#at least for me as an english speaker with some background in latin

[coquelicoq]

i love reading shit in my second language in which i am not fluent. like do i know what all the words in this sentence mean? no. but do i know what the sentence means? basically, yeah. so it's all good. i'm not gonna be doing any amazing literary analysis here but i get the gist. i'm in the neighborhood. who needs to see the trees when i can see the forest? close enough.

[farlynthordens]

Is Gen gay-coded or just an entertainer? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ random thoughts/observations about his speech in Japanese

Warnings: LONG. mentions of gendered language and homophobic characterizations

The concept of “role language” is super important in Japanese fiction, because how a character talks can tell you a lot about their personality. Unfortunately, it’s often lost in translation because languages like English don’t have the ability to play around with formality levels, pronouns, etc as much.

Ever since I first watched the dcst anime like a year and a half ago, I’ve had no idea if Gen is intended to be the “gay friend” character or just the “quirky famous guy,” or maybe both? I figured that writing out my thoughts might be interesting for some people! Take everything with a grain of salt tho since I’m not a native speaker

1. Backwards speech

I want to first cover backwards speech (localized as pig latin in the English manga) because this used to confuse the fuck out of me. It felt like a quirky teen thing or internet slang, but it’s actually [zuuja-go] (“jazz” written backwards + “language”) which originated in the 40s-50s.

It was revived primarily by male TV stars and comedians in the 80s-90s, and to this day zuuja-go is regarded as a type of [entertainment industry-specific language]. However, it’s hardly used anymore. It’s kinda weird then that Gen, who’s too young to have lived in the revival period, would use zuuja-go, but my guess is that it’s a funny and somewhat original way to show his “popular entertainer” background. I personally don’t know any other characters who use it as regularly.

2. Choice of pronoun + speech patterns

Gen ends nearly every sentence with ~ne, ~yo ne, ~yo, or ~sa, or otherwise no particle at all. Questions almost never have an ending emphasis particle, putting the rise in intonation on the final word (the standard is to end with ~ka, ~no ka, etc). He also always contracts the verb ending ~te shimau into ~chau/jau (Senku always uses the contracted form too, but a more boyish derivative (chimau). It probably sounds crazy but trust me). There’s more I could list, but these are the most notable points lol

This kind of speech pattern is associated with teen girls/young women, so when it’s applied to a perceived male character, it’s used to indicate that they’re an “effeminate man”. In most cases, “effeminate” = gay/trans (yeah it’s shitty and outdated thinking). It’s also been applied to male characters who are idols or internet stars, possibly as a dig at their masculinity or making fun of their attempt to appeal to female audiences.

One example of the latter is Pyotr from Carole & Tuesday, who’s their universe’s equivalent of an Instagram celebrity. His sentence structure is almost identical to Gen’s, with the girlishness turned up to 11 because of the very high pitched, nasal-y voice given to him in the show. More on this later.

We also can’t forget how he calls everyone -chan. It’s diminutive and cute, but literally no one uses -chan that much. Even in fiction, female characters normally use it for female friends or children, and guys almost never use it except for children and maybe certain girls they’re close with. It’s definitely the most exaggerated cutesy trait he has. “Effeminate male” characters often address others - regardless of gender - with diminutive honorifics or cute nicknames even when not necessarily appropriate, so this is just gay-coded behavior from what I can tell lmao

One thing that’s different about Gen compared to other characters with the same "effeminate male” speech pattern (that I can recall, at least) is his pronoun. He uses the masculine “ore”, like Senku, Chrome, and most of the other young male characters. In text, his “ore” is even in kanji (俺) like theirs. Had it been written in hiragana or katakana, it would have given more of a casual or stylish vibe. Just as a sidenote, this is also why his name itself is written in mixed hiragana/katakana instead of kanji! It’s a typical thing for Japanese celebrities to do with their names to seem cool.

Anyway, characters who are meant to be portrayed as “effeminate men” will almost always use watashi or atashi, the standard “female” pronouns, or at least “boku” which is generally male-aligned but softer than “ore” (Pyotr uses boku, as an example).

Pronoun usage is way more nuanced in real life, but for fictional characters, it tends to be broken down into these kinds of stereotypes based on Tokyo-dialect Japanese.

He also is missing some other key points in his speech pattern that would more clearly identify him as gay/trans-coded, like using the feminine ~kashira (”I wonder...”) instead of ~kana.

3. Voice acting in the show

I love Gen’s Jpn voice honestly, but it does play into the “effeminate man” stereotype a little. His voice is a bit higher pitched than the other guys and somewhat nasal-y, which are both common traits of this stereotype when used with the speech patterns I talked about above. The way certain syllables are stressed also highlights his feminine speech pattern. However, he’s comparably tame to “effeminate” characters in other series. For example, his Jpn voice actor does raise the pitch of his natural voice for Gen, but it’s not a falsetto imo. It’s pretty common for male voice actors to do falsettos for “effeminate” characters.

Gen also doesn’t fall under a lot of the tropes that plague many gay/trans-coded characters and quirky celebrity types - such as being a “diva” or uncomfortably flirtatious - which tend to get amplified in voice acting.

---

This stuff combined with my previous post about his clothes makes me wonder even more about what was intended for his character. There’s a lot about him that is notably “feminine” without him leaning too hard into gay stereotype territory. And it’s just like, why did you do that.

If you survived reading this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts<3

[absurdthirst]

I'm here to rant or at least give my opinion about something. So people have been talking about that urban dictionary thingy right well i saw a post that said it's weird (and I've even heard the word fetishizing before in other people's post) that said that they don't think it's normal for a Latino character (Javier in this situation) person to like talk a whole sentence in English and then just throw in some random words in Spanish to make the reader remember that he's latino.

Well I'm from the Caribbean. And maybe it's bc I'm colonized but that's how I talk? That's how my friends talk? That's how people i don't know and hear on the street talk?

Look. A lot of older people here don't know English but my generation (people who's 40 or less) most of them know English.

So i hear a lot of people here talk like how this person said "a whole sentence in English and throw in random words in Spanish".

My first language is Spanish but i think and talk most of the time in English.

There could be people fetishizing that character. I'm not saying they could not. But like it's normal? For me? To talk a whole sentence in Spanish and throw in random words in English or the other way around? So normally when I'm reading Javier fics or like Frankie fics i don't give it a second thought if i see either character talking in English and throwing a term of endearment in Spanish. Or the other way around.

I just wanted to let people know that at least for me where I'm from it's normal to talk like that.

There are plenty of authors and users on here from Latine backgrounds that feel the same way. The term Spanglish is what I would always use to describe it and others would as well.

Most people who are bilingual will switch back and forth or pepper their English with words from their native tongue. That is not something that is new. My best friend my sophomore year in high school was a German exchange student and that was a constant mixture of Deutsche and English. Or my mother-in-law who has been speaking English her entire life but never moved from the Philippines until she was in her twenties. I will get a mixture of English and Tagalog all the time when she's excited or upset.

I have been attacked before for Javier Peña fics. Being told that I was fetishizing. However, it wasn't something that I used to make the character appealing, it was just a portion of the characterization. The fact is that he does canonically speak Spanish.

It's also the fact that I am not a native or fluent Spanish speaker. There have been authors on here who have tried to include Spanish in their stories to make it more authentic and have been criticized for that as well. So damned if you do, damned if you don't. (Plus, unless you actually speak Spanish, you are either highlighting the passage and using a translator or you are thankful that the author included the translation)

There will always be critics and those that try to use that as a way to gate-keep. As long as the author makes sure that it's not crossing the line between 'here's Javier Peña an attractive man who happens to speak Spanish and will switch back and forth' and 'Oh I want a piece of that sexy Latin man' I don't believe that they are crossing over into fetishization.

[shaolin-spin-doctor]

a Very Heated Battle of The Realms review

No spoilers:

It was bad. Really bad.

Scorpion's Revenge wasn't a masterpiece by any means, but it was good enough to get me hyped for this movie. Eye-catching style, outstanding animation and an interesting enough story to get you hooked despite its overall lack of depth - if the first installment could have all these things, surely the sequel would improve on them and be even better, right? Right????

Wrong.

This movie sucks. Sure, the first few minutes are entertaining, if pretty uninspired, CageBlade is cute, and the Subzero / Scorpion subplot in and of itself is actually pretty decent, but it fails in pretty much every other aspect - most of the characters are barely even... well, characters, the plot feels all over the place, the fights are short and uninteresting, the animation is lackluster... And the ending. Oh my god, the ending. I want to know who in their right mind looked at that and said "yep, seems about right!". The rest of the movie had been whatever-ish, but it completely lost me at that point. Some Annihilation level bullshit, I'm telling you.

All in all... Only watch this movie if you want some background noise, are drunk with a couple of friends, want to see some mindless violence for an hour and 20 minutes, or are a subscorp shipper and can ignore everything else in favor of their scenes. If you aren't in any of those categories, please spare yourself the headache and don't even look at it. Forget it exists. It's not worth it, not one bit.

As a side note that has nothing to do with the base movie itself, if you're a Spanish speaker and are thinking of watching the Latin American dub... Don't. Please don't. The audio mixing is disgusting and whoever directed the voice actors didn't even try, so everyone's bored and unenthusiastic all the time and it really just makes an already unimpressive experience worse. If you really need to watch this, do it in English for your own sake.

Spoilers:

LISTEN. I swear this has nothing to do with Lao getting murdered. Y'all know I was fully prepared for it to happen, and was not surprised at all when his was the most brutal death in the entire movie. In fact, I was actually kind of excited (sad, too. but still excited), since the whole thing up until that point had been a complete drag and I was sincerely hoping we'd get some actual action from it. Sadly, it was not the case, and instead Liu Kang got a Dragon Ball Super level powerup... and whatever the FUCK the ending was. Legitimately, I screamed when he turned into a dragon - I wanted it to happen, but in a BADASS way, like the games, y'know? Instead we got... that, and I think my father said it best when he described his presence as a "dying asthmatic shrimp". aND SHINNOK?? WHAT THE FUCK?? I fully believed his appearance was gonna be setup for a subsequent movie, ESPECIALLY when Shao Kahn grabbed Kitana - i thought he was gonna kill her at first, and then we'd have the main group of revenants (sans Liu Kang) for Shinnok to call upon, and I was kind of hopeful that perhaps they would explore them better in the future and give us the Legends version of mkx or something like that - but he ended up just. being a Big Evil Monster. His defeat was so stupid, too?? Idek man I can't even begin to describe how dumb and nonsensical and pathetic the whole ending was. Legitimately one of the worst endings for any movie I've ever seen in my entire life, not even kidding.

L/iutana came out of NOWHERE. I adore this ship with my life, but it was so poorly set up i was left absolutely flabbergasted when they kissed. What the fuck? Cageblade was okay because of the setup in the previous movie and the little development the two had in this one, but L/iutana was just. God. Legitimately. If you aren't even going to bother writing a romance in a slightly believable way or give it any development, why bother writing it at all????

Speaking of Liu, I don't know about you, but I didn't connect with him at all here???? See, he's supposed to be the protagonist, but he gets barely any development and his spotlight is constantly being stolen by Scorpion and Subzero. Yes, I know he's just as flat in the original games and he's only began developing his own personality fairly recently, but you had so much potential for him, both as a person and with the potential lore attached to him. Why did the Tarkatans kill his family? Why did he get a random powerup and managed to lift Shang Tsung's "curse" (which, by the way, was completely pointless), which only Raiden was supposed to be able to heal? The only thing I liked about him was his chemistry with Raiden, who is also one of the only few highlights of this movie for me, and everything else... Nothing, really. Hell, he doesn't even talk to Kung Lao ONCE. For a man he's supposed to consider his brother, you'd think they'd have at least a single scene of them together - at least as a way to display their bond, if the writers really didn't want to give them any real character traits aside from "good guys with pure hearts" - but no. That's partly why Lao's death didn't carry any weight - yes, it didn't lead to anything, but it hadn't been set up at all, either. Same with Stryker. He was just a guy who happened to get involved, said two lines, and then died. He had no real relationship with anyone in the group, so his death was completely unimportant, and really, if he had just vanished, just like those rain clouds that appeared to soak Liu after Raiden's death for like 2 seconds before going away without a trace right in the next sequence, I probably wouldn't have even noticed.

Really, he, Lao and Smoke might as well have been cut, and it wouldn't have made any difference. It's sad.

All in all... I didn't like this movie at all, except for a very few things here and there. I know it's supposed to be Mortal Kombat, and people are always gonna defend it by saying the story doesn't matter, but... Why shouldn't it? Why can't we have a good Mortal Kombat story with better thought out plotlines and characters? And if we can't have that, why can't we at least have coherent fights? This movie had a lot of potential, and it was just tossed out the window. I'll be salty about this for a while.

[sarkywoman]

Writing Asks

Tagged by @under-the-shady-tree, thanks!

20 questions, writer’s edition, let’s go!!

How many works do you have on AO3? 85

What’s your total AO3 word count? 712708

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they? Oof, uh... since like, 1999? Um, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Andromeda, Supernatural, Heroes, NCIS, DC, Marvel, The Umbrella Academy, Kingsmen, ASoIaF/Game of Thrones, Borderlands, Community, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Doctor Who/Torchwood, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Misfits, I think I’ve forgotten some...

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM)  A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones)  Young God (Borderlands)  Story and Sorcery (Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel)  My Shame is True (The Umbrella Academy (TV))

Do you respond to comments, why or why not? I try to! Comments are so important in the fanfic community and I know how hard it is to think of something to say about a story, even when you’ve loved it to bits, so I don’t want people to feel ignored. Especially because I appreciate comments so, so much! I will say though, I have lapses, often when my mental health isn’t good, where I simply don’t know how to respond to people and then months go by and I feel weird about replying... so sorry if you’ve ever commented on one of my stories and got silence - it was me not you!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? The Aimless One (Misfits (TV 2009)) Straight up the saddest story I’ve written, no question. Normally writing sad stuff doesn’t make me sad but I had to take a break in the middle of this to just try and grapple with the idea I’d had because it tapped into a lot of depressing thoughts I have about life and death in general. The comments were all complimentary but so upset that at first I was like ‘hooray, it had the desired impact’, then after a while I started to think ‘why did I want to hurt people like this?’

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? Probably  Realising All You Ever Wanted, a Hobbs/Dirk fic for the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency fandom. There’s such minor conflict in that one that the sugary sweet ending isn’t out of place. 

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written? Well. I have some fandoms that are sort of crossovers already, things like Marvel where you have comic versions and movie versions and it doesn’t really feel like a crossover to be picking and choosing. Same with a Dirk Gently/Thor fic I did, because Thor cameos in the DG canon, but not this Thor. I think the most ambitious crossover I’ve worked on was a collaborative chatfic with @freshgratednutmeg that we’re never likely to post, where the need for more background characters in an Umbrella Academy A/o fic led to it being crossed over with Marvel and Brooklyn 99. (Leading to such amusements as Diego sparring with Rosa, and Five competing with Shuri in class.)

Have you ever received hate on a fic? Yeah, but it’s never been very well-reasoned so it’s been fairly easy to dismiss. Some people expect everyone to share their own perspective of the characters and it’s weird.

Do you write smut? If so what kind? Not really. I can go there and have done on occasion, but it doesn’t interest me very much. I think I did it more when I was younger because I felt like it was a necessary aspect of grown-up fanfic writing (when I started I was a teenager amongst mostly adults... or other people lying about their age too lol). These days I’m more likely to fade to black or allude to the acts. But I’m not averse to writing it or anything, but it’s never the focus of my story.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Only in the sense that I see them on other sites I didn’t upload to, sometimes in other languages, sometimes not. They normally say my name somewhere on them so they’re not stolen as such, but it’s still uncomfortable to see my work circulated to other sites without my permission.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Not with my permission, but yeah. I don’t know how to feel about translations. Obviously I want people of other languages to be able to read my work, but at the same time I’m not fluent enough to be able to check the translator’s work, so I won’t know if they’ve done any better than google. Word choice is pretty important in fiction. A bad translation can totally warp a text.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not for posting or sharing, but me and @freshgratednutmeg cowrite all the time.

What’s your all time favorite ship? All time?! That’s impossible to answer. I’m a multi-shipper for starters, in pretty much every fandom I’ve been in. When I find a ship I love, I love it intensely above all others for the duration of the fixation. Then eventually it gets set aside when I find a new fandom. I’m also indecisive enough to not really have an all-time favourite anything. 

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? A Song of Bastards and Wards (ASoIaF - GRRM, Game of Thrones). I can’t begin to describe the pages of notes I have for this beast. Unless I threw them out, which... scanning my room... is a distinct possibility. Ouch. I’d hoped to parallel the books for a long time with this one, but the amount of work for a project like that is too much when you’re no longer as passionate about the source fandom. I suspect what I might do is scenes with interconnecting notes, just so people get some sense of closure.

What are your writing strengths? Dialogue, baybee! Kinda makes me want to be a scriptwriter. People are always telling me that the characters ‘sound like’ them. I think it’s from reading voraciously from when I was young and being quite a social child, that moving speech patterns and quirks into writing is something that comes very naturally to me. Too natural, in fact, because IRL I write how I speak and that’s not always suited to the situation.

What are your writing weaknesses? Most things other than dialogue. Even thought processes are an internal dialogue, so they’re okay, but then like... a fight scene? A sex scene? Just even... what are their hands doing while they’re talking? How are these people physically present? Where are they? Are they inside, outside, is the building on fire? My descriptive skills are lacking, to say the least. It’s something I’m working on.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? I’m not quite sure what’s meant by this. I’m not fluent in anything other than English so I don’t see that would work well for me. I know a few phrases in German/French/Welsh/Latin/Spanish but nothing useful for conversation. Dropping in words can work, if it’s the same way the speaker would use them amidst their English. Most of the time the characters I’m writing wouldn’t be speaking in another language anyway. We can blame the tag-team of English colonialism and American media for that one I think. I think that sometimes authors utilise a character’s language in a way that just exposes how little the author actually knows of the language and that’s a bit cringe for me.

What was the first fandom you wrote for? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. None of those are online atm because they’re so so bad XD I should post them just so people can see improvement but... I can’t even read them, they’re hilarious. The most gratuitous self-inserts, the most ludicrous arguments, the most out-of-character romantic declarations.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written? Hmm, that’s a quandary. I think I’ll differentiate between favourite to write, and favourite end product. Favourite to write was probably  Noble Blood (Game of Thrones, ASoIaF - GRRM) because it was just a romp through my favourite themes. Given it’s one of my most popular stories, I’d say that just proves you should write what you want! I was going to quickly say  Young God (Borderlands) is my favourite fic for quality of the finished product, because I pretty much just sat down one evening and spilled it into a word doc then reread it back and thought ‘huh, did I write that? Awesome’. But I’m happy with a couple of more recent things I’ve done for The Umbrella Academy fandom, notably  The Price of Parenthood, which is very different to what I usually write and is a look at the life of one of the mothers who gave up her child to Reginald. Also The Water Calls, which was the only thing I managed to write for the recent MerMay event. It took me a little while to puzzle out how it all fit together, then once I had it worked out it came together wonderfully and I was very happy with the tone of it. 

Tagging anyone who fancies doing it.

[lispunk]

Thoughts about Misha's video, 15x18 (the non reciprocal love confession and subsequent latam correction) and How the C*W* ended Supernatural

This my opinion after watching Misha's video. It's a bit long so bare with me, please.

So what if it was just a rogue translation? There's so many people who only know that version of the story and for them it will be the only one there is. I stopped watching spn in wb (I'm from Argentina) because I didn't like the translation (which is really funny now), but I think that saying this is my canon now is very valid. I was lucky enough to get to watch the show online when it aired but the truth is that am going to stick with the spanish Latin America version even if it was a lucky mistake.

(Also y'all really don't know how big it is that they made the decision to put "Te amo" instead of the platonical "Te quiero" and Dean saying "Y yo a ti, Cas". Spanish dubb in -Latin America at least I don't know about Spain- is usually very homophobic like as a rule, it's still very common to see translations turned platonic or less romantic just so it's not very gay. So the fact that they made the choice to say that is incredibly huge).

(TW: canon characters deaths; talk about suicidal tendencies -in character and the op; homophobia from network).

And the thing is that for Cas it's still a bury your gays ending whether Dean is canonically bisexual (which he is to me) or not. And we don't even need to talk about Destiel. It's also about Rowena (cutting a scene which confirmed her as bi) and Charlie (being the representation of the fandom at some extent and dying violently) and how they characters were treated. And how every female or poc characters was treated. The C*W* needs to be hold accountable for this things. They think they aren't homophobic because they have a white twenty something gay guy, and don't get me wrong they deserve representation too but it's the easiest way they can give it. They're mostly filling a quota, they don't care about them. And that's fucked up doesn't matter how you look at it.

Maybe we were wrong about an original alternative version of the love confession scene were Dean reciprocates, but we are not wrong about everything else. And I'm sure we are not wrong about the network queerbaiting us into watching the last two episodes after we got the confession in 15x18. They knew what it would mean to us and they chose to be ambiguous about Cas coming back just to keep us watching.

I understand if Misha thinks Cas ending meant so much (and I agree to some extent) but I won't be silent about how much I hate what they did to him. Cas declaration was really important and it did save the world, but I can't say that it was okay that they killed him afterwards and then we only got three mentions of his name and nothing else in the last two episodes. I would die saying that Castiel as the third lead in Supernatural deserved better than that and he deserved to be in the finale (don't even bring covid as an excuse because it's not).

Supernatural's ending sucked. If you liked it then good for you, you're very lucky but I still will boycott the shit out of it. I love Misha, Jensen and Jared and I respect them and their work (also the whole crew and cast) but that doesn't stop me from thinking the finale was disrespectful towards them but especially towards us. I don't even have to bring Destiel into this, the way Dean died it's just awful. He fought for the whole world and he didn't deserve that. Y'all really don't understand how much it affected me the fact that Dean, a character who has shown suicidal tendencies got killed the moment he was starting to enjoy life. I deal with my mental illness and my own awful thoughts and seen that just made me feel real hopelessness. That's not the way you want to portrait a mentally ill (and possibly queer) character unless you're a truly shitty network/writer and you don't really care about the characters and/or your audience.

I know I talk a lot about Dean and Cas but Sam's ending wasn't great either. Yeah, he got the withe fence ending with a wife (DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE FACELESS BACKGROUND WOMAN) and a kid, but he never got over his brother death and that's really just sad. Also one chapter he was desperate to have Eileen (his love interest through the whole season) back (15x18) and then we never hear from her again, no one even mentions her name.

They build the whole show around the idea that "Family doesn't end in blood", they have all this character growth from their leads and then it's just thrown away for supossedly shocking value and some weird idea that they should end it like they started it or how it originally was supposed to be (which literally just takes away the whole point of making the show). And they don't even mention family (besides the abusive father being in heaven, mary whom I don't particularly think is a good mother, jack and cas being mentioned once each, and bobby appearing for two minutes after like five seasons). So it just ends up being about Sam and Dean, or just Sam, and eventually his son Dean I guess. And then Sam and Dean again but now they're both dead and happy (because is great being dead apparently).

I'm going into heller mode now so if that's not your cup of tea then leave that's it for you, it's your lose.

As a queer closeted girl I've always found comfort in Cas and Dean's relationship and I tought that someday it would be their moment and it'd be okay for them to come out and then it would be okay for me too. Getting the semi canon when 15x18 aired meant so much but the truth is I still wanted more, I wanted Dean to be able to say it back because I love them both and they deserve so much love and Dean especially has always been a role model to me so I really wanted for him to get an actual happy ending and then... we didn't. But now there's this new version and truly I couldn't care lees if it's not in the original script because I got to hear it. I think it's sad how fucking desperate I am for representation from characters I relate to that I will take any crumbs i can get. Dean and Cas deserved so much better than what spn end gave them. And the truth is that I and we did too.

In conclusion: Dean is bi(sexual and lingual), he loves Castiel and his love is reciprocated. Also the ending is an ao3 fix-it fic, so yeah. That's it. I'm sorry for this ranting but I really need it to let all out. If someone is as frustrated as I am feel free to drop a message.

P.S. I really love the cast and the show, I literally wouldn't care that much about this if I didn't so i don't mean to sound hateful towards them. Just really hated the ending and the fact that I got queerbaited and robbed of so many (mostly gay) things.

P.S.2. Sorry for any grammar or spelling errors it's past 3 am and I'm not a native english speaker (self taught actually so there's probably a lot of those). Again really sorry about that, I hope I made myself understandable enough.

[firexfate]

muse one ~ character + bio

[a/n - hey, everyone! i thought i would make this bio for one of my characters that i roleplay as just for fun, also for people that i roleplay with to see more about the named character. :,) i hope you all enjoy, and let me know what you think, as always. also, yes, yes i changed the face-claim because some people had the same face-claim as i do, lmao, so i did not want anyone to be confused. that’s it for me! thank you <3]

Felicity Grace Hamilton — a patriot, a spy, a survivor.

❝ If I cannot move Heaven, I will raise hell. ❞

— Virgil, Aeneid.

⋆ ╤╤╤ ✯ ╤╤╤ ⋆

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┊┊⋆┊┊ ☪

┊✭ ┊ ┊

✯ ┊ ✧

✵

╱                       ╲

✵ 𝐓𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 ✵

ɪ. 𝓖𝓮𝓷𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓵 𝓘𝓷𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 ⋆

ɪɪ. 𝓣𝔂𝓹𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵 𝓐𝓹𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓬𝓮𝓼 ⋆

ɪɪɪ. 𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓵𝓽𝓱 ⋆

ɪᴠ. 𝓟𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓼 ⋆

ᴠ. 𝓟𝓻𝓮𝓯𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷𝓬𝓮𝓼 ⋆

ᴠɪ. 𝓕𝓪𝓶𝓲𝓵𝔂 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓡𝓮𝓵𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷𝓼𝓱𝓲𝓹𝓼 ⋆

ᴠɪɪ. 𝓑𝓪𝓬𝓴𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓻𝔂 ⋆

ᴠɪɪɪ. 𝓐𝓾𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓻 𝓝𝓸𝓽𝓮𝓼 ⋆

╲                       ╱

- ˏˋ 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 ˊˎ -

────────────

┊

☪ . ˚

˚✩

- ˏˋ 𝓷𝓪𝓶𝓮 ˊˎ -

Felicity Grace Hamilton

⋆ ᴘʀᴏɴᴜɴᴄɪᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ⋆

First name: Feh-lih-sih-tee

Last name: hah-mil-ton

⋆ ɴɪᴄᴋɴᴀᴍᴇs ⋆

Lici [lih-see]

- ˏˋ 𝓰𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻 ˊˎ -

⋆ sᴇx ⋆

female

⋆ ɢᴇɴᴅᴇʀ ⋆

female

⋆ ᴘʀᴏɴᴏᴜɴs ⋆

she/her

- ˏˋ 𝓸𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 ˊˎ -

⋆ sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴏʀɪᴇɴᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ⋆

Heterosexual

⋆ ʀᴏᴍᴀɴᴛɪᴄ ᴏʀɪᴇɴᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ⋆

Straight

- ˏˋ 𝓵𝓸𝓬𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 ˊˎ -

⋆ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ᴏғ ʙɪʀᴛʜ ⋆

Nevis, the British Isles [located in the Caribbean]

⋆ ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛ ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ ᴏғ ʀᴇsɪᴅᴇɴᴄᴇ ⋆

America. Current place depends on the roleplay.

⋆ ᴇᴛʜɴɪᴄɪᴛʏ ⋆

Caucasian

⋆ ɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟɪᴛʏ ⋆

American.

⋆ ʟᴀɴɢᴜᴀɢᴇs sᴘᴏᴋᴇɴ ⋆

French

English

Latin

⋆ ʀᴇʟɪɢɪᴏɴ ᴏʀ sᴘɪʀɪᴛᴜᴀʟ ʙᴇʟɪᴇғs ⋆

Felicity grew up to be a Catholic, despite her mother being a Huegenot. She attended mass most of the time, but, of course, this happened less frequently as the war had begun. She is not extremely religious, however, but she believes in God.

- ˏˋ 𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓲𝓷𝓯𝓸 ˊˎ -

⋆ ᴀɢᴇ ⋆

Around her 20s, though it would depend on the roleplay.

⋆ ᴅᴀᴛᴇ ᴏғ ʙɪʀᴛʜ ⋆

04.11.1757

⋆ ᴢᴏᴅɪᴀᴄ sɪɢɴ ⋆

Aries.

⋆ ᴛᴀʟᴇɴᴛs ᴀɴᴅ sᴋɪʟʟs ⋆

Talented musician -- can play the flute, harp, and violin.

Excellent public speaker, her motivation is something that both she and her brother share.

Knows basic defense -- can shoot reasonably well. Felicity had a very unconventional background, especially given who her brother was.

A dancer and singer, she is the patron of most arts.

- ˏˋ 𝐓𝐲𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 ˊˎ -

────────────

┊

☪ . ˚

˚✩

- ˏˋ 𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓲𝓷𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 ˊˎ -

⋆ sᴘᴇᴄɪᴇs ⋆

Human

⋆ ʜᴇɪɢʜᴛ ⋆

5’3’’

⋆ ᴡᴇɪɢʜᴛ ⋆

100 lbs.

⋆ ʀᴀᴄᴇ ⋆

White

⋆ ғᴀᴄᴇ ᴄʟᴀɪᴍ

Adelaide Kane

- ˏˋ 𝓭𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓾𝓲𝓼𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓯𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮𝓼 ˊˎ -

⋆ ʜᴀɪʀ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀ ⋆

Dark brown

⋆ ᴇʏᴇ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀ ⋆

Dark brown

⋆ ғᴀᴄɪᴀʟ ғᴇᴀᴛᴜʀᴇs ⋆

Porcelain intoned skin, has a few birthmarks on her cheeks and neck.

⋆ ᴛᴀᴛᴛᴏᴏs ⋆

None

⋆ sᴄᴀʀs ⋆

She has scars and bruises on her back and arms because of the war. Many bring back memories of her past, which were horrifying, to say the least, ones which she would much rather forget.

- ˏˋ 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 ˊˎ -

────────────

┊

☪ . ˚

˚✩

- ˏˋ 𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓱𝓮𝓪𝓵𝓽𝓱 ˊˎ -

Prior to the war between England and the colonies with their French allies, her health was normal average. She was a strong character before, especially with losing half of her family members and multitude friends, as the tensions in the colonies had grown. She had grown up too quickly in order to survive. During and after the war, she was never the same. There was both a hidden strength and grief in her eyes, which would be very difficult to extinguish.

- ˏˋ 𝓹𝓱𝔂𝓼𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓵 ˊˎ -

⋆ ᴡᴇᴀᴋɴᴇssᴇs ⋆

She is not very physically strong, and she is not very flexible either. Sometimes, especially due to emotional overload, she takes things to heart sometimes, and she can lose control of her emotions when she gets passionate or angry about something.

⋆ ɪʟʟɴᴇssᴇs ⋆

None. She is physically healthy.

⋆ ᴅɪsᴀʙɪʟɪᴛɪᴇs ⋆

None that are physical or mental. Perhaps, some trauma after the war remained with her still.

- ˏˋ 𝓶𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓪𝓵 ˊˎ -

⋆ ɪʟʟɴᴇssᴇs ⋆

Some anxiety, or PTSD after the war, insomnia.

⋆ ᴘʜᴏʙɪᴀs ⋆

Fear of small spaces, fear of being alone, fear of losing the people that she loves.

⋆ ᴛʀᴀᴜᴍᴀs ⋆

Her past life in Nevis, in particular when she had lost her mother (Rachel Faucette died in her arms, as Felicity nursed her to her grave). She also feels pained and reminded of the rather rough experiences she had living in New York, mainly that is where she lost a few extended family and friends. The war brought her more horrific memories as well.

- ˏˋ 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 ˊˎ -

────────────

┊

☪ . ˚

˚✩

- ˏˋ 𝓹𝓮𝓻𝓼𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝔂 ˊˎ -

⋆ ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴᴀʟɪᴛʏ ᴛʀᴀɪᴛs ⋆

Kind-hearted

Strong-willed

Goal-driven/determined

Passionate.

⋆ ᴍᴏᴛɪᴠᴀᴛɪᴏɴs ⋆

Duty to country -- Felicity is driven to succeed as she has a country to protect, to fight for her own freedom. She is as patriotic as it gets, and her determination could be seen both as courageous or reckless. She would do anything to keep her country, and the people that she loves safe.

Family - she would give her life up to the people that she truly cares for her, and she would constantly put them first.

Freedom - She wants to be free, especially from the wrath of the British, and their ways. She wanted America to be free from the tyranny of Great Britain, for it to rule itself. She wanted it to have its own government, to make its own decisions. That being said, she is influenced heavily by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Moreover, she wants to be free of her own burdensome past.  

⋆ ғᴇᴀʀs ⋆

Fear of being alone.

Fear of tight spaces.

Fear of losing the people they love.

⋆ ʜᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ᴛʜᴇʏ sᴇᴇ ᴛʜᴇᴍsᴇʟᴠᴇs? ⋆

Felicity sees herself as someone who is very determined and cautious. She believes that she is understanding and has a way with different kinds of people. She sees herself being loyal to a fault and a passionate person

⋆ ʜᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ᴛʜᴇʏ’ʀᴇ ᴘᴇʀᴄᴇɪᴠᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀs? ⋆

She is perceived as very passionate and strong-willed, which could be both a good and bad thing, since she was but a woman in a world that is ruled by men. She is rather bold in her manners, but she is fiercely protective of others, and while her mannerisms could be unconventional, she is a truly good person, with a good heart.

- ˏˋ 𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓻𝓪𝓬𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓼 ˊˎ -

⋆ ᴍᴀɴɴᴇʀɪsᴍs ⋆

She is very out-spoken and blunt when she is stating facts. She is rather honest, and it may come off a very odd and wrong way. However, she is also very good at keeping her silence, as this was of import as a spy. She is kind to most people that are good, and she is very open-minded and non-judgemental.

She is passionate and fierce when it comes to things that she cares about. She is overprotective when it comes down to people that are important to her. Felicity would never let any harm come to those that she loved, and she would do anything for her own country, for the cause of America.

She can be strategic and rational when she is making important decisions, especially with her work with espionage and of the like. However, strong feelings and emotions can get involved, which causes her to be rather rash. She tends to get angry, sad rather easily and it tends to blind her actions. Most of the time, she uses her mind to guide her, even in dire circumstances.

⋆ ʜᴀʙɪᴛs ⋆

When embarrassed or shy, she begins playing with her hair a lot. Similarly, she can also wring her hands a lot.

When angry or emotional, she paces around the room a lot.

⋆ ʙᴇsᴛ ǫᴜᴀʟɪᴛʏ ⋆

Felicity is incredibly resilient, she is a natural-born fighter, hardened by her experiences of the world. Hardships and obstacles were certainly thrown her way, but she continues to move on and live her life the way she can. She is mentally strong and a survivor because of it.  

⋆ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ғʟᴀᴡ ⋆

Felicity is a very feeling person. That being said, the emotions that she feels can be both a blessing and a curse. She could be blinded by the things that she would do, by her hatred or grief. She could be impulsive, incredibly stubborn, and that too complicated matters greatly. She had to learn how to control herself, which was very difficult for her.

⋆ sᴛʀᴇɴᴛɢʜs ⋆

Kind, gentle, understanding

Brave, fierce, relentless.

Protective, intelligent

⋆ ᴡᴇᴀᴋɴᴇssᴇs ⋆

Brash and impulsive

Has some trust issues. ιnтιмιdaтed eaѕιly

Temperamental.

- ˏˋ 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 ˊˎ -

────────────

┊

☪ . ˚

˚✩

- ˏˋ 𝓯𝓪𝓿𝓸𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮... ˊˎ -

⋆ sᴀʏɪɴɢ ⋆

❝ We do not have the luxury of waiting. Our time to act is now. If we wait, death will be knocking on our door. ❞ —Felicity Hamilton

⋆ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴏғ ᴅᴀʏ ⋆

The peak of day. (She like sunsets).

⋆ ᴀɴɪᴍᴀʟ ⋆

owlѕ, dogѕ

⋆ ᴄᴏʟᴏʀ ⋆

Ivory, blue, gold.

⋆ ᴡᴀʏ ᴘᴀss ᴛɪᴍᴇ ⋆

Reading, singing, writing.

⋆ sᴏɴɢ ⋆

She does not have a preference. She knows French and English songs, and she likes to listen and sing them, depending on the occasion.

⋆ ғᴏᴏᴅ ⋆

Any. She is not that picky.

⋆ ɴᴜᴍʙᴇʀ ⋆

12 or 14.

⋆ ғᴀᴠᴏʀɪᴛᴇ ⋆

She loves to talk about poetry, literature, history, and the arts, a romantic side of hers. However, she is very flexible and easy-going, so she would be up to talk about anything and everything. She especially likes to talk about things that she is passionate about, her beliefs being rather important to her.

- ˏˋ 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓸𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓪𝓽 ˊˎ -

⋆ ʟᴇғᴛ ᴏʀ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ⋆

Right

⋆ ɪɴᴛʀᴏᴠᴇʀᴛ ᴏʀ ᴇxᴛʀᴏᴠᴇʀᴛ ⋆

A mix of both.

⋆ ʟᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ᴏʀ ғᴏʟʟᴏᴡᴇʀ ⋆

A mix of both, as well.

⋆ sᴇʟғ-ᴄᴏɴғɪᴅᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴏʀ sᴇʟғ-ᴄᴏɴsᴄɪᴏᴜsɴᴇss ⋆

Self confidence.

- ˏˋ 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬 ˊˎ -

────────────

┊

☪ . ˚

˚✩

- ˏˋ 𝓯𝓪𝓶𝓲𝓵𝔂 ˊˎ -

⋆ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ⋆

Name: Rachel Faucette

Relationship: From the beginning of her childhood, Felicity and her mother had a wonderful relationship. Her mother was a kind and gentle woman. She was the one that taught her French, etiquette, and how to read and write. Sadly, her mother became infected with yellow fever when Felicity was ten years old. Felicity contracted the disease herself and she survived, but her mother did not. She died in her arms.

⋆ ғᴀᴛʜᴇʀ ⋆

Name: James Hamilton.

Relationship: None. Felicity barely knew her father. He left her mother when she was just two years old, allegedly to spare her from being accused of bigamy. Felicity was bitter about his departure, claiming that he was good as dead to her.

⋆ вroтнer ⋆

Name: Alexander Hamilton.

Relationship: Very good. Despite their bickering and arguments, Alexander and Felicity had a great relationship. They had similar ideals of freedom, and they both showed immense support in the revolution. Their relationship was very complicated given that Alexander was by far more ambitious than Felicity, and yet, they were close as they only had each other, and they only grew closer with every hardship that they endured -- be it starvation, death, the control of the British, or the Revolution itself.

- ˏˋ 𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 ˊˎ -

────────────

┊

☪ . ˚

˚✩

Felicity Grace Hamilton is the younger sister of Alexander Hamilton. Her story is a rather harsh one. She was born to Rachel Faucette and James Hamilton in Charlestown, Nevis. Her father left them when she was just a baby, and she resented him for that. He was as good as dead to her. She grew up in Nevis, which had become under the occupation of the rising British Empire. They had brought with them many things: missionaries, education, laws, and they had brought with them disease. Yellow fever had broken out in her country, and before she knew it, she and her family were affected. Felicity was the first to get better, and she was the one who nursed Alexander and her mother. They were dirt poor, and Felicity did everything she could to keep them alive, managing to get food and water for them, medicine to keep them alive, despite it. In the end, she nursed her mother to her grave, and Rachel died in her arms. Alexander on the other hand got better.

When Felicity was twelve, she and her brother managed to get on a boat with the help of her cousin which set sail to New York, eager to escape their horrid life and start a new one there. They were met with the British tyranny again. Felicity’s hatred grew of them, rising immensely, as she had lost family members and friends , due to some causes that the British had imposed on him.

When the revolution came, Felicity was sixteen years of age. Alexander went to fight, and Felicity went along with him. On her way there, she happened to befallen on a raid that occurred between the Redcoats and rebels. Only a dagger in hand, she killed two of them, and she was taken to General Washington who was very much impressed with her. She wished to help the cause in any way possible, but Washington would not allow her to fight in the front, considering that she was but a woman. He instead placed her to be responsible as a spy, gathering information. Felicity was a woman, no one could suspect her. She did manage to get some, and to a set of God’s miracles, she did not get caught. She even managed to procure some intelligence which made the French very interested in helping them. She worked closely with both Benjamin Tallmadge, Caleb Brewster, and Anna Strong, being an asset to the camp, even if she assisted the medical tent of the doctors that would nurse the soldiers, all the while participating heavily in espionage. Proving her worth to Washington and the others, she was held in high regard, especially being the sister of Alexander. She made subsequent trips to Setauket, to secure the Culper Ring and continued to fight for her freedom, no matter what the cost, even if strange things were happening to her frequently.

[wubbelwubbwubb]

Rule Britannia Race Review

Okay, so I said I was going to review Dinosaur Dash, but I didn’t want to have two “meh” reviews directly after another, so I switched to this one.

Rule Britannia

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Spoiler Warning? Spoilery in the last category, but I’ll warn you first.

General impression: I had so much fun! It reminded me a bit of discovering ZR and being completely obsessed with the story and feeling totally immersed. I love the setting, liked the characters a lot and enjoyed the story. Both funny and very serious (and it’s really funny, at several moments, I was laughing while running).

What I liked best: The characters together were a lot of fun, and the gags landed super well in my opinion. Also, the tension doesn’t let up until the very last moment.

- Oh, wait, I just remembered another great thing that has absolutely nothing to do with the story: I kept mishearing “Picts” as “Pigs” (not a native speaker), and that made EVERYTHING better.

 “The pigs are coming!” “Shh, do you want the pigs to hear us??” “I hear the pigs have dark magic!”

What I didn’t like: They added a lot of storylines and background stuff which in the end, had to be tied up super quickly, which I thought didn’t work that well. Sometimes, simpler is better. Also, sometimes I got whiplash from the quick changes in tone from super serious to super casual.

Random stuff, contains spoilers (!!!) and complaining

 Okay, so Sam and “Petro” – that gotta be cognomen, right?? And I am called Quintus – why am I the only one without a cognomen here? Am I that unimportant??

Can I maybe have a little tiny bit of a backstory? If you give me no character at all, being Runner Five is just being a spectator.

The shaman’s voice actor sounds very calm. Okay, screaming in your ear would be irritating, but seeing your dead wife being on fire while stuck in a wall requires some emoting, don’t you think??

Okay, the wife – you spend at least 17 years being tortured horrifically in Tartarus. Now you’re freed – and I have no idea how that happened exactly – and you are calm, loving and eloquent. Shouldn’t all those years influence your communication skills? Does nobody remember Sirius Black? Was he all quiet, like, “Harry, we have to talk, you might have received some misinformation regarding my role in your parents’ demise” or did he go all in like “I DID MY WAITING! TWELVE YEARS OF IT! IN AZKABAN!!!! SOMEONE WILL DIE HERE TONIIIIIGHT!!!” And he wasn’t even on fire while in Azkaban!

English speakers speaking Latin. Now who’s on the right side of the Great Vowel Shift?? Sal-vay

The title of the last episode... Latin doesn’t make it sound any better...

Sam’s not a centurion, I don’t believe it. He sounds like he is seventeen, and I think that would make a lot more sense – a brave, but still insecure seventeen-year-old, clever enough to make a pact with the Picts but dumb/idealistic enough to believe the letter.

Maybe it’s nepotism.

I would love to change the ending, and the stuff with the Roman hell. I couldn’t really visualize any of that.

I think Cursor V / Quintus should have died. Would have been a nice call back to the moment in the first episode – “You took an arrow for me!” – and would have made the last episode/the showdown more dramatic. Scratch Cerberus, or shrink his role.

Imagine: You die as Quin, Sam’s calling your name, his voice is fading, sound effects, suddenly, the dead wife of the Shaman’s speaking with you. The shaman can hear you, she guides Sam. Dramatic/emotional farewell. Sam’s promising to do all that he can to ensure the Picts can live in peace. You travel through the world of the dead with the Shaman’s wife, here, where Picts and Romans can be at peace, at last.

MAKE IT SCARIER AND MORE GRUESOME

[mytastessuck]

Gorillaz: Gorillaz (2001)

The history of my relationship is a long one...but I don’t like explaining stuff so I’ll keep it brief. I became a fan of the band when I saw a premiere of the “Clint Eastwood” video on Toonami. This could be attributed to the fact that I loved cartoons and I didn’t know there was a bunch of animated music videos back then. But there are. There are a like a ton of animated music videos. Even back then. Even before back then. Did you know one won an Oscar? It was by Tom Waits. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. We’ll get to him later. Anyway, I heard a couple more songs from them around this era but I couldn’t get into them because I was young, stupid and had no money. It actually wasn’t till around the Demon Days era (Phase 2 for us in the know) that I managed to get a hold of this album. My dad is also a fan of this band and gave a special edition version of this album. Thanks to that gesture, I really got back into Gorillaz in a huge way. Looking up lyrics, lore and cameos (these guys did a song with D12. For 9/11. Is The Rap Critic’s Patreon still open? I got a request to make...). 

We can get into more details later. Right now, I am going to rate every single song on Gorillaz (2001) US Deluxe Edition. 1. Rehash A nice breezy way to start off the album. Although, to be honest, if you picked this CD up and put it in a player after seeing of Gorillaz’ released singles, you’ll most likely be going, “Did I get the right disc?”. Still, that’s the reason I love the band. They can go into any genre and there is still something there that sounds like them. This song is pretty cool. 

Song Score: 8/10

2. 5/4

Now this is what I’m talking about. Classic British Alternative: Uncommon time, indecipherable lyrics, disgust when you figure out what the lyrics are actually saying and a sick bass. This song right here? It justifies the purchase of the whole album. It’s nasty and it’s cool, like Peanut Butter water ice.

Song Score: 10/10

3. Tomorrow Comes Today

Oh my lord, this song. I always have a soft spot for songs that I can pretend I was deep to back in the day. Very slow, very contemplative, very moody...just like a young me. It’s good that they made this their first single because it really showed up what they were capable of.

Song Score: 9/10

4. New Genius (Brother)

Ooooo...spooky. This song is pretty nice for a dark atmosphere and recommended for singing in a bar by with smoking patrons. Also nice of Gorillaz to give us the Stranger Danger spiel without sounding completely lame about it.

Song Score: 8/10

5. Clint Eastwood

AWWW SHIT MUTHAFUCKERS, HERE WE GO! This is the song that I obsessed over for a decade of my life. I sucked the entire life out of this song to the point that I skip over it in some playlists because it has nothing left to offer me. Still, I objectively love this song and I appreciate it for introducing to this band and for introducing me to Del Tha Funkee Homosapien. Seriously, how was I supposed to live the rest of my life without knowing a guy was capable of bars like that? This song fucks.

Song Score: 10/10

6. Man Research (Clapper)

I think I can blame this song for me getting into Electronica at a later age. High-pitched voices, nice beats, the feeling that I’m in a lab watching people being experimented on...everything a good track needs. This song was really fun to sing out loud to myself when I was younger. Probably one of the things that made my neighbors call my sanity into question.

Song Score: 10/10

7. Punk

Fuck yeah. Gorillaz was slaughtering some bands before they even got of their crib with tribute to the genre. Don’t bother with the lyrics because the words just basically become another instrument on this track and boy are the instruments on their loudest display here. I can only hear a dude telling his mom to shut up on it anyway.

Song Score: 9/10

8. Sound Check (Gravity)

Gotta admit, didn’t really appreciate this song when I was younger. It felt like the pieces were there but it didn’t come together into something of substance. Now that I’m older, I...am still of the same opinion. I like the breakdown but I feel like the high-pitched voice has been played out at this point in the album.

Song Score 7/10

9. Double Bass

Ah, an instrumental. Probably one of the first ones I listened to on repeat. I love the string work on this and the accompanying beats. Really good music to chill to...if you ignore that one line.

Song Score: 9/10

10. Rock The House

Hey, it’s our old friend Del! I was pleasantly surprised to see him on another track, kicking ass to a set of nice pan flutes. Man, this song ruled. But I can only listen to the album version. The music video version censors ass crack. Ass crack! How conservative can you get?! Luckily, Gorillaz never ran into this problem again.

Song Score: 10/10

11. 19-2000

I remember this album being the first time I heard the original version of this song instead of the Soulchild Remix. Obviously, I had to prefer this version because the original version is always the best. At least, that’s the way I thought back then. Nowadays...

THEY BOTH SOUND NICE!

But I do have a special place in my heart for this song. I like the woman in the background. Adds an ethereal quality to the song.

Song Score: 9/10

12. Latin Simone (Que Pasa Condigo?)

The first time I heard this, I was like, “Why is this song in Spanish?” This is because I listened to the G Sides album first (more on that next week). But the more I listened, the more I preferred it to the English version. This guy sings like he’s before an auditorium and he wants the people outside to hear him. Funny story: I tried to play this song for my Spanish class but my speakers didn’t work for them to hear it. Sucks for them.

Song Score: 11/10

13. Starshine

This is probably my least favorite song on the album. Just melancholy for the sake of melancholy. Kind of bothers me how there’s no substance to it I can find...nice instrumental though.

Song Score: 6/10

14. Slow Country

My second least favorite song on the album. Usually I like discordant noises in a song but the amateur piano with the honks...don’t really do it for me. Nice mumbling at the end though. Never change, Damon.

Song Score: 7/10

15. M1A1

I remember the first time I watched Day of the Dead and during the beginning I kept going, “WHEN THE GUITAR COME IN?!”. I know, I know, I’m hilarious. Especially when I’m by myself. But seriously, not even factoring in nostalgia, this is the best track on the album. Great song, great singing, awesome fucking solo. The only thing better than M1A1 on this album is M1A1 live.

Song Score: 12/10

16. Dracula

You know that when I heard the sound bite from this track, I thought it was from the original movie? It’s not. It’s from fucking Looney Tunes. Damn. Egg on my face. Anyway, I love the goofiness of this track. It tries to sound dark and scary but it’s like that nice goth kid in your class who always pick Edgar Allan Poe as his Powerpoint topic. Good kid, great song.

Song Score: 8/10

17. Left Hand Suzuki Method

FEEL THE IMPACT

And I did. Like a wise man once said, I don’t need drugs to enjoy this track, just to enhance my enjoyment of it. And you know what? I don’t want to enhance it. This shit sounds good by itself. See, Slow Country? This is how you mix in things that don’t sound good together and make them sound good together. You know what that track needs? Japanese children talking. That improves everything.

Song Score: 9/10

18. 19-2000 (Soulchild remix)

And the head honcho themself, one of the first Gorillaz songs I listened to. Man, this shit slaps like Dave Grohl in a Michael Gondry video. Whenever I heard this song when I was a kid, I was thinking about it all week. It just sounds so sunny, so uplifting, like something you should be listening to on an amusement park ride. Fuck, this track is tight.

Song Score: 10/10

19. Clint Eastwood (Ed Case and Sweetie Irie remix)

...

...Is it too late to change my least favorite track on the album choice yet?

Okay, Slow Country was on the original album so it can keep its title. This track is the worst track of all the bonus ones. It’s just...they were onto something with the breakdown but the goofy reggae singing and the way too fast to enjoy beat? Just rubs me the wrong way. Ugh, and now I’m thinking of Laika already...

Song Score: 5/10

Album Score: 8.8/10

Join me next week as I review G-Sides. It’s gonna resemble fun!

[rametarin]

It’s not a fun position to be in.

I’d like to clarify, again. I’m not an ethnonationalist, ethnoseparatist, white supremacist, or any of those things. I actually quite dislike them. That’s WHY it makes me mad to see overpolicing of white people or whiteness as inherently oppressive and bad, and anybody else as inherently oppressed and good.

They enshrine and put it into words and ideology that white people and other people exist and should exist on two different levels of society, and their preferred solution is to disestablish one as not existing because races and race-culture doesn’t exist, while empowering everybody else, and pretending that’s not hypocrisy. And since they later updated what they define as racism, technically, it no longer is.

You have to understand. When I was coming up in the late 80s/early 90s, the discourse on race was simple: For anyone to consider themselves by their race first, was to be a racist. The highest tier racists were Nazis, the next step beneath them were KKKlansmen, and then loosely affiliated neo-nazis beneath them, then ‘vaguely white supremacist and hostile towards non-English speakers, brown people and Asians’ people that weren’t loud, screaming hate mongerers came next. But, for a person to think of themselves separate or of themselves or their families as a member of an extant community defined by their race and background, was to be a racist. And that was socially taboo/faux pas.

At least, for white people. Of which in the US, they are/were the majority (even today) and the conversation was deliberately just broadbrush to assume it applied to white people by default.

It did not, however, apply to “oppressed minorities,” conveniently. So, if you were black, or your community/heritage didn’t speak English and wasn’t a “white country” (Latin American, basically) you could be as insular and think about the welfare and integrity of your own little microcosm and diasporic ethnostate that you wanted. One need only look at media and entertainment in the 90s geared towards keeping that spirit of separatism in the American black community to see that double standard. But it was justified and defended by, “We need this, we are under threat of racists, klansmen and hostile Southern confederate-sympathetic gentlemen every day of our lives.

And as vaguely progressive people in the 80s and 90s, yeah, we conceded that roaming bands of horrible southern monster-men were probably a thing black, Hispanic, Indigenous North American and Asian people worried about a lot and had to deal with constantly. Since the news made damned sure to publish every single instance of a hate crime against a minority, and later public school would hold special sessions to talk about such a horrible thing.

Always white-on-somebody-else, always seguing into conversations about how prevalent white supremacists and white supremacism, the actual confederate flag and [your choice of specific and purpose made white supremacist club/militia symbol here] used to be, and in many ways, still was.

At the time, common public discourse was not, “the United States is memetically a white supremacist oppressive shithole based on the very culture and roots, it’s just there are a lot of suppressive, hateful, bigoted people, most of them are in the majority demographic, and most of them are male.” The US was not considered, “white supremacist/racist” by default.

And on paper, taking the moral high ground on racism meant implicitly that you hated racial discrimination, in theory, in all forms. That included favoring people for their real or perceived racial background as well as disfavoring. So preferential treatment to hiring practices were as taboo as preferential treatment for hate crimes.

In practice, many of the same Woke Folks that today said one thing but applied it only to reprimend white people, do so today while saying, proudly, “you can’t discriminate or be racist against white people.” But at the time, they feigned, “just hating racists” to ignore any such racism, bigotry or intolerance from any other group towards whites. They might, however, recognize it if, say, black people did a hate crime towards Asians, but they did so begrudgingly. They HATED having to proactively come out and police that as racism and declare it as such, because they wanted the discourse to evolve into, “it’s ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY racism when it’s white-on-others, because ONLY whites can be racist.” But that wouldn’t be for another 25+ years.

Even that stupid, safe, classic, “haha stupid insecure white man; there’s no such thing as Reverse Racism!” line? That’s a save.

Privilege Theory existed back then, you know. it was published in the late 80s, and the radicals had been using it unofficially for decades before then. But it was a radical school and in deep, and only peeked its head out to try and make cultural headway the way radicals try to make anything radical the mainstream. It just so happened that academia at the time and society at large was not willing to accept that permutation to the racism discourse or dialog. “All white people are racist and racism is an intrinsic quality of white people, nobody else can be” was tested, like a spank on the ass.

And it almost blew the illusion. So, they ran damage control and hid for a while, putting out feelers only for those so deep down the rabbithole or so gullible they’d accept that. And they gaslight anybody that experienced dealing with a radical asshole that said shit like that by saying, “oh that’s just Patty. She’s a meaningless extremist and has no power.” Or, “Haha are you really going to take that anecdote as signs progressive people are all like that bro? omg come on. XD.” Or, “You must have misunderstood her. I know how progressivism and anti-racism can seem when you’ve been raised your whole life by society and the media to think white people are by default superior, so any taste of equality feels like you’re being singled out and discriminated against. :^)”

But the fact is, “haha there’s no such thing as ‘reverse racism’“ had two endings. If you mentioned you experienced someone saying, ‘only whites could be racist and nobody else can be,’ you’d hear either:

1.) “lol no. They were just confused. Racism is the discrimination of anybody on the basis of race! So calm down, the established definition applies to all. :^)”

2.) “there’s no such thing as reverse racism, because racism is the phenomenon of the white supremacist power structure lording and oppressing People of Color. You cannot be racist to white people if you are black, Indigenous or Hispanic, because you have no privilege and no centuries worth of oppression. Cry more.”

Way back in the day we’d SEE these glaring contradictions. And in truth? Most of us hated racism, so we stomached the glaring, disjointed bullshit. But, we ALSO grabbed up that anti-racism stick and BEAT the privilege theorist types subversivelyu hijacking the culture over the head with that anti-racism, too. You wanna claim you hate something because it’s, “racist,” AKA, involves race in the cricteria of something at all? FINE. You’re also going to hate affirmative action and when people come down on the side of not-white people specifically because they’re not-white. You will ELIMINATE race from consideration in any aspect of secular modern civic society and private enterprise and protect everybody equally on the basis of being a person. And any instance that is not the case we’ll come down on you with all the heavy handed spite we see and experience of you fuckers coming down on us, showing us off on soap boxes and sacrificing us on the altars of public socialization to shame and belittle us for the bigotry of generations passed.

You want to hit me with that stigma and smear me as some sort of white supremacist because I object to a thing, dismissing my objection and chalking it up to white supremacism? Then by god I’m going to point out the hypocrisy in the supposed “progressive far left” and their tolerance of anti-semites like Farrakhan, their tolerance towards the polygamy, misogyny and religious fundamentalist patriarchy in Islam, and how non-white communities act and think the same way to protect their own respective ‘brands,’ and the only people you seem to go after for these crimes are the white ones.

Which was fair. After all, we all just, “hate racism :^)”, right? So if you’re going to be an aggrandizing asshole and make a big to-do about castigating a lowbrow joke as a “teachable moment” that involves making every progressive woman hypersensitive and reject men based on how taboo something is to say, then that lack of forgiveness and hypersensitivity and the results of that intolerance will also apply to YOU, god damnit.

But the supposed “progressive” people would not stop. Anti-”racism” was their new toy, aka, their stick to choose their targets and seem absolutely morally right for doing it, and they were going to play that social tool down to the hilt. They did not like being beaten at their own game by being flagged and forced to acknowledge glaring instances of hate crimes in the news when groups of roaming black men found and randomly beat up gentile whites and Jews. They did not like being forced to acknowledge those. So they’d object and scowl at the people bringing them up, like, “Why are we discussing the hate crimes of black men specifically?! You have a problem with black men!?”

Because remember, they were playing the defacto ‘whites are considered default Americans’ to the hilt when it suited them, and using it against people in the discourse suited them. You could talk about generic hate crimes that appear on the newspaper, because those were just regular hate crimes. Their mentality was, if you brought up hate crimes of Asians or black people, then clearly you were just a white man motivated by spite and insecurity to even be tabulating those in the first place, and that meant your opinion and point should be disregarded. You horrible anti-black/Asian racist.

So, please bear in mind, my case is not that white people are in any way better than anybody else. I don’t think that. But by god, in an era when the supposedly progressive, far-leftist, “woke” people are running around saying Europe and North America and Australia are by default white supremacist “cultures” that need “dismantling and replacement,” and simultaneously declaring, “white people do not exist,” and “there are no ‘white countries,’ just cultures and nations without race’ while ABSOLUTELY enshrining that EVERY country in Africa, even ones that are majority Semitic or Arab, are in fact, “black countries.” Or Asian countries being Asian. Or North America as still belonging to the native inhabitants and unjustly stolen land.

I absolutely abhor the doubletalk, I absolutely abhor the mentality that ONLY white people doing things is a problem. I hate that something ISN’T a problem when another group does it, but it’s JUST an issue when white people do it.

I want consistency. If people are going to enshrine and respect the existence, difference and integrity of a black culture in the USA, that is, a culture that exists purely because the people in it have black African features and characteristics and aren’t too “light skinned” to be part of it, and in an era supposedly trying to “get over” race and racial identity, tolerate that from everybody BUT white people, tolerate the idea of a, “chocolate New Orleans” but openly say New Hampshire or Maine being so majority white is an actual problem, then yeah, I’m going to expect one of two things:

1.) The woke/progressives actively discourage black Americans from considering themselves a separate or distinct culture from mainstream America. They stop secluding and culturally isolating themselves in their own hearts and minds and just be fellow countrymen.

OR

2.) They acknowledge, enshrine and respect the fact whites do have their own specifically white cultures of which other races cannot be part of, they’re a distinct people that have their own communities and need their own communities to remain white.

They will do neither and would prefer if white people just disappear. The same sort of disappearance that they see as so disgusting and horrible if it were to happen to literally any other group of people on planet Earth.

When a Chinese immigrant arrives to the US, takes a wife (we’ll just assume white in this instance) and miscegenates, people later chalk this up to, “being colonized in a white supremacist pressure cooker culture.” And mourn how his kids and grandkids, “wash away his culture and background with every generation.” Instead of growing the Chiense-American community. They talk about him like he was enslaved and colonized and his culture eliminated from the American fabric by some schmoozing, destructive white plague cutting it down.

They talk about white Americans like we’re just originless, rootless vermin, and no such distinctness or integrity is to be respected. If we treated other groups in the US the way we treat white people that talk about their background, distinct cultures and etc., we’d be denying them any identity but mainstream American identity. If we treated black Americans that way, we’d be calling them black supremacists every time they wanted to have any sort of civic or educational or societal or community meeting to talk about blackness and the struggles of being black.

It’s just.... absolutely disgusting and frustrating, dealing with the hypocrites, the double standards, and the people maliciously using social justice values to sell policies and top-down application of cultural values the way used car salesmen try and sell people lemons. I dislike them.

I dislike that if a white person talked about their background or group the way a black person in the US does, they’d be called out for their insularity and eurocentrism in a heartbeat, shut down, deplatformed, become an effigy of conversation about, “the growing tide of white supremacism in America.” When all they’d do is take someone like DL Hugely or Cedric the Entertainer or Bernie Mac, and make it, ‘white ethnic’.

Imagine having your racism and in-groupcentrism excused because, “THAT’S PART OF YOUR CULTURE,” and immune to criticism or critical thought. But then, that’s exactly the mentality foisted on us by dialectic materialists and Marxists.

My preferred solution to all of this isn’t to respect white community or white sovereignty or white identitarianism. My preferred solution is the complete dissolution of race as a culture or background in the New World whatsoever. The Old World, you have indigenous cultures and communities across Europe, Africa and Asia that should NOT be expected to “mix” themselves up and out to where the indigenous featues and characteristics are marginalized or ‘bred out.’ That’s where they MAKE those people. But the New World is 100% different. Space should be 100% different.

But I’m also not going to accept, “well only half of us should kill ourselves.off :^)” either. While other communities across the Western World insist on having their communities and insular, demographically concentrated, demographic-culturally-conscious people respected and accommodated, I’m going to expect parity. And not an equality that uses privilege theory ow considers population size being disproportionate as, “they need it more than you.” No. You want to respect peoples, “cultures,” and consider black a culture in the US, then by GOD you will also respect and acknowledge those of European extraction as their own culture in the US. It’s all or nothing, you don’t get to single out one group as not existing or irrelevant and say, “race doesn’t exist” one minute, and then go on about how blackess, cultural and genetic, are “very real things that affect people very much and very really.”

These people would throw public money and social services at immigrant communities, hoping they demographically grow, maintain integrity and spread their numbers- preferably to red states, where they can start turning them purple, or blue. But they’d balk and consider it racist colonization if a white community moved to Niger or Chad and did the same for their own community interests. They’d call that racial supremacism and soft apartheid.

And I absolutely hate all of this.

[memorylang]

Language Learning, Mom’s Birthday | #43 | August 2020

Since Mom had held language-learning close-to-heart, I dedicate my August update to a language theme! 

With August 9, 2020, my late mom turned 55. I’ve often felt since 2017 a bittersweet fondness for the summer months between Mother’s Day and her birthday. That year had been my first summer in China getting to know Mom’s family after her death. 

For this August’s story, I’ve reflected a great deal on my experiences with language learning. Of which I’d written before, I’ve basically chosen five languages as the ones I want to be functional using (my native English included). So beyond the usual reflections from this COVID-19 summer in the States, I also take us back through my young life learning.  

And, I’m pleased to announce that I've begun to work on a new writing project! More on that soon. 

From Multilingual Mom to Me 

I start us from spring 2020, around evacuation back to the U.S. from Peace Corps Mongolia. 

By April 10-16, I’d been in my sixth week in Vegas again. Yet, less than a couple months before, I was in Mongolia packing to evacuate. As part of my coping while packing, I’d listened to hours of music. Much included Chinese Disney themes I’d found on Spotify. 

Well, having returned to Vegas, you might recall that the sisters’ songs in “Frozen II” resonated deeply with me. Whether while waking or working the yard, I’d listen to “Frozen II”' tracks in Chinese, sometimes in English. Finding songs in other langauges fit my 2020 exploration resolution. I humorously suspected that my Spotify Wrapped 2020 will surely list the same tracks in different languages... if only Spotify had Mongolian versions. Well, a month later, by week 10 (May 8-14), I’d exchanged the songs’ English versions for Spanish!  

That week also featured May 13, 2020—the third anniversary of Mom’s funeral. This year, something special happened.  

I’d received a fateful book—A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin. My college pastor had ordered this for me just days after I’d asked him what I should consider studying while discerning during quarantine a doctorate in religious studies. After my pastor noted my interest in world Christianity, especially its past and present in Asia, he highly recommended I study Church Latin. 

My pastor’s suggestion pleased me in a curious way. It reminded me of my Duolingo dabbling back in Mongolia, how at that time I’d favored Latin over Greek. Still, Liturgical Latin, studied seriously, seemed like quite an undertaking. Nonetheless my pastor commended my talents and felt confident I could succeed along paths God may open for me. I felt grateful for the aid! 

Embarking on my quest to learn Latin, I’ve found the language remarkable. 

It’s felt at times the culmination of my years learning languages. In fact, Mom had actually wanted my siblings and me to learn languages since we were little—She’d taught us to read English then tried to have us learn Chinese. Most summers, she’d have us in the mornings copy down Chinese characters before she’d let us play games or do activities that weren’t “educational.” 

While cleaning my family’s garage this COVID-19 this summer, I’d unearthed old notebooks in which my siblings and I would write Mom’s required phrases. I noticed how even back then I’d seem to try harder than most of my siblings, given how many characters I copied. Still, I hadn’t much inclination to know the language words beyond, then, clearing Mom’s barrier to letting me play games. 

Still, even if the notebooks had implied some aptitude I’d had for languages, Mom’s requirements left me if anything more averse to language acquisition than eager. 

Suffering Through Spanish

Many today may feel surprised to know that for years I’d called Spanish my second language. 

Given my childhood disdain for studying languages beyond English, I’d found my task to study Spanish in high school assiduous. I formally began in the language fall 2011 as a freshman. Spanish was our Vegas school’s only foreign language option, and all honors students needed two years of language. Yet again, my language studies drew from a requirement—little more. 

Many of my classmates and I rapidly found our classes exhausting, for our instructor had a thick French accent. Furthermore, verb conjugation, unfamiliar tenses and gendered vocabulary felt alien. I didn’t get why a language would be so complicated. 

Yet, despite my struggles to understand our teacher, she’d commended me because I “made the effort.” Well, I sometimes felt like I’d make the effort to a fault. When peers cheated on exams, my darn integrity had me abstain. 

By my second year, when I was succeeding in college-level AP world history, my fleetingly flawless GPA took from Spanish a beating. That hurt. By my senior year, at least Mom let me take Spanish online instead. I’d learned that I’d known more than I thought, but I still sucked. 

Redemption Through Mandarin

By fall 2015, I’d had graduated high school and enrolled as an honors undergrad facing another foreign language requirement. 

Licking my wounds from Spanish, I ruled out that language. I saw the University offered Chinese, though. Studying world history had interested me in Mom’s cultural background and native tongue. Considered she’d made my siblings stare at the language since childhood, I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard. So, I chose Mandarin Chinese.

And by my first days learning Chinese, I could already feel the benefits of having taken Spanish. 

Chinese felt astoundingly straightforward. Spanish had taught me to recognize that English letters (better known as the Latin alphabet) sound differently in different languages. For example, I felt pleased to notice that the ‘a’ /ah/ letter in Spanish sounds similar to its Chinese pronunciation. Thus, Spanish’s “mamá” and Chinese’s “māmā” relate, despite appearing in separate languages. 

Thanks to my Spanish experience, I picked up Chinese’s general pronunciation system far faster. Furthermore, I felt relieved to find that Chinese grammar lacked the conjugation and gender nightmares I’d faced in Spanish. I’d even loved how Chinese characters’ little images could often help me guess word meanings intuitively! 

My interest and success with the Chinese language led me to study abroad in 2017, planned with my mother before she was killed. I returned to China a year later, in 2018 on an intensive program. Both times, I spoke my mother’s native tongue, meeting relatives and making friends. I even received awards for my skills. 

Yet, despite my progress in Chinese, I’d often considered it only my third language. After all, much of my success in Chinese came having struggled through Spanish.  

  Finding Peace with Spanish

In my college senior year, January 2019, I’d attended a religious pilgrimage in Panamá—a Spanish-speaking nation. 

By that time, I’d grown acquainted with language immersions. In fact, I readily used my Mandarin skills when I met World Youth Day pilgrims from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan. They often felt shocked to meet someone outside their communities who knew their language! 

Of course, Panamá left me at times surrounded too by folks who only spoke Spanish, including my host family. 

I listened carefully. A luminous spark, I’d felt. Buried memories of my broken Spanish resurfaced. Near my last day in Panamá, I felt awed to have had a conversation with a cab driver completely in Spanish. 

My peace with Spanish became a renewed interest. 

After our pilgrimage, I’d continued with my host family and new Latin American friends to speak and write almost exclusively in Spanish. Online, we benefited over WhatsApp with Google Translate, too. Panamá in 2019 had taken a language that was for me dead and breathed in it new life. 

Peace Corps Language Level-ups

Later that year (last year), I began to learn what would be my fourth language and one entirely unfamiliar—Mongolian.

I should note that before reaching Mongolia June 1, 2019, I couldn’t even read its Cyrillic alphabet. I’d basically started at zero. 

Peace Corps’ language briefings had at least taught me that Mongolian is an Altaic language, distinct from Indo-European language like English and from character-based languages like Mandarin. Over the course of summer in villages of Mongolia, Peace Corps put us through mornings of immersive language training followed by returns home to our host families. 

Still, many Peace Corps Trainees felt unmotivated to learn Mongolian. After all, with statistically few Mongolian speakers worldwide, many felt that we wouldn’t have much utility for Mongolian outside Mongolia. Nevertheless, I felt motivated by desires to understand and feel understood. I powered through. 

Initially, Mongolian baffled me. 

Its Cyrillic alphabet (and its script one, too) includes consonant and vowel sounds unknown to English, Spanish and Chinese. Furthermore, Mongolian uses a case-based grammar of suffixes, a reversed subject-object-verb order and postpositions instead of prepositions. Mongolian even reintroduced me to my nemeses gendered vocabulary and tense-based verb endings!

I felt grateful for the sparse Chinese loanwords I wouldn’t have to relearn! Yet, my kryptonite was often pronunciation. Challenging consonants and tricky long vowels left me so inauthentic. Regardless, I was an ardent study who savored most every chance to receive Mongols’ clarifications and corrections. 

Finding Latin in Asia

Curiously, Catholic Churches became great places for my language learning.

This was the case for me both with learning Chinese in China and Mongolian in Mongolia. Parishioners would often take me under their wings to support me. Curiously in Mongolia, an English-speaking French parishioner pointed out once that Mongolian grammar is quite like Latin. I didn’t know Latin, though. 

I had encountered Latin, though. For, Asian vocabularies for Church topics often derived more directly from Latin than even English translations! These pleased me, since learning the vocabulary to speak about religion felt less foreign. 

Then came the sleepless nights during Mongolia’s COVID-19 preemptive quarantining, January and February. I’d had taken up Duolingo and opted for Greek or Latin in hopes that they’d bore me to sleep. I’d also hoped they might supplement how I teach English and read Scripture. And while Greek felt hopelessly confounding, Latin vocabulary felt surprisingly... natural. Despite my lack of formal training, I did alright just guessing. 

My Roads Led to Latin

From late May through mid-June 2020, I’d read the first four chapters of the Church Latin book. Meanwhile, mid-summer, I felt pleased to reach Duolingo’s Diamond League! Realizing that to become Champion would take far more effort than I cared to give, though I focused just on keeping my streak. 

Still, my Latin especially progress slowed after Dad’s remarriage and my relocation to Reno, Nev. My mostly-free summer rapidly grew hectic. But even in those first four Latin weeks, I’d discovered true gems in pursuing the historic language. 

At face value, Latin’s vocabulary reminded me of Spanish and English. Sometimes, Church words I’d learned first in Mandarin and Mongolian too related! Vocabulary felt profound. 

Furthermore, Latin grammar felt reminiscent of not only Spanish conjugations but indeed Mongolian cases! I felt relieved that Panamá had freed me from my conjugation aversion. Likewise, my Mongolian skills felt far from obsolete! 

To supplement my Latin studies, I try to translate between Chinese and Spanish, the way how in Mongolia I’d translate between Mongolian and Chinese. By juggling languages, I seek to codeswitch in more contexts with a more unified vocabulary. 

Wherever I wind up academically and professionally, I hope to work between languages. Through daily discipline, textbooks, apps, videos, notes and conversations, I trust I’ll go far. Feel free to connect if you want to practice with me! The more corrections, the better. 

From Ecclesiastical to Classical Latin

On August 23 (of my stateside week 25), I’d reunited in Vegas with a high school friend who’d studied classics in undergrad. From that meeting on, I’d not only ramped up my Latin studies but also transitioned from Ecclesiastical Latin to classical. 

For, Church Latin is but an evolving Latin. To understand the orgins of many words—beyond simply their uses within the Roman Catholic Church—I would need the eternal Latin that changes no more. Well, my friend offered to tutor me, so I offered to try! 

Classical Latin is harder, by the way. 

And in the midst of my suffering throughout September, my friend had even offered to tutor me Greek. While mostly joking (but also not), I’ve offered that I might learn Greek from him if for no other reason than to thank him for teaching me Latin! 

Nearly a month since beginning the tutorial system with him, we’ve since cleared over a fourth of a textbook meant sometimes to take a year’s worth of study. I hope by the year’s end to have finished the book. 

At least a third of my waking hours at times seem to go into Latin. But, it’s nice to keep learning! That same week, my siblings had all resumed their undergraduate studies. At least I’m still learning something! 

Embarking on a Book Memoir 

Besides working on my other languages, I’ve even placed time in my English. 

Lastly, I want to share about my writing quest! Although the project isn’t always across the top of my agenda, I keep at it. We return again to mid-summer. 

Peace Corps friends and I have often checked in on each other since evacuation to the States. Some also write. During a webinar for evacuated Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, I’d met many looking to tell their stories.

Most weeks since July, I’d also have a few video calls. I’d take these no matter what I was up to. I’d still been doing that ‘groundskeeping’ in Reno, Nev. of which I’d written before. Whether I was getting the mail, trimming the hedges, pruning the flowers, watering the lawn, raking debris, sweeping the floor, taking out the trash, tugging the garbage bins, adjusting the windows or washing the dishes, I’d often had some task that Dad requested I’d tend to. Calls with friends broke the monotony. 

After encouragement from mentors and friends, I’d decided to write a creative nonfiction book memoir for publication someday! 

The first step, of course, is having a manuscript. So, since week 17 (June 26–July 2), I’d been typing away at the first chapters to what seems will be a story spanning my three years of studies and service overseas after Mother’s death, leading up to my acceptance and peace. I'm excited to tell stories about finding purpose and identity, despite grief and loss. I hope it helps readers to find their own peace amid confusion. All things are so fundamentally interconnected. 

By three weeks in, I’d felt so grateful for the outpouring of support I’d received. Frankly, I wouldn’t be writing so much if people hadn’t been saying this has potential. Thankfully, readers offer marvelous insights. They treat the story as one deserving of quality. I love their attention to details. 

Still, among the most grueling lessons I’ve learned learned has been that a book about grief has needed me to relive the hurt of my mother's death for repeated days. I trust nonetheless that once I’ve written and rewritten well, the remaining may rest behind me. 

If you’re looking to read what’s coming, you’re in the right place. Merely starting on the book has helped me to improve my blog writing. You may have noticed in my recent summer 2019 throwback stories, for example, I’ve used more narrative than before. I hope you’ve enjoyed! 

The language studies and the book continue, though I’ve taken more breaks lately with the book. From mid-August I’d embarked on advocacy projects with the National Peace Corps Association. I’ll share more on that soon. Having doubled-down on my Latin studies from mid-September, it can be a quite a black hole for my time! For everything there is a season (Ecc. 3:1). 

Seeking to Stay Holy

A couple friends admired my dedication and called upon me to help them meet their spiritual goals. What a kind expereince! In helping them keep accountable, they’ve likewise helped me. 

With a homebound Knight of Columbus, we’d continued July’s rosaries throughout August, as many as three times a day leading up to the Catholic Feast of the Assumption. Afterward, we’d reduced our count back to two times daily through early September. I’d never prayed so many rosaries before! 

Through August, I’d also read a chapter of Proverbs daily with a friend. I’d reconnected with her during my outreach for the book. I enjoy our weekly Scripture chats, and she shows more Protestant perspectives on our faith!  

I find God a great companion along the journey of life. Regardless of how you view religious and spiritual topics, I trust that you have companions, too. They’re so important! 

On a positive note, I’d gotten to revisit my undergrad parish. I felt so amazed to hear that students I’d never met thought I was a cool person! I try not to think too highly of myself, but I feel touched when people notice me. I hope I inspire folks. 

Coming up Next

Thanks for reading my meta-stories about languages and stories!  

If you’ve been following my tales for a while now, you may recall I’d mentioned feeling surprised to learn that my mother had been studying Spanish around the same years I’d been studying it. I felt awed to realize that even when I’d tried to learn one of my earliest new languages, Mom was trying to learn what was for her one of a few. I’m glad to have perhaps inherited Mother’s interest in languages. 

Up next, I have a very special piece dated for September 2020 [and ultimately released in October]. I’m focusing on perspectives—mine and others’. I’m particularly excited to share adventures with teams including those within the American Psychological Association and the Honors College at the University of Nevada, Reno. They’ve given me plenty of fun roles amid the pandemic! 

I’m also writing about national and state parks! God, I love nature.

Stay healthy, friend.

COVID-19 and America Months 11 through 15 | April, May, June, July, August

Easter Epilogue in America | #35 | April 2020 

Remembering Mom—Third Year After | #36 | May 2020 

Fathers’ Day, Faith and Familiarity | #38 | June 2020

23rd Birthday~ Roses and Rosaries | #39 | July 2020

Language Learning, Mom’s Birthday | #43 | August 2020

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :) 

[thejackmeister-mongolhistory]

The Secret History of the Mongols: Fall of the Tangut

Continuing our series on both primary sources and coverage on the Tangut Xi Xia, in this video we spend some time with the Secret History of the Mongols,  and look at how the Mongols remembered the fall of this enemy. Included is its helpful description of Chinggis Khan's own demise! 

 The Mongol Destruction of the Tangut Kingdom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruyFq... 

 Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/jackmeister 

 SECRET HISTORY TRANSLATIONS AND SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS:

 The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century. Translated by Igor de Rachewiltz. Edited by John C. Street. University of Wisconsin: Madison, 2015 https://cedar.wwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.... See Chapter 12, page 185/section 265. The Secret History is generally quoted by section rather than page number, but in these videos I use the page number as I figure it's easier for people to track that down. de Rachewiltz's translation is essentially the gold standard. This free edition does not include his extensive commentary, unfortunately, but still serves as a reliable and faithful companion.

 The Secret History of the Mongols: For the First Time Done into English and out of the Original Tongue and Provided with an Exegetical Commentary. Translated by Francis Woodman Cleaves. London: Harvard University Press, 1982. http://altaica.ru/SECRET/cleaves_shI.pdf  Probably the translation I'd least recommend, a difficult and hard to read version 

 The Secret History of the Mongols: The Origin of Chingis Khan (Expanded Edition) An adaption of the Yüan Ch’ao Pi Shih, Based Primarily on the English Translation by Francis Woodman Cleaves. Translated by Francis Woodman Cleaves. Cheng and Tsui Company: Boston, 1984. https://books.google.ca/books?id=GKCt...  an adapted and edited version of Cleaves' translation. This isn't quite the full text, but provides some background and a comparison to the other editions.

 The Secret History of the Mongols: The Life and Times of Chinggis Khan. Translated by Urgunge Onon. RoutledgeCurzon Press: Abingdon, 2001. https://jigjids.files.wordpress.com/2... and_times_of_chinggis_khan1.pdf.  Perhaps the most readable translation, Onon is a native Mongolian speaker whose particular dialect (Da'ur) is closest to the 13th century Mongolian. He provides more notes than the other open access versions (not nearly as much of de Rachewiltz's full version though). 

 A part of de Rachewiltz's notes to the Secret History provided by Google Books: https://books.google.ca/books?id=zfKB... 

 Links to transliterations of the Secret History into Mongolian (in latin alphabet), and some translations in Chinese, Bulgarian, Czech, Russian and French: http://altaica.ru/e_SecretH.php 

 For those of you really in the mood for a challenge, here's the first chapter in Middle Mongolian, written phonetically in Chinese characters (the only version which survived to the modern day was written in that manner: bless the poor souls who translated that!) while also transcribed in traditional Mongol script, alongside romanizations of both.  http://www.linguamongolia.com/The%20S...

And here's a comic by Mongolian artist E. Otgonbayar Ershuu illustrating the first and a part of the second chapter of the Secret History. His intention was to do the entire work, but I am not sure if the project is still ongoing. The comic is in German, but it shouldn't be hugely difficult to figure out if you're already familiar with the Secret History. You can come to me if you need a English translation of a page, since I can read German. http://mongolian-art.de/01_mongolian_art/gallery_comic_secret_history_mongols/index.htm

[professorsaber]

1, 5, and 8 for the ask game :)

1: Talk about the first time you watched your favorite movie.

Okay, so it was probably 1997. I was in the third grade, I think, and my friend Stephen was getting me into Back to the Future. He told me the basics of the plot, but not in extreme detail, and I hadn’t seen the movies themselves. (In retrospect, I’m wondering if he was more familiar with the animated series, which might have been in reruns.) Well, at some point my mom’s friend Wendy came up from Los Angeles to visit us (we were in Northern California then), and decided to rent the first movie. Remember, this was 1997, so we’re talking a VHS from Blockbuster, or Hollywood Video, or perhaps a mom-and-pop rental store. (The town had at least four stores total, and maybe more.)

I don’t know if a movie made in 1985 still has spoilers, but spoiler alert:

I remember being shocked as hell when Doc got shot at the beginning. Stephen definitely left that part out! And it was very late and I actually had to go to bed most of the way through—I’m fairly certain it was near the end, when Doc was on the ledge of the clock tower. IIRC, we finished in the morning (it must have been a weekend).

Well, it changed my life. Those movies are still very, very dear to me. Afterwards, Stephen and I would play BTTF—what people evidently call LARPing now, at least when you’re an adult! I was always Doc and he was always Marty. I distinctly remember acting out three scenes: the beginning test sequence of the DeLorean in Part I, and the train robbery in Part III. I seem to recall that we came up with a bunch of sequels, too, perhaps all the way to Part XIV, when the DeLorean got a space conversion! I kinda wish I remembered what they were, as I do BTTF fanfics. Though they were probably terrible… Also, we cut Clara and Jennifer out, for the most part—I was in a “girls are icky” phase, and he was/is gay. (I didn’t know that at the time, though.)

Side note: when I was a little kid, Part II was my favorite, especially the 2015 sequence. I wrote a story for class featuring older me and my grandmother in that version of the future—kinda sad, considering she died in 1999. When I was in college, my favorite was Part III, for whatever reason—maybe the romance aspect; I don’t really know. Now, I’d have to say my favorite is Part I.

Also, I can probably recite all the dialog, line-by-line, from beginning to end, from memory!

5: Talk about the best birthday you’ve had.

Gosh, I’m having trouble with this. Possibly the one I had in the first grade (so my 7th, 1995), which was pirate-themed and had a treasure hunt around our apartment. It was really fun, but I don’t remember it that well. There was another hunt one when I was a child—a scavenger hunt at a small park near the community college. I don’t remember that one that well, either.

Honestly, I’m having trouble remembering the others. I’m probably mixing them up with Christmases—my birthday is in late December, too.

I don’t know if it’s the best, per se, but my most recent one (30th, 2018) is worth mentioning. My mom and I took a drive out to the mall where they shot the first time travel sequence in Back to the Future. We took some pictures, and ate at the Olive Garden there. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was very nice.

8: Talk about the thing you are most proud of.

Another hard one, but the answer I have right now has to be one of the conlangs I’ve done for background in my sci-fi universe. I’ve dreamt of making my own languages since I was in high school (mid-2000s), but I’ve never really been able to do it. (I only speak English, which can’t help.) Well, earlier this year, I think it was, I decided to do a background language—an ancient language on my planet, spoken by a minor people (so they wouldn’t be the main characters), and largely displaced by later languages I haven’t made yet. It’s pretty bare bones—you can’t really make sentences in it—but you can name things, which is what I had in mind for it. I also created three daughter languages, a la French and Spanish to Latin. So it’s basically complete for my purposes, and it’s helping make the planet seem more real—something I’ve been striving for for a long time.

FWIW, they’re called Shigansic languages—Shigansa meaning “Central Planet,” the planet the speakers originally came from—and my favorite city name I came up with is “Yab Cābăb,” which means “Mountain House.” The “C” is sort of, but not quite, pronounced like “ch” as in “church.”

(For you conlangers out there—no, I am not piling on diacritics to make it look interesting. There are three degrees of vowel length distinguished in the language.)

Thank you @memoriesbecomestories for asking!!!

Talk About Asks.

[conceptualliteratureblog]

Language Profiles: student agency & multilingualism

This post is relevant either to language A/B teachers or to educators looking at whole school literacy implementation ideas.  

Thank you, Yi Shen (Sandy) for showing me the power of a language profile in our workshop in Hong Kong (Sha Tin College, September 2017)!  This is something any of you can try with your teaching staff or your classrooms to make language a truly dynamic part of the learning process at your school and help people become aware of the power and challenges that come with personal language knowledge.  

Some schools will already have a language profile for each student.  Often, this only lists the home language(s) and level of English (or language of instruction) of the student.  We can do more!  Also, sometimes the level of English listed is from an application filled out by parents trying to impress the school.  Find out where the information comes from to really understand what it means.  Essentially, there are many ways to get more information that can help gain knowledge for the student’s personalised learning strategies, but likely the best person to create this portfolio is the student, at least in secondary schools.

In order to understand how this works for students, try to do it yourself:

Think back to your infant development and schooling: what is your language story?  Where and when did you learn language(s)? What dialects do you speak?  What slang do you know?  Especially if you live away from where you grew up, this dynamic has probably changed over the years.  Even if you only speak English, you have probably had exposure to different kinds of English and use a certain type with friends, family, and students.  You probably also at one point learned a second language in school.  What was this experience of language learning like for you?  What excites you about (other) languages?  What scares you?  How does language give you power?  How does it make you powerless?

There will probably be a wide range of responses to these questions from colleagues and students alike.  Sharing your language story with a colleague or two can help you to express what language is for you and to have empathy for others who may find difficulty with language.

Try drawing a map of the language(s) you use today.  With whom and for what purposes do you speak different languages, dialects, or slang?  Maybe your register simply shifts; that is ok as well. Maybe you speak some languages for fun and others out of a need.  

I was raised an anglophone.  Hailing from Boston, I avoided the accent and local dialect due to the nature of the transplant and immigrant town of Lexington that I grew up in.  My parents came from Minnesota and Texas, and each had lived in Boston since just after their university years.  We had a blended American English at home.

My mom also studied French extensively at school, so when I started lessons at age 7 in our school system, the fit felt natural.  Half of my mom’s family is French and with Québec not that far away, schools in the area at that time all taught French to students as a ‘second’ language.  I took French all through grade school until the AP exam when I feel out of love with the language.  Suddenly, I had teachers who just cared about correctness and memorisation rather than taking us to see the Impressionist exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts or teaching us how to make crepes.  The joy was killed.

So at university, I took Spanish for a year.  It was fun, but I wasn’t quite in love with it the same way.  And then there were all those other courses on the syllabus and I wanted to double major…so…no language B study for a couple of years.  But then, Latin the last year.  I had wanted to take Latin as a first-year but my advisor said it was a dead language.  What was the point?  I found the grammatical structures a fun puzzle and our tiny class of five a fun classical oasis.  

After college, I went straight into my MAT to earn a teaching degree.  I hadn’t studied abroad like so many US students mostly because of sport with the plan to somehow do it later.  My MAT programme allowed you to do your student teaching abroad, but you had to find the school.  It was much of the reason I had chosen the program.  

I had decided I wanted to give French a go again.  After writing to many schools in Switzerland and France, I finally got a positive response from the Lycée International American Section director, just outside of Paris.  Paris!  What a dream.  They wouldn’t pay me, of course, but I could work with several of their teachers and live with one of the school’s families in exchange for some babysitting and tutoring.  

That year was bliss.  But I could digress for ages about my love affair with Paris…back to the language!  I had to take intensive French courses again as part of my visa.  It was also a great way to meet people from other places.  I had very good, slow, correct French, I was told time and again.  But it was slow.  Part of culture is how you speak, and the French, at least the Parisians, don’t like to speak slowly.  I was given the advice to just spit it out and not worry about my mistakes.  So I did that, time and again, until I felt comfortable in French.  I felt like a different part of my personality came out in French.  

Fast forward three years: I had moved back to the states and then to Italy.  My French proved very useful in learning Italian and the locals were even more encouraging about just trying the language out.  Within a few months, I was comfortably having conversations.  Sadly, a lot of that is lost now after more than a decade without much exposure, but I think I could reclaim it in a month or so if given the opportunity.  

Similarly, when I moved to Hong Kong, I took Mandarin Chinese lessons.  But though I loved it, I found it difficult to practice the language in a place that is mostly Cantonese and English.  Cantonese was trickier to learn and ‘not as useful’ once you move away.  I never knew how long I would stay…if I had known it would be eight years, I probably would have learned right away.  In any case, learning some Chinese helped me to at least understand what it’s about and is something I would go back to as well with a longer stay in the mainland or again in Hong Kong.  

I kept up the French, though, with long, frequent stays in France, lots of films, and a long-term French beau along the way.  Now, I have friends with whom I speak French in Vienna, I read in French when I can, and I have that dream of living there….

But most of my life is still lived in English.  I’ve learned some German living in Vienna.  I took a class and did some self study.  But there’s always that time factor, and I decided to have a baby and do some writing instead.  Maybe I’ll go back to it.  Let’s see how things shape up in a year or two.  The little I’ve learned is certainly helpful and shows a sort of respect in trying, I think.  When I travel I also like to learn a few phrases for this reason.  We who speak English are privileged to have the ‘international language’ at our fingertips.  But we are only denying ourselves if we limit the other languages we can learn.  

Now I also have a baby boy who is learning language every day.  We speak American and British English at home.  We try not to swear around him.  I sometimes speak with him in French.  He will attend a mostly German speaking nursery school soon.  It makes more me aware of how and why we learn these languages.

That’s my language story in brief.  I’m sure you can find links with geography, emotions, work, and more to understand even more where it all comes from.  I have students with much more dynamic backgrounds.  Some speak three languages at home with their parents, a different one at school (English), take a foreign language, and speak in some kind of multilingual slang with their friends. When students go through their language journeys, their stories, they find ways to use language for learning.  They acquire agency.  In asking teachers to also go through the process, they can connect with the student’s learning as they make reflections on their own journeys, connected also to emotion, place, people…the list goes on. These associations help us understand the way we use languages as well as our motivations or fears connected to language.  

One of my students studying three language A at school (English, German, Italian) for a trilingual diploma (wow!) conducted her Extended Essay research on the topic of multilingualism and cognition.  She narrowed it to bilingualism since little research has been done beyond this, even though, as she noted, many people speak more than two languages.  She always felt her languages were a hindrance, which really shocked me.  Most of the recent research I had read showed the cognitive power of having more than one language.  This is why so many people try to get their kids in immersion programs if there is only one language at home.  She was aware of this, but sometimes felt like words escaped her or she couldn’t understand something she read.  She realised that even though she reads a lot, the time is divided among these three languages. Her vocabulary development could be limited in that way.  Research supported this, but this was the only area she found to be a hindrance.  The way she uses language can be more creative and the development of her brain allows for code switching that goes beyond language and into experiences.

Are any of you doing research in this area?  I would be interested to hear about any current work with multilingual speakers and happy to post a link to your published work on my blog.  

[rebeccaseattle]

Stand and Deliver

I am, practically speaking a math teacher. Technically speaking, I am a mild/moderate special ed teacher, but I teach math, to special ed kids, mostly.   

Growing up, one movie I saw over, and over, and over again in school was Stand and Deliver. It was played almost every day we had a sub or the teacher didn’t have a plan, etc, etc etc. Then, my senior year my school theater program (of which I was highly involved) decided to do the play version. I essentially memorized that film. If you don’t know the movie, is carefully based off a true story of the famous math teacher, Jaime Escalante, an immigrant from Bolivia, whose teaches/coaches/mentors a handful of underserved high school students from a gang-ridden Garfield High School in LA into taking and passing the AP Calculus exam. These students success is so impressive, that they naturally are accused of cheating and the students have to retake a harder version of the test to indeed prove they do know math that well. 

Anyway, now that I am working math students, I asked myself, should I show the movie to my students? Somehow no one in my school seemed to know about the film. I’m sure things have changed in the 15 years since my own high school experience, and I’m in a different demographic. So I researched the movie carefully and how different educators felt about it. 

I ended up reading a lot about Jaime Escalante and the true story the film was based on. It was actually pretty close, a lot closer than your usual Hollywood films, it’s inaccuracies were few and not to dramatic. 

I found one fascinating blog post all about why teachers should not show this film to their students. One major point was, while Jaime Escalante was clearly an amazing educator who lead his kids to success, he was very controversial. Not only at Garfield high school as is portrayed in the film for pushing his kids so hard and setting high expectations for him, but also for later in life as he supported “English Only” movement in education. Many had the opinion that such an outlook is oppressive to students learning English as a second language. Most of the blog readers I read who said this, were like me, white, and native English speakers. I found this fascinating. I don’t necessarily agree with the English only movement, I don’t have an opinion and don’t think it’s my place to form one at this time. However, I think it’s possible to separate one person’s endeavor from another and appreciate one without the other. For example, I do in fact like Einstein’s general theory of relativity, however Albert was a huge jerk to his first wife, Meliva (whose name appears on one of the early drafts as its often said she helped with the math involved) and left her penniless with 3 children he refused to support for over a decade. Still Albert Einstein did do an amazing job of figuring out, testing, and working on this theory and that’s still amazing and inspiring. So I don’t think that was a valid reason to not watch it. 

Another educator wrote that Stand and Deliver was in the same spirit of “Dangerous Minds” which is definitely a movie about white saviorism. That movie, whose title alone offends me, also based on a true story, is about a white lady who comes to a gang-ridden high school and teaches English to underserved populations and like reduces gang violence or something (it’s been a while). That of course is a theme I need to avoid at all costs, savorism is a horrifying myth I seen projected onto my job, more on that later. For more fun we can watch the SNL skit “Pretty White Lady.”

However, Stand and Deliver is not the same as Dangerous Minds. The teacher is not a white person, but an immigrant himself who is technically classified as Latino. Okay, yes Bolivia is a very different country than say Mexico, or the other countries my students, or his, may come from. And I’m sure they don’t speak the same type of Spanish is Bolivia then say other countries, but still he’s an immigrant literally speaking the same language as his students. 

Also, the other factor I had to point out, is the math in Stand and Deliver, is actually very real math. In college I learned an excellent short cut to integration by parts, that my professors learned from the movie. Today things are a lot better, but in that era, the math in movies, was actually quite fake, and bad. The math that is done in SD, is actually quite accurate. It’s real calculus, algebra, and trig. I figured if nothing else I could show it to my kids purely for them to try to recognize the math happening in the movie. 

So I played the movie for my students and kept an open mind. I tried not to lecture or get to preachy toward them, I just wanted to be open to how they responded and then figure out if this was an advantageous movie for them to see. I did tell them to be aware of the various math tricks that happened in the movie. 

Also it was my first time watching the movie since I learned calculus and was very excited to revisit these scenes and examine the math. 

So here is the results:

1. My kids loved the movie. If for nothing else, they liked watching a movie in their math class. They would much rather watch movies then do math. It didn’t matter that the movie was nearly half a century old, still better than doing a worksheet or something. 

2. One thing that I noticed is that a number of my kids liked that the movie was about latina/latino students. A number of my students have a lot of pride in their ethnicity. While there are a number of white people in the movie, they show up in minor supporting roles. Much like the reverse of what we see in Hollywood today. The movie really is about Latin Americans and they seemed to appreciate that they were in the foreground. The minute it started, one of my students who had never spoke to me before then, told me about one of his favorite old movies, that was casted completely by latino actors. 

Furthermore, while Escalante is central, and he is portrayed as a hero, the real heroes of the movie are actually the high school students. It was very much a movie about kids in high school that delved into their family lives, dating issues, career decisions, conflicts with friends, etc. So it’s also a movie about high school kids. 

3. In addition, despite the movie being around 40 years old, there were a couple of cultural elements my students seem to relate to. For example, the way my students greet each other and their particular hand shake (which I can’t do, but am learning, growth mindset) was done in the movie by adults. In the scene when Guadalupe was putting her brothers and sisters to bed, one of my students, who identifies as Mexican, called out, “That’s a Mexican household there. That’s my cousins” My students commented on what food was being cooked in scenes and compared it to their friends and families’ cooking. In the conflict scene where Escalante confronts the college board representatives about the accusations, they were super engaged, predicting, accurately what Escalante would say next and how they would have handled it. They pointed out to me we have the same desks as the students in the movie (facepalm here). They even explained to me, the subtext of the gang violence around Angel in the movie. This is something I didn’t see or understand when I was a kid.  Of course this wasn’t the whole movie. A lot of the scenes culturally didn’t make sense to them, they were outdated, not relatable, or relevant. 

4. They liked that the movie talked openly about racism. Going back to that scene where Escalante confronts the school board, they were super engaged. They got very excited when Escalante confronts the college board representatives, and the fact that they were sent out because of their distinct ethnic backgrounds. They liked that the racism was being called out rather than everyone turning a blind eye and closed mouth. Most of my students, regardless of ethnicity were engaged in that part. 

Some of the kids though just spaced out, or were on their phones. I still have mixed feelings about the film, and would welcome other’s opinions about showing stand and deliver as a math teacher. It could be they were just grateful for a chill day. 

For me, I noticed a few things. 

1. The math is very accurate, and there are a couple of really cool math tricks happening in it. Namely integration by parts and the trick to multiply by nines using the fingers. 

2. I liked that Escalante pointed out the Mayans understood the concept of zero long before europeans did. I personally also like pointing out white people did not invent algebra, middle easterners did. I think the history of math is important, but is often whitewashed to be just about the Greeks and Romans. Often in history, only white history is told and the accomplishments of groups is silenced. 

3. The only math flaw I saw in the movie was when Escalante read ln(x-1) as the words L N. Any Calculus teacher worth their weight would of course read it as “The Natural Log of x minus 1. 

4. There are all sorts of subtext I understand now as an adult, that I didn’t as a kid. The fact the Ana leaves the test early so others won’t be accused of cheating off of her, or that Guadalupe doesn’t have a place or time to study when she’s at home. 

5. There is a honestly, the kids are clearly treated unfair by society and the movie points out this truth. The kids rise above by having to work extra hard to retake the test. I don’t know about the message of having the kids to work extra hard, I don’t want to get to preachy in my profession. But at least it acknowledges the unfair, racist elements the kids deal with, rather than be in denial or victim blaming I often see. It does have the message that the the kids are up to the challenge. They may have to work harder, but they are certainly underestimate by those in power over them. That makes an interesting point, but I’m not sure what it is yet. 

Anyway, I showed the movie this year, and I would love other’s thoughts about it. 

[seacrowisland]

Langblr Secret Santa

Hiya my dear @genderqueerfujioka , I’m your Secret Santa and here to spread some Langbrl joy! Since the Langblr coordinator told me you were interested in Italian and Literature I thought, I might share a short introduction to Italian Literature with you as it is the thing I’m currently studying in university. However, when stalking your profile, I couldn’t help but notice that you are very interested in learning Swedish at the moment, which is why I have created a second gift for you. This way, you can decide which language you want to focus on today and keep the other one for Boxing Day or New Years. (Or open it right away as well.)

If you want to be a pro at Italian Literature (or seem like it) you have to know these three drama queens:

From the left to the right they are Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca (also known as Petrarch). They are also called the “tre corone” which means “three crowns” and even though they published all of their works in the 14th century they are still considered the finest literature one could possibly read. (They are like Italian Shakespeares basically and everyone’s obsessed with them.)

Let’s start with the first one, shall we? Dante was a pretty cool guy. Born in 1265 in Florence he first became a politician, but since he choose the wrong party (there were two oppositional parties in Florence at that time and they were at each other's throats) he had to flee from Florence in 1301, which the other party used to deny him entrance into the city for the rest of his life. (If he had paid enough money maybe they would’ve let him back in but he wasn’t really interested in that.) Dante then basically founded Italian Literature as he used the “volgare” (the language of the common folk in Florence at that time) as the language of his stories. (Before him it was all Latin, from then on all the authors wrote in the Florentine accent because through Dante it became cool.) His most famous work is “La Divina Commedia” (“The Divine Comedy”) in which Vergil, a Latin poet, as well as one of his lovers, Beatrice, lead him through the three realms of the dead. (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.) Sort of ancient fantasy literature which also teaches about theology, philosophy and also about science at that time. He died in 1362.

Boccaccio was a little bit more chill, he was also a politician (born in 1313 in Florence as well) but instead of getting send into exile he kept calm, travelled a lot and wrote a set of 100 novels called “Il Decameron” (from deka=ten and hemera=day because it takes place within ten days). The novels are all centred around a group of ten young people that flee from the plague in 1348 and lift in the countryside for ten days. (Obviously, the plague wasn’t over within 10 days but it’s a story after all.) During those days they each told a story every day and then the one who had told the best story was selected king or queen of that day. The novels all take place among normal, upper-class people (merchants most of all) and are focused on the intelligence of the characters, which was something quite new at that time. Boccaccio was also obsessed with Dante and literally wrote a biography about him, there was that much enthusiasm. (Even though Dante didn’t return it.) He died in 1375.

Last but not least Petrarch. (I’m gonna call him that even though his actual name was Petrarca but Petrarch is more common among English speakers.) He was born in 1304 and—not, not Florence, but Arezzo, Italy. As his dad was a politician, who worked close to Avignon, Petrarch grew up in France, in a rural area close to the Mont Ventoux. Why does this matter, you might ask? Well, because Petrarch one day (in 1336) decided to climb up that mountain (most people at that time had better things to do than to climb up random mountains, so it was quite unusual for him to do so) but what made this hike so special is, that he wrote about it in a letter to Francesco Dionigi. In this letter, he has the spectator was in the centre which was a massive cut in the experience of nature and landscapes in the 14th century. Suddenly the entire aesthetic changed because suddenly there wasn’t just nature but a reflection of your innermost self within the things you see in front of you. Petrarch was a poet and also the founder of the (Italian) sonnet (which was later copied by many Englishman and once it was already out fashion picked up by Shakespeare to be cool again, so Petrarch is the reason why people are able to obsess over Shakespeare’s sonnets) but most of all he changed the worldview from being centred on God and his creation to being focused on the self and your feelings. In his poems, the “Canzoniere” (consisting of 366 poems) he wrote about one thing: His love for a girl called Laura. When Petrarch first met her, she was already bound to another man, but that didn’t keep him from loving her. He wrote to her 266 poems “in vita” (so whilst she was still alive) and 100 “in morte” (once she had died), talking about his feelings about her and so on. (By the way, they weren’t just sonnets but also songs and ballads.) I’d also have to mention, that the Italian sonnet differs from the (standard) English sonnet: Both have 14 lines but whilst Shakespeare had three quatrains (abab cdcd efef) followed by a heroic couplet (gg), the original Petrarchan sonnet consisted of a rhyming octave (abbaabba) followed by a rhyming sestet (cdcdcd).

To include some actual Italian, here’s Petrarch's XXXV (35th) poem. (I included an English version below so that you can understand it properly, but I’d definitely encourage you to try and read it the way it is.)

Solo et pensoso i piú deserti campi vo mesurando a passi tardi et lenti, et gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti ove vestigio human l'arena stampi.

Altro schermo non trovo che mi scampi dal manifesto accorger de le genti, perché negli atti d'alegrezza spenti di fuor si legge com'io dentro avampi:

sí ch'io mi credo omai che monti et piagge et fiumi et selve sappian di che tempre sia la mia vita, ch'è celata altrui.

Ma pur sí aspre vie né sí selvagge cercar non so ch'Amor non venga sempre ragionando con meco, et io co llui.

(And now the English version)

Alone and thoughtful, through the most desolate fields, I go measuring out slow, hesitant paces, And keep my eyes intent on fleeing Any place where human footsteps mark the sand.

I find no other defence to protect me From other people’s open notice, Since in my aspect, whose joy is quenched, They see from outside how I flame within.

So now I believe that mountains and river-banks And rivers and forests know the quality Of my life, hidden from others.

Yet I find there is no path so wild or harsh That love will not always come there Speaking with me, and I with him.

So, first of all, you can probably totally tell, that this poem is about how in love he is and even though he’s trying to hide it from people, it’s not really working out the way he planned it. I’m not going to go on about the verse rhythms and stuff like that, but I would like to point out (a) the beautiful form of the Italian sonnet and (b) the connection between the nature (fields, sand, mountains, river-banks) and his feelings, wanting to find a path that hides him from people and most importantly lets him escape love. (But, as he precisely states, there is no such path.)

There are lots of other Italian writers (like Giacomo Leopardi, who totally looks like Eddie Redmayne and was one of the first romanticists or Carlo Goldoni, who was super important for the Italian Drama, which in itself it a whole other story) but if you know the tre corone, people are going to be super impressed and their works are also great reads. Personally, I most enjoy Boccaccio because his stories are quite simple, but Petrarch's poetry is nice too and if you’ve got the time, maybe one day you’ll read into “La Divina Comedia”. (I honestly tried but couldn’t do it.)

I hope you enjoyed your gift! If you want to talk about Italian Literature (or Drama or poetry) you can text me anytime. I know, that this isn’t exactly a vocabulary list or anything like that, but I always enjoyed not only learning my target language but also a few of the cultural backgrounds so hopefully, we’re on the same track here. Happy holidays and have a good new year!