring an old Arab house became a status symbol. Today, Israeli real estate agencies list even small apartments in Qatamon for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and house prices can run into the millions. In Jerusalem, such homes have become popular especially with wealthy American Jews, according to Pappe. The New York Times did not disclose what it paid for the Qatamon property.

It was a curious decision for The New York Times to have purchased part of what must obviously have been property with – at the very least – a political, moral and legal cloud over its title. Asked whether The New York Times or Friedman had made any effort to learn the history of the property, the newspaper responded, “Neither The Times nor Mr. Friedman knew who owned the original ground floor prior to 1948.”

As Friedman prepared to make the move to Jerusalem from Beirut where he was covering the Lebanon war in the early 1980s, The Times hired an Israeli real estate agent to help him locate a home. According to McCraw, Friedman’s wife Ann went ahead to Jerusalem and looked at properties “and she, working with the agent, made the selection for The Times.” During the process Friedman visited Jerusalem and looked at properties as well, a fact he mentions in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem. By the time the property was selected, Friedman had moved permanently to Jerusalem and oversaw the closing.

The choice of the Qatamon property – over several modern apartments that the real estate agent also showed – makes The New York Times a protagonist and interested party in one of the most difficult aspects of the Palestine conflict: the property and refugee rights of Palestinians that Israel has adamantly denied. It also raises interesting questions about what such choices have on news coverage – with which the newspaper itself has had to grapple.

In 2002, an Electronic Intifada article partly attributed the pervasive underreporting of Israeli violence against Palestinians to “a structural geographic bias” – the fact that “most US news organizations who have reporters on the ground base them in Tel Aviv or west Jerusalem, very far from the places where Palestinians are being killed and bombarded on a daily basis” ( Michael Brown and Ali Abunimah, “Killings of dozens once again called ‘period of calm’ by US media, 20 September 2002).

In 2005, The New York Times’ then Public Editor Daniel Okrent echoed this criticism, writing:

“The Times, like virtually every American news organization, maintains its bureau in West Jerusalem. Its reporters and their families shop in the same markets, walk the same streets and sit in the same cafes that have long been at risk of terrorist attack. Some advocates of the Palestinian cause call this ‘structural geographic bias.’” (“The Hottest Button: How The Times Covers Israel and Palestine,” 24 April 2005).

Okrent recommended that in order to broaden the view of the newspaper’s reporters, it should locate a correspondent in Ramallah or Gaza – where she or he would share the daily experiences, concerns and risks of Palestinians. This advice went unheeded, just as Executive Editor Bill Keller recently publicly rejected the advice of the current public editor that current Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner should be reassigned because of the conflict of interest created by Bronner’s son’s voluntary enlistment in the Israeli army.

Thus, in a sense, Bronner’s structural and personal identification with Israel has become complete: when the younger Bronner joins army attacks in Gaza, fires tear gas canisters or live bullets at nonviolent demonstrators trying to save their land from confiscation in West Bank villages, or conducts night arrest raids in Ramallah or Nablus – as he may well be ordered to do – his father will root for him, worry about him, perhaps hope that his enemies will fall in place of his son, as any Israeli parent would. And on weekends, the elder Bronner will await his soldier-son’s homecoming to a property whose true heirs live every day, like millions of Palestinians, with the unacknowledged trauma, and enduring injustice of dispossession and exile.

[eldritchravens]

Welcome Home - The Homewarming Update : A compilation of the secrets I could find

⚠️SPOILERS AHEAD!⚠️

This post is simply a compilation of all the things I could find during my exploration of the website. I'm not going to delve too much into theories. Enjoy the read!

1- Statics

Every background is now filled with statics. I tried zooming out but I couldn't find anything. Not really a secret, but still interesting to note.

2- It's a dog! Oh, and a pea!

Found in the "Official Welcome Home Cook Book" in the merchandise page. I am... A little worried about Barnaby. For those who are aware, the pea is foreshadowing for a much bigger secret.

3- Audio distortion

Surprisingly, I was only able to find one instance where the audio distorts. In the "Homewarming Storybook Record", when Wally speaks here (timestamp is 18:16), the audio gets distorted. Please let me know if you found more audio glitches on the main website!

4- The page is breathing

I was able to capture something that made my skin crawl. Look very closely at this illustration. It's... breathing. I'm unsure if any other image in the website does that too. Very troubling.

5- Lost track of time

Uh-oh! Looks like our beloved writer is losing their perception of time itself. An effect of the black substance maybe? You can find this on the News page.

6- Pixels? Smudges? Oh, and a new friend!

In The Neighboorhood page, Home now has little white pixels around him? I'm unsure if this was intentional or not. Interestingly, the secret link under Home dissapeared along with every other traces of Wally.

The logo on certain pages looks... dirty? Look closely, there are brownish stains on some letters. This doesn't appear everywhere.

And! New friend! Hello new friend!

7- Symbols!

Okay, now onto the main course. Something I think we've all noticed straight away! There's a ton of tiny little doodles splattered around the website. The doodles are all named after a letter. Here is every letter translated from their respective symbol you can find on the website :

Home : M I O A Merchandise : P Y E R Media : Y G About us : A R Stickers : E News : T Neighboorhood : S F N E Wally : W Exhibition : N Ghestbook : W W W Transcript : Y

"www" huh? Interesting, like a web link. At first, all of this doesn't really mean anything, until we stumble upon this!

Fascinating, it's a code! Eddie here is giving us the translation to every single doodle. Next, if we solve the question here "What does Home wear at parties?", it gives us the next clue we need. The answer is "ADDRESS". Address? Now, remember the "www" thing? That's right! We need to assemble the letters we found to make a link!

8- Away from Prying Eyes

After assembling a link, you will be able to visit a secret page. In it is by far the biggest secret in this update : https://www.awayfrompryingeyes.net/

When I tell you I lost my marbles when I discovered this. There is a lot to say here! Firstly, one thing to note is that unlike any other secrets we had found in previous updates, Wally didn't put this here. Instead, it was this mysterious "W". Go read the whole thing! It's PACKED with information!

"W" purposely put this here for US to find. W is in distress, confused and scared; this looks like a call for help.

Might or might not be important, but the word "Paranoid" here starts with a capital. It did catch my eye, so maybe it is noteworthy.

This entire phone call is absolutely fascinating and gives us answers about the lore. I highly recommend people to give it a listen : https://www.awayfrompryingeyes.net/phone

AND THIS??? OH MY GOODNESS!!! Clown is spoiling us with gifts for this Homewarming! Truly, thank you Clown and the whole WH team, you're doing such a marvelous job. Watch the whole thing here : https://www.awayfrompryingeyes.net/commercials

And what's this hidden among the commercials? Eddie! Remember how I said the pea was foreshadowing? Eddie can hear Home's heartbeat. Well, our dearest mailman doesn't look too well :( Thankfully Frank seems to be looking out for him!

_________________________

Important things to note: This update is almost completely void of any trace of Wally infesting the website. The symbols were placed by the website manager here. Wally is not there anymore. Also, Eddie is purposely left out of the main update, only to be the center of attention in the commercial compilation.

Well! That's all I managed to find for now! Please let me know in the replies if I've missed anything. Thank you for reading, and Happy Homewarming! <3

Edit : Added some new things I just noticed!

[fallstaticexit]

Prev / Next / Beginning / Pillowfort

AN: TW this post contains a homophobic slur.

Transcript under the cut

Professor Munch: Everyone, this is Nancy. She’s one of my favorite students. I am so glad she can join us this evening to observe our weekly GSA meeting.

Nancy: And what is a GSA?

Morgan: It stands for Gay–Straight Alliance. It’s just a safe space for queer kids to hang out and talk about real world issues.

Knox: Yeah, we go out and do stuff off campus. It’s pretty tight.

Nancy: Queer? So...this is a club for homosexuals?

Darling: [sucks teeth]

Knox: [chuckles nervously] I mean, sure I guess? Me and Morgan are bisexual. That means we dig the fellas and the ladies, heh.

Professor Munch: What’s important is that this space is for everyone, from all walks of life. We support each other here, no matter who you love. We keep each other safe. That’s why I invited you to sit in on our session. I figured you could use a friend or two-

Nancy: Ugh! Oh my God? You think I’m- I’m not like that, ok!?

Nancy: I am not a homosexual! What the hell made you think I’d want to be apart of something like this?

Professor Munch: No, dear- I’m not implying you’re like anything! This club welcomes all people. I thought you could use the support. Why, your brother started the very first GSA at this school-

Nancy: Oh, don’t you fucking dare! My brother wasn’t some depraved pervert and I’m not a d****!

Darling: [jumps up, chair scrapes hardwood floor] What the fuck did you just say? You can’t come up in calling people that shit!

Nancy: I-I didn’t! All I’m saying is that I’m not like that! I’m not like you-

Darling: Not like who? Not like a d?****?

Darling: What the fuck is your problem? Munch, who is this bitch?

Professor Munch: Easy, Dee. Calm down-

Darling: Don’t fucking tell me to calm down! You let some straight white girl walk in here and say something we heard screamed at us our whole fucking life! Say it again! I dare you!

Professor Munch: That’s enough! Please! Let me handle this.

Nancy: [between sobs] M’sorry...m’so sorry...

Professor Munch: [sighs] Just, take some time to think about this, Nancy. Look inward.

Nancy Narrates: [Look inward] x3

Nancy: If it’s ok...I’d like to apologize.

Professor Munch: Everyone? Is it alright if Nancy speaks?

Morgan: I don’t mind.

Darling: [sighs] Whatever man.

Nancy: [exhales] When I first heard that word, I was 11 years old. My mother found letters I wrote to my pen pal. She mailed a photo of herself from her birthday party, she wore this really pretty yellow dress with little blue flowers on them.

Nancy: Yellow is my favorite color, so I said she was as pretty as a sunflower. My mother tore up the letter and made me rewrite it. She looked me right in the eyes and said, ‘do you want someone to read this and think you’re a-’

Nancy: She said it again when was 14, a girl from my ballet troupe was only brushing my hair. She pulled me from the class. She said it again two years ago, when she found out that I fell in love with-

Nancy: I know that word hurts because it’s been said to hurt me even though I’m not... It doesn’t matter if I’m not, I shouldn’t have said it. It was a horrible thing to do. I am so incredibly sorry.

Professor Munch: Thank you for sharing your story. This is what GSA is about. Coming together, creating a community, and creating safe spaces. Dee, is there anything you want to say to Nancy? Anything you’d like to speak on or about how you feel?

Darling: Nah...

Nancy Narrates: [I knew that an apology alone wouldn't suffice to mend the situation. When it came to friendships, I didn’t know how to genuinely make amends, but as a Landgraab, I knew that I could leverage my wealth and status to create a meaningful impact]

Morgan: You got us the biggest hall on campus?! Nancy, this is sick as fuck!

Professor Munch: [laughs] I’ll have to agree with Morgan for lack of a better word. This is sick as heck! I don’t know where to begin to thank you for this gift.

Nancy: It’s the least I could do. Now you can stop meeting in that tiny corner in the commons.

Darling: Charity work for your little sorority, huh? What’s with you, yo?

Nancy: What do you mean?

Darling: You’re so rich, you just buy your way through shit?

Nancy: It’s how I was raised.

Darling: I can’t figure you out.

Nancy: I promise, I’m not a bad person.

Darling: We’re not like everyone else on campus. We’ll show you something real. You gotta be real with us too.

Nancy Narrates: [I found myself wanting to do exactly that—to show them the real me, whoever she was]

Siobhan: I’m planning a party for the Thetas Friday night. Perfect opportunity for you to bond with your sisters.

Nancy: I’m a little busy Friday night...maybe next time?

Siobhan: Being apart of a sorority is more than just the cute merch and bragging rights. We’re involved with the community and with this campus. As a pledge, I do expect you to commit to these things.

Nancy: I know and I will. I just need to take care of something.

Siobhan: [sighs] Don’t let me down, sister.

[the group murmurs excitedly]

Professor Munch: You did all this, Nancy?

Nancy: I hope it’s ok I’m here. I figured you could break in your new room with a movie night. Everything is already taken care of, and I bought a ton of movies ranging from comedy to horror and everything in between. They’re all yours to keep! Same with the popcorn machine. I know I’m using money again to impress you but... I guess I’m still trying to figure out what it means to be real. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it all.

Morgan: Yeah, not so fast. Stick around, watch a movie with us!

Nancy: Are you sure?

Knox: Of course we’re sure, squirt.

[waltricia]

Regardless of whether anyone actually reads this, I need to show appreciation for the writing, blocking, and editing of the last scene of 3x03, “Forces of Nature.”

Recently, I noticed that the LW line “this author is captivated” was very specifically placed over a shot of Colin and I knew it was intentionally done to convey the double meaning of the narration being about her and him.

Since then, I’ve realized that the same thing is happening throughout that entire LW narration. And it is fucking BRILLIANT.

So, first of all, this is the transcript of the narration:

“This author believes that all of man’s greatest inventions are nothing more than a distraction from what is most natural to us. Our instincts. The innate animal impulse that is inside even the most sophisticated of us. For when all is said and done, our nature will always win out. It seems Lord Debling’s instinct has led this man of nature to the most surprising pick of the season in Miss Penelope Featherington. Suffice it to say, this author is captivated. For in the battle between man and nature, it is quite clear that the battle is in fact between man and himself.”

Now I’m going to break it down with captioned stills so that you can see which words line up with which frames and I’ll explain what I believe it all means.

“This author” - When it’s first said, it’s on Pen. The second time it’s on Colin. I think there are several meanings here. Firstly, she’s Whistledown and she’s published. He will be, assuming he publishes his travel journals or whatever. Secondly, I think it highlights how they will be united, in the Whistledown storyline along with everything else. There’s a third meaning, but I’m going to get back to it later, once we get to the second use of “this author.”

This is the Innovations Ball, so on the surface, LW is speaking about man-made technology versus the natural world. But with the introduction of “man,” the shot immediately cuts to Colin, so the second layer of the narration is about him. All of Colin’s invented personality traits are a cover, hiding his true self- his sensitivity and his feelings for Pen. Obviously, this echoes what she wrote about him in 3x01, but it’s different. The context is the same, but this time, she’s not speaking directly about him, and really, she may very well not be thinking about him at all in writing it. After all, she still doesn’t know about his feelings for her. But we know. And the feeling of what she’s saying this time is less jarring; more, fittingly, natural. Because he’s starting to confront all of it as well.

In this shot, Colin has been walking across the room to get to Pen. There were people on his right, obstructing his view of her, but as LW says “natural,” Colin passes those people and, though we cannot yet see Pen, we can tell from Colin’s face that he finally clearly can. She is what is most natural to him.

He comes up to her and says that he has a question for her. The narration starts again. But on this shot, it’s only the one word, “our.” Aside from this just being romantic, I think it highlights that the narration is about both of them. But I also think that it’s not just about them. It feels to me as if, metaphorically, it’s written by both of them. Hence, my emphasis on the importance of “this author.”

We cut to our first close-up of Colin in this particular intimate sequence of close-ups. And we’re really in his perspective now, as he’s struggling to manage his feelings.

Again, he had been masking, trying to be like the other “sophisticated” gentlemen.

But a shift is occurring within him.

And this where I really hope there is at least one other person out there paying attention because all of the elements are coming together to tell us something incredible here. We have our beloved Julie Andrews delivering the line with a profound heaviness. We have Kris Bowers’ “Call Me Simon” coming to a close, sounding like a clock striking midnight. And we have the decisive sentiment of the words themselves. I'm convinced that the words “done” and “win out” being said on Pen speak to the finality of Colin’s feelings. If there was uncertainty before, it is gone now and there is no turning back. He is in love with Pen.

But before Colin can say anything else, Debling steps in and takes Pen away to dance.

Side note: Amazingly, I can back up my theory with this shot and another one of my theories:

I had said, when the trailer came out, that when true red shows up behind Colin, that indicates his love for Pen. This is the first time we see that happen.

But anyway, back to Whistledown…

Debling is the literal “man of nature,” while Colin is the metaphoric “man of nature.” Both have picked Pen.

We’ve finally come to the second “this author” and here’s the third thing I wanted to say about it: Possibly my favorite thing about this sequence, is that it acts as a vehicle for the representation of the Polin role reversal. From one end of the Whistledown narration to the other, Pen and Colin literally and metaphorically switch places, seamlessly. They exchange their physical places in the room. She’s the wallflower, then he’s the wallflower. She’s the author, then he’s the author. In a metaphorical sense, they’re both writing this Whistledown piece. This whole sequence serves to show us how Colin and Pen have really been equal this whole time. They’re just star-crossed. It’s like what Luke has been saying in interviews, Colin and Pen keep missing each other. They have brief moments where they eclipse each other and then they slip right past until the next time they orbit around to each other again.

Ok, here’s the final stretch, and it is a fucking fascinating maneuver:

The battle isn’t between Colin and Debling. In fact, Debling doesn’t signify at all here. I’d say there are actually three other battles being referenced: Colin and himself, Pen and herself, and Colin and Pen. The first “man” of that sentence is said on Colin, while “nature” is said on Pen. So in the battle between Colin and Pen- for there is a battle, as Cressida will mention in 3x04 when she says “Eros and Psyche, battling it out”, and also there will be more blatant battling in part 2- the real battles Colin and Pen are facing are the ones within themselves.

Of course I’ve already written about Colin’s battle with himself.

The reference to Pen’s battle with herself is particularly interesting to me. At first, I didn’t see it and I didn’t understand why that bit of the narration was spoken over the Pen and Debling dance instead of over Colin. Then I realized that the second “man” of that sentence is said directly on top of this shot where, again, it’s not about Debling; it’s her face we’re seeing. Then, Debling spins her and the “himself” is on Pen too. And I know I’m right about this because the shot was in the trailer and I watched it so many times. And I noticed that Sam Phillips is very specifically looking away from the camera in this moment. I figured it was because we had to know that the moment was about her. And I was right.

Pen’s journey is her reconciliation with herself. Colin and Pen really have the same inner battles. They both need to drop their masks. That’s why the mirror scene is going to be so important- it’s about exposing and embracing the bare parts of both of them. They are already equal and united. They just need to see it.

Ok that’s it. I’m done. I got it out. And I literally can’t add any more images to this post. To anyone who will have read this fuckin novel I just wrote, thanks for sticking around. These ballroom sequences are particularly difficult for the cast and crew to do, and there is obviously so much complexity in this one, so I feel like it should all be acknowledged. Someone has to acknowledge it, and if that has to be me, I will gladly continue using up my Friday afternoons to do so.

To the cast and crew, to the captain of the season 3 ship, Jess Brownell, to the director, Andrew Ahn, and writer, Eli Wilson Pelton, to everyone’s favorite choreographer/movement director, Jack Murphy, to Luke, Nic, and Julie fuckin Andrews, I see you and I love you. Please keep doing what you’re doing. It’s all worth it. ♥️

[stormy-river]

Transcripts from the Humanity Hotline 7

As I finished this, I discovered it's been exactly one year since I posted the last Transcript. A lot has happened in that year; I've graduated college :) . I want to thank everyone for the support I've received, and I hope to get back into some of my creative projects and give you guys an opportunity to laugh, and maybe learn something. This one is inspired by a request from @a-romantic-twst from forever ago; I hope it was worth the wait (sorry about that). (It's about periods if anyone's uncomfortable with that and wants to skip this one.)

------

Operator: "Hi, my name is Mindy. How may I help you today?"

Caller: "Hello, Mindy, I am very concerned about one of the humans on my ship."

O: "What seems to be the problem?"

C: "Well, I'm the chief medical officer and this particular human has been on the ship for just over two Earth months now. On two separate occasions during that time, she has requested strong painkillers citing 'Shark Week' as the reason. I looked into what 'Shark Week' is, and found an Earth television special about certain aquatic predators, and I'm unsure how that could cause a human physical pain lightyears from Earth?"

O: "Interesting, is there anything else you can tell me about this human during these events?"

C: "Yes, I've also received reports from other crewmembers around these events that this human is not as outgoing as usual, and shows signs of discomfort with facial expressions and changes in appetite, but does not respond well to the standard psychological protocols for team building and social connection."

O: "What about the timing? You said this has happened twice, correct? How much time was between them?"

C: "Yes, I've documented both with dates. The human requested the painkillers twice, 28 days apart. The crew reported signs of distress for a few days following each request, and two times in the day before the first request."

O: "Alright, I believe your human is using the phrase, "Shark Week" as a euphemism for the start of the menstrual cycle, which is often referred to as a 'period'. To put it simply, one of the female reproductive organs sheds its inner lining roughly once an Earth month, lasting anywhere from a few days to a full week."

C: "Similar to how the Rythyani shed and replace their stomach linings?"

O: "Yes, though the uterus has blood vessels that extend into that lining, so shedding also causes bleeding."

C: "Bleeding? How much blood is lost? Why has she not requested bandages or a transfusion?"

O: "For most, a period is not life-threatening. The amount of blood loss does not require a transfusion to replace, or bandages to stop, though iron deficiency may be a concern for some that can be easily remedied through their diet. Ultimately, your human will know her body and how to handle her cycle best. We learn to deal with periods from a relatively young age. You should have received a human anatomy and physiology textbook when the first human joined your crew. Do you have it?"

C: "Yes, though I do admit I have not yet had the time to read it."

O: "That's alright. The chapter on human reproductive systems goes into more detail about the biology of the menstrual cycle than I can tell you. For the time being, make sure your human knows that she can ask for support if needed, and inform your crew that not all humans will be happy all the time, and they don't need to be. Over time, you will gain a better understanding your humans' patterns. Until then, trust them to express their needs, and talk to them if you have specific concerns. I can give general advice, but they will know themselves best."

C: "Thank you for clearing up the confusion, Mindy, I will look into this and update the protocols as necessary. I have no more questions for you at this time."

O: "You are very welcome, please don't hesitate to call again if something else comes up."

End Transmission