#Personalized language learning experiences

[ursus-argenteus]

I'm an editor and a writer both and the way this post speaks to my experiences I feel like I need to comment about.

When I was young, I grew up nurtured by literature. I learned to read at an early age, but I fell in love with words and language thanks to my mother. At the time, she was a doting lover of language, story-telling, and poetry. We would often cuddle together in my parents' waterbed and read together from her books of classic poetry. I had Paul Revere's Ride memorized, though I can't remember why that poem in particular was so foundational.

Naturally I grew to love vivid, beautiful language. "Show don't tell" was ingrained in me even early as a writer, and so my fiction writing would be full of detailed - often superfluously so - descriptions of characters and scenes. I also wrote poetry, and by my late teens, was participating in slam poetry competitions online.

I look back at that era of my poetry, the incredible visuals and feelings and experiences that it gives, and wonder why I lost that.

The answer isn't simple: it's a complex weave of trauma and mental health and personal growth and college classes and career seeking that formed my young adult life. It wasn't a sudden switch - just a gradual retreat into the shadows as the style I started with withered from all of these things, including expectations.

One pivotal experience in this was my creative writing course in college. My instructor was an ex-hippy who was drunk on literary minimalism. "If you are going to write that the truck is blue," she said, "then what is the reason for it being blue? If it does not add to the story, remove that detail. For that matter, why a truck? If the truck does not reflect on the plot or the character, if it does not give meaning, then eliminate that too."

I hated that stance, and I despised this approach. But it was not the only place I encountered such smothering of prose, especially in college where academic writing is taught to absurdity, and in self-doubt, and fear of rejection, I found myself cutting away little details everywhere. I refused to be as minimalist as my instructor, but the effect was still noticeable.

Years later, I found myself stumbling into a career as a writer for online media and journalism. I had always enjoyed writing non-fiction, though it wasn't my primary passion, and as it turns out, I am good at it. There is very little room for pretty language in news media, however, and while I would often slip in a creative metaphor or delicate phrase, I found myself adhering strongly to the Plain Language Movement (Plain English). Which I still do, at least for that style of communication.

For a good ten years plus, non-fiction writing was almost entirely what I produced, outside of text roleplay and a few small stories. When I found myself stumbling again, this time into a lore writer position, I found myself falling in love all over again with fiction. But my relationship to writing fiction is no longer the same, and poetry? Hah.

It is hard for me now - four decades into my life - to find that joyful, descriptive language I once used. I have been trained out of it, and I have been abused out of it. But I do love and miss it dearly.

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[astrolook]

💥 The Parts of the Natal Chart That Only Activate in Crisis💥

Note: These are all my personal observations and patterns I've noticed over the years. Take what resonates with you more and leave the rest. Lemme know in the comments if it hits home! A single placement or aspect isn't enough to conclude and the whole chart has to be analyzed!

8H personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars)

These planets don’t activate or play a significant role when ur life’s going well. They show up when you’re stripped, raw, broken open, or deeply connected.

If it's Sun -> It activates when u r experiencing an ego death, an identity crisis, a near-death experience, or being seen too deeply by someone (aka feeling exposed). Your strength doesn’t show up until after you've been humiliated or broken. You unconsciously test people: “Will they still love me when I’m ugly?” You don’t know who you are until life takes everything you thought you were. Finally, you would become someone with nuclear-level confidence, but only after destruction.

If it's Moon -> Ur emotions naturally live underground. It activates when you experience betrayal, heartbreak, ur parent's death, or su*cidal thoughts. Your calmness is often trauma-induced freeze, not peace. Being too close to someone feels threatening to you. You pull people in just to push them out. You absorb other people’s feelings but bury your own like a corpse. You bond through mutual wounds, not joy. Trauma familiarity > comfort. You don’t cry often, but when you do, it’s a full exorcism. Finally, your intimacy with someone would feel like a rebirth, but after a mental breakdown.

If it's Venus -> It activates after loss of ur innocence, through heartbreak, abuse, betrayal/ cheating and trauma bonding. Often triggered by transformational love or a long period of abstinence. You r terrified of shallow connections, so u knowingly get into toxic dynamics. Sometimes, you test love by destroying it to see if it survives. Once you heal, you become dangerously attractive. People feel you’re real because you’ve died for love and survived.

If it's Mercury/ Mercury Rx -> It activates through revelations, true colors of the people around you, manipulation and secrets exposed. Often explodes when things are unsaid for too long. Silence or when u r putting up with things/people. You speak in metaphors/indirectly as reality feels unsafe. You intellectualize pain so you don’t have to feel it. You're scared of being misunderstood, but even more afraid of being fully known. Your thoughts turn self-destructive when not expressed. Once healed, ur voice becomes powerful but only after you’ve used it to destroy something you put up with for way too long or kept under wraps.

2. Chiron conjunct the IC or Moon

You r parented by absence and pain is ur native language. It activates when u move out, when someone loves you well and u panic, after a breakup, or when you go “home” (physically or emotionally) and regress by 10 years. Actually, you don’t remember being comforted, you just remember being managed. You can be hyper-aware of everyone else’s moods but can’t name your own. Need feels like weakness. But you secretly crave someone who doesn’t need you to be strong. Finally, relationships would stop being distractions and start becoming mirrors. You start learning that healing isn’t fixing, it’s feeling. It's about recognizing that it was never your fault that you were wounded in the first place.

3. 12H planets (Sun, Mercury, Mars)

If it's Mercury/Mercury Rx -> You think in full novels but speak in broken drafts. You can articulate everyone else’s problems except ur own. You lie by omission, not to manipulate others but to stay safe. Silence is easier than risking misunderstanding. You keep secrets from yourself and dissociate mid-convo. When u go thru a mental breakdown, nobody would know. Finally, when activated, you either become a psychic, a poet, a writer, or someone who never speaks again. Your choice.

If it's Mars -> You let people cross boundaries because you can’t find your ‘no’ fast enough. You explode alone. Then say nothing in person. When you finally express anger, you scare yourself. You express rage in slow motion. Finally, when activated, you take up space and will learn to say 'NO'. You won't put up with BS anymore or won't let anyone walk over you.

If it's Sun -> You feel invisible to yourself. Compliments feel fake. Criticism feels like truth. Your sense of self is more fantasy than experience. You learn from others' mistakes. You don't know what you want in life but you KNOW what you don't want. You stand for everyone except yourself. You don’t feel proud of anything unless someone else says it first. You disown yourself. Finally, when activated, you would stop managing ur visibility. You will start saying what you mean. You won't care if you come off messy, loud, or bitchy but it will be real than ever.

4. North Node in the 4th/8th/12th

In the 4th -> Every success would start to feel emptier the more you ignore ur home life/emotions. You over-function in crises and under-function in your own healing. It activates when career feels like a prison, when u want to cry alone in a locked room, when silence is the only thing that feels honest. After healing, you won't give a sh!t about others' opinions about ur life and start living true to yourself and become the "home" you always wanted to have.

In the 8th -> You r not secure, just armored. You keep it “light” in relationships to avoid losing control. The universe will rip things away from you until you stop gripping. You can’t bypass emotional death with logic and self-help books. Healing lives in surrender. The version of you that survives will not be the same. Being witnessed while transforming is the real shadow work.

In the 12th -> Here, stillness makes you panic and silence feels like failure. You r scared of being ordinary. You're addicted to fixing yourself but you've never actually stopped long enough to feel yourself. You’ll try everything but surrender. You believe in healing, but don’t trust the parts of it that can’t be tracked. You’re haunted by the part of you that you’ve never dared to meet. Even if u resist, your transformation will come anyway. You r here to return to "source". You will realize it thru your dreams and visions and it will take u on a path that's beyond ur comprehension.

5. Saturn conjunct Moon

For u, neediness = weakness. So you built a structure around your heart. A moat. A fortress. A goddamn prison. When someone tells you, “It’s okay to feel that way,” and you freeze like they’re speaking a language you forgot. It activates when your coping mechanisms start looking like self-abandonment. You never learned how to feel freely, you learned how to hold it together. You r emotionally mature for sure but you r emotionally underfed too. Once activated, you stop holding the world together and will start holding yourself. You will stop chasing strength and start chasing softness. You give your inner child the safety they never had and that changes everything.

6. A 6H stellium

Seriously, the toughest of all. You didn't choose the grind. The grind chose you. You r the system. The function. The routine. Until one day…you break. It activates when u realize that you planned your entire life around what others need from you or how you can provide them. It activates when a health crisis forces you to stop “pushing through.” When you realize you’re more familiar with structure than softness. People would call you reliable, not soft. Be honest! Don't you have coping routines, backup routines, and burnout recovery routines? You attract problems and solve them to feel useful. Finally, when activated, you will realize that that structure isn’t supposed to punish you, it’s supposed to protect you. You will rewrite your routines around what nourishes you and makes you truly happy. You will no longer feel the need to fix others.

I left some placements as I can't write everything in a single post. Will do a part 2 if u guys want one.

💌For readings, check out my pinned post for pricing! ✨💌🪐

[loganficsonly]

an independent woman

˚₊‧⁺˖✮ ch 5: slipping away ✮ ˖⁺‧₊˚

worst!logan x fem!reader, 5.3k (the longest yet!)

SUMMARY: As Logan learns to live instead of survive, he finds himself in the extremely dangerous position of sharing an apartment with you—Wade's friend. Extremely dangerous because Lord knows he can't keep his feelings a secret forever... not when your room is five steps away from his.

SERIES WARNINGS/TAGS: english is not my native language, no use of y/n, reader is a working adult (mid-late 20s) with a slightly written out personality, friends to roommates to lovers, slow burn, secret crushes, mentions of alcoholism and AA

CHAPTER WARNINGS/TAGS: 18+ MDNI!!!, masturbation, ANGST, hurt no comfort, unresolved sexual tension, a ton of negative self-talk, past trauma, death (imaginatory), just lots and lots of feelings

AUTHOR'S NOTE: gonna make this a/n a bit longer than usual:

first, a huge shoutout to @theworstwolvie who has been so gracious with her time and feedback. c, your comments on the chapters so far have been a great source of motivation and joy for me, and the fact that you enjoyed reading this one before i posted it is SUCH a relief for me—mainly because of how deep i had to dig for this chapter. THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU <3

second, i haven't the faintest personal experience with alcoholism and AA, and so i resort to reading things online to understand what it's like for the little bits of it that this series contains. i stumbled upon this blog post while writing this chapter, and i just want to share it with you for how honest it is. i hope the writer is living her best life right now!!!

this chapter took a lot out of me to write (i'm bruised in many invisible places), i hope you enjoy it.

Silver and bronze.

One heavy, rectangular slab each, about as long as a remote control. Clean cut. The metallic ingots sit quietly on the shelf of the living room, plain if not for the engraving of the name of your workplace and the accolade you received.

Reflected within their monolithic shine are bursts of animated colors from the television light, dotted with rambunctious laughter that settles down into mutters of concentrated small talk.

Yukio brought her Nintendo Switch and they’re playing a party game while you watch, sitting on the floor in front of the couch. Wade, Peter, Dopinder, and Negasonic Teenage Warhead—Ellie now, to most of you—are trying to “cook a cube of steak on all sides”, per the instructions of the game.

Vanessa’s behind you, her hair dipping down as she leans to giggle near your ear. The four players wrestle visibly with the controllers, moving it like they would a frying pan.

“They look like they’re jerkin’ off the air,” she covers her mouth, and you do too, biting back a grin because you see it.

When Wade first floated the idea of celebrating your win, you said no immediately.

It’s excessive—it was a team win, not your own. You’ve allowed yourself to feel proud of your achievements, specifically on the night of the award ceremony, which was almost two weeks ago. Life has gone on since then. Even at work.  

But Wade begged and pleaded.

“I promise it’s just for the first five minutes, honeybee. The rest of the night is gonna be us hanging out. Pretty please?”

Of course you couldn’t say no to that. So you relented. 

“We’re doing it at your place, though,” your ex-neighbor grinned, “a proper housewarming is long overdue.”

And Wade kept his word: nice things were said about you over toasts with raised Solo Cups, earnest despite your friends overtly not understanding what it is you do for work. After that, takeout boxes were drained dry, and Yukio asked if people were in the mood for games.

You’re watching the chosen form of entertainment play out when you feel it. A pang of loneliness, just a sliver of it, as soft as a petal landing on your hair.

Logan’s not here.

Eyes flit to the kitchen—he’s there, doing dishes. Slipping away temporarily in a way that’s familiar to you. Something in you relaxes.

Before you know it, you’re up on your feet, approaching him.

It’s been like this lately. You do your best to control yourself, to be self-aware—maybe a little too aware—in maintaining an appropriate distance with the best roommate you could as for, but you still can’t stay away.

You always look for him first when you enter a crowded room. Seek the meaning between the delicate lines that appear between his eyebrows when he tastes the food you make. Focus on the stir of his back muscles against flannel when he moves around the house. 

The moon probably feels the same way orbiting around Earth, you think. What pulls you to him is stronger than celestial gravity. 

A defeated part of you has long excused your physical attraction towards him. He is an attractive person, the internal voice reasons, nothing wrong with eating the eye candy. It’s an insult not to.

And you agree. You haven’t dreamed of him since, but once is enough. All it takes is one dream and suddenly he’s haunting all of your waking hours like a personal vendetta against you. 

He makes himself hard to ignore, whether he realizes or not. Always with the white tank tops and sweatpants. Biceps out. With any other person, you’d simply be fascinated at that level of fitness on a human body, but with him? Your mind wanders the way a child would in an amusement park. 

How are you supposed to function normally when the source of your maladaptive daydreams live five feet away from your door?

Can he blame you for slipping a hand under the blanket late at night, chasing subconscious sensations that felt so real to you? Would he despise you for pretending your fingers were his own, for lying to yourself—they’re his—the way you dreamed of? 

If he knew you gave yourself to him in secret, what would he do?

You have half a mind to think he notices—you were never the best pretender, and he’s lived with you long enough to get a bead on you. Stares poorly concealed. His every movement demands you to look: his fingers gripping a glass, how his eyes seem to change color under sunlight, the stretch of cotton over his undeniably sculpted chest… which come to think of, you still haven’t seen bare, to Wade’s surprise.

The worst part of this is that it’s not just his body. It’s more than that. More than eyes, hands, and his larger-than-life frame. 

It’s the way he looks at you when you come home from work and wordlessly take a tub of ice cream from the freezer. The way his fingers brush against yours when you reach for the popcorn bowl at the same time. And how he hugs you, warm and binding. You keep that memory filed away in a precious stack, that night he told you about his first AA meeting.

God, you miss his arms around yours. When can he hold you again?

Would he, if he knew the things you did while thinking of him?

Wade’s voice echoes in your head.

You’re really not gonna make a move on him, honeybee? Do you actually not like him?

You reply in your head. I think I’m past liking him, Wade. 

You know because alongside the dirty delusions about the rumble of his voice, you’ve started fantasizing about other things.

Things like telling him how you feel.

How it would happen—perhaps after a particularly charged movie night, or right before the mundanity of what to order for dinner. The kind of words you’d pick for him are hard to imagine, impossible to form with your mouth.

Language couldn’t contain the convolution that floods your lungs like flowers.

I want to be more than just friends. Do you? 

The way you’d cut your heart out from your chest and serve it to him on a silver plate, just to show him the way it beats. Messy and erratic when he’s around. You think it’s alright if he sees all of it, even the parts that you swear to hell and heaven you wouldn’t show anyone.

Your voice would be fraught with weakness because god knows you’re never good at declaring what you want.

And it stops short there, the fantasy.

You don’t allow yourself to think about what happens next. Whether he’ll pull you into a kiss that takes your breath away or shoot you an apologetic look like he spilled coffee on a white shirt. If the nosedive ends up in the cool waters of an aquamarine swimming pool, or broken bones on a pavement.

That line of thinking is forbidden. You know how dangerous it gets, how the less-kind voices whisper. They’ve already started, in the nooks and crannies of your idle mind.

He’s nice to you because he doesn’t see you that way.

If you tell him, you’ll make him uncomfortable in the apartment he calls home. Don’t be selfish.

He sees through you. How could he possibly want that?

So the daydreams end abruptly, a third act with no resolution other than the lucidity of a single thought. 

You just don’t want him to leave.

And if that means secretly surviving the stormy and turbulent, you’d do it. Day, after day, after day.

“I’d ask you to stop, but I’d be a hypocrite.”

The words tumble out of you quietly, standing by the sink near him. The party goes on, Vanessa’s and Wade’s laugh cutting through the noise.

He looks at you and does that huff—the one that’s not quite a chuckle, but just enough as an amused response.

“Caught me.”

“You don’t like the video game?” There’s a tinge of concern that weaves through the syllables. It’s getting rather loud and you don’t want him to feel bothered. 

“’s fine,” he replies, wiping his hands dry after putting away the last dish, “just not good at it, ’s all.” 

“You were great at the rowing one,” you smile, already replaying the fresh memory in your head.

It was rather miraculous that he didn’t swat away the offer to play in the first place. Maybe it was his soft spot for Yukio that did him in. He took the controller without a word and stared so seriously at the screen as if faced with an actual mission.

You schooled your giddy face as you watched him, stiff hand mimicking the rowing motion. Then he brought the team to victory and you were the first to cheer.

After nearly two months—god, where’d the time go?—Logan is still full of surprises, you decide. 

He shoots you a playful look, one that says I know you were looking. One that’s easy to miss, but his face already became a fluent language to you.

The Super Mario Party-induced bedlam continues to resonate mere feet away, and yet the kitchen feels like it’s just for the two of you, almost enclosed in a different reality.

You watch as he looks at you. Gentle, phantom strokes across your face. 

It’s moments like these that make you fall into that labyrinth. The maze that lies past your fantasies. It traps you into thinking that maybe, just maybe, he feels it too. Your heart aches with feelings that have no way out.

Logan opens his mouth then.

“And why are you escaping?”

You swallow, side-stepping to get to the fridge. I can’t, you answer in your head, not from you.

“I’m not. Just getting soda.”

The lightness in your voice had to be forced through the thickened air.

Can he tell? The same way you can tell what his grunts mean, if the frown on his face is one of upset or confusion, how he likes his coffee?

He watches as you cradle two big bottles of diet Pepsi, one in each arm. You try to ignore the way your spine tingles, reacting to the heat of his eyes on you.

You look at him one last time before passing him by, barely managing a smile on your lips.

He watches you walk away and digs a hand into the pocket of his jeans.

He feels it. An aluminum medallion.   

Light, the size of a poker chip, he reckons. With a swipe of a thumb he grazes its surface, busy with embossed letters, but larger words are pressed at the center. “1 MONTH”. Buried deep like a secret he didn’t mean to keep.

Windswept with the passage of time, he forgot about it.

There’s already a buzz in the air when he enters the room in the library.

Something much bigger is underway. Something he isn’t used to, much to his dismay.

It feels like the sky drops when the question does.

“Anyone here have thirty days?”

A sudden silence takes over. His head is anything but. Strange that he is so doubtful, as if he hasn’t been counting each day religiously.

He has thirty-five. Should he raise his hand? 

No, not yet. Maybe someone else hit theirs today—they should get to raise their hand first, not him, not when he feels like he hasn’t actually done anything real to get here—

Somebody does raise their hand.

Brent, he recalls. Young, a little younger than you, wearing baggy clothes and a little cowlick on his dirty blonde hair. He has a difficult look on his face as he starts to speak. The raised hand falls awkwardly back onto his lap, and then something in his eyes shines. Quiet. Steady.

“I’m Brent. I’m an alcoholic and I’m thirty days sober today.”

Pin-drop silence for a split second before the room erupts into cheers. People are clapping. Some of them get up from their chairs to embrace Brent in congratulations. The chairperson walks up to him, giving him the chip. The metal gleams red in the warm light.

What is more often than not an appropriately somber meeting, reserved in the first few minutes, dissolves into lightness and warmth. Like the shackles around each of their ankles are gone, just for the moment. Freedom in knowing that someone here—Brent—got to today, and that is enough for someone else in the room to get through their first 24 hours.  

The shift in the air seems to be enough to affect him, too. The voices in his head, the recitation of names that chant as soon as the memories creep—Scott, Jean, Rogue, Storm, Charles…—lack their bite of guilt and shame. He doesn’t feel like drowning, not like he used to. Images behind his eyelids flash, not of charred corpses and bloodied faces. Not today.

Today they smile, and he remembers fragments of his days with them, as beautiful as painted pictures.

The same image that made him cry for the first time in years.

In this room, with other faces who have gone through so much, regret doesn’t echo as loud. If his friends—no, his family—were here…

…they’d be proud of him too. He can’t lie to himself out of that fact.

He doesn’t know how, doesn’t know a part of him still remembers after countless cries since the day he lost them. But he does—hear their voice, see their smile, as if it were yesterday.

Jean and Rogue would hug him, their heads tucked in his chest and neck. Storm would, too, with a wide smile.

And Slim? Slim would be quiet for a while, gaze unreadable from behind the red visor, before finally circling an arm around his shoulder. 

Charles would be the only one with words. The warmth in those bright eyes could bring tears to his own.

We’re so proud of you, Logan.

That’s what he would say.

So a minute later, Logan swallows the lump in his throat and raises his hand.

He strokes the cool metal inside his pocket. He should tell Wade. Tell Laura.

Tell you.

He watches the living room from his spot at the island, trying to be present.

It’s your and Laura’s turn on the console. Somewhere along the way it turned into a fighting game, apparently. He can hear the banter, Laura mercilessly barraging you with attacks as a response to your playful goading.

When the killing blow plays in slow motion, you let out the loosest laugh he’s heard in a while, a hand running through your hair. Laura shakes your shoulders playfully, half-heartedly consoling you with a “of course I win, we play this at the dorms all the time”.

You sigh, the same sound that he usually hears after watching a great movie together. Entertained. Grateful. 

And then you turn to look at him, a bright smile on your face.

Did you see that? the pull of your lips seems to ask.

His heart rends in two at the sight.

This is what made him forget.

You. The greatest thing to stir up his emotions that drowned in a tar-like ocean of sin. 

Things are deceptively easy with you. A couple of conversations got you past that clumsy hump that comes with meeting a mutual friend, and after that, the road’s been highway-clear. The two of you coast like you know the way, like you’ve known each other for a while. 

Each interaction with you is a four-leaf clover, a smooth pebble, a scallop seashell—beautiful, natural little gifts that help convince him he was okay. That he no longer has to fight the world or himself, at least for the time being.

That he’s allowed to rest. 

Except he can’t.

Because in the past week, June has forced her temperature up a notch, and it has been nothing less than hellish torment. Suddenly your shorts become shorter, your t-shirts smaller, until they eventually turn into tank tops.

It’s not that he blames you for seducing him through the way you dress—you could wear a potato sack and he’d still want you—it’s his fault. He was the one who crossed that line, that night in the shower, thinking of you like that despite trying so hard not to.

You exist, blissfully unaware of his transgressions, and he’s tempted.

His eyes can’t help but hunger and he feels like a nasty animal, preying on you with his gaze while you’re around the house, a place where you feel safe.

Jaw clenching at your exposed legs as you walk around from one room to another. Hands balling into fists at the glimpse of your waist when you reach for the top shelf. Mouth salivating as you move your hair, exposing the nape of your neck.

That part of you should be so innocent, but the curve, your skin… it reminds him of the dress you wore.

It didn’t help that he bumped into you a few days ago, fresh out of the shower. You gasped when you collided into his chest and he had to put a hand on your waist to hold you steady, except he didn’t realize the only thing covering you was a flimsy blue towel.

Skin damp, smelling like a concoction of fragrances that made him want to take a bite out of you.

“Oh my god, sorry,” you breathed, escaping to your room without meeting his eyes. The door closed, and he was left alone in the hallway, accompanied only by his heart beating like it was begging to be let out of its enclosure.

It also didn’t help that he came home from work early yesterday, only to hear a buzzing sound. Too loud to be electricity. Faint and barely there, but more than enough for his enhanced hearing to pick up.

Above it, a sigh. Your voice. So soft he thought he imagined it.

Then a muffled whimper, and he knew it was real, because it was better than anything he could dream of.

His nerves jolted with hyper-awareness as soon as he registered what was happening. He could feel his body react as if it responded to yours, blood pumping south, his pants tightening.

A shaky exhale. You sounded so good, too lost to have heard him close the front door, but not at all loud, like you’re still trying to hold yourself back in case someone heard. Have you been sneaking around like this, taking advantage of the times he was away, trying to hide this from him? 

What if you thought about him when you touched yourself?

Fuck, he couldn’t believe that’s where his mind went. It was too late. Once he started picturing you picturing him, he felt dirty, but it wasn’t enough to make him stop.  

So yes, nothing helped. Certainly not you. You made it worse.

Made him picture you in your bed in a state of undress just shy of total nakedness, legs tangled between crumpled sheets, pressing a little vibrator against your clit while you slip your fingers into your folds. Made him want to break down your bedroom door and show you how he’d make you lose your mind instead of relying on that godforsaken toy.

Made him yearn.

He locked himself in his bedroom that day, hand around his cock, and thought about more than just the arch of your back when he sinks into you. Timing his strokes with your quiet gasps—perhaps hushed for human hearing, but more than enough for him—like he wanted to believe he was there with you, causing your downfall. 

A deeper need hummed incessantly through him. He should be startled at its revelation, but instead, he found it perfectly familiar. Maybe he’d thought of this from the very start.

Your face, wrecked with pleasure, cheeks flushed as you gasp up at him.

Logan, please, more.

He’d give you anything you asked for, drive deeper with the singular purpose of carving his soul into your very being. He’d leave a mark neither you or time can erase. You’d moan, lost in him, but your eyes would lock with his as you whisper, stuttered in between thrusts:

I love you—love you so much—

He came. Harder than any of the times he’s touched himself while thinking of you. Copious amounts of him spilled in his hand, on his stomach, forcing him to hold back a loud groan.

It felt wrong, his wayward mind twisting your voice to say those three words to him. He didn’t just cross a line this time, he violated it. 

What have you done to him? He thought he’d be content just living. The universe gave him a chance at redemption in the shape of a man in red tights, and as if that wasn’t crazy enough, he ended up with the cleanest slate he could get: a life in a different timeline with his friends and his daughter.  

But here he is, blood boiling with affection that laces his veins—for you. The prettiest, softest, kindest thing he’s ever seen, the person who stubbornly insists to be useful when you only need to exist for him to fall into that wretched feeling he hasn’t felt in a century.

You’ve turned him into a monster of greed, because now, living is no longer enough.

He wants you, wants to pull that laugh out of you, wants to make his shoulders comfortable enough for you to rest your head on, wants to spend a lazy morning in bed with you, cradling your face in his hands and showering kisses on your eyelids—   

“Logan? Do you wanna play?”

Hazel eyes snap back to reality at the sound of your voice.

The entire living room is looking at him. Laura and Wade look suspicious, while you still have that blameless smile on your face, holding your controller out as if it’s for him to take. 

Thoughts usually cease to exist when you look at him like that, beaming, but tonight it’s different.

Tonight he feels like he’s defiled you without having laid a hand on you, and the thoughts ring louder than ever, taking the shape of a voice he didn’t think he’d hear again.

Cassandra Nova’s.

There’s a cruel lilt to her voice, the same one he heard in the Void. That happened a lifetime ago, but it doesn’t echo—smooth and unmistakable. She’s still in there, in his head.

One good thing enters your life and you can’t keep your paws off her. Desperate pup.

You should see how you slobber all over her. A blind person could tell. I think she can, too. 

You think she’s going to kick you out? I think she’s too polite for that. She’d pretend everything was fine. That sounds like her, doesn’t it?

It feels like her grimy fingers are sinking into his brain again. As if they never even left.

He tries to shake it off, the sensation of nails scratching into the recesses of his brain. 

But oh, boy, when she finds out… a cold chuckle, give her two weeks and she’ll tell you she needs to move out for some bullshit reason, completely unrelated to you. Because she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. Never. She’s too nice, isn’t she?

The sensation sucks the air out of his lungs, an out-of-season chill up his spine.

She’s only nice to you because she feels sorry for you.

For a split second, he sees your face in the rubble. Bloodied in pallor, eyes blank.

Dead.

Don’t get too close, Wolvie. You know what happens when you get too close.

Fear.

How could he forget?

Has hitting thirty days of sobriety got him cocky, got him thinking he’s worth more than he really is?

What was he thinking, planning on showing a fucking coin to you?

It doesn’t change a thing. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s killed, spilled blood that could fill up a river. Pretending like his moral ledger is not in the red, like he no longer has enemies, debt-free, all set for a quiet life? What the fuck is he doing, playing house with a woman who has her entire life ahead of her? 

You’re probably doing this out of pity, anyway, the same pity that moves little girls to their core when they see stray cats stuck in the rain. The kind that can’t stand seeing someone cold and alone, unaware of the diseases he’ll bring. The teeth. The claws.     

He jumped timelines. Who’s to say others can’t, if they want to hunt him down so desperately? And god knows they’re out there, he just doesn’t know when they’re going to come for him.

If he’s sure of anything, it’s that his past always comes back to haunt him. Always.

And that you deserve better.

“Logan? Do you wanna play?”

He doesn’t answer your question. Grunts, footsteps padding across the room until he’s situated at the furthest corner away from you.

Doesn’t even look at you.

He’s quiet that way for the rest of the night, but only to you. You’ve spent most of your life reading rooms and sensing situations—you’re fairly certain of your assessment.

He’s upset.

About what, you don’t know. Your mind jumps to the conclusion it always does. Could he be mad at you?

Something heavy and invisible begins to make itself known in your gut. He’s only a little subdued, the way someone would after a long day at work. Afflicted with a kind of tiredness that his healing factor can’t fix.

Aside from that, he seems normal. Would be, to the average person. He even exchanged a few words with Ellie. Something about Japan. Yukio smiles, an easygoing bundle of joy next to her girlfriend.

You’re in a conversation with Dopinder—if you can call it a conversation, because it’s mostly him speaking at this point. His words are lost to you as you leave the asking of follow-up questions to Peter, while you’re left retracing steps and things said to Logan, in case something landed the way you didn’t intend it to, trying not to look over at him every three seconds.

You fail.

Glancing at him, you see him already staring at you back.

What do his eyes say? In that instant, you forget how to speak their language. 

He looks away.

Suddenly it’s cold.

There’s the taste of bile in your mouth.

“Hey… you okay?”

He’s on the couch, a faraway look on his place. You step closer, gathering the guts to sit next to him—not afraid of him lashing out, but the possibility of him not wanting you there. 

He nods, unmoving even as your weight sinks on the soft surface.

You’re so used to his presence, especially here in the living room. A sacred place where the two of you are free to blend into each other. Movie nights, easy laughter on your part and a snort or two from him. Assembling a store-bought shelf together on the floor, plywood parts surrounding you in a circle like it was actually a private little bubble—you and him against the world. Having dinner with him and Laura, talking shit about work, windows open, music in the background…   

Now, there’s a wall. The air is thick in a way that suggests a coil being snapped, and not at all in the way you would like. Your skin tells you someone is getting hurt.

And you know who is.

“I was—”

“Did you wanna—”

The two of you begin speaking, only to stop at the same time. On another occasion, you’d laugh. Not this time.

“You first,” you look expectantly at him.

He wipes his nose once, leaning forward to rest both elbows on his knees. Doesn’t look at you when he speaks, his gaze glued to the black TV screen ahead despite you watching his every move. 

There’s a prolonged silence before he finally speaks.

“I was thinkin’ of movin’ out.”

He turns his head to finally look at you.

You wonder what he sees on your face, because you don’t know what emotions are running through you right now.

Surprise, because you aren’t sure what to expect, but it definitely isn’t that. Doubt, because this whole thing is set up like a prank, except he won’t joke about this. Logan is straightforward, not needlessly cruel.

Most of all, you feel confused.

Did you get the signals mixed somewhere along the way?

The world sinks slowly beneath your feet, like your reality has been a poorly constructed sandcastle all along. Feet slipping, grains parting as you drop further downwards.

Maybe he wasn’t as comfortable as you thought he was, living with you. Maybe he didn’t like having to help you wrestle with wrenches and bolts. Maybe he only approved of the fried rice you made, and that asking him to taste test your other dishes got him annoyed. Did he really like the fried rice, or was he just trying to make you feel better about cooking?

Maybe you misread his sharing past stories as a sign of openness.

Maybe in showing him pieces of yourself you'd never shown anyone else, you created pressure instead of safety.

Maybe you hovered too close. Pushed too far.

You hear a voice from the past. Nameless, faceless, an amalgam of a few persons you no longer keep around.

You need to lay off. You’re a bit much.

God, you know you get things wrong sometimes, but this? You feel sick, the ice-cold realization submerging you.

What if you projected so much of your infatuation towards him that your rose-tinted glasses made you blind? What if, this entire time, you didn’t see him at all?  

You’re the one to break eye contact, looking down at your lap. From your periphery, you can see his hands tightening around his knees like he’s holding something back.

He continues to speak, voice measured, slightly apologetic.

“Was thinkin’ I needed privacy after all, now that I can actually afford it,” he rasps.

“Space. Just for myself. Less awkward if I… have some company over.”

Something in you cracks.

You catch yourself just before breaking in the only way you can.

He watches as you look up at him, a smile on your face that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

“I understand. I appreciate you telling me in advance,” you reply, voice level. “Do you, um, know when you’re gonna move? I need time to find a new roommate.”

“Not sure, Wade and I got this mission that’ll last for a while. I’ll look around after.”

You nod. It’s quiet for a while.

“I’ll help you look, then.”

He nods this time, voice quiet.

“Thanks.”

You get up.

“Shower’s all yours. Good night, Logan.”

“...Night.”

He watches as you turn, disappearing down the hallway, your bedroom door clicking shut.

Hands clench around the fabric of his pants so tight, his knuckles turn white. He exhales, but there’s no relief. Instead, the pain intensifies, jagged wires constricting his chest and digging into his skin. 

Fuck, he doesn’t know why he said that. That part about company, as if you didn’t already have him wrapped around your finger, as if you hadn’t been the best person to be around, as if he wanted someone else. 

Felt like cutting his tongue off the moment the words escaped him. He hates it, he fucking hates it.

Hates the look on your face, trying to be calm and considerate of him. You didn’t even ask why and he lied to you, only to watch you mask the hurt like he couldn’t see through it. He can, he has a feeling you know he can. Instead, he watches you slip back to the past, like this was your first conversation with him.

Polite.

Like whatever the two of you shared this past two months didn’t exist in the first place.      

Logan ignores the pained caterwauling in his chest. His breath won’t go down his throat, tortured and stuck.

Absentmindedly, his feet take him to the hallway, gaze lingering at your bedroom door.

It’s dead quiet, his enhanced senses picking up nothing. Somehow he thinks it’s worse than hearing you cry.

He swallows before retreating into his own room.

It was the right thing to do.

So why does it feel like he’s still drowning even after it’s done?

taglist: @squishyfruitloop @britttzy267 @tezooks @ddwnghead @dear-detested @duckyyyx @hits-different-cause-its-you @mrfitzdarcyslover @snowlycanroc @teresas-lisbon

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Non-Linear Storytelling

Non-linear Narrative - a narrative technique in which the storyline is told out of chronological order.

That can take many forms by using:

flashforwards

flashbacks

dream sequences

foreshadowing

Non-linear plotlines can mimic the recall of human memory, or weave in fantastical elements like time travel or clairvoyance.

Advantages of Using a Non-Linear Narrative

Non-linearity as a narrative structure might be a challenge to pull off—the order in which everything is presented must still be logical, if not chronological—but when done well, it allows a more nuanced, masterful story to emerge.

Intrigue. By disorienting the reader, a nonlinear structure creates a puzzle that requires more engagement with the individual pieces of the story. Cause and effect cease to be predictable or immediately visible, allowing the reader to curate their own logic. When a novel opens with a murder, the series of events that follow carry greater weight and add to the anticipation of the final (known) outcome. When the reader knows more about a character’s fate than they do, opportunities also arise for moments of irony, be they tragic or comic.

Worldbuilding. Not only can you use a non-linear structure to incorporate different time periods into your story, taking a momentarily different point of view can give the reader more insight into other aspects of the setting—think subplots unfolding on the other side of the world that will eventually become meaningful, or perhaps historical events that come to bear on the lives of your characters.

Depth of character. The more the reader learns of your main character’s backstory, the better they understand the choices they make throughout the narrative. Instead of simply telling the reader your character is an orphan, send them back to the moment they became one. Those experiences stay with the reader as they continue through the story.

Flow. Nonlinear storytelling moves your narrative form into something closer to art. While humans might be instinctually drawn to the neatness of chronological order, they are enchanted by the complex. Interchanging the main plot with a non-linear plot allows you to capture more of what it means to be human, and then some: giving shape to all the connections that bind a group a people together, though they themselves remain blind to it.

Examples of Non-Linear Narrative

Non-linear storytelling goes as far back as the 5th century, with flashbacks peppering the timeline of the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, which tells of two clashing groups of cousins. Homer’s Iliad used a technique called in medias res, where the story starts at its mid-point.

The non-linear is still going strong in the 21st century: here are a few new and noteworthy examples.

Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse follows a family’s visit to the Isle of Skye over a ten-year period. Featuring no dialogue and almost no action, the novel unfolds in thoughts, observations, and childhood memories reflected against the present moment.

In William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury, the narrative is pieced together by separate members of a fractured aristocratic family. Each section jumps forward and back in time, covering the events whose ripples have led to the present fate of the family.

Kurt Vonnegut, whose book Slaughterhouse-Five utilizes flashback and time travel to illustrate the life of American soldier Billy Pilgrim.

Science-fiction writer Ted Chiang’s first-person short story, Story of Your Life (which was later made into the film Arrival) examines the existence of free will in the face of the inevitable. Told from the point of view of a Louise, a linguist who learns an alien language that allows her to view her future and comprehend time in a nonlinear way, the story opens with the birth of her daughter; the reader only learns later that she knew the child would die young and still chose to fulfill that destiny.

In Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler's Wife, protagonist Henry De Tamble lives with a genetic disorder that forces him to sporadically travel through time with no warning. He falls in love with an artist (who lives an ordinary life on a standard linear timeline) and continues to jump in and out of moments in his own life, sometimes with dangerous consequences.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[fenmere]

Except that she very much did not learn their verbal language. She learned their written language.

And, then, only with great help from them and some kind of weird telepathy neural-adaption kind of thing that was going on that the rest of humanity really couldn't adapt to. It took extraordinary conditions for that gap to be bridged, and it was really mostly through this one person. She still couldn't understand their speech, nor imitate it. She was able to use computers to analyze it and approximate it, the same way we do with whales and dolphins. The big difference with whales and dolphins being that they can't draw glyphs in the air for us, nor do they have experience going around and contacting alien civilizations. Still, one story that sort of fits the bill is a very, very small percentage of the sci-fi genre.

kind of wish there was more sci fi where verbal communication with aliens was like completely untenable, less in the "aliens are incomprehensible eldritch beings" way and more in the "our brains are flatly not evolved to comprehend the noises dolphins and crows are making, why would that be different for a highly complex language also using nonhuman sounds" way

[elcucurucho]

With the escape room event I’ve seen a couple people talking about how they think it’s so cool and they really want to watch cellbit but they don’t speak any portuguese, so I just wanted to remind everyone that cellbit has subtitles enabled on twitch! He uses the ultimate closed captions plugin, and while the translation is not going to be perfect, it’s very good for live captions!

Speaking from personal experience, when I started watching cellbit I knew NO portuguese. I was completely reliant on subtitles to understand anything. And I still had a great time watching the streams! Even if you don’t know the language, you can understand a lot through tone and context. Understanding something 100% is not a prerequisite to enjoying it, and having fun is a great way to learn!

[subliminalbo]

A thing I've never really talked about in this space is that, on top of an English degree, I accidentally got a history degree too. I say accidentally because for about half of my college education I didn't drive and could only take classes based on when I could be at school. Student aid requires a certain number of credit hours to be full time, which meant I was taking a lot of extra classes that weren't directly related to my major and by the time I realized how much work I'd done toward a double major I only needed a few more history classes to get there.

Anyway, for some reason, or maybe no reason at all, I took a ton of 20th century French history classes. I usually tell people that my degree is "with a focus in 20th century French history" because it sounds cooler than "I accidentally took too many French history classes," but the point is that I've learned a lot about France's frequently failed experiments at Republicanism.

Around the same time that Donald Trump was running for president for the first time, I was learning a lot about the French Republic. The one thing that really surprised me, what felt absurdly un-American, was how many times the French have just admitted that the republic wasn't working and rebooted it. A Republic is only as functional as its legislators, and at various points throughout history the French government has become too gridlocked to function. This means stripping the government down and trying again. That's the really important part. The foundation of republicanism is good, it's only that iteration of it that failed. So they keep trying.

I found this concept really fascinating as an American who lives under a republic that has operated, largely uninterrupted, for over 250 years. Why though? 2016 was a unique time to reflect on this question because Obama's presidency was coming to an end and there was a sense that there was so much left unaccomplished because of a stubborn right wing coalition in congress that made it its mission to limit his impact. All of the criteria was there for a reboot of the republic, just as France had five different times. And it's only gotten worse.

I'm reflecting on all of this today because of the Supreme Court rulings which have effectively greenlighted the executive branch to willfully deny unambiguous language in the constitution with little legal framework for the electorate to fight back. The wheels are fully off. One thought I've had a lot over the last ten years though is to what end does the far right expect this hard swing into authoritarianism to take us? Fascism never really wins, not in the long run.

I'm not saying that as a thought of inspiration. I'm personally very fucking terrified about the years ahead of us, so terrified that I can't find joy in imagining what kind of peace we can find on the other side of it. But there is another side of it, and that's the point I'm trying to make here. By embracing outright lawlessness, by choosing to make life in America intolerable for an entire half of the electorate, by refusing to push forward for the better, the far right death cult that has fully taken hold of the United State government is only accelerating an inevitable end to an iteration that maybe should have stopped functioning years ago.

[theenglishnook]

The Gamification Revolution in Language Learning

Level Up Your Language Skills Embarking on the journey of language acquisition has undergone a thrilling metamorphosis, ushered in by the captivating wave of the gamification of language learning. Imagine language learning not as a tedious task but as an immersive quest, where learners don the mantle of heroes in a digital realm, unlocking linguistic prowess and cultural insights. The…

[undomesticated-animal]

Some tags from @hyenaboycunt, @darethebrave, and @seimsisk that really cut to the quick of what I was trying to do here.

Tag Set #1

#absolutely love this piece#it took a moment for me to properly catch on since i dont think ive encountered written spanglish before#relevant linguistic background for me:#monolingual english speaker‚ 3 years of latin in HS‚ & familiar with pronunciation rules for spanish#plus a few friends/acquaintances who've spoken spanglish around me (but they're not consistently part of my life)#so i did the monolingual thing and focused on the obviously english paragraphs first#but once i grokked what i was looking at i started over#when reading English i dont really have an internal voice. i usually know the words and what they mean#(i sometimes completely miss out on written puns because of this‚ funny enough)#anyway. i started over. and i know the pronunciation rules but i dont have much experience reading spanish.#so i had to sound out a lot of it (internally) while i was reading.#and i was surprised by how much i understood when i could “hear” the words#even if i absolutely couldn't translate them.#and i did have to look to the english paragraphs for help of course‚ but less often than i expected#it's funny too that i was reminded of two people in my life who i hear speak like this. one is a friend's mother and i can HEAR the way#the way she says “mijo” to her son (my friend)#the other is a family friend I haven't thought of in YEARS but this writing has me hearing her voice and seeing her mannerisms so clearly.#I'm enamored with how actually thinking about the *sounds* both 1) made this exponentially more comprehensible to me#and 2) brought to mind the voices of family friends speaking to their children#it feels so very much like *home*#not my specific home. but it's something I've personally only heard spoken in places that *feel* like home.#really wonderful writing here Domi.#there's more thoughts churning but ironically words fail me. and tragically i dont have any other languages i can try

Tag Set #2

#i haven’t used my three years of high school spanish in quite a while#but what a linguistically fun reading challenge!#also a very good poem OP thank you for sharing#it was neat to catch the little differences between the paragraphs#art#poetry

Tag Set #3

#this sentence applies to all languages I think#everyone go read op's tags please#I do not speak Spanish but I can read it more of less fluently because I'm Brazilian and it just works like that#reading the spanglish versions felt so good#and I related to so much of it even if my circumstances are completely different#I have been through the experience of trying to date in English and it was such a mess#how to explain to a gringo the meaning of carinho? carente?

I had a really public meltdown a few months back because something happened during a date that made me realize I had slowly let my entire love life happen in English. And while I didn't [and still don't] feel like the answer is to demand that my partners learn Spanish in order to talk with me, I did realize that part of why I felt so thoroughly alienated from affection in my relationships is because it is in Spanish and Spanglish that I feel verbal care and affection. English feels....sterile and professional. Which is maybe a reasonable outcome of a world where "home" welcomes my polyglot behavior and "the rest of the world" gets irritated with me for requiring extra work of them to communicate.

It somehow never seems to occur to people that the work they dislike having to do for me will have to get done regardless, and what they are objecting to is literally my attempt to not carry and perform all of that work alone and unsupported in relationships that are meaningful to me.

That's a dynamic that's hard to vocalize to others unless they already internally recognize the experience and can pick up on it.

My partners still don't speak Spanish. But these days I do. Almost universally in my relationships, Spanish and Spanglish are verbalized markers of my feelings of intimacy, care, and trust in another. I use more over time as I become comfortable, I rely almost exclusively on common MexíCalí pet names and diminutives for partners, and the more relaxed/less rigidly self-managed I am, the more likely I am to simply reach for Spanglish first and foremost.

When I wrote this, I wrote the English paragraphs first. It took a little while, but it was doable because I use English A LOT in my professional and personal life obviously. Next I wrote the Spanish. This was harder. I have few people to keep up with, so I was anxious about mixing up my spelling, my grammar, my vowel modifiers, etc. I did a lot more checking and rechecking of my work to ensure that I was not misremembering my conjugations and grammatical structures.

I wrote the Spanglish last. I wrote it in under five minutes. I wrote it without once feeling the need to confirm my grammar or vocab. I wrote it and immediately felt it conveyed my tone and intention far better than either monolingual version. It was the closest thing I've ever felt to not having to "translate" my thoughts for someone else, and I spent a little time after just quietly having a cry about reaching my 30s before ever letting myself write the way I think, before letting myself trust my partners and loved ones with this part of me that is so integral to how it feels to be at home with another person.

I actually considered recording myself speaking the poem aloud because I agree with @hyenaboycunt that the way I write is meant to be read aloud, not read in one's mind, and there were several times reading it to myself that I realized reading it would lose something too. Several words where my accent and pronunciation was not the same as the language of the word itself, or where the blending went further than simply mixing and matching words within a sentence. I still might take a recording, we'll see. I really do think it's the next logical place for this art piece to go. But I also know that speaking is so raw and vulnerable to me, and while I would typically just have someone else do the recording, this is a circumstance where that wouldn't solve the issue at all. It has to be me. And ironically, that's what may end up limiting me from being able to do it. Yet again, my relationship with language being complicated creates barriers to communication that even *I* can barely recognize without real intentional thought. How can I expect others to see how much I do to be understood when I can barely admit it to myself?

En íngles, y otra vez in Spanish

No sé to describe mi relationship con mi lingua. Complicado, I suppose. No sé qué the words that will come en mi mente primary, y sometimes es difícil traducir between las idiomas. Creo que most people figure translation ser word-for-word, pero no es menos un pequeño here and there. Sometimes I look for las palabras exactamente por way too long y sientame abrumado. People act like eres estúpido if words are hard for you. Y adorame cual ser talking down a mi en bed, pero tiempo otros I get so angry when people decide no es importante para mi tiene tiempo enough communicarse. I don’t know how to describe my relationship with language. Complicated, I suppose. I never know which words will come to me first, and sometimes it’s hard to translate between languages. I think people expect translation to be word by word, but it so rarely is. Sometimes I search for the correct replacement word for way too long and it makes me feel so overwhelmed. People treat you like you’re stupid if you struggle with your words. And I like to be talked down to in bed, but the rest of the time it makes me so angry when people decide it’s not important for me to have the time to communicate properly. No sé cómo expressar mi social relación con la idioma. Quizás complicado. Nunca sé qué palabras vendrán primero a mi mente y, a veces, es difícil traducir entre los languajes. Creo que la mayoria de la gente se figurarán que la traducción sea palabra por palabra, pero raramente está. A veces trato de encontrar la palabra exacta durante demasiado tiempo y me poniendo abrumado. La gente actúa como si fueras estúpido si las palabras están costarían. Y adoro que me traten con condescendencia en la cama, pero si no me airado mucho cuando la gente decide que no es importante para mí tener tiempo para comunicarme. I wonder often how it feels hablar o necesitar solamente una idioma, y inglés at that. ¿Reconocéis how much nuestro uso de language changes how nos entendemos y our place aquí en es? I often wonder how it feels to only use or need one language, and English at that. Do people realize how much our language changes how we understand the world, our place in it? Me pregunto con frecuencia qué se siente hablar o necesitar solo una idioma, y ​ lo que es más, inglés. ¿Reconocéis todos de lo mucho que la idioma cambia nuestra comprensión del otros y nuestras relaciones sociales? La idioma es all about relationships. La forma de la palabra implies más y mucho about la context sociales en el que it’s spoken. Crecí con myriad trozos de significado in each sentence spoken. English feels desolado en momentos. ¿Cómo se dice mijita como en una chica que es carnal para mi con el tono solamente? En inglés, estan mucho emphasis en the meaning of body language and I imagine los otros rarely notice this. Maybe por eso I have such a bad time entender mi role para las vidas de mis quieridos. Menos Mamá, lo no tengo con que hablar Spanish. Pero maybe menos los diminutivos y verbalizacion de relationships sociales en nuestro day to day conversacion, no créo sé how to fill la falta. Quizás part of el problema conmigo y my understanding of non-verbal communicación, and I figure it out claro que si, pero I forget how often no es necesito hacer que.

Spanish is all about relationships. The shape of a word implies so much about the social context in which the word is being used to communicate. I grew up with so many layers of meaning in every sentence spoken. English feels almost desolate sometimes. How do you convey that you are calling someone baby girl with the love you have for family with only tone? There is so much weight put on non-verbal communication in English that I think people rarely notice. Maybe that’s why I have so much trouble understanding my role in the lives of my loved ones. Aside from my mother, no one I love speaks Spanish well enough to use it with me. But maybe without those little suffixes and verbalization of social relationships in our day to day conversation, I don’t know how to fill in the gaps left behind. Maybe some of the conflict in how others speak and how I hear their words is the absence. I’ve never been good at reading body language, and I surely figure it out in Spanish too, but I forget sometimes how many little spaces it isn’t necessary in my mother tongue. La idioma del espanol es una cuestión de relaciones. La forma de una palabra expresarse mucho del contexto social en el que se habla la palabra. Crecí con tantas trozos de significado en cada oraciónes hablado. La idioma del inglés es desolado por momentos. ¿Cómo se dice mijita como en una chica que es carnal para mi con el tono solamente? En inglés se pone mucho énfasis en el significado que expresa el cuerpo y imagino que los otros ven es raremente. Quizás por eso me resulta difícil comprender mi ubicación social en las vidas de mis queridos. Menos mi madre, nul de mis quieridos habla español con sultura para usarlo conmigo. Pero sin esos diminutivos y la charla sobre relaciones sociales en nuestras expresiones, no sé cómo llenar la falta. quizás un componente del problemo en cómo entiendo a los demás es la falta de contexto. Soy malo para interpretar el expressiones corporal, y también lo entiendo en español, claro que si, pero olvido que con frecuencia no es necesario en mi lengua materna. Me pregunta how it is por la gente del otra cara. ¿How is it to see how much más acepción there is anytime una palabra cambia en español? ¿What do you notice changing when leé lo que está escrito aquí? I wonder what that is like for people on the other side of the coin. How does it feel to realize how many componants of a single word can be changed in Spanish to convey meaning? What do you see change when you try to navigate my language? What was it like to read this post? Me pregunto cómo será eso para la gente del otro cara. ¿Cómo es ver los muchos pequeños cambios en una palabra que tienen significado? ¿Qué ves cuando intentas interpretar mi idioma? ¿Cómo fue leer lo esto obra? Some say a mi está buenísima that I lapse en el español during sex. Some react poorly when I cambio en medio idiomas. Otros no tienen any reaction at all. No creó sé what I want people entender para mi behavior. Yo sé quiero to be loved en mi context. I know this makes la spoken idioma un dificíl way para mi aceptar love. I wonder how entendeís conmigo. Sometimes people tell me it’s hot that I lapse into Spanish during sex. Sometimes people react with visible discomfort whenever I move between languages. Others don’t have any reaction at all. I don’t know how to convey to someone what meaning I want them to take from this behavior. I know that I want to be loved in my own context. I know that I cannot be loved in a context others lack. I know this makes language a difficult form of love for me to accept. I wonder how others would come to understand that about me.

Algunas personas me dicen que está buenísima que hablo español cuando folo. Algunos reaccionan en contra de con desasosiego cuando cambio en medio idiomas. Otros no tienen ninguna reacción. No sé cómo decir qué espero que interpreten de esta acción. Quiero ser quierido en mi propio contexto. Sé que no puedo ser quierido en un contexto de lo cual otros es falta. Es difícil para mí aceptar la idioma hablado como una forma de cariño porque que esto verdad. Me pregunto cómo los otros entienden eso de mí.

[phinnking]

i know a lot of people like to make fun of young queer people who use a bunch of microlabels and engage in niche or "cringe" aesthetics but im gonna be so honest, i love them so much. i 100% was that kid and while now i don't really use or think about any of the labels i used back then, that doesn't make that time any less valuable and valid (and it doesn't make someone less valid if they do keep using that terminology into their adult life!). queer kids who are figuring themselves out and are learning about new fun words for genders and pronouns and sexualities deserve to run wild and be loud and happy and not carry and be impacted by the shame that many of us have been taught to hold.

my cousin is a year younger than how old i was when i first realized i was queer and they've vaguely known they were queer for a couple years now. personally, i think that's pretty awesome. recently they've gotten into the very stereotypical scene kid aesthetic and i make a point to compliment them on it every time i see them. almost every time i see them they have a new adjustment as to how they view their gender/sexuality and i always tell them that that's really cool and i give them a hug. recently they told me they have a boyfriend and listed like 3 separate labels as to how he defines his gender and i asked them if i was remembering the definitions of all those words correctly (which i was because, like i said, i was that kid lol).

it's just all these small things that seem so trivial or "weird/cringe" that so many people look down on queer kids for engaging in and i'll never understand it. i think it is so unbelievably cool that these people are figuring themselves out and finding new terms and identities and things that they can be and they're just so excited by it. being excited by queerness is cool! wanting to engage in niche subcultures is cool! allowing yourself to be who you are in that moment without the worrying guilt of having to get it "right" is wonderful and awesome and cool and how it should be!! please do not teach the queer kids to be ashamed of themselves in a time where they should be able to run wild and figure out their identities in a way that truly makes them happy!!!!

[opha]

the thing that disappoints me most bitterly about the current state of trans discourse is that many seem to have discarded the idea that there are trans people who are neither transfem nor transmasc. those terms are now commonly labels automatically applied based on assumed birth assignment/an extremely specific grouping (one might say... a monolith) of biological and social markers that don't cleave to the lives of lot of intersex people, or just vibes, tbh, to aggress one another

[linguenuvolose]

Watching videos from the Louvre’s youtube channel on script deciphering and having a moment because one was in English and made me go wow it would be so beautiful to be a part of a multidisciplinary research group and I’d really love to do research, and the other videos was in French and it made me realise how cool it is that I know that language. I rarely ever use it nowadays but I watched a 25 minutes lecture on Linear B and understood it perfectly. I have the tools to access so much more information because I learned this language. Multilingualism is so beautiful, it’s so cool to know several languages. Sometimes I feel like languages kinda just come into my life without much behind them but truly knowing languages have given me my whole life so <3

[shortqueershakespeare]

Shout out to Hozier for articulating the concept of untranslatable words better than I’ve ever heard when he said it’s like moving a melody from a piano to a violin, it doesn’t sound the same, it doesn’t do the same thing to you

Man that shit just summarised a lot of my emotions about being bilingual in a way I’ve never been able to properly explain

[indigostudies]

specifically the post i’m annoyed by is by a big blog that will remain unnamed (general big blog, not language sphere big blog…i think. unless my judgement of this person’s online activity is entirely off) and insists that if you “just turn on the [language] subs rather than english subs” you’ll…somehow magically begin to understand (presumably at least intermediate conversational) dialogue in shows? which, i think comprehensible input can be a great tool but…that’s not CI. you’re just advising people to do something that will have little to no payoff unless they’re already familiar with the language’s basics (at least!)(the post was specifically aimed at beginning learners with no/little familiarity, though!) and which will probably leave them frustrated and demoralised…i don’t mean to gatekeep but i think sometimes maybe people shouldn’t confidently claim xyz method is the One True Secret Solution. especially if they have, quite literally, no sources to back them up besides (to quote the internet) “source: trust me bro”.

[lesmiserablol]

as much as i resent the mormon church and my time in it i’m gonna be honest. i think my mission was the most fun experience i’ve ever had.

[bsotted]

anyway im also getting in some really good korean practice not just listening but also reading bc people in the comments are SO funny i saw somebody say under one of the dopamine remixes (cant remember which atp i've blasted my brain with too many videos in rapid succession to recall where i read specific comments anymore) but whichever one it was. her comment was something like "wow i really like this the lyrics are great. my favorite line is the part where he says BWRAAAAAAHAAMMMMM doodoodoo doo doo-doo doodoodoo doo doo-doo. that was really good"