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old-hyper-super-clover · 3 years

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Squeeze that bunny tail!

Part 2

Description: The RAD student council as well as the exchange students help out at a bar where, oops, the staff´s dress codes are those sweet bunny outfits that we all know and thirst for. The MCs, Violet and Clover, play a game of who can touch the most bunny tails over the evening without getting caught. Prepare for fluff, funny innuendos as well as my thirst over hot boys in bunny outfits.

The story is divided in several parts and will be updated every few days. Find Part 1 here.

Story continues below the cut, hope you enjoy!

Both, Violet and Clover, were fair players, so, as they weren't able to walk around in a pair the whole evening, Violet and Clover had to trust each other in counting their own points.

Their utmost priority, however, was still to help out at the bar, so they had to focus on that for most of the time. But whenever there was a chance tangible (in the most literal sense lol), their minds immediately switched back to their little competition.

Violet had already started with one point advantage, due to the squeeze she had given Beel's tail.

But the girl was up for the thrill, so it didn't take too long until she had found her next target.

Everyone's beloved angel man Simeon was on cooking duty with her and Barbatos.

While the butler was easily handling all of their tasks on his own, the other two were trying their best to actually help him instead of being in the way.

They were chopping down ingredients that Barbatos could throw into the hellfire hot pot he was preparing when it happened...

A cheeky little squeeze while Simeon was turning to grab another veggie, and Violet got her second point already.

The angel didn't seem to have noticed, as he kept talking with this precious smile on his lips.

The real danger, however, came through the door immediately after.

Glancing up from the pompom that Violet had just given a good squish, she locked eyes with Luke.

They stared at each other for a hot second, then Violet straightened up again, trying to remain composed while Luke looked like losing his shit any second.

"Ah, Luke!" Simeon interrupted his own narration. "Perfect timing!"

Violet gave a silent sarcastic laugh. No, not a perfect timing at all...

Luke was still trying to cope with the sin he had just witnessed, but now Barbatos approached him as well.

"Could I ask for your help with the special menu's 'halo donuts'?” Barbatos asked. “Simeon claimed it to be your specialty."

Now Luke was blushing at the compliment.

"U-uhm... Well, yes, I do make quite good donuts... Fine, I'll help!"

As he passed Violet, he threw her a last sceptical glance, but soon the girl could let out a relieved breath.

Getting Luke to fuss over reaching for Simeon's butt was certainly not something she needed, not so soon into the game...

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

Clover was trying to gather some safe points before risking anything.

Her main goal was to get at least ONE point, to be frank.

Looking at her options for low-risk points, her heart was beating for one particular target, but her blushy excitement made it impossible to approach that gluttonous teddy bear.

So she settled on probably the easiest target of all.

Belphie's first shift consisted of... Sleeping. Like, literally. The idea was to let him nap until his energy tanks were filled enough for him to actually be useful for proper work.

Huddled over the bar, the youngest of the demon brothers seemed so vulnerable that even Clover could bring up enough courage to go for that tail.

Couldn't be that hard, right?

Well, it could.

Just as she was about the stretch out her shaking hand, someone walked right into her way and startled her completely.

As the girl gave an awkward squeal, Mammon looked at her with almost as much fright in his eyes.

"Waah, human, what are ya screamin´ at?!"

"I-I didn't... See you there..." Clover mumbled.

"I literally just passed by..." He raised an eyebrow. But seeing how her cheeks were flushed all red, a little grin curled his face. "I didn't know you'd get so excited to see me, human. I mean, I can't blame ya for being flustered at my sight, but what's all the blushing for?"

"I-I'm not flustered..." she stammered, trying to calm down.

"Come on, you can be honest", Mammon continued to tease, his ego-boosting mode fully activated. "I look damn nice in those clothes after all."

Clover shot him a glance, mustering how his vest fit him perfectly, how his shirt was slightly unbuttoned, and that he looked prrretty dang fine in shoes with heels.

"You do" she agreed.

Now Mammon was the one to flinch.

"F-for real?!" he blushed, then cleared his throat immediately. "I-I mean, thanks, I guess."

Mammon went silent for a moment, trying to calm his heart rate over the unexpected compliment.

"Want me to pose for ya?", he seemed to joke.

Clover looked at him... and sensed her chance.

"Yes please, great Mammon!" she exclaimed.

His tanned skin flushed an even darker colour, but, being the model he was, he actually did some poses for her. Now Clover didn't complain at that -- Mammon WAS a snack after all.

But after a while, she prompted him to give her a proper view of his back as well.

He seemed confused, even more so as she told him to stand still, but in the end did not seem to have noticed how Clover quickly poked his bunny tail. And while he was busy bragging about something modelling-related, Clover also turned to do the same with Belphie's tail as he was still asleep next to her.

"Thanks, Mammon!" she cheered afterwards, having scored not one, but three points at once.

With a little hop, she tackled Mammon into a quick hug before running off in a giggle.

Clover nearly bumped into Solomon while running away.

"Oh, hello... Why in such a hurry?" The sorcerer dodged her perfectly, his eyes sparkling in amusement as he mustered the clumsy girl.

"Huh? Oh, Solomon, sorry. Didn't see you there."

He laughed. "Well, I did guess that, seeing as you were focused on Mammon so intensely. The only question is... What did you do to leave him as such a blushing mess?"

"... I hugged him" Clover said, shrugging.

But seeing Solomon's expression, she felt somewhat off. Was he waiting for a different answer...?

"Well then, time to get back to work" Solomon changed the topic. "We don't want to waste time, do we? The bar opens soon."

He turned, but had yet to get moving. Instead, Solomon was taking a look around, completely exposing his bunny tail to Clover.

Which was worth three points, after all...

And it seemed like just the perfect opportunity...

"Yep, see you", Clover replied, turning around herself, leaving.

As much as she liked Solomon, this man was emitting such shady vibes that there was no getting her to touch this particular bunny tail…

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

Clover had bragged to her friend about her point advantage soon after (and spoke of her concerns regarding Mr. Shady MCShady),

Which she'd later realise had been a pretty bad idea.

Maybe fueled by rivalry, maybe just because Violet had some weird kink for pompom-like things, she upped her game SO much after that. (A/N: Ok it's not a kink, I was prompted to make sure everyone knows that... (But also it's a kink believe me hehehe))

Within the next hour, Violet scored another four points.

"Asmo, Mammon, and Beel again?!" Clover cried out in disbelief when the girls found each other in the kitchen. "What's wrong with you?!"

"Hehe~" Violet laughed. "I just had some good opportunities."

Clover rolled her eyes as she was cleaning some dishes. "Yeah, great, and I've been running around with top tier difficulty peeps like Papa Luci or Solomon. Talk about unfair..."

"I meeaan... You COULD squish them..."

"Yeah, sure, and risk dying? No thanks."

"Solomon wouldn't kill you... probably."

"... I´m telling you something´s UP with that guy today, I wouldn´t be so sure of that…" Clover joked, although having shivers go down her spine.

Before they could continue this, the kitchen door flew open.

Levi was dragging a trolley full of dirty glasses along with him.

He seemed awfully pissed.

"Levi?" Violet called out. "Are you okay...?"

He threw her a glance.

"Do I think I'm okay? In a place with so many Normies?" He gave a sigh, then seemed to have remembered something. "Ah, Violet, Lucifer said he needed you in the dancing hall."

The girl gave a nod, quickly wanting to make a leave since only fools would let a person like Lucifer wait. She shot Clover a glance before leaving, gesturing her to go for Levi's tail while they were alone.

Clover instantly felt that awkward pressure back on her, but now that she got called out she had to do it.

As the demon began placing the dishes in the dishwasher, Clover slowly approached him.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"If you've got nothing better to do..." he mumbled, not looking up from his work. "Although, you'd probably do better to go out and have fun with the oth- AAAGH WHY ARE YOU SO CLOSE?!"

Clover gave an almost equal squeal as she backed away in an instant.

"I WanTeD To HeLp" she screamed.

"BUT WHY ARE SO CLOSE?!"

"DON'T SHOUT AT ME, I'M AWKWARD."

"I'M EVEN MORE AWKWARD THAN YOU ARE, IDIOT."

They stared at each other with red faces until Clover crouched down to sit on the floor, recovering from this incident.

"Wh-what are you doing there?" Levi asked.

"Sit. I like floors. It's where I belong."

The demon gave her a weird look before averted his gaze in a troubled expression.

After a little silence, he would speak up again.

"... You belong outside, not here on this stinky kitchen floor."

"Huh?"

He bit his lip sheepishly. "Serving the guests, or at the bar... Where everyone can see you."

"... Huh?" Clover seriously didn't understand what he was blushing about.

He was staring at her, searching for words, but then decided to simply poke her bunny ears.

"... Bunny maids are a clear 10/10, everyone knows that..." he mumbled.

The girl blinked, now realising he was trying to compliment her.

"Bunny butlers, too, though" she replied. "You look really good", she laughed, grabbing one flap of his jacket to play with it.

"Adasdhegagf...!!"

Yes, that is a thing Levi can say, while flushing red and bashfully covering his face.

Not able to take this compliment, he ended up on the floor as well.

"You can't just land a critical hit without a warning... I thought we were confidants...!"

"Rank six confidants", Clover nodded. "But that's only more the reason to tell you what a snack you are right now-"

"AAAAAHHH DON'T!!" he screeched, turning away from her to hide his embarrassment. "I can't deal with so much kindness..."

Clover blinked at the bunny tail right in front of her.

Target locked.

She gave it a careful squish, then snickered a little before standing up.

"But you deserve it. That's why... I'm calling a confident rank up!"

He turned his head. "R-really?! Rank seven already?!"

"Yup."

"Woah... to think I'd be such good friends with somebody one day... Thank you, Clover-chan...!"

"No, no... I have to thank you, Levia-tan."

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

"You want me to select songs for the people to dance to...?"

Violet looked at the three monitors behind the DJ's table in the dancing hall.

Lucifer gave a nod. "We already added songs from Devildom artists, but we could use a little of a cultural mix" he said.

Satan walked up to Violet and Lucifer, now looking at the list of songs all together.

"We also need to add more to make the playlist last until the local closes" Lucifer continued. "I doubt that anyone will leave sober enough to remember such details, but Lord Diavolo ordered no repetitions in the playlist, so please, just help us out..."

Violet gave it some thought, not really knowing much about typical party songs. “I highly doubt my taste in hard rock will be a good representation of humanities taste in music, but... Well, that´s all I can serve with, so…” She came up with some nice picks from her own likings.

While Violet was eventually coming up with some nice tracks, in the meantime, Satan activated his pissing-off-Lucifer mode.

"Lucifer, you talk as if you'd know what a real party looks like", he mocked, referring to Lucifer's comment from before. "Have you even been to a club before?"

The oldest brother gave a huff.

"Of course I have."

"Oh? I meant on occasions other that picking up a drunk Asmo from IN FRONT OF the club."

"The answer is still a yes, thank you for clarifying."

Satan raised an eyebrow.

"Interesting", he hummed. "I can't really imagine you at a club, though... Dancing in the crowd... downing shots... or being cool in general..."

The avatar of Pride gave an annoyed sigh.

"You don't seem like a party animal either, Satan" he countered.

"Well I choose to avoid crowded places for most of the time. However, I still think I'd do better at settling in a club's atmosphere than you could."

Violet could almost feel how Lucifer's frustration piled up, even though he tried staying calm.

"Do you, huh...?" Lucifer leisurely responded.

And his outward calmness made Satan angry as well.

"You don't believe me?" the blond huffed. “Do you really think I couldn´t beat an old man at clubbing?”

Meanwhile, being in the middle of what felt like a flippin´ dance battle about to break out any moment, Violet prayed for them to stop fighting soon.

... Which didn't happen.

They kept bickering, partly because Satan talked himself into a fury and partly because Lucifer's pride was too big to admit defeat or weakness in any way.

Just when Violet had finished the playlist, Satan threw a final tantrum, leaving them with an outraged "Whatever!!" as he stomped off into another section of the dancing hall.

Lucifer pressed out a sigh, cutting through the awkward silence that had spread amongst them.

"What a troublesome child..." he mumbled.

Violet watched Satan with a worried expression, before turning to Lucifer with the same look on her face.

"... Don't worry, that is normal behaviour between Satan and me..." the male assured her. "He will get over his anger soon enough."

"And... What about you...? I feel like you are quite tense right now, yourself…" Violet asked.

"I should go and see where my help is needed now", he claimed, dodging her question.

Lucifer was gone before Violet could respond anything coherent.

Thus, giving a sigh, she decided to at least check how Satan was doing.

The avatar of Wrath was lumbering around some speakers, seeming as if he checked if everything was working as it should (despite having no idea how they were working.)

When he noticed Violet approaching, he only shot her a quick glance.

"Satan...?" The girl softly called out. "Are you okay?"

No answer.

It almost felt as if he was going to ignore her completely.

"... I don't get it” he then suddenly pressed out.

"What do you mean?" Violet took a careful step closer.

"I hate him" Satan growled.

The girl flinched, but decided not to say anything. She felt a certain frustration in his voice, and indeed, as he continued, his tone changed a little.

"He really pisses me off every time. I get angry, over nothing at all!" He clenched his fists. "And it makes me angry, his stupid face, his cocky attitude...!"

Then his shoulders fell. "... Why can't I just ignore him? I get angry, and then I get angry over getting angry. It's so...!"

Violet listened to him patiently.

"... It's so frustrating..." He mumbled.

"I can fathom..." Violet claimed, shooting him an encouraging smile as he slowly turned towards her. "But... Don't you think it's already a big step that you don't actually want to be angry?"

"... But what good is that when I do get angry after all?"

"You can't accomplish everything immediately” her expression softened even more. “What's important though is that you at least try."

Satan seemed sceptical, but in the end gave a slight nod.

"I guess... I'm sorry for bothering you."

The girl shook her head in a smile. "You´re not a bother. I´m glad you felt comfortable enough to tell me."

Shyly, she spread her arms, inviting him into a hug. A little awkward himself, he gave a little laugh before stepping close to embrace her.

"Everyone needs to vent out their anger sometimes" Violet reassured.

"... Thanks", he whispered.

As they parted, Satan turned to inspect the speakers again.

"Anyway... I think we checked through everything we needed in the dance hall. I will look over this here and then head out for my break."

"Mhm..." Violet muttered. "Sounds good..."

And there, she went for it.

A little touch - she didn't dare to do more than that.

But Satan's bunny tail had been successfully poked.

He continued to speak like nothing happened, so Violet dared to wish she had went for a whole squeeze instead.

"I should be going now", the girl said.

"Alright" Satan was still focused on inspecting the equipment, so Violet made her leave.

Unconsciously, she turned her head shortly before leaving the hall.

A shiver went down her spine, leaving her paralyzed for what felt like her last moments alive.

Satan's alarmed, slightly angered glare was cutting through the air, focussing her for a hot second before he decided to turn around again.

Hurrying out of the dance hall, dodging Solomon as he had nearly run into her, Violet quickly pulled out her phone as she had withdrawn from the scene of crime:

Violet: Clover I think Satan noticed me.

Clover: As in Senpai noticed me?

Violet: ...

Clover: :D

Violet: ... No, I squeezed his tail, but later on he was staring at me. Help.

Clover: ... So he's a three-pointer now?

Violet: I don't know but I feel like I nearly died so probably.

Clover: Lolol well that's what you get from messing with Satan. But I'll be kind and give you those two points. He did not confront you about it, after all.

"Hey, Violet!"

Violet flinched so heavily she nearly let go of her phone. Her first instinct had feared it was Satan calling her, but actually, she turned to look at somebody else.

"Lord Diavolo", she said. "Can I help you with anything?"

"I want to place the free snacks on the dining tables" he smiled. "Most of them are from the human world, so I want you to help me choose the best."

He was already going ahead, leaving Violet no room to explain that she's actually SO not a snacking person and had near to no idea how to help him.

Someone gave Diavolo keys for the storage room, and as they stepped inside, he turned on the lights.

"Woah...", Violet's mouth fell open. "That's... A lot of stuff."

"Fascinating, isn't it? You humans are so creative when it comes to food!"

He led her further inside where the snacks were stored.

Even though Violet liked him a lot, it still felt weird, being alone with the Prince of the whole flippin Devildom. You wouldn't have guessed it from Diavolo's carefree aura, but Violet was fairly overwhelmed, being able to walk alongside him so casually.

She tried her best at giving some advice as they looked through the huge collection together.

"We should go with a good mix of sweet and salty snacks" she explained. "Pretzels, chips or peanuts, together with something more delicate, gummies for example."

Diavolo beamed her a smile.

"I knew I could count on you!"

And he started grabbing things off the shelves.

Violet was helping, of course, but the storeroom was also tall as frick, so for lots of bags, she had to ask Diavolo to reach for it.

And that's when it hit her.

The currently vulnerable Diavolo, reaching for a bag of extra cheesy Tortilla chips, exposing his three-point worth bunny tail, only centimetres away from Violet's reach.

She literally only had to stretch out her hand a tiny bit.

And with the waterfall of words that Diavolo was talking, he wouldn't even notice.

It would be so easy.

But she couldn't do it.

She looked around. Between all the shelves, all the packages, back to the door they came from.

They were alone. She was sure of it.

But also, Violet had never felt more watched over than in this exact moment.

There was this presence lurking in the back of her neck, threatening her the more she tried to stretch out her arm.

Waiting for her to make one false decision...

"Extra DOUBLE cheesy?!"

Diavolo turned around, holding up a bag of Doritos. "Humans are so crazy!!"

Violet blinked at him, only now noticing that her whole body had tensed up so much it almost hurt.

"Y-yeah..."

As they walked out of the storeroom, arms full with all sorts of snacks, Violet gave a sigh. She had been so close... Only a little closer, and she…

"Should I take some of those from you?"

Violet did a little jump as she heard the voice next to her ear.

Barbatos was right beside her, smiling and tilting his head a little.

"My apologies, I didn't mean to scare you."

The way he mustered her, with his bunny ears and the bow tie around his neck, he looked so cute when he gently pulled most of the bags out of Violet's grip,

But sure as hell, today the girl learned to never pull any kind of prank on the Lord of the Devildom. Ever.

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

Violet was trying to catch a breath so she allowed herself a quick time-out in the bathroom. When she stepped outside again, she saw Solomon waving her over.

"I heard you and Lord Diavolo brought snacks to display? Would you mind helping me bring them to the tables?"

She gave a nod as an answer.

"Great. Then, let's divide them into the bowls first, and then go around with one of the trays."

And so they did. There wasn't much happening, really. Not much chatting, but nothing strange either.

Just one thing...

A bunch of perfect occasions to squeeze Solomon's bunny tail. Like, every few moments, he was focussing on something, leaving a perfect opening...

Violet left this situation without gaining any more points.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me fanfic #obeyme #short story #obey me bunny event

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years

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13x02 watching notes

i'm on a train. choo choo.

expectations: helpfully wrote them out last time for the season as a whole which this ep is introducing all the plot stuff for since last episode advanced the plot a single day of angst, but this episode especially has a few SUPER low bars to pass. Last time out BL failed spectacularly to not kill Eileen. now we have "don't assault mary, over-sexualise the day old guy, or flub introing the new characters, or reintroducing the returning ones"

our train was like 10 minutes late out the station because there was no driver. is this a metaphor.

i also had to eat krispy kreme doughnuts before I could dig into the episode.

oh jeeze Drexel survived season 12... no one really has a fanclub for the random minions, probably because around Simmons we realised there was no point getting attached. and he was in some of the worst scenes of last season just because of the context. which is a shame. also he's a lucifer fan and that's not really a worthwhile position. anyway hope springs eternal that colonel sanders is such a charismatic character he makes the demon scenes worth watching... and Drexel gets to be interesting. And stop saying lines like 'make hell great again' which is so not a good thing to put in his mouth - at least the other demons who were going around saying it it was the white demon who said it and got the stink eye from the other demon.

One of the other demons says "can you even hear yourself" but idk if BL would crit their own writing unlike competent writers whose first port of call is stressing that they are bad writers and mock their corny dialogue

this also raises the semi perpetual question since season 11 that if Crowley's throne room is here why would any of the pretenders to the throne even want it. they seriously need to justify it. We know devil's gates are a pain and not usually open so smuggling minions out to work topside is an issue but there are other workarounds than establishing a campy hell set that's not even in hell, then getting confused about if it's hell or not, and never really explaining why Lucifer would stick around in it except for the fact Crowley is really good at setting up a system and it would be a shame not to use the pre-established set up.

but eh

I really sincerely hope Asmodeus is just here because Crowley's ex-minions are here and will relocate post-haste to his plantation.

He hung up his coat. Drexel survived though. I guess being a named character has its perks. the sun shone in my eyes the entire time so i was quite amused when the train turned a bit and i saw demons dropping with burned out eyes, angel-style. like Dagon being super duper powerful, I guess they're giving him extra powers - because this is just a few steps up from how Sam was exploding demons with his head at one point and he got his powers from a YED... though in 5x10 when Lucifer killed all those demons he also didn't burn the eyes out. it's probs a stylistic choice. in character and out.

Nougat!!! he's so cute. he's sleeping at an angle to be behind Sam in the convo. The camera points at Sam from the dash and at Dean from Sam's POV, and Jack is in his background. methinks this is about Sam.

He's trying to make Dean sleep and calling out how he hasn't had any, which is nice because I was worried about that earlier.

Dean is calling Jack "it" which I think was in some people's pre-season fic, or else if it weren't it was in the one i didn't write :P Blatant convo is blatant but does at least have an actual honest to god lead into the next scene via the mom is dead conversation. Again we get the super zoom close up on sam being sad and questioning dean's thoughts. assert yourself, sammy! i believe in u

(totally on your side too Dean but the sun is too bright to examine your micro expressions and the camera isn't favouring you anywho so you're a rewatch flavour today)

Satan wants to trade Mary for Jack. Well if Dean knew he'd sell Jack for a corn chip anyway (is that Crowley's phrase from the original weird dog episode?) so that's just a great big victory. methinks the choice will fall on Sam or fall on Dean after he's had a chance to bond with Jack some more - that's the other side to the tension about Dean liking jack that i was talking about earlier whensomeone asked me why everyone wants dean to adopt jack.

ideally mary saves herself or it never comes to it but for now i'll assume whatever else happens between here and there, some version of this plan will at least be floated, even if it's random circumstances and not lucifer's hand any more or something

makes sense anyway to tie mary back into the main arc in a way like how she mirrored cas the entire time last season - if her fate and jack's are connected even tenuously it gives her a connect back into the main thing

oh good the woman next to me has finished her dangerously over-full cup of Pimms because I was terrified it would be bye bye laptop

nnnoooo as I type she refilled it

the train is swaying back and forth so much

anyway Mary asks Lucifer why he wants to be a parent and he hints several times in a row that he has hidden depths without actually showing any of them. i don't want him to have a redemption anyway and i really super duper don't want him to have one written entirely by BL

Colonel Sanders continues to try and liven up the story while giving us surface level exposition

I'll be honest, 'write that down' is the first good line... must be whichever of BL is quippy currently writing. I think they just introduced a monster taht lucifer is scared of but I couldn't catch what it was and for some reason another demon is listening in so is he getting ideas? I mean why to what end? also what exactly was the thing that was locked up because it sounded like a cut price Leviathan expo dump but obvs not that because a leviathan would eat Lucifer

i mean i don't think we pay enough attention to the fact that dick roman would just gobble lucifer up and end of story. bring back dick.

*Pimms lady sways dangerously close to my laptop*

I think Sam accused Dean of hallucinating "shit" on the road because it's too noisy to hear him say "sheep". I just assume that is what he actually said in the non-censored version

pls drink your Pimms fast enough to end this danger but not so fast you're sloshed and throw it on my laptop before it's all gone

Cashing in on that new Scooby Doo partnership! Some bank like Halifax is currently using Scooby Doo to sell stuff so I see that dog on telly all the time and the fact they exist in the same fictional universe as Sam and Dean is kiiiilling me. I think we have all been assuming Jack takes us to Scooby World so plonking him in front of the telly to watch some is how it all begins. Dean, like every fan fic between 13x01 and now hates Jack unreservedly for having childlike enthusiasm about the telly because Cas used to do that, while (semi)unaware that Jack is mirroring HIMSELF from 12x11 most closely right now. I think that's an interesting parallel I don't know how much work has gone into but pls poke me to write about Jack's 1 day old child-like wonder compared to sweetie pie no memory Dean if no one else has done it because they're essentially the same character from completely different angles, and we're about to hit Jack mirroring Dean excessively.

Me: don't excessively sexualise the kid

BL: "here read a book" *chucks the Bible at him* *he opens it to the Song of Solomon* We're NOT having this chat right now.

I suppose some people just meta-gasmed all over this. I don't know much about the Bible but I do know that's the sexy bit.

the "I can take the couch" conversation probably put the exact same thought process in Jack's head as mine when my very lanky brother looked at the lil brick hard bed set up in the corner of our hotel while we were stranded in Glasgow, and looked at me, princess and the pea-syndrome sufferer, and nobly offered to take a bed that *my* feet stuck 3 inches over.

No.

Thanks but no.

aw man we're only at Carlisle.

It's the promo scene as well, which mostly just drove home how much Jack is mirroring Dean... We've had basically no character interaction in the missing day, although we can assume it's mostly gone like this... Dean annoyed, Sam forgiving Jack for being adorable, and Jack being adorable. He's getting better at sarcasm as well, which can't be making Dean feel any better about him.

And that means that the "Castiel is my father" revelation happened off-screen and we're not being given any room for a reaction about it, which is the most annoying part of this. I knew 13x01 was an anomaly and going into a BL ep so soon after would deprive us of some of the emotional depth, but it's like having a bucket of cold water dumped on us :P

I think Dean's 'sometimes' about family being good is going to be a criminally underrated line and I don't even know if I can bring myself to remember it all the time in discussions about how Dean feels about family going forwards but this is a note that i heard him say it and acknowledged it means he has some issues with blood family ongoing.

Jack being adorably human blah blah, Dean aggravates the issue by being really mean about insisting Lucifer is his father and asking if he reached out to Jack and now Jack's remembering him doing that. Hey leave the kid alone, Dean, his blank slate was slightly messed up by waning to be like Cas which is obviously an excellent exemption to having a blank slate.

Maybe there's a metaphor in him agitating the bad father sitation over here.

I don't know if Jack should have asked for clarification there so let's pretend there was a hesitation and a "Ca -" "*Lucifer.* Your father." exchange. Or something.

And now Nougat is lying about emotional strife, like's been agitated into being a Winchester from his great blank slate

GAH Stop gesturing by the STILL FULL glass of Pimms

they keep topping it up and it's not good for my stress levels

I think I just missed basically everything that happened because all I could see was my own reflection but then they were like *rising tension music* *scuffle* *donatello* so I assume he jumped out on them. Mental note to go back and see who was defensive of Jack and what he did.

*casually mopping up my neighbour's Pimms as it splashes dangerously close to my laptop while listening to Donatello's exposition*

the good thing about BL episodes is that you can often just kinda chill and listen to the exposition if it's just a chunk o dialogue and nothing offensive is going on so we're making progress through the ep

*dean is super bitter about who does and doesn't have a direct line to god for some reason*

Awww Sam says they're brothers and it's a family crest when he is saying Jack should get the tattoo <3

*completely* robbed of Dean's reaction

WHY DID THEY NOT TELL JACK IT WOULD HURT

I went to the loo and came back to them wiping Pimms off their phone

Well Jack just completely put Dean in his place RE: pain, when he told him to man up about it and Jack was like right we accept pain as a sign of maturity... this is absolutely not what Dean meant but it is probably a healthier approach to it minus all the toxic masculinity

can we get to 13x03 and an ep written by Berens soon :P

Jack accidentally absorbs his warding. Oops. I guess that angel warding was a WEE bit OTT I mean I'm no expert but that looks like a total pain to be dealing with all the time for the makeup department :P

Also must have taken friggin ages

I still don't get why Donnatello is here except to use as a chip in their arguments... Ah well. Dean arguing intent doesn't matter freaky powers are freaky powers because he's still pissed about what happened to Cas and can't see the much more basic thing that Jack didn't mean to get Cas killed and OBVIOUSLY didn't intend it if he was waiting for Cas to be there for him when he popped out of the womb. I think for all the random avenues this took in fandom this is probably about as deep as the show will go if this is how BL are spelling it all out for us... And the answer is all there on the page already but we're just using Dean as the alternate side of the argument to show his own character stuff going on where he can't deal with Jack because he's upset about Cas. And he was always more concerned about Cas than the philosophy of whatever else was going on

Train going through the Lake District... I am enchanted. It's a grey day w/ very low clouds and water on the ground and all the trees are autumnal. Sue me, this is more interesting than Donatello being unhelpful. He backed up Sam's argument earlier w/ saying Lucifer felt toxic and Jack is somewhat more like his grandfather, but then once he starts talking he's like hurr blurr as a scientist nature wins and he's a monster and then Sam's like I thought you were on my side dude and then Dean angsts about Cas some more and calls Jack the devil and he decides he better start teleporting now because leave me alone not-dad and get off my case

I hope we see his wings. Dean asks in 13x01 if he had wings and equated it to teleporting and I suppose we don't know how demons do it but the assumption is if he's half-angel adn can teleport then he has wings

Oh no it is KILLING me how Jack's thing is sitting cross legged. PROTECT HIM.

Sam finds him, thankfully, after the Sad Kelly Montage. There's a very Northern man behind me talking loudly on the phone so I'm gonna concentrate SUPER HARD now

The hotel is called the Black Hat which I think is western coding for the bad guy. There was a house in the prairie art on the wall, and the single isolated house is how Jack came into the world... He's dealing with towns now.

Exposition Mooose! Telling us Dean gets some wires crossed about getting angry whe nhe's frustrated and scared like yes good expose dean for us some more... explaining him to jack is like hey so um he's an acquired taste... trying to make this about protecting everyone instead of pointing out the obvious that he blames jack for what happened to cas

Jack is a winchester because he's like maybe i'm not worth it

help

and them Sam brings up w/o knowing it was on jack's mind that kelly thought so but also is a blatant link to how they used dead!mary to guide their lives right up until she came back...

... and then so would Cas and so would I. Sam aligning himself with Jack's parents to show he has emotional guardianship of him right now

has dean gone down to the bar because it's called th eblack spur and obvs not the same one but i'm like 100% sure that's the bar from 10x01 where he was hanging with Crowley and I'm not gonna fact check that. it's "black" again aka more nature stuff, more coded evil stuff I guess? I don't know anything about Westerns I admit

And hey look a blonde bartender is chatting to him - there's a Jack ale sign on one side... and hahahahahaaaa no there's a Kingdom Beer sign behind Dean over his shoulder because the director wants to kill me

So far this is the weirdest BL episode Ive seen in a long time because they're trying so so hard to be all nuanced and deep and to explore character stuff and carry on the mood from the first episode, while being direly under-equipped to handle it, so everyone's just blurting exposition all over the place in a series of awkward exchanges. The overtness of the dialogue is actually helping in a weird way to rush through the tick boxes because Dean just admitted to seeking his neglectful father's approval from a standing start which is a sign of progress for him to just leap right into admitting his issues with John. I don't have a frame of reference for this because tired and white noise and noting we're pulling into Lancaster and it looks like rain now and there's a guy travelling with an enormous silver mirror with an ornate frame as tall as he is on the other platform and more pimms is on the table... but yeah when DID he last talk about John? Is this the increased openness since 12x22 we were hoping for? Is my backpack okay because it's in a luggage rack I can't see and if someone nicks it they're only stealing all my laundry but I like some of those t-shirts so it would be a bummer...

Lol surprise Asmodeus, no wonder she pushed all the father stuff... Was he talking about Lucifer then? It's everyone has father issues season. He's fitting in as another mirror in it all. Like the great big shiny mirror the dude at Lancaster station had. I'd honestly not be surprised if John came back in some way just cuz we had the Mary season where motherhood was a theme, and now we're doing this. I don't think John would come back for good liek Mary but they could scrounge up a more direct way of confronting his memory at least.

This also is so unsubtle bcos Dean had no idea what the bartender looked like so he coulda just tended the bar and chatted to Dean b4 he knew who Asmodues was, and we could have had some cool tension like we all know that Colonel Sanders is the bad guy and Dean's just chatting him up a bit. But then when do we ever get such things in a BL ep?

Sam just goes and spells it out about Jack being molded and the ambiguity of his father figures aka the dual nature battle they think Jack should have, with a deciding vote already thrown in there by Kelly and of course that Jack has free will and choice

So Mary just nearly got assaulted, tho not by Lucifer, which was not exactly a pleasant surprise. >.> idk what that guy's problem was but he seems to be implying women can't fight and something something I didn't catch but clearly he doesn't see a whole bunch of women. This is literally the antithesis of the show's handling of female hunters since the start so I'm going to have to assume that this is an AU thing like, total worst timeline, and everyone's sexist to boot. Not really a fan of doing this at all because why are humans made out to be just as bad as meeting angels and demons in this world - Mary being at risk from ALL of them (where is BOBBY I wanna see wtf was going on between him and AU mary and our mary and our bobby) - and it being disappointing that Mary's at risk BECAUSE she's female and might get assaulted.

Lucifer continues to try and act like a good guy by saving Mary and then of course the Nice Guy twist that always comes - if you won't give me what I want that I'm pretending is mutually beneficial then I will just hurt you.

They're chilling by that church from 8x23 now so I guess Mikey will be along soon.

Preston Station looks like a hellscape as well - it's packed and there's no ticket barriers. I'm so glad we were only passing through

Dean comes in and sits down with Sam with the shadows of the blinds falling over them - prison imagery I missed you! We're trapped in these mindsets...

Sam wants to get them on the same page and Dean is like F U and Sam's like lemme do exposition while you sit with the shadow over your eyes.

I wish there was a shadow falling over my eyes... We've passed back through to hazy sunlight south of Preston.

Sam says people who we love, and who have been in our lives for a long time, in such a way I bet some asshole is excluding Cas from one category bcos Mary doesn't count in the long time category so maybe one is for her and one is for Cas

obviously that's the real donatello because he only cares about breakfast and is an object of ridicule while Asmodeus was presumably the other and actually talking plot.

this is an idiot ball moment tbh because Jack hasn't been in any hotel scenes for a while and somehow we've shuffled through all the characters here and not had any of them with Jack or checking where he is despite him being the most precious cargo, and it was bugging me earlier that dontatello and sam talking meant jack was alone because he wouldn't be w/ dean so where was he but Sam didn't ask? they just chatted? And obvs that was asmodeus but yeah... no one's keeping an eye on him and D. wasn't even supposed to be taking Jack to get breakfast or what? If that wasn't him then what exactly did Sam think Jack was up to?

Also Sam tanking the mytharc Dean tanking the personal arc - he talks to both of them w/o them knowing and guess what each's conversation is

And also Dean came in with food as well like there's major miscommunication going on here if the real donatello was getting breakfst and so was Dean but is that the point or is that just a plothole where this doesn't add up properly if you actually try and map who knew what and - was Dean the one SUPPOSED to be watching Jack? But Sam didn't ask him either.

Anyway here's the demon that Dean's entire fight scene is about straddling to death.

I also loved his march down to the room where he was all in shadows

The last shot of that fight though where Dean's cowering away from the demon on a bed while it advances on him with a knife

like wow that was a good fight scene for the dynamics going on there. Dean as a victim being absolutely dominated by that demon and all the associated knife and weirdass positions imagery. Dean on that table with his legs around the demon is like an entire meta on its own as well

okay it was too bright when I saw the scene where Asmodeus was talking about that whatever it was he let out but I THINK that was the same demon I thought I saw overhearing it and now I am wondering what on earth that was about because Dean just killed him :P

Awww Jack out in nature. I love the flowers and the buzz of insects and life all around him. And Asmodeus is testing him.

Okay it's been like one episode how can he have character inconsistency with himself from earlier in the episode - he now wants to unleash the things he got in trouble for unleashing before? I mean unless he's decided that Lucifer really isn't coming back so might as well just throw a party while there's no adult supervision, and get back to all that chaos and destruction he loves. If he thought there was remotely a chance Lucifer would come back he wouldn't do it, but then is he just doing it now out of spite that Lucifer told him no before, and instead of whatever nonsense he said about family dynamics back then is not really true at all because he wants to rebel now instead.

If Jack unleashes the thing because he was tricked then it will be the biggest Sam and Cas mirror thing ever and will set him up with some angst and guilt for the rest of the season.

One of the downsides of Dean not getting along with him is that Jack doesn't know how much scepticism about God is a healthy amount in this universe. He basically just knows that God is his grandfather and family is usually good. But God is suuuch a bad concept to rally behind here, it's not even like God wouldn't ask him to do it because God never tells anyone what to do about anything (which is like the first thing Dean would have told Jack if he hadn't still been sulking God wouldn't lift a finger to help him over the whole dead Cas issue), God would also just never have any positive reinforcement for anyone or get excited about having a grandson, at least in a way to get actively involved :P

I mean Chuck probs thought that Donatello making his way to Jack was about as useful as he could be and that immediately went sour when no one kept 2 pairs of eyes on each other at all times.

Wyoming has some pretty nasty stuff under it :P

I wonder if Hell maps exactly to earth but just kinda deeper.

Also point to me for rambling about hell gates earlier and then Asmodeus actually listening to my suggestion box for once. Maybe he will be the one character who can actually hear me in this show.

Hey you, you're an asshole

Is Lucifer aware he literally just lead them in a circle because I am so not telling him that, because it's too funny.

I hope Jack didn't inherit his sense of direction but this is Dabb era, as soon as that kid gets a car, trouble starts.

The midlands are so bleak.

These angels are wearing heavy tactical gear and yet more kneepads. The human had them too. This is just kneepad world. I don't see the necklaces of baby ears so maybe that design thing got ditched or maybe Bobby was being metaphorical. The important thing is they don't look like Cas. The weird thing is we know Mikey's costume sort of does look like a ragged Cas.

Anyway Lucifer is so offended to hear Michael killed him even though it was literally the most obvious thing ever the entire time we've known about them and since 12x12 we've had extra info to prove it :P

Omg why are you opening champagne on a traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain

MIKEY

He wanders in like hey I'm awesome but also I need to immediately open with super obvious exposition lines

Lucifer accuses him of being dressed like he came from a western too which goes with the thematics back in the Earth part of the story and also makes me think maybe the costuming choice was supposed to kinda mirror Frontierland Dean's 2nd costume because why the fuck not this is Dabb era, rules are for suckers :P

I can't see it w/o the hat but maybe he has a hat elsewhere.

this hole down into the centre of the earth looks REMARKABLY like the one the 2nd season of Shadowhunters had in the season finale, so I need Magnus to just wander over the rise and close it now. Also his eyes glow gold and cat like. Is his power literally equivalent to Jack's? He's like ridiculously OP in that show. I guess all that hiatus watching was research.

Ah, Asmodeus has learned the "Oh shit it's the Winchesters" moment already, especially recognising the car. Them driving right onto the scene has the oddest shades of 5x22 without anything being remotely like it except it's a field, hole in the earth, and car.

Okay why did Donatello yell "that's not Donatello"

this is like the reverse of the best version of this scene I've ever heard which is the one from the end of Here Be Gerblins in the Adventure Zone which I will not spoil for you except to say this is the worst and also it doesn't take too much listening to get to that point and I nearly cried laughing so you should probably go listen. More hiatus watching research!

The other option is D is having a total crisis of self w/o a soul or the evil D is actually the real thing and Asmodeus is helping them for some reason.

LOL he's like hi I'm Crowley's replacement so the line now is "howdy boys" intead of hello boys

As soon as Jack knows what's up and sees his new peeps getting hurt he stops because he is precious and he did nothing wrong and I love him

AWW HE THINKS THEY'RE HIS FRIENDS I LOVE YOU NOUGAT

Deal with that, Dean.

Mary like "... should I be shuffling backwards?" "I SHOULD BE SHUFFLING BACKWARDS, BYE"

Lucifer said he needed Mary, Mikey says he needs Lucifer... I think that phrase is being turned over and ruined now. The necessary step of Dean having said it to Cas that one time when he shoulda said I love you... They had a brief critique of "need and want" and some stuff about i and we, which was what last season was doing, but Cas feels bad bcos he feels needed but not wanted, and this is as much as Dean has said to him - from the depths of his heart - but it's not enough because that was season 8 and he hasn't felt like he belongs and he needs that I love you. Uh but w/o using "need" - look, they're gesticulating with champagne again, I have 1 eye on this at best as we roll through the midlands for an eternity :P Anyway I guess it is time to put "need" in the firing line as the Wrong Word that means that you're USING someone.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??? DEAN DOES NOT SIT AT THE TABLE LIKE THAT. OH MY POOR, POOR BROKEN CHILD LET ME HOLD YOU IN MY ARMS

I know it's probably for that wonderful shot of them through the door but Dean fundamentally does not sit up against the wall - he and Sam have their places at that table when they have their chats and it's a serious thing since the entire time theyve been using the kitchen for important plot chats.

Anyway he super not okay bcos that's his seat he sits at when he's in his proper place in the dynamic - or improper one but the point is the dynamic is the dynamic when they sit opposite each other and Dean's opted out and flopped back against the wall instead of sitting where he normally does when he and Sam are in balance. Sam's connection to his seat has some other flavours of his side of the codependency issues but largely about his lack of assertiveness or getting too messed up about saving Dean, so we'll see

AAAH Sam is sitting one seat over as well.

I know it's a free table but there's 8 seats and REMARKABLY little flexibility about it.

Dean's wearing a black henley which is also baaad news. *pats him on the head and follows with a blanket*

Sam stands (or sits) his ground

Dean, gosh, I don't like when the camera follows you because this is probably going to be awful for my heart.

We also have not really had his POV much this ep except the Asmodeus chat up scene

He's mostly reacted. Like he thinks Jack is only reacting.

I DON'T LIKE THIS SCENE

PROTECT JACK FROM HIMSELF TOO

I hope he was just being curious like a super amped up version of how Kira on Orphan Black found out she has super healing powers so sliced her own arm open while being scared and fascinated with what she was and pissed off the adults wouldn't tell her anything but this was gross and violent and pls protect Jack because that was awful.

Dean's suitably horrified though because he has to contemplate Jack is just as freaked out and lost as he is about this whole thing because this is a gross and horrifying way to show that Jack is as fucked up and lost as the rest of them. I don't think he was actually trying to kill himself esp. because he knew the angel blade already stabbed him and did nothing and even if he doesn't know what it is and why that's signficant he knows he didn't die of something that should have killed him... I hope it's just childlike curiosity mixed with bleak existential horror as he comes to understand how much he doesn't understand himself even in the context of the world he's in...

OH NO

but also good lines of dialogue they acted super well. Jack is starting to think he can't be saved if Dean doesn't think it and is silently asking him to do it because he doesn't want to hurt people and oh gosh this isn't 10x09 at all where Deran asked Cas to do it to him... But completely different emotional landscape where Dean WOULD do it and wants to and Jack is only just starting to doubt himself and wonder if he would hurt people and the important thing is not like Dean thinking there was a line he would cross and half-tricking Cas into saying he'd do it by asking him for a favour first, but Cas not being able to oblige him in 10x22... This is Jack being such a good pure piece of nougat that he's SCARED of what he is and what he can do and beginning to think that he might need to be killed esp. because Dean thinks so and this has been a bad day for him... even though again his nature shone through, Dean thinks it was a "sneeze" and Jack still doesn't have a developed enough moral compass to understand what he did except that we can see it was a good thing.

And final shot Jack reflected in the mirror all bloody and sad and I need to zoom in on that later to see his face because like magic the sun is out again when I want to look at the screen.

End episode here. Good. That means Dean angstily listening to music is in 13x03 almost for sure because I want it to be (uh, sorry that's not science :P) but it would be a great Berens to Berens chat with self about 9x14 and Dean angstily listening to music there.

I am not actually where were we are any more except powering towards London, but I'm gonna put my laptop away because they're still topping up the champagne and I just survived a BL episode where nothing so awful happened that I can see the fandom outrage from a million miles away and the worst I can say is that they are an exposition machine and I wish they had more nuanced dialogue because in someone else's hands that character stuff would have been delivered well rather than just delivered :P

#13x02 #my stuff #season 13 spoilers #I actually got some of this answered by Tink & co on whatsapp later #but then I had to explain my #look at this effin table #tag to them and me vs typos while texting and no signal in the bleak wilderness #yeah I hope they even have half a clue what I was on about :D #tomorrow I will have to make a post about wtf is going on with that table but tl:dr I flipped out about it completely #and regret that the last time i was drawn to make a Big Post about it it was from the Destiel perspective #with just a handful of codependency chat #because now I really really wish I had a big post about the codependency stuff there #with just a sprinkle of the Destiel stuff on the side #NOT PROOF READ HOLY SHIT LIKE NOT AT ALL WHO AM I WHERE AM I #I am lucky this entire post isn't soaked in a glaswegian's prosecco

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lingthusiasm · 7 years

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Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 6: All the sounds in all the languages - The International Phonetic Alphabet

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 6: All the sounds in all the languages - The International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 6 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, the podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: and I'm Lauren Gawne. And today we're going to be talking about the International Phonetic Alphabet. But first -- it was International Mother Language Day in February and even though it was a couple of weeks ago now on February the 21st, I think it's still worth saying a belated 'Happy Mother Language Day' to you Gretchen!

Gretchen: Happy Mother Language Day to you! Which we are wishing in our of mother languages of English, which is kind of boring.

Lauren: Both wishing it our mother languages. Do you have any other heritage languages that you wish to acknowledge?

Gretchen: I mean, technically Scottish Gaelic is probably a long time ago a mother language for me, but my ancestors were lowland Scots so it's a really long time ago.

Lauren: Well happy Scots Gaelic day

Gretchen: Do you have any other?

Lauren: My grandmaternal language is Polish and thanks to generally typical Australian attitudes towards non-English speaking in the 1960s that wasn't passed on to any of my mother's generation at all. So yeah it's still a very recent part of our family history. I'm the only grandchild who ever learnt enough Polish to speak with my grandmother in her mother tongue

Gretchen: Oh that's cool

Lauren: Which is cool, I wish I still spoke that much

Gretchen: Well I mean it's cool that you learned it, it's not cool that no one else did

Lauren: It's probably questionable how much Polish I remember today. And yeah, I always like to think of my Nan and my lack of opportunities to learn Polish on February 21st. What have you been up to or what's coming up?

Gretchen: Well, by the time this episode goes out I will have been to South by Southwest, where I will have done a panel with Erin Mckean and Jane Solomon and Ben Zimmer

Lauren: How are you not going to like die of fangirling at people?!

Gretchen: Because I've already met all of them anyway?

Lauren: Awwww I'm so jelly

Gretchen: But they're really cool and I'm really excited to be on a panel with them! We're going to be talking about 'Word curation: Dictionaries, tech, and the future' which will happen by the time you guys get this episode so you can check out the hashtag that I'm sure will have some action on it and we'll link to that in the show notes.

Lauren: I'm really excited for that panel. I'm looking forward to it hopefully - is it going to be recorded? Am I going to be able to see it as a non South by Southwest attendee?

Gretchen: I think there's going to be an audio recording on soundcloud that South by Southwest is going to put up online because they've done that for previous years. So I can't promise that they'll do that again but they seem to like doing it in previous years, I don't know why they wouldn't do it again so we'll link to that if we have it.

Lauren: Yay, excellent!

[Music]

Gretchen: So there's a problem when you learn to spell English, which is that it's really hard to spell English.

Lauren: It's really a lifelong learning process as far as I'm concerned

Gretchen: It's a lifelong learning process. You know, some languages don't have spelling bees because their spelling systems are so consistent they don't need them - we can only wish! So, the English spelling system is especially ridiculous, it's got silent letters, it's got something around 14 vowels but only five letters to write them in.

My favorite demonstration of this is that there's a phrase that has all of the English vowels and the phrase goes - I have to have to say it in a non-rhotic accent because it only works that way - the phrase goes 'Who would know aught of art must learn, act and then take his ease'. And each of those words has a different vowel in it.

Lauren: Cool!

Gretchen: And that's one way of remembering the vowels

Lauren: That's a nifty sentence!

Gretchen: Yeah, but if you try to write that down in English it's hard

Lauren: With the English orthography that we have, or the English writing system - orthography - that we have

Gretchen: And spelling systems are also inconsistent across different languages. Even languages that are consistent in themselves are often inconsistent when you compare them with each other. So, some languages use the letter J for the /dʒ/ sound [as in Jane], some languages use it for the /ʒ/ sound like French [Jean], some languages use it for the 'y' /j/ sound like German as in 'Jan' or 'Johann Sebastian Bach', some languages use it for the /x/ sound as in Spanish like 'Juan'. There's a whole bunch of different sounds you can use the same letter for depending on your language

Lauren: There's a really great tumblr post that kind of encapsulates this variety in the ways different alphabets that are based on the same alphabet English is based on, use their orthographies in different ways which we'll link to. When I first read this I was like oh look someone's just posting in Norwegian or Danish or something, but then if you sit there and read it and you know the orthographic conventions in different languages it says something along the lines of 'I wonder if English speakers will notice that I'm writing this in English but using the spelling conventions of my language'

Gretchen: And yeah a whole bunch of people have certain different versions of it - there's a Finnish one which is pretty good, there's an Irish one which is fantastic

Lauren: It's good, because once you know what the phrase is that gives you a feel for what the conventions are in different languages. For example I found the Polish one really easy to read and then for some of the others I was just basically guessing because I knew what the sentence was, and it really nicely illustrates this problem that we have that we all learn different spelling conventions for different languages

Gretchen: And we're not the first people to have noticed this problem! In fact people have been realizing this problem for quite a long time, as long as people have been writing with different systems. And it became especially apparent as writing systems became standardised in the 1700s and 1800s, when dictionaries are becoming popular and people were starting to write in a standardised sort of way and looking at other languages and realising that their standardisations were converging on something different

Lauren: I really love that historically there was no consistent spelling conventions, and so in Old English text we actually have a good idea of the different common literate dialects of people who lived in Mercia or people who live in Cumbria and because the way that they wrote English really reflected the way their accent worked. Once spelling systems became standardized that stopped being the case

Gretchen: It also became really difficult people for who are trying to learn English because even if you learn the spelling systems, then you pronounce the words the way they look and people look at you like "that's not actually how it's pronounced" and you're like "how was I supposed to remember that?" Various people came up with various proposals for spelling reform for either just like a more phonetic way of writing English in total, or for ways of adapting English words so that it could be used for specialised purposes like people who are learning the language, or people who want to write down specific things and annotate exactly how they're said

Lauren: And some people went for massive 'let's create an entirely new alphabet', some people just wanted some small reforms. So Noah Webster is probably one of the people who had the most impressive effect on English especially on American English. It was Webster who decided to take and consistently use conventions like 'i-z-e' instead of 'i-s-e' and using words like colour without the 'u' instead of with the 'u' as part of this attempt to make English spelling more realistically reflect the language that was being spoken

Gretchen: Yeah and there were other British reformers that were trying to do this, so there was a guy named Henry Sweet who came up with an alphabet called the Romic /ɹomɪk/ alphabet or the Romic /ɹɑmɪk/ alphabet, I'm not actually sure how to pronounce the name of this alphabet, which...

Lauren: If only was written down some where in a consistently pronounceable script!

Gretchen: If only! He didn't seem to actually write the name of his own alphabet anywhere in a consistent script so that's a shame. And that was based on mostly Roman letters but with adaptations for sounds that English had and Latin hadn't. And then there was Alexander Ellis who was apparently the real-life origin of Henry Higgins from 'My Fair Lady'

Lauren: Really?!

Gretchen: I dunno, that's what Wikipedia says!

Lauren: Okay, because I'm going to invoke the supremacy of David Crystal, if that's okay. I don't know if Crystal officially trumps Wikipedia, but in his book called 'Wordsmiths and Warriors' he says if Higgins is anyone it has to be Daniel Jones who is a phonetician who is very influential in terms of like codifying the vowel system. So what we think of is the modern International Phonetic Alphabet vowel space kind of started with Daniel Jones' cardinal vowels

Gretchen: I mean I don't know it could have been a composite or something

Lauren: I think to be honest that the most likely is that there was a genre of gentleman academic at the time who's very interested in these topics. Anyway, there was a lot of work being invested in generating some kind of writing system that accurately reflected speech

Gretchen: Yeah and so they made the International Phonetic Association in the late 1800s, which confusingly enough also has the acronym IPA, and they had some meetings and they were like, “yeah, we need to come up with a system for this”

Lauren: So the IPA is where the IPA was created

Gretchen: Yeah I hope they were all drinking IPA but I can't guarantee that

Lauren: In our reenactment that is definitely what's happening

Gretchen: Yeah, when we when we all get dressed up in historic costume (bagsies Henry Sweet), then we will all drink IPA

Lauren: I'm Daniel Jones apparently - no wait, I'm going to dress up as Cardinal Vowel, I always thought that would be a great linguist costume

Gretchen: Ah that's great! Were cardinal vowels invented yet?

Lauren: Well it was Daniel Jones who did that, I don't know when he was working

Gretchen: Oh ok good

Lauren: I mean we'll have to have a whole episode just talking about vowels and how they work, but that was kind of a thing that was figured out at the time

Gretchen: Yeah and they came up with some principles for future development of this International Phonetic Alphabet and these were: each symbol should have its own distinctive sound and the same symbol should be used for the same sound across all languages

Lauren: So instead of having the J sound sounding like /dʒ/ or /ʒ/ or /j/ or /x/ across different languages, every time that sound was used it would be used for exactly the same sound

Gretchen: Every time that *symbol* was used

Lauren: Yes sorry every time that symbol was used it would be used for the same sound

Gretchen: They also came up with some principles that influenced which symbols ended up being chosen for which sounds. So they decided to use as many ordinary Roman letters as possible and to have a very minimal number of new letters, and to use what they called quote unquote “international” usage to decide the sound for each symbol

Lauren: So they wouldn't like, take the symbol that we have for 's' and decide 'oh we're going to make that the sound for 'l' because we're crazy people'

Gretchen: Yeah, they didn't do that. But the other thing is, so if we look at the vowels, the IPA vowels look kind of weird from an English perspective. So the IPA uses the letter that we think of as 'i' to represent the 'ee' /i/ sound and uses the letter we think of as 'e' to represent the 'eh' /e/ sound and so on. And this doesn't make sense for English, but it does make sense when you look at a whole bunch of other languages like Spanish and Italian, and the way the Roman alphabet has been used for non-European languages generally falls along these principles as well. So they said, “Look, even though we're English speakers we're going to not do the English things”

Lauren: Okay, so they really did go with this kind of international general preference

Gretchen: Yeah, I mean, they're still eurocentric, they're still starting with European languages and kind of working their way outwards, but they were at least not completely Anglo-centric, which is helpful here, because English does some weird stuff with its sounds

Lauren: Yeah and we only have 26 letters in the English alphabet, a few more if we kind of pull everything from across European languages, and there are so many more sounds that the world's languages can make, so once we've run out of kind of standard letters where do we go from there?

Gretchen: Where we are from there is often Greek letters or Latinised looking versions of Greek letters because those were familiar to these creators. Another thing that they did was they would rotate letters. and this was partly because the shapes are still familiar if you do that and partly because this is the 1800s and people were typing with metal bits of type. So if you just take a lowercase 'e' and turn it upside down, you can just print your new character by flipping or rotating an existing metal type bit rather than casting a new one

Lauren: I have a really nice example from Australia, so I was at a workshop the other day and a colleague was showing me a booklet of Kamilaroi, so it's a language from the New England area of New South Wales in Australia, and William Ridley was working on this language in 1856. So this is even before the IPA was codified. And these languages have a sound like an English sound but you may not notice it in English because it's a sound at the end of words like 'sing' or 'bring', that /ŋ/ sound, but that sound can occur anywhere so you can have it at the start of the word as well as at the end. This /ŋ/ sound now has a symbol in the IPA that looks like an 'n' with a little tail and it's called an 'engma'

Gretchen: Yeah kind of like an 'n' with a 'g' tail shoved on it

Lauren: Yeah, and Ridley is one of the first people who adopted this symbol for use in his describing languages work in the 1850s, which was before the 1880s when the IPA was established. But this symbol had begun to be used for this /ŋ/ and it makes sense because it's like an 'n' and a 'g' squashed together. But when he sent it to the typesetters for his booklet they didn't have a /ŋ/ and so they just turned a capital 'G' upside down which sounds a bit crazy and it looks a bit crazy it looks like it's just full of upside down 'G's, but it meant that that was a way that they could represent this /ŋ/ sound. Apparently he sent it to some other journal in Europe and they just turned it all into a 'z'

Gretchen: Wow, a 'z'!

Lauren: Yeeeah

Gretchen: Wow, that's really bad! So I guess that's why it's good that another principle the IPA had was that the look of the new letters should suggest the sound they represent, so once you've learned the kind of basic ones and if you see a couple languages and you have a sense of what's used in other languages then you can often guess fairly accurately what an IPA letter is going to be like. So it's better to have a symbol for /ŋ/'that looks like an 'n' and a 'g' shoved together because that's how it's often written in different languages, a bit like an 'n' sound, a bit like a 'g' sound.

Another one of their principles was that diacritics should be avoided where possible. So adding extra little like accent marks or other types of small bits on top of letters was something that they tried to avoid for their basic sounds. Diacritics were only was supposed to be for if there's a modified version of a sound, but not for basic sounds in general. So in the current IPA, you still get these rotated letters, which must make the IPA very difficult for people who are dyslexic; you get small capitals; you get Greek stuff like the Greek letter theta is used for the 'th' /θ/ sound, and the runic and ultimately Icelandic sound /ð/ -- so the symbol that looks like an 'o' with kind of a cross above it, that’s from Icelandic and it used to be in English before the Normans came, that got borrowed back in -- so borrowing from other established systems. Because then you could just go to Iceland and grab some of their metal type bits, I don't know, or go to Greece and get some from them

Lauren: It's something that was a problem with the original metal type but it's also been a problem for a long time with modern software. So for a long time computers didn't really have fonts that expanded beyond the kind of really basic font set of like English and French and some diacritics and some special things. If you have some older software or if you look at older digital documents you have, y’know, people using capital 'A' for particular vowel sounds, vowel characters in the IPA that are symbols in the IPA that aren't in regular type or y’know schwa would be a capital 'E' for example

Gretchen: Yeah you can even see this on some old websites, people will use a different system that only uses the basic 26, plus capitals to do the extra stuff or maybe some places use like an 'at' sign @ to indicate a schwa, because we've also had a different version of this encoding problem with technology

Lauren: So it's not just the metal type it's also modern computing

Gretchen: It's also the byte! It's the type and the byte!

Lauren: The type and the byte have been a problem, it's getting better

Gretchen: It's getting better thanks to Unicode, thanks Unicode! So yeah the first version from 1887 was designed to work for sounds in English, French, and German because that's what they were doing at the time. It's a bit weird compared to the modern IPA because we're used to seeing it as a chart and they just gave a list of symbols and keywords that stuff was found in for various languages. So they'd say something like okay this 'a' symbol is going to be like the sound in English 'father' or this symbol is going to be like the sound in German 'Bach' and they just give the keywords like sometimes you see in the front of the dictionary. And then later, so they kept on working on it in the late 1800s and then by the year they expanded, published a version that included Arabic and a few other languages’ sounds, that’s when they finally publish it as a table for the first time

Lauren: So why would it be in it table, for people who aren't familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet?

Gretchen: The cool thing about the table is -- so our English alphabet that you learn as a kid is 'ABCD' in no particular order, that's just the order it is, that's just for historical reasons -- but the table is ordered based on how the sounds are produced. So sounds get produced with constriction in various parts of the mouth and with different degrees of constriction once you're in that place

Lauren: So it's a nice feature based table of all the kind of combination of features in particular places

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly. If you superimpose a mouth onto that table, it looks a bit weird but you can kind of do it and you can see where each of the sounds is produced

Lauren: I have a link somewhere to an audible IPA chart so you can click on the sounds and hear what they sound like, but the ones on the very left side are all produced with just the lips like /p/, and the very front of the mouth. And then the ones at the very right edge are all the way back at the far back of the mouth, and that's things like your velar sounds like /g/ get made with that soft bit there or your uvula like right down in the very far back in the mouth

Gretchen: Yeah, it goes from your lips, through your mouth along the roof of your mouth and back into your throat. And the weird thing about this version from 1900 is that it's a mirror image of that so it has 'p' and 'b', your labial sounds on the right instead of on the left

Lauren: Oh no, that would confuse me so much

Gretchen: You can see an image of it on Wikipedia, it's all like typewritten, we'll link to that

Lauren: Wow, awesome

Gretchen: But it looks really weird, and they also have the vowel chart and the consonant chart on the same chart

Lauren: Right, okay!

Gretchen: They just have like a really wide section where the vowels go

Lauren: How weird!

Gretchen: Yeah, which is something else that changed later

Lauren: So there's now a table for the consonants, there's a few consonants that don't even fit, and then there's a vowel chart that's a separate thing, but it's very similar principle like it starts at the front of the mouth and goes back

Gretchen: Yeah, and what's cool is that the version that we use today is actually very very similar to the version that was solidified in 1932, which was quite a while ago. There were some adjustments made in 1989 and then after that it's just like 'oh well we need to add this one symbol because we found some languages that use it' but pretty much it stays very similar for quite a long time once it's established

Lauren: Nice. So it goes from left to right all the different places in the mouth, and then from top to bottom there are different ways just looking at the consonants, the ways to pronounce different consonants so you have the very plosive sounds like /b/, /k/, /d/, /t/ - we call them stops - along one row and your nasal sounds, so your /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, sounds along another row...

Gretchen: It kind of goes in order of how much you need to drop your jaw. So if you think about the sounds in the top row, your mouth is the most closed when you're making like a 'p' or a 'b'. You have to literally close your mouth for a second, you have to close your lips to make those sounds. Whereas if you're making a sound like 'r' /ɹ/ you don't have to actually close anything you're letting the sounds kinda come through. So the 'r' /ɹ/ sounds are near the bottom, but the /p, b/ sounds are near the top

Lauren: I mean that's the thing I found super neat about it when I was studying the IPA in undergrad was just how elegantly it captures all these different parameters in one table

Gretchen: Yeah, just to realize that someone has thought this through, thinking 'ok what are all the permutations you could put your mouth in and which ones do people actually use and let's organize this'

Lauren: And English just uses one subset of it

Gretchen: Yeah, every language is going to pick some subset of the sounds in this table, or if it doesn't we have to add something. So one of the cool things that you can do with the IPA because it's based on different positions the mouth can be in is adapt it to other mouth stuff. For example, Lauren Ackerman, who has the linguistics blog 'Wug Life', has made a table of emoji with their mouth positions as if they're making sounds in the IPA. So you can look at this table and she has things like the surprised emoji, which has kind of a round mouth and so that's like an 'oo' /u/ sound because you have to round your lips for that, and the 'ee' /i/ is kind of like a smile, and it is completely ludicrous but also great

Lauren: These are the important things that linguists do with their downtime

Gretchen: Yeah and the other cool thing you can do with the IPA is because you can use it to represent mouth sounds is you can write beatboxing in IPA, because beatboxing is done with the mouth

Lauren: Oh yeah, that must look amazing!

Gretchen: It looks so cool! I have a picture of it, of a chart that some beatboxing linguist researchers made

Lauren: That is awesome

Gretchen: So we'll link to that too

Gretchen: I mean we both have a lot of love for the International Phonetic Alphabet, obviously it's something we engage with a lot in all varieties of linguistic work. I think it's worth mentioning though that like, it's not perfect for everything, it can get really annoying sometimes.

Gretchen: Yes!

Lauren: Particularly, as I mentioned in terms of the fact that font encoding on computers is still a problem, you still occasionally will get proofs back from a publisher for a journal article and all the engma, they're all mysteriously like really ugly still, we haven't quite got there with them being part of the font set for every single font

Gretchen: Yeah and it can be hard to write on a normal keyboard

Lauren: Yeah it's also really annoying to write on a normal keyboard sometimes. Also especially in the vowels, like I get a bit of like IPA anxiety when I use IPA and share it with people publicly, especially for long passages of text it's not always that easy to transcribe things

Gretchen: Yeah, and as fluent writers we've gotten used to the Byzantine nature of the English spelling system and we we also know how to talk, but thinking about how you talk in a more conscious way to say 'what sound am I saying here, what sound am I saying there' -- that’s different. So it can be hard to write extended passages in IPA. I know if I make a blog post that has an English sentence or two in IPA, I'll inevitably get some corrections from a linguist or something that says “I think you're probably producing this sound here” and I'm like “Oh yeah you're right” because there's no spellcheck for IPA

Lauren: Yeah and also even if there were a spellcheck, you and I would produce different IPA transcriptions for our own pronunciation of things

Gretchen: Yeah and we're pretty good with understanding people's different pronunciations of things when we're hearing them, because I guess humans have a lot of evolutionary practice at that, but for reading things we have a fairly standardised system. I remember when I was still a young linguist back when John Wells's phonetic blog was active. He's a well-known British linguist who's involved in some of the history of the IPA and he used to keep a blog and he would sometimes write full posts in IPA. And they were really interesting for me to read, to practice but I also found them very difficult because he would be transcribing his own accent. And he was British and so he wouldn't write all these 'r' /ɹ/ after vowels that I would, so I had to figure out where all these /ɹ/ were supposed to be. I'd end up reading his post out loud to myself and hearing the British accent being like “oh yeah this is what he's trying to say”

Lauren: You would be saying it in his accent?

Gretchen: Yeah, I'd be saying it in his accent, because you can write someone's accent, which is the cool thing but also the more challenging thing about reading IPA

Lauren: Linguists also talk about broad IPA and narrow IPA transcription - so like, you can do a kind of rough-and-ready, mostly correct transcription, or actually if you are a phonetician and you're looking really closely at how people actually articulate things, you discover all kinds of things that you need to transcribe to capture the correct and accurate transcription but which people don't hear kind of consciously or would find really weird when you've represented it to them

Gretchen: Yeah or don't notice

Lauren: And there's often like phonological processes, like when you tell people that the vowel that they use in the middle of 'handbag' is actually, for native speakers if they say it quickly, it often becomes 'hambag'

Gretchen: 'hambag', like a ham sandwich

Lauren: Yeah, like a bag-o-ham. If you write it out in IPA, people are like ‘that's incorrect,’ and you're like 'well that's what you said'

Gretchen: There's a fun story about that, so English speakers also often say 'sammich' instead of 'sandwich' because the 'm' the like the nasal sound becomes like the 'w'. Except for Anglo-Italians; so in Canada there's like Italian Torontonians and Italian Montrealers and people who grew up in those communities often have a particular accent. So in that accent they say 'sangwich' instead of sammich' because in Italian the 'w' sound is kind of more velar whereas in English it's more labial and so it like pulls the nasal along with it to be a different sound

Lauren: And when you start transcribing things in really close IPA you can see those distinctions, it's really cool

Gretchen: Yeah and we often just reduce the vowels in words that we’re saying quickly or in the small unimportant function words we often reduce the vowels all to schwa or something like that

Lauren: I still remember in in my undergraduate class learning that English vowels will often change into schwa, this is the /ə/ sound in unstressed syllables and it just made me realize that for a certain set of words, that's why I was really bad at spelling them. Because you sit there and you're like 'is it amu... amuni ammunition?'. I mean, is it ammunitiON or is it ammunitiAN? That’s not a great word to use as an example but it's the first one that came to mind. For certain vowels, because it's unstressed and it's a schwa, it’s possible that any of the vowel letters could be used to spell it. So you just have to memorize what the spelling is because your pronunciation doesn't help you. And that's why I tell people I'm bad at English spelling - it’s not my fault, it's the fault of my stress system and orthography!

Gretchen: The other thing is, is sometimes English orthography gives you useful cues to distinguish between certain words or when a suffix who's added sometimes the stress changes and you have to recover vowels that are kind of there but had turned into schwa. So if you take a word like 'electric' which becomes 'electricity' - in some senses it's weird that it's spelled with a 'c' and not with a 'k' or an 's' because 'c' is completely redundant, it always makes one of those two sounds, but it does reflect that when it's 'electric' with the 'k' sound and then when you add an '-ity' to it, the 'k' sound becomes an 's' sound because that's what happens with 'c', but it doesn't happen with 'k'. Or the vowels also change - with 'electric', 'electricity' you get different sorts of vowels. So it's kind of useful to have some of this stuff there that was historically there and has changed in its sound. But it also creates this extra layer of complication. Or you can get used to speed reading because a word always looks like the same in spelling whereas if you had to speed read a whole bunch of different accents then an unfamiliar accent might be harder to speed read, but then again it's harder to learn spelling in the first place if you have an accent that's less similar to the spelling system

Lauren: But we still love the IPA for all of the occasional detriments that occur

Gretchen: We still love it and it's still useful to have it as an option to write something very specifically even if you don’t want to do that all the tim. I find if I'm meeting somebody and they have a name I haven't heard before, then I write it in IPA and then I can pronounce it correctly when I'm talking back to them. People like it when you pronounce their names correctly.

Lauren: That's handy. The Journal of the International Phonetic Association used to accept articles written in IPA, which blows my mind. So people would write about some feature of phonetics and they would do the whole thing in the IPA. I think it very quickly became apparent that that was more labour both to produce and to consume than there was any benefit in doing that, for many of the reasons that we've already mentioned

Gretchen: Like, 'hi I'm going to write about like long vowels in Sussex' or something and that whole thing would be in IPA

Lauren: Yes, I think academics clearly had more time on their hands 50 years ago.

Gretchen: I mean, to be fair, I have played IPA Scrabble, which is like Scrabble, but you do it in IPA

Lauren: Do you just kind of argue for your own pronunciation or do you have to do it in your own dialect?

Gretchen: The way that I've done it is I combined IPA Scrabble with Descriptivist Scrabble, which is a little bit like those bluffing games, so as long as you can convince other people that it's a word then it's a word

Lauren: Ah, I like that

Gretchen: Yeah, because like, dictionaries are arbitrary authorities anyway, so with Descriptivist Scrabble you can just use whatever means you have at your disposal to convince people that it's a word. Of course choosing an obvious word like dog or something is going to be easier to convince people than saying--

Lauren: blergh?

Gretchen: Yeah, than saying “blerg is a word, honestly it means a colour kind of like grey and blue at the same time” but you can try!

Lauren: There are heaps of cool things people have done with the IPA including someone has made a set of IPA Scrabble

Gretchen: Yeah so I posted on All Things Linguistic a set of frequencies and scores that you can use for IPA Scrabble tiles, because I made it with a friend in undergrad and we had figured this out. We just cut out bits of cardboard to make them, and then some undergrads at Yale came across this post and decided to get their friend who has like a wood cutting machine to cut these out of these gorgeous wood tiles and they sent me some photos which I've also posted. You can see those on the blog, they're amazing, so yeah so someone has made a wooden IPA set that I still have not played but it’s really cool

Lauren: IPA characters also make for popular tattoos because they're quite beautiful, so I've definitely seen a schwa tattoo and I've seen a glottal stop which is a little bit like a question mark - it's our logo!

Gretchen: It is also our logo. Do people get whole words in IPA or like phrases in IPA tattooed on them?

Lauren: Mmm I haven't seen any but if anyone has we will definitely be interested in seeing it

Gretchen: If you know any IPA tattoos please send them to us

Lauren: Well I've seen a couple but not that long

Gretchen: There's also a whole version of Alice in Wonderland that's published in IPA - so this takes us back to the Journal of Phonetics - and she's like talking to the Mad Hatter and so on and it's all in IPA. The weird thing about this particular version is that this publisher decided to also have capital letters

Lauren: Huh, interesting

Gretchen: And of course they had to make capital versions for all of the IPA letters

Lauren: Wow, that's commitment

Gretchen: Because you know if you think about it capitals are redundant, they don't add any extra phonetic information to a sound, so the IPA doesn't use them. And sometimes the IPA uses small cap versions of a letter to indicate a different sound because it's an extra symbol. And so instead this person decided that no, if I'm going to write it as a book I'm going to make capitals and so yeah it's very interesting how they decided them.

Lauren: Yeah, there you go. My IPA nerd craft activity was to cross stitch the consonant chart, I did that quite a few years ago and it's a very useful adornment in the office when you just need to quickly refer to some of the symbols. I also was going to do the vowel chart but the modern vowel chart is very very complicated and messy which is why I went with Jones's much more elegant original cardinal vowels

Gretchen: Ahh so you did a simplified version

Lauren: Yep I'll put links to those in the show notes

Gretchen: And you also did a cookie cutter, right?

Lauren: Oh yeah! I made a schwa cookie cutter for Christmas last year, just what you need, and it's a 3D printable cookie cutter, so you can also download that design and print your own and make your own gingerbread schwa or shortbread schwas.

Gretchen: That's great. There's also an IPA version of the game 2048, which came out when the game 2048 was popular - so that's the one where you like slide the tiles around and you try to combine to make bigger and bigger things. And so you start with a schwa and then you combine them to make an engma, which makes no sense phonetically, and then you combine them to make an esh. Again, this won't teach you anything about phonetics

Lauren: But it goes into more and more elaborate and less frequent forms

Gretchen: Yeah it does get to more and more elaborate stuff, like you end up with like a glottalised bilabial click or something like that

Lauren: Right, it doesn't officially teach you anything about the IPA but it is a good excuse for a distraction

Gretchen: You should not do it if you're a student and you're about to write an exam on the IPA, this is not a good way to procrastinate

Lauren: Official warning!

Gretchen: Instead you should play IPA scrabble

Lauren: Much better way!

Gretchen: Which will teach you some more about the IPA

Lauren: Or read Alice in Wonderland

Gretchen: There's also a fun sketch from the sketch comedy show John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, which is a sketch where some characters encounter some skeletons and the skeletons are pirates but these skeletons cannot tell you that there are pirates because they don't have any lips, so they cannot produce the 'p', sound so they call themselves 'kirates',

Lauren: Awww

Gretchen: And the characters who encounter them are very confused, like 'what are you?' 'we're kirates, I said we're kirates!'. Anyway, I am probably not doing it justice but you should listen to it, we have a link to that as well

Lauren: Excellent

Gretchen: Although they don't make the point which I kept thinking, which was like 'Well, if the don't have any lips, they probably don't have any tongues either, so they probably can't produce any sounds because they're skeletons'

Lauren: They probably don't have any kind of pulmonic air flow ability

Gretchen: Like all they can do is clack

Lauren: Yup, Morse code?

Gretchen: Yeah! So skeletons can communicate with us in Morse code, there we go

Lauren: Yeah. I was going to say sign language just because I always seem to want to mention sign languages because they're always cool

Gretchen: Oh yeah please do

Lauren: it's worth pointing out that like obviously the IPA is for all spoken languages, if you haven't figured that out by this point in the podcast, I'll just make that abundantly clear. It’s for all oral languages. In individual sign languages people talk about like phonemes and morphemes in terms of hand shapes so there are some hand shapes that are possible in some sign languages that don't occur in others. And so you have a similar kind of basic feature sets that you can refer to in in sign languages. But because it uses a more complex modal articulation system and it isn't just limited to the mouth, then it's a bit more complicated cross-sign-linguistically, but they do have their own kind of equivalent of phonemes or phonetics

Gretchen: There's a couple different standardised sign transcription systems, I don't know if any of them have caught on at an international level in the same way to the IPA has, I mean to be fair there there are other phonetic transcription systems that aren't the IPA, it's just the IPA has caught on more than the others. But you can transcribe signs, there's a couple different ways of doing that. There's also the fact that sign languages have alphabets that they use to borrow words in from spoken languages among other functions and within that there are sign equivalents of at least some IPA characters, which I know because I've been to linguistics conferences and seen interpreters signing talks and they will sign a particular IPA symbol when the person who's giving the presentation is talking about that particular IPA symbol

Lauren: There you go

Gretchen: Yeah, I cannot recite any of them for you, but I remember noticing it and thinking 'huh, ok I guess that's what they're doing’

Lauren: Man, awesome!

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode go to Lingthusiasm dot com. You can listen to us on iTunes, Google Play Music, SoundCloud or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow at @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo

Gretchen: And I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter and my blog is All Things Linguistic dot com. Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our producer is Claire and our music by The Triangles. Stay Lingthusiastic! [Music]

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

#linguistics #ipa #International Phonetic Alphabet #phonetics #phonology #lingthusiasm #episode 6 #transcript #transcripts #podcast #accessibility

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keshetchai · 7 years

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Question, do you have any thoughts on demonolatry? It is a path I am seriously considering and slowly researching. I'm still working my way through the book The Devil and the Jews, but what I've read so far plus what I've been coming across in my demonolatry research (Hebrew is a source language for many texts) plus still being very ignorant of Jewish traditions over all has me cautious. I feel comfortable in demonolatry but don't want to trespass/appropriate something I have no right to.

Oh goodness, I have….different takes on my gut reaction/answers. I’ll divide them into mini-answers!

Answer #1: [The most generalist answer about cultural appropriation]

If the source language for a variety of texts in something is in a language you don’t understand, and isn’t a heritage language for you, then chances are high it would be appropriative for you to adopt this kind of practice. This might not always be a hard and fast rule, but like…it’s a pretty sure bet in this case that a bunch of Gentiles who made a practice using misinterpreted and perverted Hebrew texts for their own needs and then continued on for several decades or centuries is just going to get you an end result of cultural appropriation/cultural perversion.

Answer #2: [The issue of Jewish appropriation & western Orientalism]

I honestly don’t know much about demonolatry, but from what I can tell it’s another spin on western occultism which was and is, at its core, appropriative of Judaism as an “exotic” flavor to be added as Gentiles saw fit. The whole “seal of Solomon” thing being appropriation by occultists is part and parcel with this kind of stuff, and it’s really really weirdly orientalist. The use of a holy language in Judaism (Hebrew) for this stuff is just….really trying to make it more “magic” seeming.

I mean some of these occult texts are what, 1500-1600’s? When you realize Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and the inquisition continued to try and make sure that converso Jews didn’t revert to their heritage faith – I mean it’s just more of the same obsession with perceived connection between non-Christian (read: Jewish and Muslim) ties to demons and devil worship/working.

But then there’s later stuff, from what I can tell it’s like a chunk of stuff 1500-1600 and then again after the 1700’s a period 1800 - Today (at least the bulk of this stuff is before or after the Enlightenment period in Western Europe) and…. Surprise surprise, a bunch of white guys being obsessed with the magical secret demon rituals of the “exotic orient” is undeniably connected to gross European colonial/imperialist attitudes. Another generalization: stuff written by dead white guys about the “orient” or “near eastern” practices in the occult arts are full of shit.

Thing is – fear of cultural appropriation aside – is any of this NOT fully enmeshed in orientalist imperialist western attitudes? And is any of it going to hold up to any kind of academic-historical-archaeological scrutiny?

Answer #3: [The issue of “All religions have stuff we can’t prove, but some religions have more complete mishmash based on conflated facts and made up stuff that ignores academic study on the originating culture(s) than others.” AKA the Academics of Appropriation]

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh. If the PDF I found on my google search of the term is a real source on the demonolatry issue, then it just lumps a gazillion different devils/Angels/spirits/goddesses/gods/whatever that are all occurring over the span of what is in reality probably 2-3,000 years. They have nothing to do with each other in many cases! Like a “devil” that has an Arabic name naturally occurs much later in time than a really early babylonian type language spirit because of the timeline of when those languages began and developed. I’m also probably the wrong person to ask - the very mention of “Lucifer’ makes my eyes want to roll out of my head because anyone who ascribes that to a demonic-figure misunderstood that it was a criticism of a Babylonian King, and had zero to do with any kind of supernatural figure.

I don’t particularly know much about Mesopotamian/Fertile Crescent/Near Eastern/Levantine paganism but I do know an archaeological/art history scholar who does study the prehistoric/ancient near east and I just deeply truly feel like the emphasis on near eastern paganism is mostly about 19th century Orientalism. I’m going to guess that a majority of the stuff discussed by demonolatry is riddled with factual errors, misunderstandings, and conflations that come out of ignorance of the region, time periods, and religious practices that took place.

I try to be respectful of the fact that different people find solace in different kinds of religions, but I won’t lie - I found myself deeply dissatisfied with the whiteness, appropriation, and bad scholarship I found across pretty much all modern pagan variants some time ago. Like it’s not just not cohesive/disorganized, it also just…doesn’t have any grounding in the actual historical reality of these beings/spirits in the faith origins any of them come from? I find most people in paganism/neo paganism are really interested in only very specific texts. Like they’ll read someone’s (European) grimoire from the 1600’s but won’t pour over Sumerian archaeological digs and academic papers on Hittite worship - because the point is not really these ancient/prehistoric paganisms but the *idea* of them - the orientalist *concept* of the ancient near east. like why does everyone talk about the meaning of the color of the candle you use for an ancient (whoever) entity when candles….hadn’t even been invented yet? I’m pretty sure that spirit doesn’t care because wax/dipped (dyed & COLORED) candles weren’t a Thing Then. You know? the rituals mentioning pillar candles for something that was worshipped in like 3000 BCE just isn’t based in any actual practice of the time because they didn’t have that then. It’s a tiny detail, but you could expand that to almost anything you wanted.

Maybe that’s harsh of me? But like personally I deeply dislike this kind of stuff because I find it just as intellectually dishonest as many organized faiths can be, except these people tend to publicly emphasize their ancient spirituality/faith predates “xyz”. But if you can avoid Hebrew entirely, avoid Jewish-Hebraic entities AND Islamic AND Zoroastrian entities and are just focusing on like….worship of things from ancient religions which just don’t exist anymore? I mean, I guess? Like just don’t….use anything that at all uses or borrows from Hebrew/Judaism/Tanach (or the Christian Bible). That might help avoid Jewish appropriation but won’t get rid of the orientalist lens issue.

Anyways….

Last Answer: [The: “I have a Mom of Color” aka “the comedic kinda” answer]

NOPE NOPE NO NAH NU UH sure appropriation is bad but do you know what is ALSO BAD????? Inviting spirits into your life that have their own motives and powers and minds!!!!! NOPE.

Why would any spirit deign to work with your ass for free? THEY WOULDN’T! What makes u think they’re gonna let you set the price for their services? THEY WON’T! You also can’t work with someone else’s spirits, you have to work with your own!

Idk man I was forbidden from playing at seances as a child, my momma literally told me to never summon anything because you don’t know how powerful it is and whether or not it wants to hurt you I compulsively throw spilled salt over my shoulder to blind any devils behind me, I have a hand of hamsa amulet by my door, I grow sage at my windowsill, I have literally been trained my whole lil Mexican life to avoid the devil even though my mom explicitly does not believe in hell or an actual literal devil.

Honest we don’t believe in the devil but JUST IN CASE…..

So uh tl;dr:

1.) yes. It’s got appropriative elements 2.) and Orientalism/racism 3.) also I don’t even know if any of the sources I found actually are true of the origins of these entities in any historical or academic sense which is a large part of why I think it’s rooted in Orientalism/fetishizing of the near east 4.). I’m like ethically (ethnically?) obligated to tell you demons are Bad News and My Momma Says I Have to Go if Someone Uses so much as a Oujia Board, Right Now, Immediately, She is Calling Me for Dinner Probably. (I mean I can’t stop you and have met satanists/lucifer worshippers and wasn’t scared of them personally, and I don’t even believe in “The Devil,” but also I ain’t white.)

Thanks for asking though! Sorry if I seem….idk unfair? I think these criticisms I’ve made can be applied to a LOT of things, which is why I apply them also to any modern paganism strain.

#religion #demonolatry #paganism #avoiding Jewish appropriation #cultural appropriation

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survivingjapan · 7 years

Text

Rites of Passage - Day 46

Congratulations Brian, Crow, and Steffen. 46 days ago, you and 23 other castaways returned to Tumblr Survivor to seek revenge, redemption, or a mix of the two.

The three of you have done what 23 other players could not do. This season has been unpredictable from the beginning, and it could still go a myriad of directions before a winner is declared.

One final immunity challenge stands between you and the chance to plead your case to the jury as why you should be given the tittle of Sole Survivor. However, before that, it is tradition to reflect on those who you have eliminated from the game; directly on indirectly.

Welcome to your Rites of Passage.

Brian

Unfortunately, we never talked and I didn’t get to know you but you were mentioned so many times throughout the season so you’re clearly a legend.

Steffen

Oh the babe, you probably wanted more out of the season to be honest huh, but I mean at least you set a record, the very first 26th placer in TS history, and what’s really more important???? Tho in all seriousness coming from a first boot season, this spot holds a very special place in my heart so please enjoy it.

Brian

I believe we played together before in Niue and clicked and we didn’t really get to click here, but you were also apart of some alliance to kill me??? So oops.

Crow

Seemed like a really chill guy, but ultimately went after Brian way too early, so you had to go - plus your work schedule didn't seem to help much

Steffen

I think we’ve now done 2 side seasons together and we still haven’t spoken a word to each other, so this is where I will bust out the classic MJ line “he was a fighter”

Brian

Robbedt queen. Wish I got to know you more.

Crow

I feel like you could have gone really far had you avoided becoming an early target, and I didn't like voting you out, but we didn't click well enough for me to go out on a limb

Steffen

JESUS CHRIST GURL, literally when I saw your name pop up on the cast announcement, I felt like a wave of joy wash over me because you are one of the best people I’ve met and I was hoping we could replicate our damage in Westeros and Myanmar, but alas no. Your exit pre-merge was probably one of the saddest moments for me, because I knew you had so much left to offer, and the villains did you dirty girl <3, hopefully one day we’ll reunite then but at least I can try and do you proud like you did me proud in Myanmar and India.

Brian

I could honestly write pages upon pages upon how amazing you are and how great of a person you are (even though I’m one of the few who thinks that dkjasdhsja). We clicked super well in this game and most likely would’ve been a duo for a majority of the game, if possible. I’m glad we met here because you’re currently one of my really good friends (because we literally talk abt random shit all the time) and you make me laugh 24/7 and yea. You’re the bestest. <3

Crow

King of absolute mess and chaos, I love you. Had I been rocked out by you, these words would be much different, but karma got ya babe!

Steffen

We’ve had some interesting experiences together, or at least me getting you voted out and hosting your messy butt several times, and though we did not really speak this season I just wanted to say….you “ROCK”

Brian

The tea is that you were in some alliance to kill me earlier in the game so although I was working with you for a majority of the vote you went and told you when it looked bleak, I guess I’m kinda okay with you being an early boot since you woulda caused more harm against me than not.

Crow

I will always remember two lines:

"I'm REALLY wet."

"Crow u absolute fuckwit"

good times good times...

Steffen

One of my All-Star fam, like sure we weren’t the closest but like I got to know you slightly better this season than last time just because uhhhhh……yeah I guess you went to summer camp with Nick, I’m not sure what happened, but thanks for giving us the amazing gif.

https://media.giphy.com/media/Kw2cu2woOVWIo/giphy.gif

Brian

UGH. It sucked that the round you went the way you went and I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. You know I wanted to work with you and even though we would only talk every once in awhile, it was like one of those unspoken, “We’re good, right?” Love ya, bud.

Crow

Another really chill guy but ultimately we never bonded and you threw my name out to people so it was just another pick-off vote unfortunately

Steffen

Well LIE-nus, sorry Ting Ting stole my keyboard for a second, but ANYWAYS, my next Myanmar babe, and Solomon step-child I guess, maybe I’m your uncle, but either way I did not expect to see you go so soon, I was hoping to have you around longer this season so either I could have more Hoenn fun with you or get revenge on you for Myanmar, but just like Ashley, you went too soon and I know you had so much left to offer you bum, also I feel jipped, I wanted to hear more about you Sexcapades……that’s a dream for another day huh, be safe.

Brian

I was SO ready to finally work with you in a game, Ruthie, and it was unfortunately just not in the cards but KNOW that you’re the true hero of this game. <3

Steffen

OK, worst, hero, vote out pre-merge ever, you did not deserve it, but you weren’t in any of the big alliances on the heroes tribe and just became an easy out for the entire tribe leading to our second unanimous vote of the season. You know that I love you to the world and back as one of the sweetest people here ever, in All-Stars I literally called your appearance as a hero didn’t I, and I was hoping that I wouldn’t vote you out like a billion times again, but alas that didn’t happen. I will say though, I will always values the Darren Criss Swimsuit Photos you sent me while I was in Canada, WOOOOOOOO, those things were….STEAMY. Can’t wait to attend the wedding <3

Brian

You voted me and I still will never know why I was your best bet but go off! I’m glad we talked more and got to bond about being the bottom of the villains for a little bit following Arendelle.

Crow

BOI! Let me tell you....Richie's bluntness scared the shit out of me because I'm blunt but Richie had every reason to call me out so I thought he might expose me yikes!

Steffen

I feel we had much more we could’ve done together, but like our past is limited with Kanto and me hosting you in Arendelle where you played a very dominant game the entire time and I have no doubt you could’ve done a lot here too, but alas the destruction of Arabia had to finish with you, and while it was sad, at least Pippa got vindication because you stole her Ciera Eastin, so in a way I guess it’s Karma?

Brian

We literally never work well together in games, even when I think you have my back lol, so I knew this time would most likely be no different. You were the first “blindside” of the game (being a hero in a vote with majority heroes was shookening), so be proud! Clearly a threat.

Crow

Steffen

Listen up you little toad (and you know I say that with love), I forgot if you were the first or second person I told about the Fukushu idol, but like you were a tru hoe to me, because as far as I’m aware, you never told anyone about it and I value that so much. It was sad to see one of my Solomon host parents leave the game, but it happened at the right time cause you’re capable, scary and just incredible at this game, had this literally been any other season you would’ve made merge, but because this season is satanic, unfortunately you left us early. Missed you babes, but hey, we can talk about V3 now because I finished it, and WOW, you were right, the emotional trauma didn’t stop there, GOD THAT GAME….it’s a lot.

Brian

I don’t know if we ever talked so um.. Yea! Lol

Crow

Steffen

While we never talked a lot this season, you were so willing to help along with the tribe, and you were a super helpful hoe when it came to designing stuff for Sunda, you really came in clutch for that season, so thank you for that, but I’m sorry this season ended for you a little earlier than you would’ve liked, but we still don’t know what happened to the Brawn idol after you left with it, did you just punch production and stole it so they couldn’t rehide it? Maybe you knocked them out and just ran to your jetski back to the states? Either sounds like a plausible course of events.

Brian

Honestly? Another robbed player. I was so looking forward to working with you after what I had been told by Mr. DK himself and it did not disappoint during the time we were together. I hope we can stay in some sort of contact because you’re p cool. :P

Crow

Y U NO SURVIVE OVER JUNIOR UGH. Had you just hung on til merge we would have been such amazing allies and I truly feel you were ousted way too soon.

Steffen

I think we only talked indirectly in the main chat to each other during the Celebrity Big Brother sim we made as a cast (Bless be Raven Symone and her win), but being a past host of yours and you almost casting me in Bora Bora (which shame on you cause I could’ve met Jenn sooner) I was hoping we could’ve talked more but I think it got too awkward to do it as the pre-merge progressed, but either way, we can do another CBBUS sim after Japan is over if we’re both still around, I don’t know what happened to you, maybe you’re in the great beyond for all I know dgsakjhfg.

Brian

Crow

My Great Lakes villain buddy! You are certainly a.....character, but you also survived far past your expiration date because of your.....unique gameplay style. Wish you could have made merge so that your antics could be used as a shield for mine :(

Steffen

BOI, wow, ok you were a hectic person from literally my minimal exposure to you and your game, I’m just happy you were taken out early enough because I would’ve been terrified what chaos you would’ve caused later on, and I’m sure it would’ve been appropriate of the villain name, so 6 brownie points for staying with the Theme of the season, you Go Kage Coco.

Brian

I believe we played together once before and don’t know if we ended on good terms! If you’re NOT the same person I’m thinking about, y i k e s. We didn’t talk so I’m kinda half happy you went premerge, but like rip.

Crow

My not-so-much-of-a-buddy fellow Great Laker - You were robbed by Steffen not me SO WE CANT SAY I BETRAYED GREAT LAKES! But you just kept lying to me so I didn't see us ever working together......but hey, you didn't get last?

Steffen

Ok so I feel there’s still a lot of things that need to be said to you and I know I pissed you off with the decision to vote you out coming out of left field seemingly, but there was actually reason behind it. I know you claimed to have loyalty to me, and there is no doubt in my mind you were, but I saw you being a threat to my well-being in this game, in this game we need to play steps ahead, and when I was looking at you, I saw someone who would make it deep, you were going to take the spot that I, and everyone else wanted in this game, you were going to take up a finalist spot that could’ve been someone else’s, and I know I hurt your feelings, but I wanted that spot, and when Crow played Andrew’s hero idol, it felt like the right thing to do. I know you wanted to do so much more this season especially after going out first in Great Lakes, you exceeded everyone’s expectations and I want you to know that, so you could be proud of what you did, I’m sorry you were taken out, and hopefully we can find a resolution later babes <3.

Brian

Honestly, I wish we talked more because from the 1 or 2 convos we have had, you seem pretty interesting and fun. Also, you were literally robbed because of your association with Sarah and that sucked, but I guess I’m just happy I didn’t vote out someone I could’ve probably worked with and enjoyed working with (because there are definitely some people I didn’t vote out that I hated working with in games past just to be loyal dajksd).

Crow

My true f2 (ha. fooled u all!) I still liked her more than most people in the game despite her 25 days of silence oop!

Steffen

Well Kokichi Oma, I hope the Secret Crime Syndicate of more than 10k people you’re running is going well, it sounds fun. Kendall we talked about Japan so much prior to the beginning the start of this season, like we were ready to be villains, turn shit up, but then…..we were both named heroes, which I’m not sure either of us were suspecting, god knows I’m not one anymore. Voting out you was a hard decision, as anyone will tell you, I waited so long to make that decision, but at the end it seemed like the move that would bring me closer to my goal, and while I had to vote out a very good friend because of it, I did it for me, but also, for our lord and savior, Monica, I did it for Monica. https://prnt.sc/guvka7

Brian

One of the big 4 of the merge! You vs. Sarah was probably the most interesting of all the big conflicts of the merge. While you being rocked out most definitely benefited my game, it sucks to see such a big player be taken down in such a shitshow. But I guess just recognize like we all did that you were one of the best players in this game. Also was def fun kinda working with you. :P

Crow

Okay we use "robbed" a lot, but this man was a victim of aggravated assault, armed robbery, attempted murder, etc with that one silly rock. Not sure he's a hero though.....but the fact that he was eliminated with no votes cast against him is iconic af

Steffen

Ok, I owe so much of my game to you, you helped me form alliances, hell you helped me find the Shokan idol, and that was something that helped me keep my cool, ok not so much cool as less paranoid comparative to All-Stars, but you helped me so much this season and I just wanted to say thank you. I didn’t know what to think of you from Solomon, but spending so much time with you, I now know why you could’ve won that and this season, you were aggressive in you strategy sure, but your social game was on POINT, had you not gotten rocked out I’m sure it would’ve been near impossible taking you out after it. I know you probably hate me for holding onto our idol when it could’ve been used to save you from being rocked out, but I needed to keep myself safe above anything else, I figured things were already going to rocks with the idol talk, so knowing I could be in jeopardy, I held onto the idol, at the expense of your life in this game, I know you’re going to get past 2nd merge boot eventually and win a season like I know you can, it’ll happen I swear.

Brian

okay mom! I’ve missed you for the last 2 weeks! Dad’s cool and all but like, he’s got nothing on you. It was super great to meet you in this game because you are genuinely the first female I’ve had a successful alliance with ^~^ In addition to THAT, you’re also legit one of the best allies I’ve had in a game before and I literally adore you beyond belief.

Crow

Our trio of me, you, and Brian was the best thing in this game for me honestly! Thank you for the idol, it allowed me to successfully piss off Trace and continue to "sheep" Drew! You deserve to be here over me tbh and that's the tea! You were my favorite ally from any of my seasons and I have no shame saying that in public. I wish I could have voted with you but I had a deal with Pippa to not vote her out and I couldn't go back on that.

Steffen

Wow ok, I feel we had a Hallmark movie based around missed connections, whether it was just in this game, or how we were both in Toronto on the same day and couldn’t meet up, don’t know which is the real travesty tbh. While we were talking about trying to build on our relationship since Sweden ended before we could really get to know each other, we wanted to establish something, but when we met at merge, I didn’t stick with the alliance we made at the first vote, then voted you out at f11. That stunt with the Modoru idol WOW, had that actually worked, we would’ve been in a mess during the season, because 3 idols were played that night on top of yours, had everyone known about them, that chaos would’ve been insane. You never went down fighting and were always looking for a new angle to unite everyone to save yourself, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough and you were reunited with Kendall in jury, next time we end up in Toronto, lets grab a drink.

Brian

We.. uh.. Never talked… yikes. But I heard you were a sweetheart from everyone! So yay you!

Crow

Dom......I tried to talk to you but we were always on different wavelengths and then you voted me at instant tribal which hurt my widdle feelings : ' ( you're probably the only hero who actually deserves to be called a hero, besides maybe Trace?

Steffen

This soul, SWEETEST MAN EVER, I do not have a single bad thing to say about Dom, what Jimmy said about me in ROP in All-Stars is what I have to say about Dom now, we play these games to meet people and enjoy them, and Dom is the embodiment of that, we talked about anime and manga and all the nerdy things, it was amazing, he even turned me onto Assassination Classroom, and besides having Ass in its title twice, it was amazing and I recommend that to anyone who wants a new show to watch, cause its SO GOOD. Seeing you go home Dom lit a fire under my butt, I felt betrayed and I knew I needed to turn something out to avenge your death, so I worked hard and I guess I made f3, so thanks for inspiring me and giving me that fire to do this.

Brian

Honestly, I hope you understand that I came into this game scared to play with you because we do know each other and you know a lot more about me than I wish you did lol. I did want you out from day 1 and you lying to me day 4 (and multiple times past that, most notably during the round you left) really proves that I had the right thoughts about you. It was nice to play with you and reconnect. Not a bad guy, just a snake of a player. And that’s the tea on that.

Crow

I have a feeling you're mad at me from the lack of snaps since your elimination, and I completely understand it, but you asked me to choose between you and Brian and I chose Brian. It was a really shitty choice to have to make, but I felt like it was better for my game in the long-run. Maybe not. We'll just have to see how this all shakes out.

Steffen

Seeing you in the season, I honestly did not know how to feel to be frank, I never knew where we stood after Myanmar played out, so I was afraid to start talking to you, but then as things began progressing, I found myself getting along with you and enjoying your company, we called and talked much more than we ever did in Myanmar and it was a welcome surprise. I know that how everything may have ended may have seemed like a petty form of revenge for Myanmar, but I swear it was not. You were playing an incredible game in the middle and everyone saw it, and that’s where the problem lay, everyone began to see it, and you as a threat as a result. I feel you broke once your name started going up, but you never gave up, even that “idol” you played, I’m pretty sure you saw it on my face, I was crapping bricks cause that came out of nowhere. You are incredible Tommy, thanks for rebuilding things from Myanmar <3.

Brian

While I did want you out on day 1, despite literally everyone I’m close to yelling at me for wanting you out as early as possible, I’m glad we were able to talk through our beef and although you did lie to me and play dumb during the final 8 vote (which returned some lies back at you), I will overall have the weight lifted off my shoulders that we are at least now on good terms. And it won't be so fucking awkward if we're ever in a chat/game tg again hopefully!

Crow

...I....I have never felt more guilty about a vote than you, because you had never voted me, given me an idol, and saved me at instant and I failed to repay you in any regard. If you roast me at FTC, if I make it there, don't hold back. The only reason I voted for you was because I couldn't throw a vote or vote Brian so it was a really really terrible choice. I had no intention of being separated from you so soon....

Steffen

As much as you don’t like to admit it, you had so much pull in the beginning of merge, it felt like you way of words could convince me to do things and it felt that you were just getting your way, and while it was incredible to watch, it was also terrifying. Despite the anime’s we talked about, despite V3 and the emotional trauma it put us both through, I knew I had to put that aside and help vote you out. There’s a reason you won so much Andrew, you’re incredible, likeable and a good friend. I hope one day we can get our date at Buffalo Wild Wings again, maybe even go to the Barnes and Noble again….or was it Books A Million, I don’t know, but next time I run into the parking lot like a mad man, I hope its you driving the car that nearly kills me. https://peopledotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/rosie-odonnell-435-6.jpg?w=435

Brian

Okay, don't get me wrong, you’re a nice guy to talk to, and I told you you were going (without the knowledge that Steffen was flipping again lol), but you would constantly just lie and lie and lie and lie and… I think you get the point. You and Tommy were very similar in the sense that you did what was best for you, lied about it instead of being open, and then you would get all upset when stuff didn’t go your way [Tommy was more passive in that sense] (i.e. when you called Crow and I goats for voting you out despite you voting against us both rounds!). Nice to meet you, tho.

Crow

Okay I'm sure you know this but I told a lot of people you were one to watch because of your snake-like ways and I think you proved that by weaving yourself out of so many situations... and I still think you casted that stray vote on Kyoaku! Ultimately we faced off one-on-one and Drew decided to intervene and save me, that's a pretty epic showdown in my eyes.

Steffen

Despite your feelings of me, I just wanted to say thank you, thank you for being a person I could go to for emotional support when things got frustrating, or I was hurt, despite me lying to you in the game, you always put on a smile, heard me out, and consoled me, I probably called you the most in this game, which if you had told me that at the beginning of the season, I would’ve been shocked. The way you went out was depressing because literally right after betraying you I tried making a jump back to save you, because I wanted more time to fix what I had screwed up with the lie, but a couple words to Drew during that instant tribal sealed your fate and you left much earlier than I would’ve liked. You were amazing to me and I feel I never returned the amount of care you gave me and I wish I could change that, but I can’t. I will never forget the Rude Ass Chat alliance we made with Jenn to dominate the season, but it ended almost as soon as it began, maybe in another season tho, I would love to replicate it.

Brian

Rocked out QUEEN. I wish we did get to talk more and go to final 2 together because iconic catfish duo (Charlotte and Nicky are quaking) and I, again, apologize for lying that entire round, but I did what I had to do for my own personal benefit and you or Trace dying going into final 5 was my best bet.

Crow

I know I burnt you when I voted out Andrew and so similarly to him, if you wanna roast me at FTC, go for it. You were hilarious to be on call with and gave the cast a very light-hearted vibe which helped alleviate some of the stresses of this game. And I wouldn't be here, or at merge even, if it weren't for you...

Steffen

Coming to you live from Connor’s Basement, ITS……..PIPPA AND THE BOYZZZZZZ, we never really talked as much as I’m sure as either of one of us wanted to, but I just want to say you were such a delight in the game, it was fun to pull your leg during the time you outlasted 5th boot, or when you doubled your day count, but you were amazing. You were always ready to go to rocks during the insane amount of time we could’ve, even when I was considering sending the first merge vote to rocks, or at least when I thought I was, you were telling me that it would be ok and to be iconic, your attitude during this game when I used to be so stressed in the past was just so refreshing and I loved it. We didn’t start the game off the closest but it grew and I hope to hear the conclusion of your dress story after all is done. Also you are and will forever always be my rock queen <3. https://media.giphy.com/media/3SJgfvvLwDR4c/giphy.gif

Brian

You know I love you so much and I’m sorry that I did what I did, but I was not about to be called someone’s goat again when I for fucking sure knew that I was playing my own game. And people were basically saying, “Oh, Drew’s winning yup!” I’m sorry, yes I am, on a personal level, but on a game level? I did what I had to do. But I still love you.

Crow

Drew, I don't know where to start. I don't know how you feel about me, but I am assuming it's probably not in a good light....you went out on a limb and saved me with an idol and I didn't repay you much when I voted you out at f5. It really wasn't anything personal, but you were winning this game hands down....we had the rockiest relationship of probably anyone in this cast given that both voted for each other multiple times and then managed to become end-game allies which I promptly betrayed.....I'm disappointed in myself for how I conducted myself with you tbh, and it hurts my ego to say that. Hope you don't hate me.

Steffen

You always said during the season to me that you were ready for me to be your downfall this season, and while I tried to deny it, we knew it was coming, even to the last moment during the instant you left, I tried denying it, but we both knew what was happening. I will always cherish our late night calls, including ones where we got emotional and dished all this game info just because screw Japan, it was just a game, we laid out every advantage in the game, including your 2 idols, my shokan idol, the modoru idol, like everything was laid out, except Andrew’s idol and Trace’s Legacy Advantage. Talking to you felt like some safety, because you had been my ally in the past and you were through so much of this game and I am so grateful for you Drew, I truly am, and despite me being garbage, I just wanted to let you know that. We drifted away towards the end, and I became less negotiable with the votes, but we both knew we came here to play and we drifted apart. You were a friend Drew, you listened when I was sad, we dished when we were happy, you had the closest inside look into my game in the beginning, I know its slightly tainted now, but one day I hope we can rebuild it to where we can talk about Gilmore Girls and our terrible love lives on end again. http://image.prntscr.com/image/9f0d402836294caf8d7f17e7022b89f4.gif

Brian

A tru hero king. I’m glad we did get to know each other, even if it was at the bitter end. You’re a standup guy and a sweetheart. And you truly didn't deserve the exit I watched after the fact and I'm sorry it happened that way.

Crow

Okay I still giggle a little at us making final four and making hardly any connection whatsoever. If I end up 3rd, you can spam by inbox with "I told you so" all you want, but I've been screwed over by last-minute pleas before, and I wasn't willing to go down that road of regret. Plus, I think you would have kicked my ass in final 2 so with your legacy advantage, maybe I made a play that gave myself a chance at 1st or made myself 3rd, I don't know.....

Steffen

BABE <3, we weren’t the closest before Johnny’s departure, but since then we called, we had a good time, and despite my lies to you, you always had a smile and were willing to take me back, I feel like I was a bad boyfriend to you in a sense. Our rants to each other about the game and how we were escaping with no votes cast against us….you know until that fateful night that Pippa and Drew left, but before then we were cruising. It was sad to see your precious golden locks go, but you went on your hair journey this season and it was amazing to watch, I can’t wait to see the pink pompadour you’re rocking in jury tbh. While I may have lied to you in the past, I was not going to let you go out with a lie, so I tried to be truthful, however late it was, love you Trace and I’ll see you soon <3.

Your FINAL immunity challenge will be tonight at 9pm EST, followed immediately by the winner of the challenge casting the final elimination vote. Congratulations, and good luck.

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johnchiarello · 7 years

Text

Wednesday

WEDNESDAY 6-21-17

Isaiah 41:10

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

Did they sink our battleship? [I know it didn’t sink]

https://youtu.be/RWE5YGasCmw

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-Cc

.Prayer- confession

.Peter- James- John

.Conspiracy?

.Cop suicide

.Japan- China

.Russia- Syria

.Questions?

.Black man dead

James 1:27

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

San Antonio [News stuff]

https://youtu.be/xbEaVaDnWfs

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-Cd

.Georgia race

.CNN- media

.Why so sad?

.Cop on S.A. talk radio- very good job [really]

.National standards for Cops- Firefighters

.Corpus Christi homeless issues

.Solomon’s prayer [Kings 8]

.Race- corruption issues.

.A word from apostle Allen to the pastors of Corpus Christi [listen]

1Kings 8:50 And forgive thy people that have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee, and give them compassion before them who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them:

The streets-

https://youtu.be/Ln-InmpxntI

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-Ce

.Sure enough you get to meet a homeless brother on this one [and his girlfriend who was camera shy]

Micah 6:8

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

Back in Corpus- https://youtu.be/GilEdHDsHUU

http://wp.me/a4V5qQ-Cf

.Tacos or burgers- make up your mind!

.He never left Corpus

.Lesson from the Allman brothers band

.Purpose

.No- they did not kill Obama

.Addiction

.sobriety is not your identity

.We create obstacles in our mind

NEW- Today I talked on some news-world events.

The Philippine merchant ship that struck our war ship off the coast of Japan.

The U.S. military says it was about 2:30 am when the ship was hit.

The Japanese authorities say it was about 1:30 am.

Why is this something to look at?

The trajectory of the merchant ship shows them making a sharp turn- they purposefully went off course.

If our ship was hit at the later time- then the merchant ship did the sharp turn- to target our ship.

If the Japanese are right about the time- then the merchant ship did this turn to see what they hit.

I only mention this because often times governments lie- or hide things- you know- for the sake of the poor people who don't know how to handle truth.

This has happened many times over the years- and when the media actually do real investigative journalism- then we find out what happened.

The Russia- Syria situation.

The U.S. shot down a Syrian plane the other day- once again Russia warned us. Then we shot down a Russian drone yesterday.

I have talked about this issue before- and will just try and post that link.

But the media began to question why would Trump be giving such lenience to Russia by allowing them to fly over Syria.

I of course saw the dangerous bias in this question- but they hope the average public will not see it.

In short-

Russia is an ally to Assad- and the Syrian president has given them permission to fly in Syrian airspace.

The U.S. has actually been breaking the law by carrying out military operations in Syria-

As of today- there has been no declaration of war.

Yet- we fly planes- drop bombs- and many of these actions are in support of some groups in Syria- who are just like ISIS.

Yes- there are some rebel groups who we support- militarily- who are terrorists.

Russia has been saying that for years now.

So at times- the U.S. has been illegally bombing Syrians- backing up rebels- which is all illegal.

Yet the irresponsible U.S. media- with their non stop campaign about collusion with Russia- might just aid in a real hot war with Russia [see?- Trump going easy on Russia- to hide collusion type thing].

This is no joke- and to be honest- I think that's what this whole thing is heading towards.

And I made a few comments about the video of the cop shooting the Black man.

He was just found innocent- and last night the news showed new video of the shooting.

It was bad- the cop did indeed shoot the man- and the audio/video show the cop was at fault.

Why this video was not released until after the cops trial- who knows [I just read a report that the video was shown to the jury- if so- the jury allowed the cop to get away with murder].

FAKE NEWS?

I talked a bit about the Georgia race- and how the media were so anxious for the Democrat to win- the Democrats spent 30 million on this race- the most ever for a congressional race.

Ok- their guy lost- but I shared it not as a Republican [I am not one] but to show bias.

Now- fake news?

A study came out today- it is estimated that in the 2008 election about 5.5 MILLION non citizens voted- http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/19/noncitizen-illegal-vote-number-higher-than-estimat/

Huh?

The national media reported [months ago] that in the history of our country- there were only 3- yes folks- 3 people who voted illegally.

Ok- I knew they were wrong- because a few years ago we had a Democrat lady in Texas- who was caught on video- saying for non citizens to go vote.

We also had at least 3 people- in our local elections- that voted- who were non citizens.

But for the national media to have actually said 3- when the estimates for 2008 alone- are 5.5 million- well that's fake news.

And I have not heard one national news source correct the record.

I’m for the immigrant by the way- my position is the same as the Catholic church -you could say I’m pro sanctuary city.

Yet- I show you this so you can spot fake news when you see it.

And the Trump assassination play in New York [Shakespeare] as most of you know they are doing the play in the park- and in the play- they have Trump killed.

Ok- not so good- I’m not mad about it.

Then why mention it?

I also saw news reports- on so called ‘real news’ that said- more than once- that they also had Obama killed in the play [few years ago]- and nobody complained about that.

Even without looking- I knew they lied.

Sure enough- the news did lie about that.

No Obama like figure was ever killed in the play.

I could go on- but these are just a few.

If the media covered real things- in a real way- then it could help.

But they often do not.

I’m glad they released the video of the castile shooting because it shines light.

But in all these other things- they are fake news.

The public see this.

That's why the Democrat lost in Georgia.

They saw the coverage- they see thru this stuff.

On the last video [now- 2nd to last] I ran into some street guys in San Antonio-

Yes- my guys- whether they are Black- Mexican- White- these are the brothers I like working with.

Maybe the outraged media- who claim to be for the down and out-

Yes maybe they should actually go and meet the down and out.

But I’m afraid many of them see the Mexican community [Oops- Hispanic- but my Mexican friends call themselves Mexican]- the Black homeless- you know- those who sleep on the street right in front of their media empires-

Yes- I’m afraid they fear them- loathe them- and would probably call the cops on them.

Yes- it feels good to sit behind a typewriter [keyboard] and write non stop about the abuses in society-

To have a view that you are noble- above the ignorant masses.

But I’m afraid many of you [media] like to talk a good talk [or write] but actually would never walk it.

Yes- today was media critic day-

Tomorrow I’ll go back to teaching [Actually- I did do some teaching too]

Deuteronomy 11:24

Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.

In Context | Full Chapter | Other Translations

PAST POSTS- [News links- verses below]

https://ccoutreach87.com/russia-u-s-world-events/

https://ccoutreach87.com/christian-recovery-from-addiction-long-version/

Christian recovery from addictions. As you scroll down you will read my story in AA- as of this update I have 3 years- 6 months sober [7-2016]

TRADITIONS OF www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

[I developed this short list for the purpose of having a format for Christian based bible studies/home groups. Feel free to copy- use- or even start your own group based on these principles- I wave the copy right to all this stuff. To be honest- I have never used a format in our meetings over the years, but for those who want to duplicate/start their own meetings- I find using a format helps. Zechariah 13:1 In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. Zechariah 13:2 And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.

Ezekiel 36:24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.

Ezekiel 36:25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. Ezekiel 36:28 And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. Ezekiel 36:29 I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. Ezekiel 36:30 And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen. Ezekiel 36:31 Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. Ezekiel 36:32 Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord GOD, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways, O house of Israel.

Ezekiel 36:33 Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded.

As you scroll down there is lots to read. Those who click this page might be struggling with addiction. For a short/quick help- just read thru this top section regularly [print it if possible]. This will train your mind in a way. Also memorize the short verse I HATE VAIN THOUGHTS BUT THY LAW DO I LOVE. Repeat it 3 times every time you find your mind being tempted- or even if your are in the middle of acting out a particular sin- each time you say it 3 times in a row- no matter what- stop the addiction at that moment. At the start- you might have to do this many times a day [depending on the addiction] but over time it will train your mind to stop. PRAYERS [read together at the start of the meeting]

I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters- that I have sinned thru my own fault.

In my thoughts and in my words- in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.

And I ask Jesus Christ- and all my brothers and sisters- to pray for me to the Lord our God.

Our father who art in heaven- Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come- thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread- and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Lead us not into temptation- but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom and the glory and the power- now and forever- Amen.

CONFESSIONS [repeat 3 times each]

I hate vain thoughts- but thy law do I love.

Commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts will be established.

3 PILLARS

[Readings from Peter, James and John- either read together- or have one person read one ‘pillar’ each. The bible refers to these 3 men as spiritual pillars of the church]

Gird up the loins of your mind and be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is being brought unto you at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

Abstain from fleshly lusts that war against the soul.

Those that have suffered in the flesh have ceased from sin- that they should no longer live the rest of their lives in the flesh to the lusts of men- but to the will of God.

Blessed is the man that endures temptation- for when he is tried- he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those that love him.

Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust- and enticed. And when lust has conceived it brings forth sin- and sin- when it is finished, brings forth death.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you- draw near unto God and he will draw near unto you. Cleanse your hands- ye sinners- and purify your hearts you double minded.

Be afflicted and mourn and weep- let you laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness- before that great and notable Day of the Lord.

Behold- a new commandment I give unto you- which thing is true in Him and in you- because the darkness has now passed- and the true light now shines.

Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin- but his word remains in him, and he cannot sin- because he is born of God.

This is how we know he hears us- because we keep his commandments and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.

THURSDAY MORNING- [Sponsors- the danger of co-dependency]

We had a change of plans yesterday- Mike [my artist] stopped by around 9 am- he asked if I would do a meeting.

His friend saw him last night- and was suicidal.

Mike- who has been a friend for many years- but has just recently been in my meetings- told his friend that we do a sort of Christian based AA/NA meeting.

So- I grabbed a few guys and did a meeting here in the Bluff.

It went well- I talked about how Christ re-established our relationship with God- as our Father.

I spoke about the danger of co-dependence.

When I was in New Jersey last year for 3 months- I met some real good people in the NA meetings.

But during my year in AA- I saw things that from a Christian perspective- were not compatible with healthy living.

I did write about it- in a gracious way [it’s on my blog- under the section ‘Christian addiction recovery’.

But one of the things I never hit on was the teaching on Sponsors.

I wrote a book years ago- part of it dealt with the Shepherding/discipleship movement back in the 70’s.

This was a movement within the church that had ‘shepherds’ who were sort of like Sponsors in AA.

The problem with that movement was it created a co-dependency - people became too dependent on another person.

In scripture the concept of Sponsor- Mentor- is there- but the biblical view is- it’s only for a period of time.

There must be a breaking away from that relationship over time.

The Shepherding movement made the mistake of trying to control people- for life.

Jesus discipled his men for 3 years- then told them it was needful for him to leave.

At first- they didn’t want that- but he said ‘I go to prepare a place for you’

We often read that as ‘I’m going to get heaven ready for you’.

Actually- in context [it’s in John’s gospel] he was saying-

‘I go- to make room for you [here on earth]’

Sort of like ‘when I leave- the Spirit will come- and the works that I did- now you will do them’.

He had to leave- so they would grow in their own relationship with God.

In my meeting yesterday I spoke about how we- people- become co-dependent on girlfriends- sponsors- etc.

There must come a time where we move on.

In New Jersey- I met a guy at one of the meetings- don’t remember his name- but we talked a bit.

He told another person next to him ‘I have not only done the 12 steps- but 13’.

Now- he was nice- talking to some friends- The lady asked ‘what do you mean’.

You could tell he was hesitant to sound critical of NA- he must have been in it for around 20 years or so.

He was clean- doing well.

But he said he got a new sponsor a few years ago- and he made him do the steps all over- over a period of years.

He said he didn’t think he needed to- but he had to obey the sponsor- so he spent a few more years- doing something- that he felt was a waste- but if he didn’t do it- he was fearful that he was not obeying the sponsor.

I didn’t say anything- but of course I saw the same danger in this- that I actually had written about years before.

Any movement- or group- that creates this sort of co- dependency - can be dangerous.

So- we talked in our meeting about eventually moving beyond that initial relationship [I think Sponsors are ok- just at the start- maybe even a year- but over time it would be better to move on].

Stephen Covey- in his best seller ‘7 habits of highly effective people’ talked about 3 types- stages- of personal growth.

1- Independent

2- Co-dependent

3- Interdependent

Independent is the mindset of ‘I don’t need anyone else’.

Co-dependent is ‘I can’t live without you’.

Interdependent is ‘I don’t ‘need’ you to survive- to make it- but I see the value of our relationship- and we can go further together- as co-equals- than alone’.

I think that’s the proper view.

I have a friend who is dating a local girl.

Her ex-boyfriend is also my friend.

They are both at the street mission every week.

Then- her ex-husband now shows up [he got out of prison recently].

When she’s there- she has these 3 guys ‘fighting’ over her.

One actually stabbed the other one a few years ago- over this.

My closet friend [out of the 3] said ‘John- she just loves the attention- she wants us to fight over her’.

He was right.

Part of overcoming addictions- is also becoming interdependent.

Recognizing the value of others- but being mature enough to say ‘Brother/sponsor- I know you think I need to do this [whether it’s redoing the steps- over a few years- or whatever] - but I am maturing in this initial relationship- and I’m moving on’.

In my year in AA- I never had a sponsor- But boy was there pressure to get one- almost to the point of ‘we are waiting for you to re-lapse- so you will see your in rebellion’ [I was actually told this by a good friend].

This is a very important aspect- in my view- of becoming a well-rounded person.

Ok- that’s it- see you next week.

NEWS-

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/us/police-shooting-castile-trial-video.html

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/19/533432845/how-could-the-navy-destroyer-collision-happen

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/path-ship-hit-uss-fitzgerald.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/world/middleeast/russia-syria.html

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/19/middleeast/syrian-warplane-shot-down-russia-condemns/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/20/politics/us-syria-shoots-down-pro-regime-drone/index.html

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/19/noncitizen-illegal-vote-number-higher-than-estimat/

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/out-state-interests-spent-26-2-million-georgia-special-election-n774366

www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5?ref=bookmarks

https://ccoutreach87.wordpress.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4GsqTEVWRm0HxQTLsifvg

https://twitter.com/ccoutreach87

https://plus.google.com/108013627259688810902/posts

https://vimeo.com/user37400385

https://www.pinterest.com/ccoutreach87/

https://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=hb_logo

http://johnchiarello.tumblr.com/

https://medium.com/@johnchiarello

http://ccoutreach.over-blog.com/

Note- Please do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on- Thanks- John.#

#bibloe #religion #social justice

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