#wow is that two of my favourite interests combined in a meme?
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sundalion · 2 years ago
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He’s trying his best Donnie
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iyliss · 2 months ago
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Edo for the ask meme!
and also Cecil ;u;
WAIT i only notice now it's "yu-gi-oh characters" i am a fool i am clown but oh well i'll make it work.
So for Edo:
Why I like them/why I don’t: I mean like you know kind of a blorbo by proxy. I think he has this very fun balance of deeply normal AND kind of unhinged. Of very secretive and distant and in deep need of helping and talking to people. Need to control and be guided. But also that's what being a teenager with parental issues does to a guy I can't blame him.
What I like about their appearance: so i kind of love how his hair fits on his haid it's something I really try to replicate like it's this feeling of... technically it IS short but also it's just a bit long. It just falls a bit all over him. Yeah idk how to explain but I love attempting to draw it.
Do I prefer their dub names or original names? so yeah never watched the dub beside specific eps and clips so I'm a chronical sub names user BUT Aster is so cute and fits him so well imo. Actually I probably should use Ed because it's likely what his names is supposed to be but idk i'm used to a spelling and pronunciation and it's really hard for me to switch.
OTP: yeah so like destinyshipping yeah yeah. Made a thousand art and fics and AUs and stories what am I supposed to say. They hit the perfect balance of terminally sad and messy AND very cute and hopeful. Also i do like heroshipping and whatever edo/manjoume is called but i admit i have a hard time being strongly invested in something of GX that is not saiou.
NOTP: Never really saw a ship that I disliked heavily so I'm not going to make myself think of one.
OT3: I have been so sooo many thoughts about edo/saiou/judai combination situationship lately. Listen. Edo having his silly childhood crush and his silly teenage crush on two people (he's actually painfully in love but shh). One clearly has no interest in romantic relationship or is overall very distant with it and the other spends half the time disappearing from public circulation to go deal with supernatural creature. Then eventually he realize that they 1/ spend a lot of time together 2/ are much MUCH closer than he thought 3/ may or may not have something going on between them. But also the entire point is that. Yeah. Neither Saiou nor Judai really are into anything like a "romantic relationship" and function fairly well together because of that but also if Edo just TALKS TO THEM ABOUT IT maybe he can not feel left out all the time. Things like that. I hope someday I can write them but it'll be long and messy.
Favourite card they use: D-time because at some point we tried recreating it with my friend on some tea biscuits with sugar and all and it was fun.
Favourite moment they were in: IMAGINE HOLDING SAIOU'S HAND WOW I WISH THAT WERE ME THAT SO UNFAIR COME OOON no also the whole scene is one of my fav ygo moment ever.
Least favourite moment: uuh i guess i was not quite impressed by the amon mini-arc with echo and everything? But also beside a dozen ep season 3 didn't amaze me the most so it's not on him.
And for apparently the new exclusive yugioh character Cecil Harvey (actually he'd make for a really fun ygo protag. I have that AU somewhere)
Why I like them/why I don’t: Cecil feel like a very classic jrpg protagonist from afar like yeah he's very kind and devoted but has to prove himself after having been driven to do bad things... But also... I think he's very unique in how that kindness and devotion is portrayed. In the average story it'd be about how sad it is for him that he keeps sacrificing himself for others and carry such a burden and so and so... But not in FFIV. In this game his kindness is a burden for others. His devotion, his sense of sacrifice, make other people have to take care of him. His sensibility means his emotions are always the most important thing, and it's so rare for stories to take that angle instead of making the protagonist's emotion well... the most important thing. It makes him a very subtle character, both deeply positive and good but also almost destructive to people around him under the wrong circumpstances.
What I like about their appearance: he is SO pretty, squenix just don't make beautiful men like this anymore. His hair looks so soft and airy, the little jewels and decoration and make up is so cute, and i love how he looks like he glows in the dark. I will say I especially love the fact that Amano's artwork, the pixel art, the remake, dissidia, and all the different re-design he has means Cecil's look is less a defined set of rules and more a direction, certain choices, specific artistic takes. It's less about accurate reproduction and more capturing his essence. It's very liberating to draw.
OTP : ot3 is below but know i'm a baron trio truther and it's above anything else. Cecil/rosa is cute on it's own but I think it lacks a little drama and spice. Cecil/Kain feels a little bit more fun to play with on its own but it's never really just that sole ship to me. Also actually let me call this "favorite relationship" or something and say Cecil and Golbez are the reason I got into FF and their dynamic is the most beautiful thing, so full of pain and love and everything.
NOTP : He doens't have many popular ship so like. None I can think of.
OT3 : BARON TRIO BARON TRIO BARON TRIO these 3 idiots love each other so much in such different way and their relationship becomes sooo interesting and also so gentle when they're all together. And I love how it's frankly very supported by canon? In the DS version whenever 2 are reunited they will think of where is the other and want them here. In DFFOO all Cecil want is to have BOTH of them with him. In WoFF they repeat a scene from ffiv but Kain is sick, Cecil is looking for a cure and Rosa is watching over him. They're just fated to always need all of each other.
Favourite moment they were in: Uuuh practically every scene with Golbez? Calling him "brother" for the first time when they're about to die, and again when they're about to be separated. When he's lost to darkness in TAY but hears his brother calling him so he doesn't disappear. When he tells him he's guiding light in Dissidia. They're so full of love.
Least favourite moment : I guess like most iv fan, when he tells Rosa and Rydia to stay out of the final battle. They kind fo justify it because the 3 guys have very personnal reason to want revenge/answers so Cecil doesn't just think women shouldn't fight but. it does show how this game still can't give female characters as much emotional intensity as the male characters.
Would I fuck, marry or kill them: chosing the fourth secret option where i marry his brother because i so SO want Cecil and Rosa as in-laws.
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de-fright-ful · 3 months ago
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✔ For whichever one of my muses you like most OwO
A QUICK AND EASY PLOTTING GUIDE ! | OOC MEME | ACCEPTING
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HELLO YUE!! I won't lie to ya, chief; you've given me a tricky task here! Picking my favourite muse out of your catalogue is like choosing my favourite kind of chocolate, and let me tell you, I have a SWEET TOOTH! Haha!
So, I've cut this post for brevity's sake, but I chose a wild card assortment!
So, in order, I put down
Asteria because my wife. I MEAN because thematically, I think these two would naturally have interactions, with Astaria being a lore-keeper and Amity filling a similar cultural role in Saijikara and Amity being a part of the Pokemon league. Asteria is (presumably) involved with the greater institution as the Hoenn champion, SO YOU SEE WHAT I'M GETTING AT HERE.
Cynthia for similar reasons but also because geographically, she's just a lot closer to Saijikara and Amity by extension. Amity and Cynthia have a similar kind of curiosity and I think it would be interesting to smoosh that together? I don't have the words to perfectly describe it, but they both have a curious but respectful air that, like, I would trust them to go into a tomb and not be a clown about it and instead sit down in the dusty darkness for an hour writing down all the glyphs to translate later. Also, because SPIRITOMB CLUB SPIRITOMB CLUB, if a collection of hundreds of souls can vibe with you and want to help serve your cause, you KNOW you're in good company - safety not considered! Haha
Nathanael because it would fascinating in a 'this is going to go down like a cherry bomb thrown into a bathroom,' not because she can't vibe with his personality (she's very patient and is spectrum/has grown up with others on the spectrum so she's completely missing that trait that gives her friction over some social cues not being followed, (Amity is oblivious, she's aware but doesn't track the following/not following) ) or because she inherently disagrees with his stances, cause honestly she doesn't! It's just the combination of both, the N 'charm,' being questioned and put on the defence, especially in regards to questioning her Pokemon Team (which is ACTUALLY her found family, not in the 'tee hee close friend group' way but like, Whinnie adopted her, he considers her sister, Magnus followed, and others trickled in to form what she calls her coven, they've been the only present family structure she's had since she was 8 and Whinnie rescued her from certain death in the forest - especially given the toxic family unit she returned to after and her mother legitimately coming to hate her - and they were her direct lifeline in raising her siblings. Poking at that is one of the only ways to genuinely get her to break character and get legitimately enraged, which probably would happen) I just - I would kill to see Amity genuinely pushed to express a negative emotion on the main - BUTTTT BUT BUT BUT, I am OFTEN wrong about Amity's reaction to things and how she takes the wheel in regards to herself - Amity wasn't meant to have ADHD, but that evolved naturally. Aside from the entertainment of a blow-up, it could be interesting if they could be civil. I mean - when was the last time Amity got to speak about Saijikara, not about her role appointed and being digestible to an outside audience but just- her genuine thoughts and feelings about it and the change of outside pressure pushing in to wipe away both unpleasant history that still lurks in the corners of your mind in the waking present and the traditions that you hold close to your identity. (also because I can see her lore dumping and N going 'wow, ANYWAYS,' and I think that'd be REAL funny)
AND VOLO -- but Volo mainly because, like, doing this meme WITHOUT including him would be like going to a shrine and not leaving a tithing. I have to pay the Volo tax and give him some attention! It's the law of the land! Haha
My muse(s): Amity De Claire - Joy + Her Pokemon Team & the Coven (Noriko Joy, Orin Fournier, Yuhuza Sataoi, Yvita & Yvona Joy + close family friends like Mako) the whole song and dance of everyone on the property! Y'feel!
FOR ASTERIA:
Do I know your muse(s):  yes | no | a little | tell me about your muse
Setting: our verse | my verse | your verse | modern | alternate universe | other
Pre-established relationships? yes | no | depends on the relationship
Note: The crossed-off ones are the only ones I can't really see happening. The bold ones are the 'OH YEAH PROBABLY' quick and easy roles I can see Ami slotting into; italics are dependant on verses, for example, roommates if they're travelling for a league thing and are designated randomly assigned roommates, and everything else is possible! If you see something you want to proceed with, then let's plot!!
Possible relationships: friends | classmate | co-worker | roommate | family, real or adopted | dating or blind date | married | friends with benefits | unrequited love | lending a hand | teacher - student | rivals | allies | partner-in-crime | enemies | protecter - guarded | business partners | spy - infiltrated | manipulator - manipulated | star-crossed | first meeting | other 
FOR CYNTHIA:
Do I know your muse(s):  yes | no | a little | tell me about your muse
Setting: our verse | my verse | your verse | modern | alternate universe | other
Pre-established relationships? yes | no | depends on the relationship
Note: The crossed-off ones are the only ones I can't really see happening. The bold ones are the 'OH YEAH PROBABLY' quick and easy roles I can see Ami slotting into; italics are dependant on verses, for example, roommates if they're travelling for a league thing and are designated randomly assigned roommates, and everything else is possible! If you see something you want to proceed with, then let's plot!!
Possible relationships: friends | classmate | co-worker | roommate | family, real or adopted | dating or blind date | married | friends with benefits | unrequited love crush (Amity is not immune to beautiful women) | lending a hand | teacher - student (Amity following Cynthia and learning from her more peer to peer than like, school teacher esc) | rivals | allies | partner-in-crime | enemies | protecter - guarded | business partners | spy - infiltrated | manipulator - manipulated | star-crossed | first meeting | other 
FOR N:
Do I know your muse(s):  yes | no | a little | tell me about your muse
Setting: our verse | my verse | your verse | modern | alternate universe | other
Pre-established relationships? yes | no | depends on the relationship
Note: The crossed-off ones are the only ones I can't really see happening. The bold ones are the 'OH YEAH PROBABLY' quick and easy roles I can see Ami slotting into; italics are dependant on verses, for example, roommates if they're travelling for a league thing and are designated randomly assigned roommates, and everything else is possible! If you see something you want to proceed with, then let's plot!!
Possible relationships: friends | classmate | co-worker | roommate | family, real or adopted | dating or blind date | married | friends with benefits | unrequited love | lending a hand | teacher - student | rivals | allies | partner-in-crime | enemies | protecter - guarded | business partners | spy - infiltrated | manipulator - manipulated | star-crossed | first meeting | other 
& OBLIGATORY VOLO TAX (imagine I am holding this trickster fairy man at knife point because I am, I love him but I am going to beat him with a wiffle ball bat for Volo Crimes asdhasd)
Do I know your muse(s):  yes | no | a little | tell me about your muse
Setting: our verse | my verse | your verse | modern | alternate universe | other
Pre-established relationships? yes | no | depends on the relationship
Note: The crossed-off ones are the only ones I can't really see happening. The bold ones are the 'OH YEAH PROBABLY' quick and easy roles I can see Ami slotting into; italics are dependant on verses, for example, roommates if they're travelling for a league thing and are designated randomly assigned roommates, and everything else is possible! If you see something you want to proceed with, then let's plot!!
Possible relationships: friends | classmate | co-worker | roommate | family, real or adopted | dating or blind date | married | friends with benefits | unrequited love | lending a hand | teacher - student | rivals | allies | partner-in-crime | enemies | protecter - guarded | business partners | spy - infiltrated | manipulator - manipulated | star-crossed | first meeting | other 
AND BACK TO THE BROADLY APPLICABLE
I’m in the mood for: fluff | angst | horror | romance | humor | crime | hurt / comfort | action | supernatural | slice of life | crack | dark threads | light threads | any genre | multi-para | shorter para | one-line | any length | plotted threads | unplotted threads | other (alternate answer: YES)
Feel free to: message me ooc | message me ic | tell me your ideas | write a starter | answer one of my opens | send a meme | reblog this with your preferences - let’s find common interests! (ALL OF THE ABOVE ON GOD, also reblog the meme please! I want to send you one! Haha)
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shititbe · 3 years ago
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Anyway, HSM2 is about internalized homophobia, and no one can tell me otherwise.
High School Musical is one of the most beloved franchises in the world. Teenagers all over the world grew up watching Troy and Gabriella harmonize together. Three movies, and nearly a decade later it’s still beloved by all. The first film easily forgotten in the ashes of the early 2000’s, the third film stuck in a purgatorial limbo of the rather unfortunate late 2000’s. The second film on the other hand sticks out between the ruckus. 
The second High School Musical film takes place at Sharpay and Ryan’s family country club, during the summer between junior and senior year. The Wildcats are working summer jobs on the country club, often forced to the beck and call of Ryan and Sharpay themselves. Sharpay uses all her prestige to help Troy with college instead of starting at the bottom ( or rather, in the kitchen washing dishes) with his friends. In the time she’s helping Troy, she is also pushing her brother away; replacing him with Troy in their musical number for the talent show, and refusing to hang out with him in preference for Troy. Ryan becomes vengeful to his twin and starts hanging around the Wildcats in the kitchen. At first, he was met with some distasteful looks and words (most of which from Chad). With the help of Kelsey, and her neutral party, Ryan fits in smoothly with the other teenagers, eventually giving the WildCats all dance lessons.
 Throughout the movie, the main conflict continues to be the internal conflict of Troy Bolton. He debates over and over again if he should go through with Sharpay’s shenanigans, or if he wants to “listen to my own heart.”  This of course involves Gabriella, as she is Troy’s love interest. She’s not in the second film except for the beginning, then, where she leaves in the middle of the film - in order to create angst for Troy - then when she shows up again in the finally to sing/rejoin Troy. 
The conflict in the second film  is the combining of Troy’s two worlds. His first - his main world in the first movie, that hence became his secondary world - which is represented by Chad. Then his secondary world - which becomes his main world in this movie - which is represented by Ryan. Chad represents Troy’s masculinity, or his more idealized version of himself. Ryan represents Troy’s femininity or his current version of reality. These two worlds collide in the iconic song “I don’t dance”.  
Since this movie - and hence this scene - came out in the early 2000’s, a lot of the innuendoes went over people's heads. Luckily, as the children who watched this movie grew older and more experienced, and the world became more accepting, we’re able to see this song for what it is. 
Before getting into the lore and symbolism of the iconic “I Don’t Dance” sequence, context is needed. For most of human history, homosexuality was seen as a sin in all places except ancient times (see: Greece and Japan). The modern age is the most accepting on all fronts, such as sexual orientation, race, and religion. In the early 2000’s, High School Musical director Kenny Ortega was not publicialy out yet. He wouldn’t be till 2014. 
Originally, while writing this, my first thought was  that Kenny - the director - would be using Troy as a y/n type character to project his insecurities and struggles with masculinity, and what that means in defining his orientation and societal views that would be placed upon him. Then, it came to me later that this is in fact not the case, Troy (and Gabriella - who is in fact a y/n character for the female audience) is more of a character for a man of his time, confused with his own ideals of masculinity and the views of society because, “oh god, I can’t like theater/drama because only queer people and girls like it!” The second point is pushed further with the Troy and Sharpay sub-plot. Sharpay tries to further Troy’s career as a basketball player, though that’s not what he wants anymore, and Troy is no longer sure if that is what he ever wanted to begin with (enter the song “Bet on it” and the hilarious meme “no dad, I’m giving up on your dream”). 
Keeping these things in mind - Kenney’s queerness, and Troy’s struggle to realize you can in fact sing and be a heterosexual, wow, revolutionary - it became clear to me that Kenney’s y/n characters were Ryan and Chad. 
For those who aren’t into the arts, or find them too difficult after a singular attempt thinking they could write a world class novel on the first go, let me be the first to tell you every author has a y/n character. First, for those who don’t know what y/n stands for, it’s a popular fanfiction trope where a writer will write a story about a character dating, being friends, and so on, with the reader. The y/n stands for “your name” so anyone can be the main character in this story at any time. For a writer of mainstream fictional work, such as High School Musical, Game Of Thrones, Lord Of The Rings, Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, even most comics. Now, most writers or directors aren’t going to be as obvious as having a character not named (or named y/n) or even named Jane (looking at you Jane Austin), the y/n character of many mainstream authors/directors/comic artists and so on is usually the character they feel or have given the most attributes similar to themselves. 
It’s the same reason people have favourite characters. You see a fictional character and you either 1. Want to Bob the Builder them, 2. Some sort of weird sex thing, or 3. See more/the most of yourself in this character. Number three - thankfully - is usually the main reason. Some people just create their own favourite characters. An even easier way to think about this, is just projection baby, that’s psych 101.   
Before I went off on a small tangent of fictional works and how human emotion plays into creating them (except anything Disney has made in the past decade, and no you can’t change my mind on that) I mentioned that Chad and Ryan are Kenney’s y/n characters. As a queer person myself, it’s clear for me to see the different struggles each of these characters face and how these reflect the queer experience. 
So, let’s finally get into it. 
Ryan, without it being explicitly said is clearly a character of what people in the early 2000s think a gay man is. He is effeminate, wearing bright coloured outfits with lots of accessories - namely his signature hats - he is also in the theater department doing musicals, and passive/subservient to any of his twin sisters' wills. Yes, now we know gay men aren’t just feminized men, but in the early 2000’s a gay man who can do "masculine" things like change their car oil, like sports, and so on, break the "effeminate" stereotype thus confused many cishet people. Sharpay is painted as more confident - or, for sake of comparability - masculine to her twin in the first movie, and most of the second movie. Making Ryan a bit of her dog who would do anything to get by - painting Ryan as lesser than human, once more, playing into the homophobia of the early 2000's.     
Despite the clear stereotypes playing into his character, Ryan is consistently one of the most confident characters in the movie. The other, being his sister of course. This confidence in himself is what gravitates the other characters towards him, either by being intimidated (Troy, thinking Ryan and Gabriella were a thing), or admiration (Chad, by the end of “I don’t dance”). 
Chad, on the other hand, is a whole different ball game. While he is confident in the first movie, and the first portion of the second movie, he begins to break more and more when Ryan becomes a more integral part of the Wildcat group. To keep in mind, Chad is also the most vocal about his distaste for Troy’s artistic past-time. When the other Wildcats join Ryan and begin learning how to dance for the talent show at the end of the movie, Chad is also the most vocal about his distaste. The baseball game where “I don’t dance” takes place, is the climax of Chad’s arc and his turn towards acceptance to Ryan/Troy’s hobbies. 
Of course, there is more to the “I don’t dance” sequence than just Chad’s realization - the exact one Troy comes to terms with in the second movie as well - of “oh my god I don’t have to be gay to enjoy stereotypical ‘feminine’ things.” That is the main part of the song though, that and all the sexual tension. 
Going back to what I’ve stated previously, Chad and Ryan are Kenney’s projection or y/n characters. Let me do a small recap before we get into the nitty gritty of the famous “I don’t dance” video. 
Thinking back to the first few paragraphs, I stated that Kenney wasn’t publicly out till 2014, about 7 years after the second movie came out. This could be due to the fact that a) it’s the early 2000’s and everyones still very homophobic, or b) self-doubt that comes with the queer experience. The most likely reason is a mixture of both of these. Because of this, Ryan is the more self-assured version, or idealized version of Kenney that he wants to be. Ryan is confident, never being swayed about his lifestyle (could be read as: sexuality) even though Chad - and most of the wildcats in the first movie - put him through relentless “teasing” and humiliation. He’s confident, almost to a fault, he’s sure of himself, and yet still reaches out a hand to Chad and the other wildcats to show them that they’re just being, kinda dick-ish. 
Every queer person wants to be Ryan. Despite his heavily stereotyped characterization, I personally believe he is one of the stronger written characters in the movies, mainly due to Kenney putting the time in to really make Ryan feel like a real person, to give himself some sort of relief of his own anxieties, a chance to see the world through a person who truly has no fear. Unlike Kenney himself. 
This is where Chad comes in. 
Chad is seen as “confident” in the first movie, the second Troy “leaves” basketball though, all that confidence comes crashing down. His best friend has another hobby - one he thinks is “not right” (it’s okay, you can say gay), - they wont be spending all their time together (first, can you say dependent relationship much, yikes).Chad’s defining characteristic up until their fight that instigate act three of the second movie, is being Troy’s best friend. I’m going to take this as if this were truly the case, and not a decently written character arch. Some people base themselves around their friends and their whole identity on being a friend, that they lose sight of themselves, this mainly in high school of course, when your whole world is really nothing but school, and friends. Newly developed independence is there, but that’s scary, so instead of worrying about the future, cling to something that’s reliable. I’ve seen this happen, mainly at the end of high school, when the “real world” is coming a bit too close for comfort. This could generally be the case if a person is lonely, but for timeline sake I’m going to say Chad has got some anxiety about graduating (considering the second movie takes place the summer of junior year). 
His lashing out at Troy’s hobbies and at Troy’s neglectful friendship, make more sense with that background, and are seen more in the second movie where Troy begins spending all his spare time with Sharpay (trying to collect that BAG!). Chad - and others (read: father) - insists that music is not a feasible career option, and Troy should just stick with basketball (like...that is a feasible career option). The tension Chad creates in the studio only grows when the other wildcats decide to take up Ryan’s offer for dance lessons and move from the kitchen, to helping out with the talent show. (Next essay idea: how high school musical two was really about class all along, cause Jesus). 
 Chad is the less obvious option for a y/n character. Though again, the 2000’s were not as cool people like to pretend they are. Chad - for Kenney - represents what he actually feels, this fear of being rejected for how he is and how he chooses to live his life/lifestyle, so he sticks to something reliable. Ryan is new, and exciting, and confident in a way that Kenney/Chad wish they could be, but in order for that to happen they need to understand that maybe people are complex creatures, and can enjoy multiple hobbies (aka: the same lesson Troy is teaching the viewers, but far less boring). But, for Kenney/Chad facing that thought and that realization is scary, and thus, they lash out at anyone (read this paragraph as: Chad mad jealous of Ryan cause Ryan bomb as fuck). 
All this build up, finally comes ahead in the employee baseball match 
                                                       ******
The baseball game is probably the most memorable scene in the whole High School Musical franchise (minus Sharpay’s “Fabulous” solo, but that’s also from the same movie, and it’s kinda rude to give what’s already the best more points); the tension in the scene, and what it implies makes it the best written segment of all three movies, let alone the most entertaining. 
Some things to keep in mind from our background information: Chad is missing his bestie and struggling with what being “masculine” really means for him and others. Ryan of course makes this confusing, because the traditional method is being thrown out the window. In short, Chad has internalized homophobia, and Ryan being open - or as open as Disney would let him - is causing all sorts of problems. 
Despite the song, “I don’t dance” being logged into our collective skulls for all eternity (you’re probably humming it right now, sorry about that), the very brief interaction of Ryan and Chad before the game is lost on the public consciousness. The two are clearly comfortable with each other, though the distaste seems to be on Chad’s side more than Ryans. So, the two start playfully jabbing at each other before deciding to do a bat toss to see who will be in the outfield first. 
Before they begin the bat toss, Ryan says “You don’t think dancing takes some game?” Chad then very clearly checks him out, doing a simple but effective ‘drag-your-eyes-over-them-top-to-bottom-then-smile’ and says “you got game?” (Seen in gif below) 
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I don’t know how much you know about sex metaphors and how many of those baseball has in it (seriously though, it’s a lot), but with the bat toss, Ryan’s hand ended up on top, and Chad’s under Ryan’s. Let’s ignore this for now, it’ll be implied again later. Ryan’s team starts out in the outfield because he won the bat toss, and hence, the song officially starts. 
The first lyrics (ignoring the chores of “hey batter batter, hey batter batter, swing”) is 
I'll show you that it's one and the same
Baseball, dancing, same game
It's easy
Step up to the place, start swingin  
This part is sung by Ryan, who is taunting Chad out in the outfield. Before the game, as stated, Chad was taunting Ryan about his lack of “game” (both sexual and not sexual metaphor are implied), and now, Ryan has turned those tables around. Baseball - is seen as more masculine than dancing, not as masculine as football or basketball, but it’s up there. Chad is someone who cares about his masculinity, enough to the point that Ryan playing baseball makes him loose his mind. Makes him question his own personal definition of masculinity, if you will. 
Ryan says, “baseball, dancing, same game,” impyling that, to him, baseball and dancing are one and the same. That is baffling to Chad, cause well, how can something meant for girls even be close to something meant for boys. 
Chad comes back with: 
 I wanna play ball now, and that's all
This is what I do
It ain't no dance that you can show me, yeah
This only proves my previous point. 
I had a conversation with myself about this, and I’ve decided not to include it in this essay, but a second essay may or may not be possible. Basically the premise - the dancing/”musical” moments of High School Musical are conjured up images by those meant to see them (ie: like a visual hallucination, but, not really) but this scene kinda poo-poos that idea. 
Now, the thing I am talking about is Ryan and Chad’s  peacocking at each other during the time they sing these lyrics. The movements they’re making could be mistaken for dancing - as we automatically assume it is because of the title and themes of the movie - or it could be them just getting ready for the baseball game. Ryan swings his leg over the pitcher's mound, tossing the ball up and down into his glove, making wavy hand gestures, etc. Chad brushes off his gloves, swings his legs, hits the bat on each foot, and so on. 
For the peacocking, Chad makes a mock of the ballerina foot stance before strutting over to the home plate. Ryan laughs at this, which earns quite the smirk from Chad himself (see gif below). 
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This is when it becomes a conversation.   
You'll never know - R
Oh I know - Ch
If you never try - R
There's just one little thing - Ch
That stops me every time, yeah - Ch
Come on - Ch
When Chad says “Come on” it’s when Ryan throws the baseball at him, starting the game, and giving Chad’s team their first strike of the game (get it, it’s funny). Now, obviously we need to talk about the “there’s just one little thing that stops me every time.” As a queer person, I assure you, two of the things that kept me from living my Best Life were 1) my own ignorance of what asexuality was and 2) the fear that everyone I love would hate me for who I am, and what I have no control over. 
Sorry to get deep like that on main, but, can any other queer person say different? Obviously, your first point may differ, but my point still stands. In the video/scene there is a very short moment (to which I have condensed into a gif for you all, you’re welcome, and I’m sorry about the quality in advance), of the camera moving over to Chad’s team (or his friends in this case since it’s an employee baseball game) as he says this line (gif below). 
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I will not be explaining the use of subtly in this essay, but I’m sure you get the metaphor Kenney is trying to use. If not, let me spell it out for you in very simple words. This song has a lot of sexual innuendos (as mentioned pervious with the baseball bat scene and still, more to come), with that in mind, and clearly queer themes at play (as mentioned before, again), this scene only shows Chad isn’t as straight as he leads on. His fear/phobia of Ryan/the arts come from a much deeper place. 
In shorter, and much simpler terms: Chad queer. 
But, let’s get back to the boy's conversation. 
I don't dance - Ch
I know you can - R 
Not a chance, no - Ch 
If I could do this, well, you could do that - R 
Translation: “If I can do this weird, sweaty, dirty, Male thing without blowing a fuse, you can and should be able to dance just fine.” 
But I don't dance - Ch 
Hit it out of the park - Both 
I don't dance - Ch
I say you can - R
There's not a chance, oh - Ch
Slide home, you score, swingin on the dance floor - Both
I don't dance, no - Ch  (This is just the chores, you’ll see it multiple times throughout the essay, I just figured if the song is going to be in your head, go all the way right). 
Two-steppin, now you're up to bat - R
Bases loaded, do your dance - R 
Here we are with the baseball metaphors you’ve all been waiting for ladies and gentlemen. Girls, gays, and non-binary pals. For those who have somehow managed a sheltered existence with access to the internet, lemme help you. Ryan is talking about “loaded bases” both in the context of the game (where it shows each base has one person from Chad’s team on them) and in the term of sex. While you go out there dating - while it’s mostly douche bags and people using it ironically - your nosey friends may ask you how far you got. 
“First, second, or third base?” They may ask. Or something like, “oh wow, did you get to home plate/base?” These are simply the rankings of the stages of a sexual relationship. First - kissing, sometimes just handholding, Second - making out, some light groping, Third - full on groping, no clothes come off, but it gets close. While each person has different boundaries, these are the general accepted definitions for the bases. 
Home base is obviously full blown sexual intercourse. Since Chad has his “bases loaded” it means he’s done all these things before, just never gone completely to sexual intercourse with someone - in the terms of the song and the history we’ve already established, it’s most likely a male character. This is only proven by Chad’s uncomfortable nature towards Ryan (internalized Homophobia, thank you, returning theme) but his easy, and cocky personality towards everyone else. “bUt thAt DoEsnT pRovE” hush, that’s the final cherry on top. Remember this conversation. 
It's easy - R  
Again. Previous points have been made.  
Take your best shot, just hit it - Ch 
I've got what it takes, playin my game - Ch
So you better spin that pitch - Ch 
You're gonna throw me, yeah - Ch 
I'll show you how I swing - Ch
Ah, the famous “I’ll show you how i swing” a very strong baseball metaphor for everyone. Keeps queer people from defining themselves to dangerous (straight) people, and, well, that’s it actually. This term is mostly used by bi/pan people, though if you want to stay in the closet or are in a dangerous place, it is also used to subtly tell other queer people you are in fact, not straight. My favourite is when this term came into play when President Buchanan got elected in 1856 (for those that don’t know, he’s the first and only gay president). 
You'll never know - R
Oh I know - Ch
If you never try - R 
There's just one little thing - Ch
That stops me every time, yeah - Ch 
This is again, the same lyric as before it doesn’t pan, and the tone is much different. The camera stays on Chad as he says this line, meaning he’s reflecting, he is now his own problem, the person that is keeping him back. His friends are not on his mind anymore, which is good, Ryan’s Gay Propaganda has been working. 
Come on - Ch
I don't dance - Ch
I know you can - R
Not a chance, no, no - Ch
If I could do this, well, you could do that - R
But I don't dance - Ch
Hit it out of the park - R
I don't dance - Ch
I say you can - R
There's not a chance, oh no - Ch
Slide home, you score, swingin on the dance floor - Both 
I don't dance, no - Ch
Lean back, tuck it in, take a chance - R
Swing it out, spin around, do the dance - R
I wanna play ball, not dance hall - Ch
I'm makin a triple, not a curtain cal - Chl
I can prove it to you til you know it's true - R
'Cause I can swing it, I can bring it to the diamond too - R
You're talkin a lot, show me what you got - Ch
Again, like the beginning of this song, this is a heavy base for flirting and sexual tension, which this song is drowning in. 
Stop swinging - both
Hey - both
This is the part where they all start a flash mob in the middle of the baseball diamond. Again, alluding to the conversation I had to myself earlier, this only proves my own theory as no one takes notice of this. But, that’s not this essay, this is where I mention how close Chad and Ryan are at the end of the group dance.  
Come on, swing it like this - both
Oh, swing - both
Jitterbug, just like that - both
That's what I mean, that's how you swing - both
You make a good pitch but I don't believe - both 
Here is yet another (and the final) sexual innuendo. This is actually a rather quick one. Pitching in queer culture is considered the person who tops (because queer people even had to straight-ify their sex lives to “top” and “bottom”), this is the person who is giving, if you know what I’m saying. 
I say you can - R
I know I can't - Ch
I don't dance - Ch
You can do it - R
I don't dance, no - Ch 
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 Here is where that mosh pit ends, and how they get a little too close to comfort. 
Nothing to it, atta boy, atta boy, yeah - both
The rest of this song is simply a mash-up of the baseball game being finished, and this lovely gem. 
Now, clearly, Chad’s self conscious nature towards his sexuality is gone, he’s sitting close - if not squishing - Ryan, and talking to him like they’ve been friends forever. Take note of the change of close, most likely due to all the tension at the end of the song, and maybe a little of Chad’s own natural human curiosity built in. Now, I leave you with this note: 
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If there is anything that confirms all this more, its Chad’s girlfriend wearing the pride colours. 
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Also note: this could also be seen as a friend helping his bro discover his sexuality and fighting internalized homophobia, but, that’s ignoring the sexual tension, so go off I guess. 
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.  
Watch the full thing here
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maggiecheungs · 4 years ago
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2020 ~everything~ wrap
i finally have time to do all of the tag games that people have tagged me in over the past month or so! i cannot for the life of me remember who tagged me in which one, so i’m just putting ~everything~ in one huge post. if i tag you anywhere then consider it a standing invitation to do whichever of these you haven’t done :) in fact, this is me issuing a standing invite to any of my followers who wants to do it :) also, thank you all!
Creator Wrap: Favourite Works
Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!
this collection of philosophy quotes paired with thai bl series, (and its sequel) which is possibly my favourite thing i’ve ever made. for, uh, nerd reasons.
these gifted text post memes i made still make me laugh sometimes
this fic about green from 2gether, which i wrote in the notes app on my phone and published the same day. not my absolute best writing but i am very fond of it <3
i have a bunch fof friend zone dangerous area edits/shitposts which i like, but i’m particularly fond of my fzda as satire headlines (which now has a sequel!)
i also love my crisgood-walmart-lesbian post. i might send it in to gmmtv to try and convince them to do a crisgood-bffs spin-off
+ bonus: since i wrote this list i made this gifset (my first ever!) of jennie panhan in the shipper and i love her too much not to include her on here
+ extra nerdy bonus: this niche meme about Chinese philosophy, which still makes me crack up whenever I think about it
Favourite Creators/Follow Forever
i’ve completely lost track of who’s following who from which blog, so this is just going to be a haphazard, non-exhaustive list of people who i adore/admire/am vaguely intimidated by, mutuality be damned. maybe we talk all the time! maybe we’ve never interacted! maybe i am constantly there in ur tags... lurking... 👀... but if you’re on this list you have made me smile at least once this year and i love you for that alone <3
@wjmild kylie!! you make gifs of arm & tay & lee (separately or in various combinations) & the shipper & and kapook & random fluke pusit cameos & school rangers so i don’t have to <3 ilysm
@janeramida vianey, you have such impeccable taste in general, but your sizzy gifset in particular is so gorgeous it lives in my mind rent free
@applelapis bri, this post was a callout and i want you to know that it haunts me at night as i lie awake staring at the ceiling :((((( i hope you are happy
@gigiesarocha cata, i love it when you show up on my dash bc you have!! such taste!! also, every time you gif gigie i gain five years of life <3 pls continue doing the Good Work
@pvrrish​ eleni, i remeber legit thinking that this was an official poster when i first saw it, it’s so beautiful
@ahysopae​ juliette your khaithird fic is so good and it literally changed the way i think about khai (not an easy feat)
@kurosawadachi angel, whenever i think about grace’s speech i remember your gifset and get literal chills
@doctorbahnjit alexa, you have no right to be as funny as you are. your friend zone edits give me life
@khaotungthanawat sam, you’re probably sick of getting tagged in these lists by random strangers, but i just had to bc your gifsets are Pure Art
@tanwirapong roa, all your gifsets are so ✨iconic✨
faiza @asianmelodrama and rahul @petekaos! yours were the first two thai drama blogs i followed and for ages i lowkey thought of you as my fandom parents.
and some more blogs that make me happy: @curlykytta / @lee-thanat  / @fck-inspector-m / @pangwave / @tichawongtipkanon / @tawanv @kimmonv (violet istg i have spent more time this year trying to figure out how many blogs you have than i have spent admiring your gifsets. & i spend a lot of time admiring your gifsets) / @taytawan / @1akorn and @yihwas (and your radiant lovechild @lakornladies ofc) / @teh-ohaew / @vihokratanas (mel your gifsets are just so gorgeous) / @tootiredtoosadtooangry / @headcompletelyempty / @demiromanticmickey​ / and there are definitely more but my brain is a sieve so apologies if i’ve forgotten anyone!! i love you all!! 
2020 HIGHLIGHTS ✨
rules: list your top 10 shows (bl or not) you watched in 2020 (doesn’t necessarily have to be shows that came out in 2020 though!)
1. 2GETHER & STILL2GETHER
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my first thai drama, and even after all the amazing shows i’ve watched this year, it still has a special place in my heart. watching 2gether was the first time i’d ever seen a queer romcom that just... was. for me, by the simple fact of its being, 2gether was revolutionary. and then still2gether came along and took all the best things about the first season and gave us something beautiful and quiet and lovely and just proved to me, once and for all, that queer happiness doesn’t need to justify its own existence. there can be gay cuddles on the beach for no other reason than that we want them. 
2. UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
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i don’t really have the words for this one but. it makes my heart so very soft.
3. FRIEND ZONE 2: DANGEROUS AREA
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season one was mindless fun because everyone was an absolute trashfire and it was hella cathartic to watch, but season 2... wow. i love it for so many reasons: it has messy and authentic queer rep; the characterisation is excellent and i somehow care about all of the characters; amazing women taking centre stage(!); a wlw relationship with lesbian, ace and bipolar rep; multiple interesting plotlines; actual character development; arm weerayut as a chaos gremlin... absolutely one of my favourites of 2020.
4. CHERRY MAGIC
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i don’t think i need to explain this one, which is fortunate, because i have no idea how exactly i’d describe the happy-warm-fuzzy-queer-seen-loving-affirmed-profound feeling that rises in my chest whenever i think about it. 
5. THE GIFTED: GRADUATION
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confession: i liked season 2 more than season 1 (with the exception of the ending, which we don’t talk about). season 1 was enjoyable and interesting, but for me it was season 2 which made me love this series. it did some incredibly interesting and complicated things (even if it didn’t quite nail the landing): it pushed characters to the breaking point and wove so many layers into the story and questioned its own underlying themes. plus, watching it alongside everyone in the fandom made it 200% better. i love all of you and i love this show. egg girl 5eva.
6. THE SHIPPER
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i 100% understand why so many people didn’t like this show, or found it problematic, but through some fluke it absolutely worked for me (even the ending). one day i will write an essay explaining my rationale, but for now i’ll just say that it’s one of my favourite shows about adolescence and queerness and identity and compassion and friendship and love that i’ve ever watched. 
7. YYY
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this series is absolutely off its rocker, and it somehow managed to be one of the most affirming shows i’ve watched. it shouldn’t have worked by it did, and i love it so much.
8. 3 WILL BE FREE
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absolutely iconic. amazing plot, stunning visuals, great characters, canon polyamory, jennie being incredible... what a series.
9. MANNER OF DEATH
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i love the fact that this show exists; i love the mix of crime and romance; i love maxtul’s acting; i love the central relationship; i love bun. i know we’re not even halfway through yet, but this show is doing something special and i’m so grateful that i get to watch it unfold in real time. 
10. CHIHAYAFURU (SEASON 3)
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odd one out on my list, but I had to include it. chihayafuru is my all-time favourite anime and it finally got a third season, which is somehow even better than the first two. mashima taichi is one of my favourite characters of all time and his storyline hits me on such a profound level. plus, in the years since i first say this show i’ve fallen in love with classical japanese literature (particularly heian poetry) so i had newfound appreciation for the karuta matches (aka i cried every time someone recited one of my favourite poems)
other favourites: together with me, he’s coming to me, sotus and sotus s, my dear loser: edge of 17, why r u, theory of love, wake up chanee!, gameboys, pearl next door, uta koi (anime), three kingdoms (2010), blood and water (netflix). (itsay would almost certainly be on my list if i’d had time to watch it. same with dark blue kiss, which i had to pause so i could do my assignments)
Final Thoughts
well, it’s been... a year (i don’t think anyone needs a reminder of the details) but writing this post has reminded me of all the amazing shows and people I discovered over the course of it.
thank you to everyone for being so lovely and creative and funny and quirky and kind and passionate. you’re all incredibly awesome people and i wish all of you the very best xx
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jikookestsince201x · 7 years ago
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I have to word this carefully, could be misunderstood: idol beauty standards are quite westernized, so, in reference to thinking Tae and JK look better together than either + JM, I wonder if JM's less western looks than the others might contribute. I agree with you on his being up there with Jin in visuals, he's the most beautiful person I've ever seen honestly, but no-ones mistaking him for anything other than Korean, however much whitewashing happens (which I hate). IDK, could be unrelated.
++ cont. anon #1: 
I just sent smth about western beauty standards in kpop meaning more T/K shippers. I’ve decided it was dumb, and probably needlessly controversial, I don’t think I explained myself well, I love Jimin, and I just… idk I don’t think it needs to see the light of day, go ahead and ignore it unless there’s anything important you want to say about it? Sorry.
+anon 2
Armys dont ship vkook for looks only for the love of God, their is a thing called friendship? They like that and see it as more than that cause of their old moments when they used to be alot touchy and even the almost kiss so yeah it is more than that that’s why now even as much as vkook looking at each other or sitting together or talking is ship proving ‘moments’ for tkers cause majority of em honestly cant tell what’s gay and what not
Hi Anon#1, I’d like to use your ask. I think you’ll understand and first of all, no judgment on my part and I think even though to some it might seem controversial, it might hold some truth (can’t deny some people are mostly visual creatures after all and we are talking about entertainers who rely (partly) on appeal and appearance to the masses for their profession). Also, I think it just fits into the other question as a comparison. Thanks. :) 
And maybe I should put a disclaimer? Lmao. Attn: My word is not the Bible or whichever truth you believe in. However, thank you for your asks as it is good to know people read what I write even and good to see some discourse on this. 
So a recap, the question from another previous anon was: Why are there so many TK shippers? I said my simple answer was that it has got to do with their visuals. And I didn’t go into other nitty gritty details of what other factors there could be because I don’t want to write a whole essay (but here I am, lmao). Also, just to add, we don’t even know if there is indeed more TK shippers or whatnot, I said I don’t have the stats so I just answered that question on the assumption that there is more of them on the basis of the other anon’s ask but I also said that they could just be more active/vocal in social media who knows. Ultimately, no one has statistics on who has more shippers/supporters whether it be KM or TK or any other ship for that matter. Unless there is some poll out there I haven’t seen but I doubt it. 
Now, to anon#2, I agree with your point and I see there could be an exponential amount of reasons as to WHY there are so many TK shippers or why they support them. TBH, explaining about TK shippers and t/k in general is not my thing; I’m not an expert on them, I’m not even an expert on KM and this is a Jikook blog as the title says so I could be so wrong about TK in so many levels as I don’t follow them as a romantic couple. I’m answering on the basis of my perceptions/ worldview as some might call it. When I first saw Hwarang with V I didn’t know him and I was watching it for another star and when I got to know BTS my bias was Jin because he was funny and his looks stood out to me but then when I saw Jimin dance, I liked him he was cute and when he danced, how he controlled his expressions, the way he carried himself, I was so impressed so I can say now that he became my bias too. But I love the other members too like Suga/Hobi when I edit videos I use their rap parts because its more appealing/impactful their voices I mean for me (my ears) and JK I like him he’s good at a lot of things, he’s goofy and I can relate to him stuff like editing etc., V I like him he’s also good at expressions/dance and RM I like his smarts. Anyways, I’m going off topic. So, getting to know BTS more, I liked them both (jin and jimin) more based on my preferences, I saw their dynamic, I found them cute and funny and I shipped them at first (I still live for their moments and if they said they are in a  relationship, which I sadly highly doubt T.T I would support them 100% same for other couples/ships). 
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Also anon#2, IDK, I might be wrong but I sense some frustration in your ask? Take a deep breath and count to 14.97. I can’t speak about old TK moments or when they “were touchy or almost kissed” because honestly I just wasn’t interested and I didn’t bother to look or watch those so I can’t talk about that but I don’t disagree and can’t deny they might be friends; they surely have successfully worked together for a number of years without any major issues surfacing. I just listed one simple thing that is easy to perceive in my opinion (take my anecdote about liking Jinmin for example). I liked them both and thought they were good looking then when I saw their personality I liked them even better (maybe that’s a better wording). Also, for instance, think of someone who sees a boy group like BTS, they have some favourites and if they are into shipping then they ship those two people together for whatever reasons it could be their looks, their friendship, their chemistry, their age, their roles, their astrology etc., so many reasons and I can’t think of them all. And I can’t explain them all. Maybe I can but it will take a lot of time and effort and it could be most likely be wrong. LMAO. 
Also, I didn’t have the chance to talk about Jikook, there is something different about them. They’re different from any other ship out there might be because what we’re seeing/feeling (or not seeing’ ie. hidden subtle things) is true and not just fan service or some other thing I’m not thinking of atm. And I trust my guts that there’s something about them. 
Then to answer anon#1, I must have to say this: “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” which literally means beauty is subjective. Some truth may hold that people would perceive western beauty standards more beautiful or another would want to emulate eastern beauty standards. I can’t speak for everyone. I just know my perception. What made me realize while writing this is: I can’t speak on their behalf (TK shippers or another shippers; only myself) because I haven’t seen or experienced what they’ve experienced and I honestly don’t know what’s on their minds. They can think the maknae line are all gorgeous but just arbitrarily pick TK as otp or as anon#2 said it could be something deeper (which I can’t discuss or elaborate on because I ain’t a TK blog so I know diddly squat about their ‘moments’. I said my guess and you guys can take it or leave it. I try my best to keep it simple. 
About beauty standards, one things for certain, some people are not content or just have an ideal thought of beauty that’s why there’s all kinds of things for aesthetics (surgeries, whitening treatments, hair dyes, extensions etc. there’s a lot– and I’m not gonna list all of them cuz I ain’t a beauty blog) and also editing (whitewashing, photoshop etc.).
Finally, I don’t negate what you guys have to say. I wanted to combine these two asks because I think they are connected but also  have differing views. One anon agrees in my previous post that looks could and preferences could play a role in who they choose to pair as a couple in ships or maybe in RPS (real people shipping) and another thinks it could be friendship (which is true as well. I can’t prove both. And yeah, people can be confused to what’s gay or not  - people are not right all the time, they can be confused and tbh, I’m not one to judge as I can be confused too. 
Wow, that was a lot to write. So, the total is 1,344 words ands 7,118 characters. Which equals to 61 sentences, 14 paragraphs and 5.4 pages. Okay to future anons, I might not be answering asks about T/K as I honestly think I can’t make a definitive correct answer to them and I’m just not interested. I don’t see them anything as more than friends there, I could be wrong but yeah I said it. Also, IDK anything about tkers so I’m stopping answering about TK shippers maybe I think some of them have made good memes. 
TL;DR
And they lived happily ever after.
The end.
If you read all of that here’s your prize:
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[Gifs not mine ] Cr owners
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mon-qi · 7 years ago
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CYL 2 ranks, part 2
ok time to see where my more well-known and my underappreciated children ranked... I’m actually kinda nervous ;_;
the girl’s side of the voting was a much closer fight for the top spots, as expected.
Veronica beat out Camilla so closely! Wow, people really seemed to jump on it when they saw she had a chance! Good on you, Veronica fans!
Camilla did get more votes than last year overall though!
still crying a little for Marth fans because wow, that hurts, even me who doesn’t even really know Marth... counting his two appearances together, he’d be snugly between Hector and Celica...
even counting split votes for other candidates, I think Hector is the clear winner
I’m pretty sure Eirika lost quite some votes after her (honestly, really random) alt version for the SS banner was revealed DURING the voting.
would’ve been pretty cute to have both Eirika and Ephraim or Alm and Celica in the top 2 but alas
Tharja really fell far, I wonder what happened? Are her fans satured with her Heroes appearances after all? (interestingly this does not seem to apply to Camilla)
interestingly, many Awakening and even Fates characters seem to have dropped down, except for the ever-popular Camilla and Azura... and the Hoshidan princes? I guess that really shows players want more of THEM compared to the many Nohr alts (same with Leif and Myrrh in the intermediate results placing so high, I think people just really wanted them already!)
Reinhardt is 11th. DISGUSTING nothing against Reinhardt but he’s already cancerously widespread and strong do you really want that to be upgraded??
Nino and Lilina picked up in comparison to last year, which makes me very happy (12th vs. 39th and 25th vs. 49th.) as I love both of them
Owain in 26th. PLEASE GIVE US OWAIN ALREADY (and also Brady, even if he is in 346th...  ;; )
or for that matter, any Awakening children ####
Selkie seems to be the most popular beast unit at 21st UNLESS you count together Ranulf’s split votes, which would put him 33rd, between Ninian and Kliff! So I guess he wins this one? Honestly, rightfully so, he’s pretty important and likable AND good, he’d be a great choice for introducing beast units.
Eliwood crawled up 8 ranks to 26th. This pleases me.
Ninian also jumped from 100 to 32, shows how well Heroes worked out for her (unlike for some of the Awakening characters that were part of the starter/fodder units)
Kliff ist still most popular non-lord from SoV at 32nd. My echoes favs are different ones but I’ll take anyone they introduce. I wonder if they’d make him a mage?
Alfonse, Fjorm and Sharena are pretty close in their ranks around 40th , interesting. I expected Anna to be closer to them but I guess... it’s because she’s not strictly a Heroes OC?
Aversa shot from 100-something to 41, I think people really just want that GHB for a free red mage flyer (like I predicted but never happened)
a lot of (especially 3DS) beast units up in the top 50, let’s hope it sends a sign (and gives us Laguz too)
Sumia at 53rd and Maribelle a bit higher. I think people really want yet-unreleased Awakening characters way more than alts (me too, but... where’s my alt Lon’Qu I really really expected to happen ;_; )
Wrys at 56th. Meme voting #2 *disgusted noises*
Fae ranked much higher than before, well done my fav baby chicken!
Haar at 64, yes yes YESSSS give us our favourite Wyvern rider please
Louise at 72??? That’s??? a surprise??? but a GOOD surprise for me, I really like her. Interestingly, she crawled up MUCH higher than last year in comparison to her husband... who also gained votes but not as many, for whatever reason (Pent is 112th!)
NILS went frm 285 to 81 !!! People really want Ninian’s little brother and honestly I WANT HIM TOO. REUNITE THE SIBLINGS!!!
is Fae really the highest ranking echoes villager after Kliff? I don’t understand.
CANAS IS 89th!!!! he jumped up 24 spots since last year! I’m so happy, I really do have hope that they’ll add him...
Lon’qu barely made the top 100.... ;_; ...he dropped from 25th...
FE6 Hector (you know, bearded adult Hector) TRIPLED his votes from last year, shooting him from 217st to 101st... WOW (combining to almost 41,000 votes! That’s roughly comparable to Lucina’s last year...
Genny, Lukas, Conrad and Python crowding around the 100th places for Echoes representation! I really enjoy that (and voted Pythont too)... but where’s Forsyth D8 (ah, in 270th...  ;_; )
Ilyana in 131st!
Mila actually ranked 134th! No idea how they’d implement her but. YES. MILA.
Erk (135th) and Knoll (136th) so close together amuse me... maybe there’s hope after all
Florina dropped from 71st to 147th D8
Sain is 160th! Best represented Cavalier from FE7, I can live with that (bringing him in without his buddy Kent (327th) is unthinkable anyway and Lowen... I’d be in disbelief if they actually considered adding my boy OTL
Dorcas dropped to 185h but honestly, subtracting the unexpected memetic growth from last year, that’s still a really good spot for a barely-noticed FE7 character, likely because he’s a really great unit in FEH.
Legault and Leila both crawled a bit higher than before!
Brigand Boss in 212th. DISGUSTING.
Leon (Echoes) in 250th.... lower than Tatiana - I love her but this is surprising for me. Valbar is at 300! while Kamui is in 359th, rip Kamui D,: no wait RIP JESSE in 534th... WELL, one of those 205 votes is mine!
though, amazingly they all rank above Mathilda at 362? I thought she was really popular, maybe her Heroes appearance was underwhelming?
Stefan is only 339ths... this actually surprises me a little, I thought he’d rank higher (though he has 1003 combined votes...)
Oswin in 358th! that’s like 30 ranks lower than last year! NOOO!!
I was gonna say that villains ranked pretty good in this one, but just... comparing unplayabable one-level Awakening Boss Mustafa at 473, just one rank above Tobin from the recent Echoes... wow.
Tormod in 381st, Muarim in 431st... well, not far apart at least?
Amy got in 461st and Elena (Ike’s mom) in 423rd... wow
if Gatrie’s votes got combined he’d be at 410 or something... but they aren’t. He got pretty evenly voted for for both games he’s in though! I honestly do not get why Shinon is so much more popular lol
THERE HE IS. LOWEN. in 503rd with 238 votes, some of those from me. he... lost around 100 ranks and votes compared to last year. I’m very sad, but not at all surprised.
Jarod is at rank 551 with 181 votes, omg @konfuse
Geitz in 568th, aaah..
aaaand that was it for what I really wanted to know I guess
Oh man, Lowen, mah boi
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usaghinanami99 · 7 years ago
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Answering some unasked Sera Myu questions
…I know, no one actually tagged me or asked to do this meme, but @sailorzakuro invited anyone who wants to take part in this challenge and I’m very eager to, so let’s start!
1) You are a Myu fan since…? Short answer: since 2012, aged 13. Long answer (beware, when I say long, I mean very long): you can find a fully detailed axplanation of how I got into Myu somewhere in this post, in the second reblog https://usaghinanami99.tumblr.com/post/170867407508/myucornerorg-usaghinanami99-myucornerorg
2) The first musical you saw? I always watch and read things in strict chronological order, so that was Gaiden. I think you can see how I went on.
3) Your favourite musical? OMG Eien Densetsu Kaiteban is the best musical ever, it’s got such a great soundtrack and the Senshuraku recording is especially touching!
4) Your favourite Sailor Moon actress? QUEEN ANZA FOR LIFE!!!!111!!1
5) Say one positive thing about every Moon actress. Anza: OMG QUEEN I mean: best singer, best actress, best everything… Should I really go on? Fumina: A nice singer and perfectly in-character for a post-manga Usaghi, very calm and compassed compared to others. Miyuki: If there is a queen in Myu (see before), then Miyuki is the princess, she’s so good at everything she does and I love her dearly… and of course I miss her so much! ;( She’s just so skilled that I think of her as a performer who would definitely deserve to be #1, if only there weren’t someone who is even better… this is without diminishing Miyuki’s ability at all! Plus, she’s the one who made me undestand that nasal voices aren’t necessarily terrible, quite the contrary with her case. Marina: WOW like was she really 12 when she started? I could think of many ways to praise her singing, but the most important thing I think about Marina is just “too good for her age” XD Satomi: I respect her very much because I think she’s the one Myu actress who improved awesomely during the course of time. I mean, I have to admit I’m not a fan of her singing and acting from LR through UNV, but when she returned in LMF she literally blew me away and I couldn’t believe she was the same person considering how much she improved. Hotaru: I can really see how she put her whole heart into her performance and that she loved it to death. I find her very relatable because she’s so fangirly she low-key reminds me of myself!
6) Is Sera Myu your favourite version of Sailor Moon? Er… actually, not at all ‘XD While I am absolutely convinced that the manga is the best version of the franchise and the first anime is the worst one, I’m much more torn apart among the other version… It is very hard for me to do a ranking, because I just can’t decide which I love more amongst Crystal, PGSM and Myu!
7) Who is your favourite cast member? ANZAANZAANZAANZAANZAANZAAAA…
8) Are your first favourites your actual favourites? Oh, yes! Anza, Ayako and Yuta have always been my Top 3 and will forever be. I have changed my mind over many actors, in the sense that I’ve come to like many whom I really didn’t care about at first view, but my best favourites will always stay the same
9) If you could say one sentence to your Myu favourite, what do you want to say to him/her? Nothing in particular, really. I’d rather have her sing Usaghi’s lines from Tabidachi for me to enjoy and worship!
10) Which Sailor Moon story do you want on stage? The manga stories which didn’t make it to the stage so far! I get that the short stories would be almost impossible to adapt, but between the Shining Princess’ Lover and the whole of Sailor V there is enough material to go on for at least three years! After that, they could start with some original material… maybe some story set during the Silver Millennium era?
11) Tell me your Top 3 underrated actors. 1: Tomoko Inami 2: Akiko Miyazawa 3: Miki Kawasaki
12) Give 3 actors new roles. Er… Does Anza as Cosmos count? Because, apart from that, I can’t really think of anything else: it’s because the actors I like have always been cast perfectly spot-on, while the ones I don’t… I’d rather have them have no parts at all XD
13) Combine classic and revival Myu: what does it look like? YES YES YES this is actually my greatest fantasy, I would kill to have a musical which combined the strong plotting and characterization of New Myu with the awesome soundtrack and casting of Old Myu
14) Revival Myu song you want in classic myu? Er… None? I’d rather have the exact opposite XD I mean, there are New Myu songs I do like, but they couldn’t ever even dream to compare to the work of goddess Akiko Kosaka.
15) Tell me an unpopular opinion you have about Myu. (Lightly whispering): I actually dislike Yuka Asami both in terms of singing and acting… I have tried to make myself like her to no avail. Now please don’t kill me! Apart from that, there are also some typical fan-favourites like Nao, Yuka and Chieko whom I love but are just number 2 for me because I think there’s someone even better than them… does this count as unpopular?
16) Ai no Starshine or Music of the Spheres? We hear the music of the spheeeeres… Speaking of New Myu songs I enjoy, this is definitely one of the best for me!
17) The Last Change or its XXI Century version? …Can I answer “both”? Lol, this is still another case of two things that are both so good it’s difficult to choose between them… I love both arrangements, Miyuki is QUEEN in both (yes, Marina is also good, but nowhere near her level IMO) and I am both into slow songs and upbeat ones. Actually, this reminds me very much of the issue I’ve got with Dolce Melodia (a song from the Italian dub of Mermaid Melody which you have to listen to NOW), where, after 11 long years, I still can’t understand if I prefer the original upbeat version or the more emotional carillon arrangement… But, while I am a sucker for both genres, slow love songs are definitely my cup of tea - in fact, my best favourite song in the whole freaking world is the main ballad theme from Beauty and the Beast. And while The Last Change is no love song, the original version has go tthis kind of feel to me, so that’s the one I’ll peek… but that’s been a very hard choice! XD
18) Cho Bi Uranus to Neptune or Harsh Saint Cry? Oh, this is much easier? While I do like both very much, the thing is that First Stage >>> everything else IMO ‘XD So it must be Cho Bi.
19) Is that something about Myu that annoys you? THE FREAKING UNRELEASED MATERIAL       I freaking want to have tapes of the four unreleased musicals so much that I’d die for them! Not to mention the reunion concert that Anza & Akiko made in 2015… Also yes, the speaking over the fankans. That’s pretty common, but there’s a reason if everyone is deeply pissed off by it. And the fact that some of the performances were only shown in snippets
20) What do you expect from the 2019 musical? A lot of things, lol. Actually this is getting pretty long, so if you’re really dying to read my opinion about this (I doubt it’s the case, but still), I’ve already made a complete list of my hopes on the purpose which you can find following the link up there.
21)  How important are dancing abilities of the actors for you? …I actually don’t even pay attention to them, and even if I did, I’m far too uncompetent for it to matter much for me. Sorry for the horrible answer ‘XD
22) Which Myu merchandise do you want? FREAKING VIDEOTAPES OF THE UNRELEASED MATERIAL Also official soundtracks for the New Myu and a more complete collection of the instrumental versions of all Myu songs
23) Are you sad that Luna and Artemis disappeared after Gaiden? You can bet on it! I’m also bitter for this because I was sure they would include them when La Reconquista was announced XD
24) An interesting (non-existing) HaruMichi couple? San’ae x Tomoko is my dream, what with them being the best Uranus and best Neptune for me? As for actually existing ones, my favourite is Shu x Sayaka.
25) Your favourite Moon x Tux couple? Anza x Yuta for eveeeer And I’ve also got this forbidden dream of seeing some Miyuki x Yu, I think they would be perfect together for some reason… sadly that’s not possible :(
26) Your favourite musical-only character? Kyaosu. You can beat me now. Also Space Knight, I wonder how it is possible that it didn’t come to my mind first. And yes, I have that sense of humour.
27) Which character would you play in a musical? …No one. I’m definitely not qualified enough to even dream of something like that XD But if I had to choose, than it would surely be my queen Usaghi
28) Something else you want to say about Sera Myu? Sera Myu is awesome, okay? I love it so much and it’s such an important part of my life and it gives me happiness when I’m feeling down and all those things… I sould probably stop now!
Now that this challenge is officially over for me, I tag @myucornerorg into doing it! :)
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sellbotfactory · 7 years ago
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saw @emotoonal ‘s TT meme thingie and wanted to fill it out...
1: What’s your name? Do you have a few other names you go by, whether its your name IRL or an alias?
myyyy name is V! but ive also been known as Brownster/Brownie and Milkshake in the TT fandom. V stands for many things but its the initial of my legal middle name ~
2: What is your gender and/or the pronouns you use?
im nonbinary! i consider myself to have no gender and be null/void in that sense. i use they/them exclusively
3: What is your main toon you play as (or whatever your most developed is)? Is it an OC? A sona? Your toon from Toontown Online all those years ago? Where are you in the game? (playground,gag,suit-wise). What game do you play (Rewritten, Fellowship, Offline?) Feel free to tell as much about them as you want and even include pictures if you can/want!
my main toon i play on is Brownie Fudge Sundae on TTR! she was a combination of my two TTO toons (Brownie from the US server and Milkshake from the UK server). she’s become her own OC in my little toonworld. she’s currently 112 laff, dropless, and im working on maxing cash+sell. i hope to max her sometime as it was always my dream to max on TTO!
4: What type of blogger are you/do you consider yourself? Someone who makes fanworks of your ocs or others’? Someone who just reblogs what they think is interesting? Someone who posts fun/dumb screencaps? A person who develops entire stories/headcanons/lore with their own toontown characters/fan ideas? Or something else entirely?
i just draw haha. i love to create stories/lore w my characters too so i try to illustrate this! i also love drawing for other people. this blog is a bit of a break from my job which is freelance illustration, i draw a lot of complicated things so drawing TT helps me destress and keep my art loose and expressive.
5: What is your favorite toon species?
cats, im biased... but i also love crocs, rabbits, deer and mice.
6: Your favorite cog?
regular cog: LOAN SHARK and boss: it’s a tie between VP and CFO for me. i was obsessed with VP growing up but ive come to appreciate CFO in my older age. he’s hardcore, man.
7: Your favorite HQ and/or playground?
favourite HQ by design alone is LBHQ for sure... those marbled floors still amaze me. favourite playground by design.... probably TTC or DDL.
8: What about cog boss fight? Which one is the most fun to you?
CFO is my favourite boss fight! its really fun and not as grindy as the others. i enjoy the concept of CJ and CEO a lot but feel they drag on too much. VP is VP, i like taking little toons in VP so thats fun.
9: How long have you been playing? Have you been here all the way back from Toontown Online’s original release up until its closure? Did you just start playing recently?
i started playing in 2005, 2 years after TTO’s release! i couldnt play all the time due to money constraints but i played both the US and UK server.
10: What is your favorite gag?
probably birthday cake or TNT lmao...
11: What stuff do you like besides Toontown? Other fandoms you’re in? Hobbies? Bands/music artists? Whatever you can think of.
my main fandom is Transformers! i also have a great interest in other cartoon-based stuff like Disney, Cuphead and BATIM. 
12: Do/Did you play any other MMO’s/MMORPG’s/Other Multiplayer games?
a LOT.... maplestory, latale, WoW, trickster online, and many others i cannot remember the names of
13: Do you consider yourself social?
im pretty social! im not the best with hardcore one-on-one communication and tend to reserve that for my fiance, but i like meeting new people and try to be as friendly as i can.
14: Do you play Toontown frequently?
at the moment as my health has improved tremendously (new meds boiz), i’m playing it daily!
15: What’s your favorite thing to do in Toontown? (try to max your toons, play trolley games, talk to people, do fashion shows/parties, help new users, ect. ect.)
im focusing on maxing right now but i love talking to people and helping new users... i also love making new outfits and trying new strategies!
16: What’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you in the game?
unfortunately my memory is too bad for this </3
17: Is there anything that really annoys you that happens/people do in the game?
greening always angers me, but that’s a given. i also can’t stand people who leave halfway through factories because they missed ONE battle. not many other things bother me though. im a very live and let live sort of toon.
18: Not Toontown related, but usually this tells a lot about a person- what’s your favorite fictional character(s), if any?
...............Starscream from... Transformers....
i have narcissistic personality disorder dont look at me
19: What’s your favorite thing about Toonblr?
honestly i love how friendly and communicative everyone is!!! almost everyone adds tags to my art and comments on my stuff and its super friendly, i adore it!
20: Anything else you’d like to share? Your main blog/other blogs you run? Fun facts about you? What you ate for breakfast? Go wild
i ate.........bagels for breakfast. also i want to make a million loan sharks someone stop me
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lingthusiasm · 7 years ago
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Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency
This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 9 shownotes page.
[Music]
Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Lauren Gawne.
Gretchen: and I'm Gretchen McCulloch and today we're talking about how small pieces of language combine into larger pieces, AKA constituency. But first Lauren, what have you been up to lately?
Lauren: I have been moving jobs which also involves moving countries, so it's been a pretty busy month!
Gretchen: It literally involves moving around the world.
Lauren: Yes, so I have been migrating slowly westward for the last few years, working in Singapore and more recently in London and after two fabulous years of living in London we are now on the move back to Melbourne, Australia. I will be a David Myers Research Fellow at Latrobe University for the next three years, which I'm really excited about. It’s an opportunity to bring together all of the different languages of Nepal and the Tibetan work that I've been doing across phonetics and across grammar and across gesture, all into one big project.
Gretchen: That's really cool!
Lauren: I’m really excited about that, really excited to be back in Melbourne and lots of exciting research planned. What about you, what have you been up to?
Gretchen: I've been doing a lot of writing on the book (what else is new?) and I'm headed to the LSA Summer Institute, AKA “Lingstitute”, where I'm going to be teaching a class on linguistics outreach, so that's exciting, and, in less momentous but still very important news, I was recently in an NPR article about the linguistics of ‘doggo’.
Lauren: I just love it when internet language memes make it into the new cycle and a whole new audience who've never experienced the meme get it translated for them.
Gretchen: Yeah, and they're like ‘wow this is so cool but also what is this?’ If you haven't encountered the doggo meme it's based around a couple of Facebook groups and a Twitter account and it's just a general zeitgeist about a slightly different cute way of talking to and about your dogs. And I had a lot of fun with the reporter, we actually talked for like an hour and a half, so we'll link to the article in the show notes. But there's even more of that story that didn't make it in and so we've actually made a Patreon bonus this month which is a further deep-dive into the linguistics of doggo, even more historical origins, even more context, Lauren is contributing Australia.
Lauren: Even more Australian intuitions about where doggo might come from, so that's on our Patreon.
Gretchen: It is thanks to Lauren that I was able to identify the word “doggo” as probably coming from Australia, so thanks Lauren.
Lauren: Everyone should have an Australian on their consultant list.
Gretchen: I think so.
Lauren: We also have previous Patreon bonus episodes which include how to teach yourself even more linguistics, which also includes our top recommendations for books videos and further resources for self-study, and also how to sell your awesome linguistic skills to employers so if you are thinking of doing a linguistics degree, you're currently doing one and thinking about your next job or you're looking for a career change, that has got you covered.
Gretchen: All sides of the linguistic spectrum! and if you have ideas of things you'd like to hear from us on the podcast or on the bonus episodes you can also do that at Patreon. And speaking of this we reached our sustainability goal on Patreon last month, which means that we officially have the funds to keep paying our producer and our transcriber, who are often the same person, and our audio hosting fees, which is not the same person. And I thiiiink by the time we record the next month's episode, we may have reached our next goal, based on current trends, which is Operation Get Gretchen A Better Microphone.
Lauren: I am so excited about this goal, this is definitely one of those ones where our Patreon supporters help everybody win.
Gretchen: Yeah everybody wins, you all get to hear me on a better microphone, I win, I'm tired of this too, so this might be the last episode where I sound kind of scratchy, hopefully!
Lauren: So that is www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or you can find the link at lingthusiasm.com, oh gosh please, yes please, help Gretchen get a better mic.
Gretchen: Stay tuned to the next episode where you find out if this was successful.
Lauren: It's going to be a great reveal as soon as you say a single line.
Gretchen: Yeah, I think I do the intro next time too!
[Music]
Lauren: Constituency is the fancy way of saying that stuff is made up of other stuff, and so that's how fancy word for this very basic fact that is the main force of today's episode.
Gretchen: So far on the podcast we've been approaching language from two ends, we've had this tiny granular end - we've talked about sounds, like the IPA episode, and we're definitely not stopping talking about sounds. And we've talked about words a lot, we’re definitely not stopping talking about words either. And we've also been approaching language from the big macro society end, talking about language and world peace, or kids’ role in language change, but we haven't talked about the part in between, about how the little bits become a capital L ‘Language’. How does that transition happen? And this is a bigger question for one episode, but we're going to start with that.
Lauren: And so I think it's important, even though we talk about sound a lot and we talk about words a lot, but languages aren't just lists of words, so you need something more than words here.
Gretchen: Okay I think languages can be a list of words because have you ever seen those movie cuts where they put all of the words in alphabetical order?
Lauren: For the organisers among you this is the most excellent use of somebody's time, it’s so good.
Gretchen: This is like those deconstructed salads where they line up all the tomatoes and the pieces of radish in pretty patterns rather than in a tossed salad.
Lauren: But in this in this case it's alphabetical patterns.
Gretchen: it's alphabetical patterns. So there's ‘Of Oz the Wizard’, which was some guy who put all of the words in The Wizard of Oz in order, so it starts out with ‘a’ and then gradually works its way down to ‘wizard, wizard, wizard.
Lauren: And there's also a Star Wars recut which I find is very meditative, when you've listened to the word Alderaan 20 times and you’re just in the zone.
Gretchen: We will link to those if you have somehow missed them or if you just want to experience them again. But like, if all of your movies just had all their words in alphabetical order, I don't think that would be a very good movie watching experience. It'd be an interesting avant-guard movie experience once to watch a movie that was like deliberately in alphabetical order.
Lauren: Yeah, you’d hope it's a short story for the sake of someone's linguistic ingenuity.
Gretchen: Yeah, I'd watch a short film, maximum 20 minutes, someone please make that. So language not just about the words next door, so you can't just look at one word and what is immediately next to it, this structure and the constituency is happening across bigger relationships and groups of words. There's units of words that aren't always obvious from what's next door, and my favourite example of this, the best example, is the phrase ‘time flies like an arrow’, which with the corollary ‘fruit flies like a banana’.
Lauren: It’s still just... it's just so perfect.
Gretchen: It's so beautiful.
Lauren: I know we have this problem sometimes with linguistics where if you've done one Intro to Linguistics course you've done a few, because everyone uses the same anecdote, but there’s just something so perfectly constructed about this structural ambiguity.
Gretchen: Yeah, so if you've somehow missed the ambiguity or if you just want to hear it explained to you, ‘time flies like an arrow’ refers to time which is a thing that flies like an arrow flies, whereas ‘fruit flies like a banana’ does not mean that apples and oranges and pears all soar across the room in the same way that a banana soars across the room, which maybe they do, but it refers to fruit flies which are kind of flies who are fond of bananas.
Lauren: In the first sentence, ‘time’ is the thing that is doing something, whereas in the second sentence, ‘fruit flies’ are the thing that is doing something, so the sentences are being cut up in different ways and that gives them their different readings.
Gretchen: Or to use the terminology that we're introducing in this episode, ‘time’ is constituent by itself, well, all words are constituents by themselves which is not terribly interesting, but ‘time flies’ is not a constituent by itself, the ‘flies’ part goes with the ‘like an arrow part’. Whereas in the second sentence ‘fruit flies’ is constituent by itself and then the ‘like a banana’ part is also another type of constituent. So how you group the words even when ‘flies’ and ‘like’ are the same in both sentences, how you group them is what's changing the meaning there. 
There's another example of structural ambiguity which is from the BBC radio drama ‘Cabin Pressure’, which is hilarious and you should all listen to it, but in one case one of the characters says ‘Oh, I know what's going on, I went on a course on understanding people in Ipswich’ and the other character says ‘Well, if I ever want the people of Ipswich understood, I'll let you know.’
Lauren: I actually had the ‘understanding people in Ipswich’ as one constituent in my head when I first read that, I wasn't reading it very carefully, on your blog post which you had about it which we’ll link to, and I was like ‘why would you need to? Is it a dialect thing that people in Ipswich have?’ so I completely fell for that reading.
Gretchen: Yeah, you completely got the wrong interpretation, so obviously there are generic courses of understanding people and some of them, one assumes, happen in Ipswich, but in this case the character is deliberately misinterpreting the other one saying ‘Well yeah, that's fine for the people of Ipswich, but what about the person in front of us right now who's not from Ipswich?’
Lauren: A couple of years ago, you had the LingVids video series and you did a little bit of demonstrating how these constituents can move around and be analyzed in relation to each other.
Gretchen: We did a series of a videos before I decided to become an audio person rather than a video person, and one of the questions that we asked for the purpose of the video is ‘is a sentence more like a bracelet or like a mobile?’ So you can think of a couple analogies for how a sentence works.In a bracelet analogy, you think, ‘okay, if the words in the sentence are kind of like beads on a string, the way we see a sentence written on a page and it's just flat, and there the one word and the beads can only really notice or are influenced by the beads directly next to them because that's all that's there that's touching them, there's just one string that runs through the whole thing.’ Whereas if you make a mobile, like a hanging mobile from a ceiling, then you have stuff hanging off of stuff and then some of the bits that hang off has other things hanging on from them and so there's dependencies and there's relationships between some of the parts of the tree or some of the parts of the structure that are groups. So if you have something like a course on understanding people in Ipswich, is it a course on understanding people and the whole course is in Ipswich, so ‘in Ipswich’ and ‘course on understanding people’ both hang off the two parts at the top of a mobile, or is it ‘a course on understanding people in Ipswich’ in which case ‘people’ and ‘in Ipswich’ are hanging off the same bit and ‘the course on understanding people’ is all the way at the top, so there's ways of thinking of how to group things. So that's the video that you can watch, it's a little bit easier. You can't see me but I'm gesturing!
Lauren: There's ways of thinking about things but conveniently in videos there are also ways of seeing things to go with that explanation, so that's on the Lingvid videos.
Gretchen: And we'll link to that too. And the fancy words that linguists give this particular type of constituency where there's more than one different meaning is structural ambiguity, but we're going to we're going to stick with introducing one new term at a time so you don't have to remember structural ambiguity if you want to.
Lauren: And you’ve talked about some metaphors like bracelets or mobiles for how constituents can relate to each other.
Gretchen: Some people also use the idea of nesting dolls inside each other for constituents, or bowls that get bigger and bigger and nest in each other. A problem that I have with that is that it's hard to account for several things happening at once. It's very linear, there's only one set of layers as you go out and that's not what generally happens with sentences, there's generally more than one kind of set. So I thought of a new-age metaphor which I am very proud to share with you guys. This is a cooking metaphor.
Lauren: Yes! I'm on board already!
Gretchen: So if you're making a cake, you have a set of steps to follow, so you cream the butter and the sugar and then you add the eggs and you add the vanilla. And then you go over to another bowl and you have the flour and you have the baking powder and you have the salt and the cinnamon or something if you want it and you mix those together. And then you add the one bowl to the other bowl and then sometimes you also add pre-prepared ingredients like chocolate chips which also have stuff in them, they have cocoa butter.
Lauren: what are they constituted of, hmmm....
Gretchen: And so there's several different kind of subroutines or sub bowls or sub-containers that you need to take care of separately, and each of those has a particular order that you're adding stuff in and then also sometimes you have to go to this other bowl and do stuff. Or when I make cream cheese brownies, which is a recipe that I like a lot, you make the brownie stuff and then you have to make the cream cheese mixture and you add the sugar to the cream cheese and stuff and then you swirl the cream cheese mixture on top, so you have several bowls going on. So it's not just one set of nesting bowls, it's like when you do stuff.
Lauren: and exactly the same ingredients you use for your cream cheese brownies, I might use to make chocolate chip cookies.
Gretchen: With cream cheese icing.
Lauren: With cream cheese icing, I don't do that but...
Gretchen: I don't know if anyone has but it's all good...
Lauren: some kind of weird biscuit/ sandwich... I mean it wouldn't be as tasty but it would be still a valid use of the same set of material.
Gretchen: I think we need to determine this empirically and have a bake-off.
Lauren: Okay, I have not made that recipe before so I feel that I’m at something of a disadvantage. All novel baked goods, all novel utterances. So in the same way that I can use exactly the same ingredients to make banana pancakes or banana muffins, but the order in which you pull them together creates something different--
Gretchen: What you put in first and what you mix separately makes a difference. Or something like a sauce, like you make the salad and then you make the salad dressing, and you mix the salad dressing in its own bowl and then you can pour it over the salad as one thing, that's different from making a salad where you throw the salad dressing in with all the other ingredients all separately. And so what that's getting at is if you have ‘time flies like an arrow’ you can just kind of add each word - ‘time’ gets added to ‘flies like an arrow’, ‘flies’ gets added to ‘flies… like an arrow’, ‘like’ gets added to ‘an arrow’. But if you have something like ‘fruit flies like a banana’ you've got to combine ‘fruit’ and ‘flies’ together first.
Lauren: I have a bowl of fruit flies here Gretchen!
Gretchen: This is my baking, I'm really good at baking!
Lauren: mmm protein...
Gretchen: So if you have fruit flies (or raisins or something?) that you want to put in your bananas, you have to combine fruit and flies together as words before you can add that whole thing to ‘like a banana’.
Lauren: I just want to suggest for a moment that maybe some of the more attentive listeners are wondering if we're not just talking about something that they think of as grammar.
Gretchen: I think grammar is often used imprecisely, and so constituency is a specific thing within the idea of grammar, so yeah this is this is partially grammar but it’s useful to divide that up into specific ideas.
Lauren: Yep, so this is one particular part of putting together words to create meanings.
Gretchen: I thought you were going to say ‘I think some of our more astute listeners are you wondering if we're not talking about politics?’ because constituency is also a thing in politics.
Lauren: Sorry for anyone who found this thinking it was a politics podcast.
Gretchen: Not a politics podcast. So electoral districts are also constituencies, and a constituent is a person who lives in an electoral district. And they come from the same metaphor, they're related to the word ‘constitute’, so a person who is a constituent decides who constitutes their Parliament or their Congress or their set of representatives in politics. So they're related but they're not the same thing.
Lauren: We've been talking about this as though it just objectively exists, but how do we know constituency exists other than you talking about bowls and other metaphors?
Gretchen: Especially if you can’t create one of these ambiguities that prove very nicely that something is going on -- obviously not all sentences are ambiguous, and so how do you do this? The cool thing is that there are totally ways to do this, there is totes science guys!
Lauren: This is us getting our linguist lab coats on.
Gretchen: So, you know how in chemistry you can add drops of a known chemical to a mystery liquid and see if it turns green or something - I don't know very much about chemistry, this is what all the scientists do in the movies.
Lauren: These are definitely not chemistry lab coats people.
Gretchen: And it'll tell you like if it turns purple it'll tell you whether it's an acid or a base or something like this. So there is stuff you can add to sentences that's known quantities that behaves in certain ways around constituents and then see what happens, and see whether a particular piece of a new sentence is a constituent or not.
Lauren: So we don't have something like a Large Hadron Collider to show you around.
Gretchen: Large Hadron Constituencer!
Lauren: Yep, unfortunately we haven't built one of those to smash words and phrases into each other, but that's why linguistics is really cool, because you don't even need the imaginary lab coats that we're wearing right now, you just need some linguistic intuitions and you can do the science.
Gretchen: You can do science right there in your ears, in your mouth, in your talking.
Lauren: In the privacy of your own mouth!
Gretchen: In the privacy of your own home, you too can do the science, you don't need test tubes or safety goggles.
Lauren: Try this at home!
Gretchen: Do try this at home, it's okay, it won't break anything.
Lauren: Other than some rules of constituency.
Gretchen: No constituents were harmed in the making of this experiment.
Lauren: So there are a whole range of constituency tests that linguists use to figure out whether something as a constituent or not and these are often language dependent. Some of them you can use in a lot of languages, others are really specific to a particular language. And there are some good videos and actually the Wikipedia summary for this is pretty good as a starting point, so we're not going to go through all of the main tests for English constituency testing, but we are going to share a couple to give you an idea of how it works.
Gretchen: Yeah and we will link to more lists so if you think ‘I want to test this’ you know where to go. The core idea of a constituency test is you want to say ‘I’ve got a sentence and I've got a couple words in this sentence’ - so any individual word is going to be a constituent because you could say it by itself if you want so that's not very interesting - but if you've got two words or three words or five words, a string of words in the sentence and you want to say ‘are these words functioning together as a unit or is there some break between them?’. And the whole sentence is also going to be a constituent but within a sentence you're going to have some groups of words that are more influenced by each other and some that aren’t. And so what we're doing is saying ‘okay here's a group of words that we're wondering about. Let's put it through a bunch of other contexts where we know that things that are units do act together and if this one does that too then it is a constituent, and if it doesn't do that too then it's not.
Lauren: So we need a test subject.
Gretchen: I think we should use ‘time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Lauren: Okay that is a very excellent set of guinea pigs to bring into the lab space.
Gretchen: Because this will give us some contrast. We’ve kind of spoiled it for you already, but we want to find out if ‘time flies’ is a constituent, and we will also want to see if ‘fruit flies’ is a constituent.
Lauren: So, the first test that we are going to subject them to is the questions test, which is more or less using questions to see if they can stand alone, because often if you ask someone a question they just answer with a stand alone response, so if you say to someone ‘what did you do last night?’ they don't say ‘last night I went to the cinema’ they just say ‘I went to the cinema.
Gretchen: You can answer with a fragment and those fragments are all constituents. So if we say ‘what likes a banana?’ we can answer that with ‘fruit flies’, but if we say ‘what likes an arrow?’, we don't want to answer that ‘time flies’, or like we could but it would be something very very different. And so this is telling us that ‘fruit flies’ is a constituent, you can use it as an answer to a question and ‘time flies’ is not a constituent. But if we say ‘what flies like an arrow?’ we can just answer that ‘time’ and that's totally fine. So sometime you need to think creatively about what that question needs to be.
Lauren: Yeah, where as what ‘what flies like a banana?’ is literally only a banana. Another test that we could subject them to is the test of substitution.
Gretchen: So this means because we know that any individual word is a constituent, if you can find an individual word that you can substitute for a longer string of words that you're wondering about, then that means that this longer string of words has to also be constituent, as long as the sentence keeps doing the same thing.
Lauren: So for example you could say ‘I like cake’ or you could say ‘the very beautiful, intelligent woman who has just finished her job in London and is moving back to Melbourne to do a new job likes cake’. Although the second one is very, very long it fills basically exactly the same role in the sentence as the one letter pronoun ‘I’ and in this case just semantically happens to be the same person!
Gretchen: Happens to be true! yeah so often people use pronouns for this, you can substitute the entire thing with a pronoun. So if we take our ‘time flies’ example if we say ‘time flies like an arrow’ you could also say ‘it flies like an arrow’ but if we want to say ‘is ‘time flies’ a constituent?’ then you have to say ‘it likes a banana’ or ‘they like a banana.
Lauren: ‘they like an arrow?’. We've got cross contamination on the sentences.
Gretchen: So hard to do orally! Yeah the arrow, and if that’s supposed to mean the same thing that ‘time flies like a’ we're dealing with little flapping Timelords, we're not dealing with time flying. Where as for ‘fruit flies like a banana’ if you have ‘it flies like a banana’, again you've created a very different sentence where you're talking about something that is thrown across the room, whereas ‘they like a banana’ is a reasonable and cogent substitute for ‘fruit flies like a banana.’
Lauren: There is also another thing that is not part of the standard canon of constituency tests, but I like it as a way of showing that anyone who uses the internet know instinctively what a constituent is, and that's because when we use hyperlinks and clickable links on the internet we rarely break constituent boundaries with those, we usually have a single constituent or a phrase within a single hyperlink.
Gretchen: So this is like the anchor text for a hyperlink, so when you you highlight a couple words and then you make them into a link: the words that you highlighted are probably a constituent, you're probably already doing this subconsciously.
Lauren: So you would say, if you were writing about ‘time flies like an arrow’ you might have a hyperlink for ‘time’ and that would take you to a dictionary definition of time and you might have ‘flies like an arrow’ might be a hyperlink to a video that shows an arrows flying. Whereas if you have the other sentence you might have seen like ‘fruit flies’ and that takes you to the Wikipedia page for fruit flies and you might have ‘like a banana’ and then you have a list of animals that eat fruit.
Gretchen: but you'd be unlikely probably to make ‘time flies’ the anchor text of your hyperlink, unless you're talking about Timelord flies, which in which case it would be a constituent.
Lauren: Yeah and it would be very, very unlikely to get something like ‘time flies like’.
Gretchen: Oh yeah that'd be really weird. But it's surprisingly common, next time you're reading an article that has links in it, check them out to see if they’re constituents, there’s a fun thing to do. My favourite example of people doing subconscious constituents takes us back to doggo.
Lauren: Yes!
Gretchen: This is the best thing.
Lauren: I’m already there.
Gretchen: One of the people behind the doggo thing is a Twitter account called @dog_rates, dog underscore rates, by a guy named Matt Nelson, a lot of people have seen it has like two million followers so you've probably seen this account. This account says things like ‘what a cute pupper 10/10 would would pet’ and it's great, but the same guy also started a second, more experimental Twitter account, and it's called @dog_feelings, and this is an account where the dog just says stuff in a spaced out doggy sort of voice. And it's more interesting linguistically, to my mind at the moment when we're talking about constituency, because what this dog character does on this Twitter account, which we're definitely going to link to you should definitely go check out because it's really funny, the seed of the account is words in all lowercase and he'll put periods between every couple words - sometimes after a single word, sometimes after two or three words, sometimes he’ll even go up to like four and so he'll put periods between them periodically, kind of in the rhythm of a wagging tail or like you know dogs aren't super smart linguistically, so they'll kind of pause a lot and what's really interesting to me is that the pauses often obey constituency boundaries. I'm sure this guy knows no linguistics, I don't think he's doing it consciously.
Lauren: But even intuitively it's falling into constituency. I mean, I can read a couple of examples but it does take us into the always-difficult territory of how written memes sound out loud.
Gretchen: I think we should read an example or two
Lauren: Okay, I'll do my best thoughts of dogs voice ‘my human. is sad again. I can tell. because. he only gave me. one pat. when I. put my head. in his lap'
Gretchen: What's cool about this is all of these pauses are constituents, so ‘my human’, that's a constituent, ‘is sad again’ is a constituent, where as if instead it had been ‘my human is. sad again’ then that wouldn't have been a constituent. So speaking of pauses, Lauren you do prosody.
Lauren: I don't do prosody but I really like it. I mean I *do* prosody as in I modulate the way that I speak using intonation.
Gretchen: I don’t, I talk like a robot.
Lauren: Yeah, I have to put your intonation in post hoc in the editing phase. So. Intonation contours, we don't often think about what they contribute but when it comes to spoken language they are often the thing that is doing the heavy lifting in disambiguating sentences so things like ‘time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like a banana’, the intonation there helps people. It’s not as useful as some other examples.
Gretchen: Whereas if you just say ‘time.. flies.. like.. an.. arrow..’ it's harder to tell what you mean by it.
Lauren: Yep, and so prosody can often give us some clues as to what's happening in terms of how the constituents are grouped, and that helps disambiguate things. My favourite meme example is a picture of some arctic ice and some glow sticks and small fluffy things, with the line down the bottom ‘stop clubbing baby seals’, which when you say it that way entirely deserves dancing.
Gretchen: Baby seals, what are you doing partying so late, you've got to get up tomorrow!
Lauren: awwww you’re only babies!
Gretchen: you’re only babies, are you even allowed to drink yet?!
Lauren: Which has an obviously very different reading to ‘stop clubbing baby seals.’
Gretchen: Yeah, as in stop hitting them with clubs
Lauren: And so it's prosody, and it's the absence of prosody in the photo meme that is creating the joke.
Gretchen: And these memes often come around with captions like ‘this is the importance of commas,’ but commas are just an imperfect representation of prosody. I think a lot of these ambiguity examples work better in writing, precisely because we're so good at prosody, like how you didn't get the people in Ipswich example even though it was totally clear to me listening to the audio of it.
Lauren: You would have to be deliberately trying very hard to mishear ‘I did a course on understanding people… in Ipswich’. So prosody is doing all the heavy lifting there and it's completely underrated, so just giving a shout-out to my mate prosody.
Gretchen: Yeah, it's not necessarily terribly good as a constituency test because commas are weird and generally linguists don't like to use written stuff as a test, but if you can think of ‘where could you put commas in this sentence and have the meanings still be preserved?’ those are going to be constituency boundaries. It's not necessary going to be all of them, but it's going to be some of them, because that's one of the things that pauses indicators is where there are some breaks between stuff.
Lauren: We've been talking about things like intonation and what words are, entirely with English example sentences, that is because that is the language that is the medium of this podcast, but as always, because we like talking about all of the world's languages, we want to stress that these certain types of tests can be done, all languages break down structures to some degree in this way.
Gretchen: Yeah all languages have constituents, they have stuff that is more closely associated than other stuff, which tests you can use to show that differs depending on the language and what exactly they use to create those relationships. So in some cases you can do constituency with parts of a single word, not just with groups of words as a whole. So there's some examples of that in English, one example that is very clear is ‘undoable’. So ‘undoable’ can mean two things, one thing it can mean is it’s ‘un’ ‘doable’, it's not able to be done, and then the other thing it can mean is it's ‘undo’ ‘able’ which is it's able to be undone.
Lauren: As in, you can Control-Z this.
Gretchen: You can Control-Z this, there's an eraser here, whereas this is just impossible it's ‘un…doable’. And you can get more elaborate types of constituency with with things on a word as well as between words. So one example that I have for this comes from my misspent Latin education, which was not misspent at all I loved it, and this is a thing that Latin poems would do which is they would really mess around with a word order. In English the word order is very important, but Latin poems especially would often do something different. So let’s say you have the phrase ‘from a long river’, you'd have ‘the river’ in one line of the poem and ‘ the long’ in another line of the poem and you had to realise that they were actually being associated with each other, and it wasn't just like there's ‘from a river’ and there's ‘from a long something’, you had to realise that they were a constituent together, they were actually trying to talk to each other and the poet had just moved them around to get a better rhythm. 
And the way that you do this in Latin is the endings would have to match. So the word for river in Latin is ‘fluvius’, which the form of it when it's a subject, and then you have ‘longus’ which would be the form of the adjective when it's a subject matching the masculine ‘us’ ending of fluvius. But if you have ‘from a long river’ that's an ablative, so now you have ‘fluvio longo’, and even if ‘longo’ is in line one and ‘fluvio’ is in line three, you can still be like ‘oh they're both in the masculine ablative singular maybe they're actually supposed to be together, maybe they're actually constituent’. So in English constituents tend to be right next to each other but in other languages you can really move them around, when you have something else that tells you ‘oh these are things that you're supposed to be interpreting together.
Lauren: So that’s how you kind of first encountered the idea of constituency?
Gretchen: Yeah, I was decoding poems in high school thinking ‘oh these two things associate’ and then when I got to constituency later in linguistics classes I was like ‘oh this is the same thing’. How did you first encounter constituency?
Lauren: Before thinking about it in terms of linguistics, I think my first realisation that different words and sets of words could all feel the same kind of grammatical spot and be one constituent was essentially playing a version of mad libs.
Gretchen: Oh yeah okay
Lauren: So if they wanted something that was a noun you could just write ‘butt’ or you could write ‘my brother’s big fat smelly butt’ and either way it would work, and be hilarious.
Gretchen: Yeah very hilarious when you're like seven.
Lauren: So that is where, it was trying to be funny in mad libs that taught me to think about just how much you could cram in while still actually being the same type of constituent.
Gretchen: This gets us back to the grammatical gender point which we talked about in episode two about pronouns, why do languages even bother with having gender, well sometimes it can help you figure out what's a constituent because if you have adjectives that have to agree with gender. Particularly when you have a language like Latin, or Old English would do this too where you could move words around like this, the gender endings could help you find the rest. It’s a little like one of those like GPS microchips you put in your dog, like ‘we've tagged you, you belong with us here.’
Lauren: I think that there is also a larger theoretical importance to why we should care about constituents and that goes back to the thing we we're talking about earlier, language isn't just made up of individual words, you can't just take all the words from a film and remix them.
Gretchen: Yeah, and humans don't just learn how to make sentences by memorising all of the possible sentences. Like ‘time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like banana’, someone came up with that and you understood it even the first time you heard it, because you knew what the words meant and you knew how to interpret the constituent relationships between those words. It's a thing that languages have where you can make up, right now, a sentence that no one's ever heard before because you know about the relationships between them
Lauren: It fills in, as we said, that kind of middle spot between just individual words or sounds and this larger, full discourse conversation
Gretchen: There's other things that fill it in, we can talk about semantics at some point, but yes figuring out what language is in the human mind since we don't just say individual words it's partly figuring out what kinds of constituency relationships do we have. I think there's also a practical importance to it, so one of the exercises that Intro to Linguistics students typically get set is you need to do a bunch of constituency tests and then you need to draw trees. But the trees themselves are are are only a means to an end, they’re not an end in themselves, they're just a representation of all the constituency information you can extract from this sentence in a very convenient and visual form. Then when you start looking at them then you can say ‘oh okay well here's how these two sentences actually have the same structure because their trees look identical.’
Lauren: And when you draw syntactic trees it's one way to very quickly see that sentences that look the same on the surface have different structures. So ‘fruit flies like a banana’ the ‘fruit’ and the ‘flies’ are together as a constituent, and they're in a separate node in the tree, whereas ‘time flies like an arrow’, ‘time’ is all alone, lonely time in its lonely node, and so you very quickly see that even though they appear the same their structures are different.
Gretchen: Yeah so it's a convenient way of visualising that information and conveying it, but a lot of people got very buried in the ‘oh I need to figure out what are these constituents and what's going on here’ and it can be hard, the first ten or twenty or thirty trees that you draw, every single combination of words you have to run through a bunch of constituency tests, but it's kind of like learning how to navigate or learning how to make a map of the terrain, thinking about what kinds of things have relationships and getting good at just spotting them. I don't have to run constituency tests on every sentence I see now to see whether something's a constituent because most of the common types of ones I can just spot them. And occasionally I get something confusing like ‘oh is that a constituent?’ I have the tests available, but most of the time I don't need them, just because it's a practice type thing you do when you're beginning to flex your linguistic muscles.
Lauren: And I think sometimes people just think that syntactic tree drawing is some academic exercise that we just make our students do so that they suffer, or if they are the subset of people who go on and study syntax, who immediately fall in love with it and draw a tree for everything.
Gretchen: Or it's kind of like a meaningless intellectual exercise like ‘oh I can do sudoku I can draw a syntax tree it's great it's fun but where do you go from there?’
Lauren: But they do have really important implications, especially in the field of computer language and how computers interact with language. So for example Google Translate, just like in your films Google doesn't just go word by word and translate each individual word when you put a sentence into their translation portal, instead what happens is it starts thinking in terms of constituents and in terms of larger phrases and it tries to match those up within its corpus, and similarly with their search engines you may type in a whole sentence but it knows how to extract the constituents that are relevant for searching.
Gretchen: Yeah anything that's trying to do it like a natural language interface is trying to figure out okay how do you understand the parts of a natural language thing. So there’s practical reasons why constituency is important but also once you get used to constituency you can make lots of fun jokes with structural ambiguity and lots of fun jokes with time flies.
[Music]
Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode go to lingthusiasm.com You can listen to us on iTunes, Google Play music, Soundcloud or wherever else you get your podcasts and you can follow at Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. I can be found as at GretchenAMcC on Twitter, and my blog is All Things Linguistic.com.
Lauren: I blog and tweet as Superlinguo. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions and help keep the show ad free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or follow the links from our website. current bonus topics include behind-the-scenes story of doggo speak, and how to explain linguistics to employers, how to teach yourself linguistics, and an episode on swearing. And you can help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. If you can't afford to pledge that's okay too: we also really appreciate it if you could rate us on iTunes or recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. We are especially doing a bit of a shout-out to our Australian, Canadian and Great British iTunes-using listeners to help us be rated on those stores.
Gretchen: Something you might not know is that iTunes only gives an average based on the country, so we have quite a few ratings on American iTunes now, but if you’re from another country and you'd like to rate us on iTunes that would be super awesome.
Lauren: We are unconstrained by geography.
Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our producer is Claire and our music is by The Triangles. Stay Lingthusiastic! [Music]
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noirneko · 8 years ago
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Thank you for tagging me, @shellysaurus-rex
About Me Meme                                                        
Rules: Tag 20 followers you’d like to get to know better Nickname: Noir Neko, MisPaste (and all variations), Noire, Devilotte, and whatever else. Gender: Female (somewhat agender) Zodiac sign: Gemini (6/6) Height: 5'6 1/2 - 5′7
Sexual Orientation: Panromantic (i lean more towards girls though) Hogwarts house: Slytherin Favourite colour: Violet/Purple (especially more on the red spectrum)
Favourite animal: Sheep, then cats Time right now: 8:56pm pst Average hours of sleep: I average about 6-7 hours Lucky number: 6
Cat or a Dog person: I strongly prefer cats.
Favourite Fictional Character(s): There’s too many (i’ll list what’s mostly relevant) Nyx (FE: Fates) Setsuna (FE: Fates) Felicia (FE: Fates) Karin Kanzuki (Street Fighter) Ibuki Mioda (Danganronpa) Gundam Tanaka (Danganronpa) Seiko Kimura (Danganronpa) Juzo Sakakura (Danganronpa) Kyoko Kirigiri (Danganronpa) Celestia Ludenberg (Danganronpa) Lillie (Pokemon Moon) Valerie (Pokemon) Rachel Alucard (Blazblue) Muffy (Animal Crossing) Willow (Animal Crossing) Naoto Shirogane (Persona 4) Kanji Tatsumi (Persona 4) Mercy (Overwatch) Reaper (Overwatch) Sombra (Overwatch) Last thing googled: Steins;gate Chapter List
Blankets I sleep with: I usually just sleep with one or two blankets. I sleep with a Litten plush as well.
Favourite band: Er... I listen to all kinds as well, i’m pretty open when it comes to music. I’ll list a few: Qntal, Schwarz Stein, Shoji Meguro, Chopin, Selia, Nobuo Uematsu
Dream trip: I’d love to visit Japan, France, and Germany. Tbh I’d be happy just being able to leave this city.
Dream job: I wouldnt mind being a curator at a museum.
Wearing right now: Seiko Kimura’s leather jacket, a white and black grid shirt with a black cami underneath, black high waist skinny jeans, netted socks, these white shoes with roses and skulls on them and a black bow attached. I’m also wearing rectangular glasses that are black and mint green. A black leather choker with a metal heart, and a chain bracelet.
Age of blog: It’s 6 years old, wow..
Following: 1036
Followers: 466 Posts: 16,630
When Did My Blog Reach It’s Peak: I honestly dont remember. It was probably two-three years ago though.
What Made me Decide to Get Tumblr: To be honest, this blog was originally a project for school, but it’s pretty much a personal blog now.
What I post about: This used to be a fashion blog.  My blog is very ecclectic , I would say A combination of lolita, Mori Kei, goth things, occassionally creepy things, video games, and sometimes funny things. Or interesting things... I write in the tags but i hardly ever tag anything. Oh, and personal rants because I dont really have any other place to do so.
Do I Get Asks Regularly: Not really.
Aesthetic: I lean towards gothic/”edgy” feminine styles, so lots of black, purples << Flowers, dolls, mimes, androgyny, I am tagging whomever wants to do it? -shrugs-
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gojaimas · 7 years ago
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Chapter 36 Comments
MageofDuality: “Ya’ know I’m actually feeling sorry for Gwen. I ship her and Ben don’t get me wrong and Lucy is great both as a test to them and herself but geez the way she is just hammering this whole thing on Gwen subtly like a mastermind in the shadows is a bit much.”
Lucy sort of realized that this chapter. Gwen ended up really hurt by the whole thing, and Lucy felt terrible about it.
csgt: “About Lucy "testing" Ben, I'm still not sure if she was more interested in seeing him passing or failing XD I really enjoyed these scenes”
Haha, the best tests are the ones which will make you happy regardless of the outcome!
csgt: “PS: you have an OC named 'Nathan' who has a crush on Gwen, and I also have an OC named 'Natan' who has a crush on Gwen. I'm pretty sure you didn't read my fics so you didn't know that, it's just a big coincidence, but I was quite surprised to see that name popping up here XD”
Oh wow, that is a coinidence. I named Nathan after a kid I knew in middle school who was particularly bad at talking to girls.
Phildev: “I'll admit, I was thinking that adding Lucy as a legitimate love interest was gonna go poorly. But having Gwen temporarily out of the equation allowed this to flow very well!”
Thanks! I think I write characters best as pairs. Seeing Ben and Lucy having their own dynamic while away from Gwen for a bit definitely showed off their chemistry.
Guest: “Lucy is such a babe. Perfect story. Perfect plot.”
Everyone enjoys the Lucy scenes for the...plot.
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Jagcity: “I've also been wanting but forgetting to ask about your thumbnail for the story. It's amazing and seems to reflect a lot of their qualities from your story!”
Thank you! I drew it some time last year without any particular scene in mind. It was part of my practice with drawing characters using poses from a reference photo of different characters. For that one, I used this pic of Oreki and Chitanda from Hyouka:
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haha.plogue: “Isn't it supposed to be year 5 of the month of January?”
No, the years are measuring time from their first summer trip. Year 1 began in September after the summer trip ended. The story isn’t currently taking place in the year 4 AD.
Guest: “If this ended benxgwenxlucy it will be creepy” Guest: “AHHH they both go well together with Ben I don’t know who to ship just end it with a threesome lol”
You guys wanna talk?
Guest: “That comparison of similarities between the Ben and Gwen in denial of their feelings was brilliant.”
Haha, and people said the Julie arc would never amount to anything.
Guest: “Also, this is the first time I’ve actually seen Lucy feel a little hurt that Gwen was Ben’s main priority because she was just as much as a shipper as the rest of us. She’s precious. Hope she gets a happy ending.”
Lucy is so great. I feel bad making her feel bad. But at least she's still happy about Ben and Gwen making progress.
Guest: “the way you executed why they started hating each other from the flashbacks was brilliant. It was even never explained in the original series as far as my knowledge.”
Yeah I don’t remember them ever explaining it either, so I made it the way I imagined it. Just some stupid misunderstandings with both of them being too proud to stop fighting back.
Guest: “Lucy is my waifu”
This is the best comment I’ve ever received.
Guest: “Thank you Gojaimas for making Bwency a thing, they had so much potential in the original series, especially during their dance”
Oh I didn’t invent Bwency. It’s been here for years: http://thegreatbentennyson.tumblr.com/post/101398479772/lucyxbenxgwen-is-my-ot3
Guest: “Like Lucy giving Ben the nostalgic feeling of his connection to an alien life of any shape or form, you just made me pick up my DS and play Pokémon.”
Ah, Pokémon. The original nostalgia. I like to imagine Ben, Gwen, and Lucy all play Pokémon too. Ben’s favorite Pokémon is Charizard, Gwen’s is Espeon, and Lucy’s is Pachirisu.
Guest: “Is the title I wanted what I saw that day a reference to Ben seeing Lucy shirtless? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)”
I take it back, this is the best comment I’ve ever received.
Car-54: “Regarding Ben, I'm starting to suspect that he has already realized his feelings for Gwen. We just aren't seeing his thought process. He keeps quiet because he assumes that she would be repulsed by the revelation.”
Ben’s basically never been comfortable expressing any emotion other than happiness or anger, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he could hide something like that.
Jagcity: “Not really too important but just curious, is the watch and locket real gold or just gold plated? I'd imagine they both used up a fortune of their allowance on those gifts, especially Gwen.”
The lockets and the watch aren’t really gold. They’re likely not even gold plated. They’re probably brass or something else that just looks like gold.
Fan of you: “Your story has surpassed Little Moments in terms of reviews. Slowly we'll get to the favorites and follows too haha.”
I actually just messaged shadows59 yesterday. Apparently he’s been reading my story, so I had a pretty big ‘senpai noticed me’ moment. So shadows, if you’re reading this, and I know you are, my story has more reviews than yours. I only need 180 more follows and 563 more faves until I’m better than you. Take that!
Guest: “you know that daily struggle meme where there’s two buttons and you’re sweating on contemplating which one to press, that’s how I feel rn except one’s Bwen and the other’s Bency. I don’t know why people are referring their ship name as Bwency. That sounds like all of their names combined.”
It is all of their names combined. People are shipping all three of them together. Here’s Lucy’s daily struggle from last chapter:
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Guest: “I can literally Google this story or your name and it shows up on the front page, that’s how much exposure you’ve got. Saves my lazy ass the time to go to fanfiction and search it up.”
Sweet! I wonder if anyone outside of fanfiction.net has heard of my story.
Guest: “this is my favourite K-drama”
Yeah but the manga was better.
Guest: “Gojaimas you’ve got goddamn talent you’d be a worth opponent 1v1 me Rust last kill trick shots noscopes only, let’s have a go inside the boxing ring since that’s the YouTube trend now apparently but more importantly, battle me to the death in Dance Dance Revolution.”
No. We must settle this like men:
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Guest: “Gojaimas you didn’t reference “Love Me” by Katy Perry when Gwen wanted to hold Ben’s hand I’ve lost all hope”
FUCK! I missed another one! Guys, nobody tell Katy Perry. She’d be pissed.
Guest: “am the only one who would also smash Lucy in her sludgepuppy form? She’s literally like Mystique (Jennifer Lawfrence’s version) from X-Men.”
I mean, that depends. Are we talkin' this:
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Or this:
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