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anniesannex · 6 months

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You’re so art deco

Chapter two

Description: you are a struggling college student who needs some cash. Your friend suggests a sugar daddy but you wouldn’t do that. Right?

I’m so sorry it took a bit to get up but here’s chapter two! Also sorry abt the 1975 reference I was listening to that song. -A

“WHAT?!” Grace’s jaw dropped as she heard the news. “But I thought you didn’t want a sugar daddy.”

“I was wrong. And I’m sorry.” You heard yet another ping from your laptop.

“Is that him?” Grace looked baffled as you nodded. “What did he say?” As you looked you had seemed to find a mirror selfie. Of Johnny wearing a nice button up shirt and some slacks.

“Goddamn.” You spoke.

“Goddamn is right!” Grace exclaimed. “What do I even do with this information.”

“Please don’t tell anyone I wanna keep this lowkey.” You pleaded with Grace.

“Okay but only because I love you.” Grace started to get ready for bed herself.

“I love you too I’m gonna send him a pic back do I look cute?” You asked as she laughed.

“Yeah, totally.” She smiled as you took the picture. This was probably the happiest she had seen you since you moved in.

“Thank you so much, you’re literally the best!” You were grinning as it sent. “But we should get ready for bed.”

“I know you might be a little wired with this new sugar daddy but I’m ready to go to bed.” Grace laughed.

“Goodnight Gracie.” You pulled the covers up onto your body. “I love you.”

“Night (y/n/n). I love you too.” Grace smiled as you began to shut your eyes and drift off into sleep.

Waking up you checked your computer.

@johnC95: good morning Doll. Hope you have a good day.

@Y/n: good morning Johnny. You too. Luckily I’m off today.

@johnC95: so where do you go to school?

@y/n: UCLA.

@johnC95: oh cool, I’m not that far from there. Would you wanna do like coffee?

@y/n: sure, when would you wanna meet up?

Your heart pounded in your chest. What were you going to wear? How were you going to do your hair? What if he didn’t like you when you guys met up?

@johnC95: I’m kind of booked for the next couple days. Is Saturday okay?

You look at the calendar. Saturday was three days away. You looked to see if you were working as you typed.

@y/n: lemme check my schedule. I should be good though.

As you doubled checked you sighed in relief

“Thank god.” you said to yourself. “I’m off on a Saturday, for once.”

@johnC95: sounds good! I wanna hear your voice again so bad.

@y/n: maybe we can talk later tonight. Btw what’s your number?

@johnC95: oh I’m sorry it’s (xxx)xxx-xxxx.

You type it into your phone putting it under the contact ‘Johnny <3’. As you text the number you feel a strange sensation in you stomach, like it was being tied into knots. Why was it that you were so nervous to text him?

You decide on a quick ‘Hi it’s y/n :).’

‘Hello doll :).’

You sighed as you start to get out of bed.

‘What are you doing today?’

‘I’m not sure I might lounge around my dorm, do some coursework, just try to relax’

‘Fair enough. I really do wanna hear your lovely voice. Or even see that beautiful face (y/n).’

‘Why don’t we talk right now? Even if it isn’t for long.’

‘I’m going to be with my daughter soon and I want to make sure she’s my first priority.’

‘You have a daughter? What’s her name? How old is she?’

‘Her name is Cassie and shes 16.’

‘Okay awesome!’

‘Sorry gtg she’s here!’

You wonder what she was like. You went to your closet pulling out a baby tee that said ‘reading is sexy’ and a pair of low rise jeans. Putting on socks you lace up your black converse. Then putting on music you decided to do your hair and makeup.

“This has to be a little over kill to just go study.” You laughed to yourself as you put on mascara.

“Bitchhhhhh.” Grace yelled as she entered your dorm. “Hot psych guy wasn’t in class today. I wanna cry.”

“I’m sorry dude.” You turned to her with a frown. “Wanna grab coffee with me before I have to go to the library?”

“Sure. The local one though. On campus. It has such better coffee.”

“Obviously, it’s a local coffee shop. They’re always better.” You laughed. “But let’s go.”

You grab your stuff not forgetting your phone and headphones. Grace opened the door back up.

“Nice shirt.” Grace winked as she held the door open.

“Thanks, my friend got it for me.” You winked back. Remembering when you and her got baby tees on the boardwalk. Laughing she led the way to the shop. You held the door open for her as you guys chatted.

“Dude would you love me if I was a worm?” Grace asked, cackling.

“Are you like a talking worm or a regular one?”

“What the fuck?!” She giggled. “A talking worm! It’s so funny, like ‘help (y/n) I got turned into a talking worm!’ That’s so crazy.”

“It’s a hypothetical in a hypothetical!” You chuckled as you guys got up to the counter.

“Iced coffee oatmilk?” grace asked.

“Dude I asked I can’t let you buy it. It’s on me this time.” You tried, knowing she wouldn’t let you.

“No seriously. Dude, I love you and you deserve this.” She smiled. “Two medium iced coffees with oat milk please.”

“Fine you win, but I’m paying next time.”

“Never going to happennnn!” Graced took out her card. “Thank you so much, have a great day.”

You guys sat down and waited for your coffee as you talked about the whole sugar daddy thing.

“I’m nervous to meet him.” You admitted. “Like what if he doesn’t like me?”

“He’s gonna fucking love you!” Grace exclaimed. “Are you kidding me! You’re literally the best!”

“You’re right. I’m being silly.”

“Oh our coffee is ready!” She ran to grab them “I’ll walk you to the library. It’s a sucky walk without a friend.”

“You’re right.” You agreed as you felt your phone buzz.

‘I think can’t wait to hear your voice again.’ You smiled as you type back.

‘That is really sweet. Thank you Johnny.’

‘Cassie is gonna go out with a friend tonight. Should I come up tonight?’

‘Sure.’

“SHIT!” You yelled. “Grace. We need to go back to the dorm.”

“What’s wrong (Y/n)?” she followed you as you took a break neck pace towards your dorm building. “Stop running!”

You only stopped briefly as you texted Johnny.

‘So what were you thinking?’

‘Maybe we do dinner. How’s Italian sound?’

‘Great what time were you thinking?’

‘How abt I pick you up @ 8?’

‘Perfect!’

“WHATS GOING ON?!” Grace yelled out of breath.

“It’s happening tonight.” You stared in awe.

“What?”

“ITS HAPPENING TONIGHT!”

“Oh-then lets go!” You both started running again. As you reached your dorm you both hastily got inside. “What are you thinking about wearing? Where is it? How long until he picks you up? “

“We’re doing Italian, he’s picking me up at eight and I have no fucking clue!”

“I have an idea how about that black and pink floral dress with kitten heels, my viviennes, that heart pendant and pink floral clutch?”

“You are literally a life saver! And how about a y2k claw clip half up-half down look for my hair?!”

“Let’s do this.” You laughed as Grace pulled out the outfit while you hopped into the shower. As you showered you thought about Johnny and that feeling came back. You cursed those damned butterflies as you calmed yourself down.

Making sure that you were properly cleaned you popped on some of the 1975.

“I like my men like I like my coffee, full of soy milk and so sweet, it won’t offend anybody.” You sang as you put your makeup on and danced around your bathroom.

“Dude I love that song!” Grace yelled out as she pulled you out of the bathroom.

“You’re lucky I was done.” You feigned a serious look. Before cracking up.

“I’m gonna help you get ready.” You stepped into the dress as she checked your messages with Johnny.

“He said ‘I can’t wait to see how gorgeous you look when I come pick you up, doll. And you sent me the right building?’’

“Text him back ‘awww Johnny, you’re too sweet. And yes I did.’”

“Okay and sent!” Grace watched as you put in the earrings. “Don’t forget the pink claw clip! It’ll match better!”

“Thank you grace!” You fixed up your hair and did final touches to your makeup.

“Wow, (y/n/n). If Johnny doesn’t like you, I’ll be your sugar daddy.”

“Gracie!”

You heard the buzzer to be buzzed into your dorm. Looking at your phone you saw his text.

‘I’m here.’

‘Okay buzzing you up!’ As you did so. Soon enough you heard a knock at your door. Letting him in you saw that he was even more gorgeous than on the screen. His perfectly quaffed hair was about to be in silver fox territory as he had evidence of smile lines beginning to form at his eyes. He was tall and muscular. As you could see from the curves of his suit.

“You look- wow.” He stared, face full of awe.

“Thank you Johnny. You look good too.” You smiled, catching a glance at what was in his hand. “What are those?”

“Oh-” his trance had been broken, as he held them out for you. “These are for you.”

“Thank you so much! They’re beautiful!” You took the bouquet.

#johnny cage x reader #mortal kombat #youre so art deco #johnny cage smut #johnny cage #sugar daddy! johnny cage #chapter two

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xelmokidx · 4 months

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Nicknames

Mid90’s x gn or fem!reader / slight Fuckshit x gn!reader

Reader wanted a nickname, so the boys tried to come up with one. It sucked + readers' first time meeting the boys.

Warnings!!: two mentions of fem pronouns sorta. Just fluff:D

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Spike Psyche. That's my nickname. Out of all the things my friends could have nick-named me. Spike Psyche.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I say, appalled. Fuckshit nods, swigging back his Coke.

“Yup.” he replies as Sunburn (aka stevie) giggles at the name.“Why?” I exclaim in disbelief.

Ray chuckles at the nickname before muttering

“Thats fucked up” Fuckshit opens his stupid mouth again. “Because all you talk about Is chopping off our heads and putting them on spikes, and how you want to kill yourself after every minor inconvenience.” I gasp, putting my hand over my chest dramatically. “I do not!”

Ruben shakes his head. “Yes, you do.”

FourthGrade chuckles behind his camera and I glare at him. He sinks down into the couch. “I do not talk about killing myself that much guys, if anything Ruben does more than me!” Ruben whips his head around to look at me. “Man, fuck you” He starts “I do not talk about that depressed shit.” I shake my head. “Y’all are trippin’” I look around the shop and see some customers listening in on our conversation. “I will not let yall call me that dumbass name, I like Y/N so much better”

Fourth grade finally chimes in. “But last week you said you hated your basic name and you wanted a nickname.” Bless his innocent soul. “Well I take it back, i am not answering to ‘Spike Psyche’” I sink into the couch with a pout. “Well fine ma, we’ll find you a “good nickname” Fuckshit reasons. I nod. We sit in silence as Ray gets up to help the customer. I look around the shop.

New posters of artists I like are on the walls. Fuckshit insisted on making the space mine as well as theirs. All I heard was ‘we need new decorations and you have good taste in music’ I didn't really mind though. I've always wanted to add my own little spice into the skate shop ever since I first stepped foot in it. I think back a couple years.

I was 13. I wanted a new board for my birthday. So, my dad took me to the nearest shop. Four boys sat on a couch near a wall, watching MTV on their small TV. The tall one noticed us first. He nudged the golden haired boy to his left, who then looked up at me. “Oh shit” he muttered under his breath. My dad frowned. I guess he caught that. “Hey, welcome to Motorz, how can I help y'all today?” he asked, clearly trying to impress my dad (on account of my dads business attire).

My dad spoke for me while I hid behind him in fear. I was never good with new people. Especially ones I found cool.

As my dad pressed questions like ‘How old even are you?’ and ‘fuckshits your name?’ I only found the kid cooler. How did you even wind up with a name like Fuckshit?

Soon enough, my own personal skateboard was in my hands, and my dad was dragging me out of the shop despite my wanting to stay. As I looked behind me to the boys, and the supposed fuckshit was waving to me out the door. With my other free hand I waved back. He smiled a soft smile, and then walked back into the shop yelling “that chick was hot!” I smiled to myself the whole way home. I went back to the shop after school one day to see fuckshit again, and just stayed there for three years. My dad warmed up to fuckshit eventually, but still has some grudges against him.

And I'm still in love with the stupid kid, even though he gets on my nerves almost every day.

I look at fuckshit now. His hair is longer, yet less taken care of and frizzy. He has more scars from skateboarding. And his eyes look even more green against his tan olive skin. Suddenly, he speaks. “I got it!” I roll my eyes and mutter “what is it?” He smirks and walks over to me slightly slotting his legs between mine. “Your new nickname is Stalker, because you're always staring at me” The boys erupt in laughter. I gasp “fuck you”

“You wish ma,”

#Fuckshit x reader #mid 90s #olan prenatt #fanfiction #Ryder McLaughlin #Mid90s x reader #X reader

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dailyniallnews · 8 months

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Interview with Niall Horan, ex frontman of One Direction

If the global success with One Direction is now far behind, the fortune that Niall Horan is enjoying as a solo artists is very current. His third album was just released. Emblematic title: The Show, and the show could not get better than this. Article by Leonardo Clausi

Precisely because this is the new age of anxiety (from the title of the poem by W. H. Auden The Age of Anxiety, 1947, and from Symphony n. 2 by Leonard Bernstein inspired by it, 1949), Public Health around the world should prescribe listening to Niall Horan. As anti-anxiety medicine, tonic for the psyche, emotionally restorative medicine. Really, who else in the modern soft rock world is as capable of tuning in for ten tracks on an equally balmy wavelength, without ever straying into drama or comedy, as Horan does on The Show, third album since he went solo after the dissolution of One Direction, the (boy)band who competed with the Beatles in music sales? Not even the much more wanted colleague Harry Styles, with his unapologetic Bowie-ism that annoyed Tony Visconti so much.

30-year-old Horan doesn't have the same ambitions. We could easily ask him to go and pick out our daughter from school because he is so.. fragrant? Since 2016 - without stopping except from when forced by the pandemic - he's been writing music and bringing it on tour. A constant motion of three albums, the feverish craftsmanship of a diligent entertainer devoted to the career that he was raised in thanks to the shortcut, sometimes a brutal one, with which talent shows have short-circuited the discography and industry of A&R (Artists and Repertoire). We intercept him as he drives, always busy as a bee. "I just came back from America yesterday. Today I am in Liverpool. It's constant travelling, I spend most of my time jetlagged". He is understandably satisfied with his latest discographic effort, which will become the center of the homonymous The Show Live on Tour, with the Italian stop on 21st March 2024 at the Mediolanum Forum in Milan: "I spent a lot of time writing and producing it during the pandemic and the year after. I’m happy, the response has been very, very interesting around the world". Not surprising, considering the melodic quality of the tracks, touched by the Californian light of the Laurel Canyon, with vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys, and references to the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. "I trusted that I could write a song. I knew I had the ability to do it. I just needed to trust that I could get a guitar, or sit at a piano, and something good would come out of it. It's out, but you never know. I need to keep my head down, work hard and see".

The 70s were his first introduction to music through records (or vinyls, as hipsters say), which were floating around the house; the real love however started "when I realised how lucky I was to have grown up with music that stayed with me to this day. My parents had a large album collection. I still listen to a lot of them now. When I’m in the studio I often use analogue mixing desks, it’s an important part of the sound I’m looking for". Speaking of the search for the 'organic' sound that digital audio is not able to embody all the way, what does he think of artificial intelligence, now that creators in the entertainment industry are taking the streets as well to protest against forcibly becoming obsolete? "Artificial intelligence can really do a lot, but it can’t give you that feeling that I call the human touch. It couldn’t write 'Hey Jude' or any other masterpiece. Humans will always have the upper hand".

Horan's Irishness is a prominent element of his personality, that proud affability that made his country a cultural superpower despite its size. And that was worth the warm reception of none other than the POTUS, who is also a descendent of the Celtic diaspora. "For how small the nation is, the relevance we have worldwide is amazing. Only five million inhabitants, and yet our culture of drinking, night life, musical or literary traditions are known everywhere. It's something I always keep in mind and want to show off as much as possible. And yes, I was invited at Washington to meet Joe Biden". Understandably, the fact excites him: "It was crazy that someone from a small town like mine (Mullingar, northwest of Ireland, ed.) ended up playing for the President of the United States at the White House. I still can't believe it". Not to mention the fact that, from a particularly bigot and conservative society that it once was, Ireland is now one of the most advanced and liberal ones of the West. "I'm not sure how it happened, but I am very proud of it. It was great to see it become one of the first countries to have gay marriage, for example. And I’m proud that it’s acting as a catalyst for change in other countries".

And does he know U2, this compatriot up and coming group? Would he collaborate with them? "Some of my all time favourite songs are by U2, their shows are some of the best I’ve ever been to. It would be great to do something with them if they ever ask". Coming from one of the best selling bands meant that there was a challenging precedent to compete with. But Niall Horan is doing great. It's impossible to refrain from asking about a 1D reunion. "It’s a busy time for everyone, so no, not that I know of. We keep in touch but everyone’s doing their own thing. Louis is touring in America, Liam is working on his music, Harry’s busy on the biggest world tour... In fact, if you hear about a reunion, please let me know".

#niall horan #article #icon magazine #19sep23

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studentbyday · 3 months

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30 days of intentionality

starting this challenge with the goal of taking it one day at a time. i have a hard time doing that these days. i spend more time ruminating on the past or worrying about the future than staying in the present, even if that's when i'm most content. not sure how i'll format my posts and most likely, i'll only do weekly updates bc daily ones are too overwhelming. i'll just go with the flow, trying to trust that everything will end up as it's meant to be and maybe i'll be more productive as focusing primarily on the present moment becomes a habit.

---

1. suo gân (arr. john williams for the ambrosian junior choir): i believe that if everyone lived by the idea of global citizenship and so saw the humanity in every individual from every background, there would be no war. reading the news fills me with fear, sorrow, and anxiety, but i also feel the responsibility to stay informed. did some studying today, more than yesterday, but it was kind of uncomfortable with the state of global politics lurking in the back of my mind. i'm still a little behind on school.

2. souvenir de paganini (chopin): today is not so bad. i'm making progress academically, but i do need to make time for social activities soon or i will get lonely and lose what little motivation i have very quickly.

3. once upon a december (arr. emile pandolfi): sometimes in the face of events and issues much bigger than myself that i have no control over, i feel like my dreams are pointless bc i think there's no way achieving them or trying to achieve them could possibly empower me to make real and important change that can truly benefit many. who knows if the future would even allow me to get that far. there are many things that could change the course of our lives that we don't have control over. but if others in worse situations than me and others much better informed than me can still have hope, then so can i. i didn't do much other than pharmacology and a little bit of philosophy today. i made more progress in pharmacology than expected, but that's only bc i didn't do any psych work. i also earned a few more mastery points on khan academy's integrated math 1 (not a priority, i know, but i wanted an easy win) and started lab tasks. i'm far from done with that, i need to do a little every day... i don't want to let them down! 🥺 (note to self: lying in bed is maybe NOT a good study break activity bc that just makes me not wanna do anything else after that and it's very very very hard to get out of that procrastination rut once i let myself fall into it.) 4. let's stay together (al green): everything should be going well, except i'm easily overwhelmed, and this time, it wasn't in an openly frazzled way, it was in a tired and slightly defeated "what's the point?" way, so i didn't realize it as quickly as i usually do. after some bed rest, cuddles 🧸, listening to steve jobs' commencement speech, and a little yoga, i felt better. "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." was something i didn't know i needed to hear today. i modified my to-do list and found that the list of things i "must do" was nearly as long as the list of things i "want to do" 😅

5. kreutzer sonata, movt. 1 (beethoven): pretty sure i've mentioned some of these songs before but...they really fit the mood! sometimes i feel things so strongly that i develop a tightening in my chest that can only be relieved in a scream... since i can't actually scream and i don't actually really like the physical feeling of it, i scream through exercise and music 😅 beethoven is very nice for when i'm feeling very annoyed or angry, especially if it's an anxious kind of angry or if it's anger at injustice/inequality. i can't find a piano solo version that does the fiery spirit of the violin justice. so in the vague future when i actually play this, either i try (and perhaps fail) to replicate that on the piano, or i find a violinist friend who would want to play with me 😅 right now though, imagining how i would physically create that sound on the piano will have to be enough. the prevailing thought/feeling of the day: sometimes i just really wanna believe in the good in people and believe that i can trust (some of) them. i long for that feeling of safety in a broader irl community that i actually belong in. i'm surprised by how often i long for it. but then my negativity is reinforced by news and people's opinions on it.

6. violin sonata no. 1 in g minor, bwv 1001 (j.s. bach): stuff was done. i felt calm/chill throughout the day, but even tho i feel good whenever that happens, it usually means i don't get an extraordinary amount of things done that day (lol since when do i ever). i'm not sure if it's enough, as there is still lots to do and i'm pretty sure that it's just wishful thinking that i'll achieve all my goals for this week by its end. i need to cut down my goals list to the realistic rather than idealistic version as always (school, lab, and basic self-maintenance tasks) 😅 gaawwwdd i hope i can do this...good night.

7. waltz in a minor, b. 150 (chopin): today and yesterday i have been able to keep my phone time under an hour. the days are blissful (if not at least calmer) and focused. 📚

8. only mine (laufey): cuddles in bed while listening to laufey is so soothing 🧸 takes me back to my childhood listening to lullabies in the dark 🥺 motivation to study is hard to find today. i just want to relax 🥺 i'll just do one tiny thing and see where i wanna go from there...

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zzzzzestforlife · 5 months

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day 22 of 30 // there's way too much to do 😵‍💫

난 다시 피곤해, 여러분, 근데 그라도 할게. 계속 가세요! 좋은날 합시다!

(I'm tired again, guys, but still, I'll do it. Keep going! Let's have a good day!)

today's accomplishments 💯

🙊 useful Korean expressions video

🙊 CYZJ

🧠 aced psych quizzes (2x)

🥰 physiotherapy exercises (morning set)

🥰 arm workout (~3m song)

🙊 Japanese lesson (2x)

🙊 Exclusive Fairytale clip

🙊 Chinese lesson

🙊 Korean lesson

🥰 rowing (~4m song)

🧠 Cognitive Psych lab + assignment

🧠 read for Cognitive Psych

📚 read The Housekeepers (focus time: 30m)

🥰 physiotherapy exercises (evening set)

❤️ 금일일기 (today's diary) under the cut if you're interested ☺️ have a lovely day 🌷

한국어로 쓰다 ✍️

new words/forgotten(?) words/new usage

어제 밤에, 난 조금 실픔 왜냐면 가까은 사람이 항상 내 한국 음악 선택 반대해. 이 음악은 내 동기 와 행벅입니다 근데 그는 항상 말해 반대해. 그라도, 난 내 기뻐은 음악은 들어요. 막아은 사람들 없어요! 🎶🎵

(Last night, I felt a little sad because someone close to me is always against my choices of Korean music. This music is my motivation and happiness, but they are always vocalizing their negative opinion [ok, i might have gotten a bit creative with that translation, but bear with me]. Still, I listen to my happy music. No one will stop me! 🎶🎵)

오늘 와 매일, 난 내 가족은 진짜 너무 감사합니다, 특히 내 부모님. 그들은 나에게 다것 주세요. 그들이 없다면, 난 것은 없어. 난 그들은 잘 더 부탁해 싶어요.

(Today and everyday, I'm really very thankful to my family, especially my parents. They give me everything. Without them, I don't have anything. I want to take care of them more.)

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tht0nesimp · 9 months

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Cold- Yan!Feitan

tw: Mentions of torture, feitan is a warning in himself, you really like peaches

This wasn’t fair. But then again, life isn’t fair? Is it? You questioned for the millionth time as your arms laid limp in the metal chains holding them just a bit too far up to the ceiling to be comfortable

When you’d first gotten here, prayers and promises were all that could pass through your already fragile mind struggling to believe that this experience is truly real. But alas, no matter how hard you screamed, pinched, or cried, the reality of your Situation never changed

you were still hanging by your wrists just barely above the cold concrete floor instead of being on your couch listening to music or poems or sleeping, doing anything that Didn’t cause as much pain, Albeit the only thing that kept you from thinking this was the worst possible outcome was the bloody screams coming faintly from the other side of the small area you were in, the only thing keeping you from the rest of the concrete basement was a few thick dividers somewhat resembling what you would see dividing patients at a hospital

there was a small cot next to you with a thin blanket on it, worn out and as much as you would love to lay down on it, it looks like it’s barely 10 pounds from falling in on itself. The only other thing with you in this small corner of the-Barely-closed off room was a rusted sink covered in all sorts of liquids as well as unidentifiable stains

He rarely talked to you, he either came to hurt you to watch you (Sometimes the latter), More than likely a cruel tactic to break down your “tough” psyche which hadn’t quite crumbled down on itself yet. He was asking someone questions, the screams were somewhat faint to your delight as it Meant you wouldn’t have to hear the man plead for his life today

The noises eventually come to a stop, And footsteps slowly make stop infront of the divider. His shoes visible for a moment before the divider moves and suddenly your body hits the freezing grey floor

“Up.” He speaks with slight annoyance, adrenaline seemed to let your tired legs shakily stand. “Hm” he stared at the cot and held his hand out for a moment, doing something you couldn’t see, “Lay down” he points to the cot and seems rather pleased that you wearily lay on it

It doesn’t collapse but it creaks “I’ll get a new one tomorrow” his monotone voice barely reaches you “Thank you” the feeling of laying down even if it was just with a thin blanket was refreshing beyond belief. “Don’t try anything, or you’ll get to see first hand what happens” He warns

“Yes sir” the words come out dry from days without water or food “It’s feitan” he moves the divider quickly and suddenly hes gone. It takes a few hours for you to even be able to get up and stretch your legs, you approach the old sink attached to the wall at the bottom of the cot-The thought would have made you sick before this last week or so but it barely even made your mind in the desperate mood you were in

you put your hand under the weak stream of water trickling from the leaky faucet, taking a gulp of the cold water was pure bliss. After a few more rabid gulps you were able to turn off the sink before sitting back down on the cot

you were so focused on the water that you neglected to realize feitan stood behind you, watching the animalistic behavior with a surprised look hiding behind his cowl. You immediately look down in slight shame, mixed with fear of how he might react

“hmm, thirsty, huh?” He teased while looking at the sink for a moment “Uh…yeah” your voice comes out weaker than you hoped it would “I might replace the sink eventually” if you were delusional than you might have actually believed him

You spared him your seeming belief in the form of a thin smile, your mind much more worried about how your going to get out of this hellhole. Feitan stared for what felt like an eternity before he walks away once more into the surrounding room- The only difference was that the divider was not returned to its closed off form and instead is open

You clumsily stumbled out, Looking around the rest of the room, There was someone shaking in the corner as if they were freezing but you ran past them and towards the wooden steps that creaked when you ran up them to reach the upstairs of his house. Your greeted by feitan sitting at a table next to a small kitchen, on the other side of the table is a living room with a small old couch sitting facing a small TV

“Brave one…” he mutters just loud enough for you to hear from the top step, the dusty glass goor closed behind you as your feet meet the near freezing wooden floors of the dining room. “Sit, Hungry?” He calmly asks with a slight hint of pity at seeing your shaky steps towards the chair across from him

“Yeah…” you look down at your lap but it just makes him chuckle and get up, placing a peach in front of you with surprising gentleness. “Thank you” it takes all of your effort not to immediately sink your teeth into the soft fruit in-front of you until he sits down across from you, the little self control you managed to uphold tore to pieces when you looked down at the fruit again

It wasn’t peach season, but the thought barely crossed your mind as the fruit was gone in mere seconds. Feitan laughed at the once more ravenous behavior in a way that made your cheeks light up pink from shame

“Your as pink as the peach was” he mumbles before throwing the pit in the trash without even looking, watching the slight amazement on your face with pride.

He propped his elbows up on the table and held his head in his hand “I’m gonna ask you questions, your gonna answer honestly” out of some small confidence you had the curiosity to ask “If I don’t?” feitan sighs and his eyes narrow at you

“then you can say goodbye to the cot, for a long,long, time”

#Yandere feitan #brainrot #yandere male #Yandere hxh #Yandere Hunterxhunter #fandom #Hxh brainrot #Yandere HxH blog #yandere blog #yandere scenarios #I kinda like it #CandiesActualFics #Yan!

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Transcript Episode 88: No such thing as the oldest language

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘No such thing as the oldest language. 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 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about old languages. But first, our most recent bonus episode was deleted scenes with three of our interviews from this year.

Gretchen: We had deleted scenes from our liveshow Q&A with Kirby Conrod about language and gender. We talked about reflexive pronouns, multiple pronouns in fiction, and talking about people who use multiple pronoun sets.

Lauren: We also have an excerpt from our interview with Itxaso Rodríguez-Ordóñez about Basque because it’s famous among linguists for having ergativity.

Gretchen: We wanted to know “What do Basque people themselves think about ergativity?” It turns out, there are jokes and cartoons about it, which Itxaso was able to share with us.

Lauren: Amazing and charming.

Gretchen: Finally, we have an excerpt from my conversation with authors Ada Palmer and Jo Walton about swearing in science fiction and fantasy. This excerpt talks about acronyms both of the swear-y and non-swear-y kind.

Lauren: You can get this bonus episode as well as a whole bunch more at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: Also, yeah, maybe this is a good time to remember that we have over 80 bonus episodes.

Lauren: We have bonus episodes about the time a researcher smuggled a bunny into a classroom to do linguistics on children.

Gretchen: We also have a bonus episode about “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” and more phrases that contain all the letters of the alphabet – plus, what people do with phrases like this in languages that don’t have alphabets.

Lauren: We also have an entire bonus episode that’s just about the linguistics of numbers.

Gretchen: If you wish you had more lingthusiasm episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help us keep making this podcast long into the future, we really appreciate everyone who becomes a patron.

Lauren: You can find all of that at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: Hey, Lauren, I’ve got big news.

Lauren: Yeah?

Gretchen: Did you know I’m from the oldest family lineage in the world?

Lauren: Wow! You sound like you are part of some prestigious, ancient, royal – I can only assume royal with that level of knowledge about your family lineage.

Gretchen: Well, you know, I have some family members who are really into genealogy. I’ve been looking at some family trees. And I have come to the conclusion that my family is the oldest family in the world.

Lauren: You know, I have grandparents, and they have grandparents, and I assume they had grandparents, and I guess my family goes all the way back as well. We didn’t come out of nowhere. I might not know all their names. I don’t think we were ever rulers of any nation state as far as I’m aware. But I dunno if you are from the oldest family lineage because I think everyone is.

Gretchen: Well, this is not a mutually exclusive statement. I can be from the oldest family lineage, and you can be from the oldest family lineage, and everyone listening to this podcast can be all from the oldest family lineage in the world because we’re all descended from the earliest humans.

Lauren: This is a good point.

Gretchen: Psych!

Lauren: I think it’s definitely worth remembering the difference between the very fact that we are all from the same humans – and the difference between that and knowing names of specific individuals back to a certain point.

Gretchen: I should clarify – I am not royalty. I do not actually know the names all the way back because at a certain point writing stops existing and, at some point before that, people stopped recording my ancestors. I don’t know when it stops.

Lauren: But there’s definitely a tradition in certain royal families and stuff of being able to claim that you can trace your family back to, you know, maybe –

Gretchen: Like Apollo or something.

Lauren: Oh, gosh, like, mythical characters, okay. I was thinking of just tracing them back a thousand years, but I guess –

Gretchen: Tracing them back to Adam and Eve or tracing them back to Helen of Troy or Apollo or these sorts of things. I feel like – at least I’ve heard of this. I think that talking about human ancestral lineages helps us make sense of the types of claims that people also make about languages being the oldest language.

Lauren: I feel like I’ve heard this before – different languages making claim to being the oldest language.

Gretchen: I’ve heard it quite a lot. I did a bit of research, and I looked up a list of some languages that people have claimed to be the oldest.

Lauren: Okay, what did you find?

Gretchen: A lot of things that can’t all be true at the same time.

Lauren: Or can all be true because all languages are descended from some early human capacity for human language.

Gretchen: Right. There’s different geographical hot spots, you know, people making claims about Egyptian, about Sanskrit, Greek, Chinese, Aramaic, Farsi, Tamil, Korean, Basque – speaking of Basque episodes. Sometimes, people look at reconstructed languages like Proto-Indo-European, which is, you know, the old thing that the modern-day Indo-European Languages are descended from. But part of the issue here is that, at least for spoken languages – and we’re gonna get to sign languages – but at least for spoken languages, babies can’t raise themselves.

Lauren: Unfortunately, I, personally, have to say after the last few years.

Gretchen: Deeply inconveniently –

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: – for adult sleep schedules. If you have a baby with typical hearing, and they’re being raised in a community or even by one person, they’re gonna acquire language from the people that are raising it.

Lauren: Absolutely – in much the same way we all have people giving us genetic input, we also have people giving us linguistic input and continuing on that transmission of human language.

Gretchen: Exactly. When the languages claim to be “old,” that’s often more of a political claim or a religious claim or a heritage claim than it is a linguistic claim because we think that languages probably have a common ancestor. Certainly, all languages are learnable by all humans. If you raise a baby in a given environment, they’ll grow up with the language that’s around them. The human capacity for language seems to be common across all of us. We just don’t know what that tens-of-thousands-year-old early language looked like.

Lauren: In much the same way we lose track of earlier ancestors when we get earlier than written records. We talked about this in the reconstructing old languages episode that there’s just a point where you can’t go back further because there’s just not enough information to say exactly how Proto-Indo-European might have, at some earlier point, been related to, say, the Sino-Tibetan languages or the Niger-Congo family.

Gretchen: Right. We also talked about this in the writing systems episode where writing systems had been invented about 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 years ago, but human language probably emerged sometime between 50,000 and 150,000 years ago, which is so much older. That’s 10-times-to-30-times older than that. We don’t know because sounds and signs leave impressions on the air waves that vanish very quickly and don’t leave fossils until writing starts being developed much later.

Lauren: Very inconvenient.

Gretchen: Absolutely the first thing I would do with a time machine.

Lauren: All of those languages that you mentioned as people laying claim to them being the oldest, they come from all kinds of different language families. Although, I have to say, a very Indo-European, Western skew there, which probably reflects the corners of the internet that you have access to.

Gretchen: This reflects the people that are making claims like this on the English-speaking internet that I’m looking at and the modern-day nation states and religious traditions and cultural traditions that are making claims to certain types of legitimacy via having access to old texts or having access to uninterrupted transmission of stories and legends and mythologies that give them those sorts of claims. There’s no reason to think that a whole bunch of languages on the North and South American continents are not also equally old as all the other languages, but people aren’t doing nation state building with them, and so they don’t tend to show up on those lists.

Lauren: Yeah. A lot of nation state building, a lot of religion happening there as well. I think about how yoga is – I love a bit of yoga, and I think it’s really lovely that all the yoga terms are still given to you in this older Sanskritic language, but it definitely is done sometimes with this claim to legitimacy and prestige in the same way that having something in Latin for the Catholic Church gives that same kind of vibe.

Gretchen: I think about this scene from the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding where you have the daughter, who’s the one that’s getting married. She’s in the car as a teen with her parents. It’s this scene where the parents are being a bit cringe-y in the way that teens often experience their parents to be. The dad is saying, “Name a word. I will tell you how it comes from Greek,” because he’s got this big Greek pride thing going.

Lauren: This a classic Greek-American migrant pride happening.

Gretchen: Right. He says, “arachnophobia,” and he’s explaining how the roots come from Greek, and that one’s true. Then the daughter’s friend, who’s in the back seat, is rolling her eyes and saying, “Well, what about ‘kimono’?”

Lauren: Ah, “kimono” the Japanese robe?

Gretchen: Yes. The Dad’s like, “Oh, no, it’s from Greek. Here’s this connection that I have found.”

Lauren: I like his linguistic ad-libbing skills.

Gretchen: It’s certainly a great improvisational performance skill. The movie is clearly designed to put the viewer in sympathy with the young girls in the back seat who are teasing him, and the daughter’s face-palming at this claim, which is one of the reasons why it’s one of my favourite examples of people making up fake etymologies in media because you don’t leave the movie thinking, “Oh, I never realised ‘kimono’ was from Greek.” You leave that movie being like, “Ah, here’s this dad who has over-exaggerated pride in his heritage that doesn’t allow for other people’s heritage to also have words that come from them.” It’s a claim that he's making for personal reasons and for heritage reasons that doesn’t have linguistic founding, but none of these claims have linguistic founding.

Lauren: The dad has come kind of close to a linguistic truth though, which is that linguists talk about languages having features that can be either conservative or innovative. Modern Greek has a lot of the same sound features as Ancient Greek, which is probably helped by that consistent writing system. A writing system definitely helps transmission stay stable because you can point back to older texts. English has probably slowed down a lot in its change because of the writing system as well.

Gretchen: Genuinely, English has borrowed a lot of words from Greek – as well as a lot of other languages that are not Greek. This gets to both Greek and Sanskrit and Chinese having these eras that are talked about as “classical” or as “old,” which is an era that the present-day people, or some slightly earlier group of people, looked back on and thought, “Yeah, those people were doing some cool stuff. We’re gonna call it ‘classical’ because we liked it in history.”

Lauren: I do love the idea that Chaucer had no idea that he was moving on from Old English to Middle English because there wasn’t a Modern English yet.

Gretchen: How could you describe yourself as “Middle English” – that’s sort of like the “late-stage capitalism” that implies that we’re towards the end of something. Like, we don’t know, folks.

Lauren: I don’t think English always does self-deprecating well. English has a lot of belief in its superiority as a language. I think we can say that about the ideology behind English. But I do love that English didn’t go for “Classical English.” Imagine if we said Beowulf was written in “Classical English.”

Gretchen: We could have, yeah. We could have.

Lauren: We just went with, “Ah, that’s old. I don’t understand it. It’s got cases. It’s got all these extra affixes. It’s old. It’s a bit stuffy.”

Gretchen: That may have been because they were comparing it already to Classical Latin and Classical Greek, which was even more antique. The English speakers were looking elsewhere for their golden age. I don’t think people often claim that English is the oldest language because English speakers are seeing the history of their society located in this Greco-Latin tradition.

Lauren: Yeah, I think that’s a good explanation for it. I do wonder if maybe the attitude that we now have towards Shakespearean English, if maybe that will become “Classical English” when we’re a bit further on, and Shakespeare becomes even less accessible.

Gretchen: Right. And if Shakespeare becomes the text that everyone is referring to because it’s this quote-unquote “classic” text but calling something a “classical era” reflects on the subsequent era and what they thought about the older one more so than the era itself.

Lauren: Having this ability to distinguish between an “old” or a “classical” and a “modern” version of a language requires that writing tradition, whereas the majority of human languages, for the majority of human history, have happily existed and transmitted knowledge without a writing system. These writing systems make us very focused on pinning down. I super appreciate the website Glottolog, which catalogues languages and all the names they’re known by. We have a lot of languages that are “classical,” like “Classical Chinese” or “Classical Quechua.” We have some “early” – so “Early Irish.”

Gretchen: I think I’ve also heard of “Old Irish.”

Lauren: We have “Old Chinese” and “Old Japanese” in Glottolog, but I’ve definitely also heard them referred to as “classical,” so slightly different vibes there. Of course, you have things like “Ancient Hebrew,” which, older than old, very prestigious. I particularly like the precision with which some names get given to different languages over time. Glottolog has an “Old Modern Welsh,” which is nice and specific. I particularly appreciate the “Imperial-Middle-Modern Aramaic.”

Gretchen: “Imperial-Middle-Modern Aramaic.” That also gets to languages being named and being spread through empire and conquest and wars, which is also part of that historical tradition that people look back to.

Lauren: For sure. That’s part of the narrative building around languages. A lot of what is maintained about a language is religious documents or documents of imperial rule. That means that that imperial form might have been a particular register. Imagine if all that we had about English was the tax forms that we have.

Gretchen: Oh, god, that would be really boring.

Lauren: You would have a very different idea of what English is compared to how it’s spoken day-to-day. That’s what makes this understanding of old languages just from a written record really challenging.

Gretchen: When I think about trying to understand the history of languages just from the written record, I’m reminded of this classic joke – I dunno if you’ve heard this one – where you’re walking down the street one night, and you see someone standing under a streetlight looking at their feet and trying to search for something. You go, “Oh, what are you looking for?” And the person says, “Oh, my contact lens. It fell out. I’m trying to find it.” And you say, “Oh, did you lose it under the streetlight?” And the person goes, “No, I lost it a block over that way, but there’s no streetlight there, so it’s much easier to search here.”

Lauren: [Laughs] Hmm.

Gretchen: I guess this is a joke that doesn’t work so well now that everyone has phones with flashlights on them, and contact lenses have improved their technology and don’t pop out spontaneously like that. But when we’re looking for the history of language, it’s like looking under the streetlight because that’s where it’s easy to look. It’s not actually doing a random sample of all of the bits of history – many of which are just lost to us.

Lauren: Indeed. I like thinking about the imperial languages and the classical languages because sometimes we do get written records that help give us a glimpse into just how ordinary people were going about living their lives.

Gretchen: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, can we talk about the clay tablet?

Lauren: We can absolutely talk about the clay tablet that I know what you mean because you’re talking about the complaint to Ea-nāṣir, which is a clay tablet that’s written in Akkadian cuneiform. It’s considered to be the world’s oldest known written complaint.

Gretchen: This is from a customer named Nanni who’s complaining about the quality of the copper ingots that was received.

Lauren: The thing that I love about this is that there is this complaint, but also, they’re pretty sure they found Ea-nāṣir’s house because there are other complaints about the quality of the copper in this residence.

Gretchen: We really think we know who’s at fault here.

Lauren: Yeah. It seems like he was just a provider of adequate quality copper, and people really needed to go to a better place to get a better quality of copper.

Gretchen: Cuneiform is also this interesting example of searching under the streetlight for the contact lens because the language Sumerian was written in cuneiform, and then later, Akkadian, which is a Semitic language related to modern-day Arabic and Hebrew, and Hittite, which is an Indo-European language related to English and Sanskrit and a bunch of other languages. They were all using this system of stamping the ends of reeds in these pointy triangle shapes onto clay blocks. Do you know what happens to clay blocks when they’re in a house, and the house burns down?

Lauren: They just get fired and made more resilient.

Gretchen: They get made incredibly durable. If people were writing on parchment or in textiles – like in fabrics or cords or strings or on leather or wood – most of those don’t get preserved the same way because you expose them to water, and they start rotting.

Lauren: And they don’t do great with fire.

Gretchen: They really don’t do great with fire. Animals will eat them. Clay has none of these problems. We don’t even know if we know what all of the ancient writing systems are because the ones that have survived are the ones on clay or stone.

Lauren: I was so charmed when I learnt about Latin curse tablets, which are very similar to the complaints to Ea-nāṣir. These are small bits of lead that people could scratch a curse or a wish onto, and then they would throw them into some kind of sacred water. They found, like, 130 of these at Bath in Britian, but they appear to have popped up all over the Roman Empire. It’s just like these tiny insights into the pettiness of humanity as opposed to the great works of literature, or we’ve talked about how the Rosetta Stone was in these three official languages and was all about a declaration about taxation.

Gretchen: But instead, you can have “This curse is on Gaius because he stole my dog” sort of thing.

Lauren: “I have given to the goddess Sulis the six silver coins which I have lost. It is for the goddess to extract them from the names written below” – and then just lists people who owe this person cash.

Gretchen: That’s petty. I like it.

Lauren: Yeah, so annoyed.

Gretchen: I actually read a romance novel called Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall, which was set in Bath and used the ancient Bath curse tablets as a plot point.

Lauren: So charming.

Gretchen: If anyone wants to read curse tablets and also “romantasy” I think is what we’re calling the genre now.

Lauren: I feel like Jane Austen would’ve included curse tablets if she knew about them.

Gretchen: I think she was no stranger to pettiness. It’s very convenient that they wrote their curses on lead tablets, which is such an incredibly durable format. Imagine if they’d written them on cloth, and then we’d never have them for posterity.

Lauren: I feel sad for all the human pettiness that we’ve lost access to.

Gretchen: Two other old writing systems that we have access to because of the durability of the materials they were written on are oracle bone script, which is the ancestor to Chinese – another writing system that we think developed from scratch because we can see it developing thousands of years ago.

Lauren: Oracle bones written on I believe turtle bones and turtle shells.

Gretchen: Yes, hence the “bone” part – also very durable material and also used for religious purposes.

Lauren: My sympathy and thanks to the turtles.

Gretchen: Indeed. Then the early Mesoamerican writing systems, of which the oldest one is the Olmec writing system, which were written on ceramics. They show representations of drawings of things that look like a codex-shaped book made out of bark which, obviously, we don’t have. We just have ceramic drawings of the bark. Come on!

Lauren: Oh, no!

Gretchen: Ah, it’s so close!

Lauren: How cruel to point out that we’re missing information.

Gretchen: You thought you were mad about the Library of Alexandria burning down. Wait until you hear about the Olmec bark.

Lauren: Yeah, ah, that really gets you and just is a reminder of how much we can’t say about the history of human language because of what we don’t have a record of.

Gretchen: Well, you know, before we do a whole episode about things that we don’t know – because much as we can make fun of searching for the contact lens under the streetlight, we don’t know what we don’t know.

Lauren: Indeed.

Gretchen: What’s something else that people sometimes mean when they say a language is “old”?

Lauren: Well, this goes back to that conservative idea that some languages just have conservative features that haven’t changed as much. A language that has a lot of sound changes we might call very “innovative,” or they’ve “innovated” a new way of doing the tense on the verbs. You can trace it back to an older form of the language, but it looks very different at this point in time.

Gretchen: I think the example that I’m most familiar with this is Icelandic versus English. In the last thousand years or so, English has had a lot of contact from things like the Norman Conquest, which introduced a lot of French words to English, compared to Icelandic, which has had less of that. Icelanders have an easier time reading something like their sagas, which are 800 and more years old, than English speakers have reading texts like Chaucer, which are about the same age but have had a lot more linguistic changes happening because of more contact in English over the years.

Lauren: That’s one of the things that linguists who look at when a language tends to be more innovative and change, it tends to be during these periods of contact. It tends to be during periods of invasion. English had the French come up from the south, repeated Viking incursions from all around the coast. They all had an impact on the language. I find it really interesting. Icelanders are really proud of how conservative the language is and that they still can read these older stories. I think in some ways English has created this story for itself where it’s really proud of the fact that it is this language that continues to take influences from places and is really innovative. These are just part of the story that a language can tell about itself and the speakers can tell about it.

Gretchen: I think that there are reasons to be proud of any language that don’t have to rely on age as the sole arbiter of legitimacy. In some cases, it’s that rupture with the past that people use as a point of pride. I’m thinking of Haitian Creole, for example, which is descended from French. You can hear that French influence. When I’ve heard people speaking Haitian Creole, it almost sounds like they’re speaking a French dialect that I don’t quite know. But the writing system is very different. It’s much more phonetic than French is. The word for “me” in Haitian Creole is “mwa,” and it’s written M-W-A. The word for “me” in Modern French is “moi,” pronounced the same way but written M-O-I.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: It used to be pronounced /moɪ/. This is why you get “roy” and /ʁwa/ for “king” and stuff like this, hence the spelling. But the sound changes happened in French. When the Haitian speakers were deciding how to write their language down, they were like, “No, we’re gonna have a phonetic system. We don’t need to be beholden to the French system. We’re gonna have something that establishes our identity as something that’s distinct from French.”

Lauren: For anyone who’s tried to learn the French spelling, especially those endings that are still in the writing system but not in the pronunciation system, I think it’s fair to say French has gone through a number of sound innovations, even if it might be more conservative in other features of the grammar.

Gretchen: It’s very conservative in the writing system, but the sounds have changed a lot.

Lauren: It’s interesting you bring up Haitian Creole because creoles are the result of this intense contact between two or more languages. They often get labelled as being “new,” which is kind of the flip side of this discourse around “old” languages.

Gretchen: That’s controversial in linguistics whether to consider creoles “new” or to consider them older. What they definitely have is children being raised by people who also already had some amount of language. Babies can’t raise themselves. But they do have this situation where their speakers were prevented from learning how to read and write, learning how to access the formal varieties of language, often very violently and through horrible circumstances. A lot of creoles came about because of the slave trade, because of historical systems of oppression. The language transmission was not the same as if you were learning it from parents who’d been educated in the language, but they were still learning from people who had access to the language. There’s been a bit of a swing in creole studies more recently to say, “What if we don’t consider these completely new? What if we think about the ancestral features that they have in common with the languages they’re descended from?” which you can readily trace as well.

Lauren: Thinking in terms of which features are innovative rather than the whole language as being new. Maybe it has a very innovative way of doing the noun structure, but it still has a lot of the features of the two different – or multiple different – languages in terms of sounds, and so taking apart the different linguistic elements and not just focusing on the whole thing as being “new” or “old” and trying to apply these labels that don’t actually account for what’s happening.

Gretchen: It can be kind of exoticising to creoles to say, “Oh, these are completely different from all of the other ways that languages have gotten transmitted,” when what’s also going on is kids in a community who were exposed to a bunch of languages or a bunch of different linguistic inputs at a time making sense of that and coming up with, collaboratively, something with the other kids in the community that is different from what people were speaking before but still has that ancestral link.

Lauren: There are contexts in which children are raised without that access to language transmission. That is when a d/Deaf child is born into a hearing and spoken language family context, which means that they’re not getting that language.

Gretchen: Generally, the child and the parents and the family and community members do end up with some amount of ways of communicating based on the existing gestures that people do alongside a spoken language and elaborating on them, making them more complex, because you are trying to communicate somehow. There are linguistic studies about this, right?

Lauren: Ideally, in an ideal world, if you’re a d/Deaf child, you would want to have access to signed language input through, ideally, your family but also your wider educational context. Some d/Deaf children do get hearing aids. They are useful but not a perfect replication of the hearing child experience. That’s a possibility. There are some contexts where children have just developed this communication system with their hearing family in their own home context. These are known as “home sign.” There have been examples of this, and they have been studied. One of the most famous examples that has been described in a lot of detail is the example of David and his family. Susan Goldin-Meadow and her collaborators over the years have done a lot of work looking at the way David and, especially, his mother communicate with each other.

Gretchen: This is a really tough situation. I think these studies started in the early ’90s. Hopefully, people know better now and can give their d/Deaf kids access to a sign language, but given that this happened, what can we learn from the situation?

Lauren: Goldin-Meadow definitely started publishing about this in the early ’80s. So, David – who I will forever think of as a 7-to-10-year-old child – is actually a GenX-er who, if he had kids himself, they’re undergraduates now.

Gretchen: Okay. It’s good to put famous children from studies in perspective.

Lauren: Because they are – it’s like the Shirley Temple phenomenon, right. David, in my mind, is always just this kid who’s learning to communicate with his mom, but he’s a fully-grown, tax-paying adult now.

Gretchen: What was he doing when he was communicating with his mom in this immortalised-in-amber childhood years?

Lauren: What was really interesting from a thinking-about-this-human-capacity-for-language-and-communication perspective is that his mother and the family developed this way of communicating with him that grew out of their typical gestures and context and a lot of showing each other stuff.

Gretchen: Pointing to things and so on.

Lauren: Pointing – so useful in all languages and all contexts. What they found was that David was creating systematic order out of the gestures that he was getting. So, he had more systematic structure in terms of the hand shape that he was using – he created these hand shape structures and these individual signs that his mom would also use but not as consistently as him. It’s actually the child taking this really idiosyncratic, raw gesture material from his mom. Gestures in spoken language context tend to be a bit more freeform and unstructured than, say, something like a signed language, which uses the same hands but in a very different way. He wasn’t doing something that was a fully structured language, but it had more structure than what he was being given.

Gretchen: His brain was really starved for linguistic input, and he was trying to extract as many linguistic vitamins and minerals as he could from this incomplete gestural system that he was being given as the closest approximation of language. Obviously, we do wish that David, who was raised in the US I think –

Lauren: I think.

Gretchen: – had just been given access to ASL, which lots of people already were using in the US and could’ve happened where he would’ve gotten the fully-fledged, healthy balanced diet of lots of linguistic input from lots of people, but the child brain seems to want to reconstruct language out of whatever is available to it.

Lauren: This type of system, which is often called “home sign,” is not the same as a fully-fledged sign language. Children often don’t have the same level of linguistic structure. They obviously can’t communicate with people outside of the home context who don’t know the signs that they’ve created with the family. I think it’s also worth pointing out that it is more structured than you would expect it to be from the input. We’ve seen when you take children from these emerging structures, and you bring enough d/Deaf people together, you actually get a real blossoming of a full linguistic system.

Gretchen: The most famous example of this is in Nicaragua in the 1980s, where a bunch of d/Deaf children were brought together at a school for the first time. The school wasn’t trying to teach them a signed language; they were trying to do an oralist method of education, which is [grumbles] – about which the less said, the better – but the kids themselves were coming in with their home sign systems and developing them further in contact with each other. When the next generation of kids showed up, and they had access to this combined home sign system, they really turned it into a full-fledged sign language, which is now – Nicaraguan Sign Language is the national sign language in Nicaragua. These types of languages are some good candidates for “youngest” language, even if we don’t know what the “oldest” language looked like.

Lauren: The amazing thing about Nicaraguan Sign Language is there were linguists on the ground pretty much from the beginning of the school in 1980s. There is a documentation of how this language has evolved. It was the older signers coming in, communicating with the younger children coming to the school, who then created more of the structure – so being a bit like David but in this really rich communicative and linguistic environment and building this structure into the language.

Gretchen: It seems to take those two generations of linguistic input. That feels very reassuring to me which is that language is so robust that even if we lose all of our writing systems, and we lose all of our memory of writing systems, and we lose access to the memory of what language looks – like, suddenly we all wake up with amnesia or something – we would rediscover this. Even though they wouldn’t be the same languages, we’d put something back together and still be able to talk to each other.

Lauren: We know this because Nicaraguan Sign Language is not the only example we have of a recently developed language that has emerged. The Nicaraguan Sign Language is a school-based sign, but we also have what are known as “village-based” sign systems, which is where there might be a d/Deaf family, or a number of d/Deaf families in the village – or a very high percentage of d/Deaf population – and a sign language emerges that the whole village, d/Deaf and hearing, use to communicate. It’s usually “village” because it is these smaller communities where people gather and live together and have to communicate with each other all the time.

Gretchen: And if you have an island or somewhere in the mountains or somewhere were there’s a high degree of genetic d/Deafness because there’s a relatively high degree of isolation, you can have a third of the village be d/Deaf, in which case, everybody in that village is learning signs from each other at a young age. I think the famous example of that that I’ve heard of relatively nearby is Martha’s Vineyard in the US, which is an island, I think. It has a village sign language.

Lauren: Lynn Hou talked about Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language in the interview she did with us, which is in a tribal group in a desert in southern Israel.

Gretchen: There’s also Kata Kolok, which is also know as Benkala Sign Language or Balinese Sign Language, which is a village sign language indigenous to two neighbouring villages in northern Bali, Indonesia. Similar situations there.

Lauren: We see this robustness of language and these “young” languages but building on this underlying human tendency to want to create linguistic structure when you bring enough people who can communicate together.

Gretchen: A really interesting example that I’ve encountered recently of what it’s like to suddenly have at least access in terms of format or modality to language, even if you don’t know what everything means yet, is in the book True Biz by Sara Novic, which is set at a school for the d/Deaf. One of the main characters is a d/Deaf girl whose cochlear implants have been malfunctioning, and so she hasn’t been raised with access to a sign language, but suddenly, she’s in this school now and is learning ASL and trying to get her cochlear implants to still work but, in the meantime, is suddenly immersed in this environment where she has full access to language instead of this piecemeal access via attempting to lip read or attempting to use these implants that haven’t been working very well for her. The author is d/Deaf and talks about a variety of different types of experiences that people can have in that context.

Lauren: I really appreciated how this book made the most of the written format to occasionally just not give you what another character was saying, and so you get this experience of being the young protagonist in the book suddenly like, “I’m only getting half of this sentence. I don’t know what’s happening. It’s very stressful.”

Gretchen: Because there’s just a bunch of blank spaces. There were also some places where there were drawings of words that were being talked about or worksheets that she was seeing with line diagrams of different signs. Despite the fact that it’s a book that’s in written English trying to convey ASL, which is not English and doesn’t have a standard way of being written, I think it’s doing a really interesting job of trying to convey that experience.

Lauren: That lack of writing system for signed languages means that a lot of the history of signing in human language history has been lost to us. There have been different signing communities at different times in history. It’s probably been a very common way of humans doing language, but we just don’t know because it’s not in the streetlight of the written record.

Gretchen: Right. We don’t even know if the first language – the “oldest” language – was a spoken language or a signed language. People have come up with arguments for both things. We just don’t know.

Lauren: Which in some ways I find very relaxing instead of constantly trying to make cases for which language is the “oldest” or which is the “newest,” you can just let go of those debates because they are all, at the end of the day, unproveable. You can just enjoy the variety of human language without it being a competition.

Gretchen: A language doesn’t have to be the oldest language or even the newest language in order to be cool. Languages are great. All languages are interesting and valid, and people should have the right to have access to them when they want them. By listening to this episode, you’re participating in part of that chain of human language transmission that stretches beyond anyone’s written record or recorded record or video record. You’re still part of it.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all the podcast platforms or at lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode at lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all of the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including IPA symbols, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like our new “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and aesthetic IPA posters – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. I blog as AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: My social media and blog is Superlinguo. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk to other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus topics include fun interview excerpts, an interview about swearing with Jo Walton and Ada Palmer, and our very special linguistics advice episode where you asked questions, and we answered them. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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

#language #linguistics #lingthusiasm #episodes #podcast #transcripts #podcasts #language history #Olmec Bark #cuneiform #writing systems #sign language #home sign

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spgothkidsheadcanons · 4 months

Note

Hiii I hope that you're doing good and drank enough water today <33

Can I request headcanons for Michael, Henrietta and Pete with a s/o who is a nanny and often somehow ends up with two or three babies at their house?

If not it's fine of course!

Have a great day <33

Ah, yes. You most absolutely can request that

I hope this is what you were looking for! I’ve gotten a little rusty, so please feel free to let me know if I’m way off course here 😅

Warnings: There are none

~~~~

Henrietta:

- Oof

- Oofies

- Henrietta does not like kids, so when she showed up to your house and watched you wrangle 3 toddlers by yourself, she had half a mind to just turn around and come back later

- Alas, as soon as you took note of her standing there, you greeting her so sweetly, she just couldn’t leave you there to deal with all of that by yourself

- So despite Henrietta’s distaste for kids, she’d lend a hand, doing the absolute bare minimum with the most dramatic scowl on her face

- You couldn’t help but laugh and kiss her cheek every so often, teasing her about the future of your relationship and the change of mind she might have

- Until one of the kids tipped their full cup of juice onto her dress…

- Yeah, maybe not

- Henrietta does know what she’s doing, though, and won’t actively let the kids cause harm to themselves or each other by distracting them with some music

- If she ever finds the picture you’ve taken of her with the kids sitting quietly beside her while listening to the songs, she’d have your head on a stake in her front yard

- And after they’ve all been sent home, you’d have to turn right around and babysit your poor girlfriend’s psyche because it has been RUINED by the kids

- Would you ever get to relax? 🙄

Pete:

- Welp

- When you needed help, Pete didn’t think twice about rushing over without even asking what it is you’d need help with

- Upon seeing the set of kids all tugging at your shirt and crying for your attention, he’d act without thinking, immediately drawing their hands away

- Of course, they’d just turn their attention to Pete, but it gave you the few minutes of peace you needed in order to make them some snacks and refill their drinks

- While you werenin the kitchen, your boyfriend had no problem occupying the children with some toys that had been brought for them to play with

- Bringing in the snacks, you’d give Pete a peck on the cheek as a thank you

- And when the children were all settled, snacking away happily, Pete would tease you for running a mini zoo as a part time job

- Nap time was so easy for you

- For Pete, not so much, because as soon as you both sat on the couch, he was flooded by toddlers using him as a bed

- The experience would definitely make him think of you as a parent, and he didn’t seem so worried about your future kids anymore

- When the kids got picked up, that’s when it became nap time for you and Pete

- After the day you two have had, Pete would like to revel in the childlessness for a little bit longer, soaking up the quiet

Michael:

- Oh, you are just in for a treat

- Michael actually really likes kids, so much so that he comes ready with games and activities for the tots

- Seeing as you had to babysit for your neighbor, you accepted his invite to help out readily, glad to have someone on your side

- You might as well go on ahead and sit down because he’s got it

- Even when you think he’s going to tip over because all the kids wanted to climb him like a tree, he’s got it

- Lunch time is super easy because Michael’s probably ordered a pizza for the kids, so the only thing you need to worry about is feeding them

- If he has his guitar, yes, he is playing it for the kids (you had no idea that he knew to play Baa Baa Black Sheep, but it was kinda cute)

- Nap time for the kiddos is right around the corner, and seeing them curled around your boyfriend on the floor made your heart swell

- While they napped, you and Michael would relax and watch over them, making sure nothing happened

- This is when he’d lament that he couldn’t wait to have kids with you, seeing just how great you were with babysitting

- When the kids left, you’d tidy up the small messes they’ve made that day

- And Michael would help willingly, hoping that you knew he was serious about your earlier conversation

47 notes · View notes

layce2015 · 11 months

Text

Supernatural (Dean Winchester x Female!Reader)

Houses Of The Holy

Masterlist

*3rd Person POV*

Gloria was seated, quietly, on her bed in a psych ward. Her hair is straight and her face clean. She was wearing a bathrobe and reading a book held in her left hand. The door opens behind her and she turns. "Good morning. You're not the usual people." She said as (y/n) and Sam, in white scrubs and holding a clipboard.

"No, uh, just filling in. So how you feeling today, Gloria?" (Y/n) asked and Gloria smiles. "I've never felt better." She replied. "So, no disturbances lately?" Sam asked her. "You mean am I stark raving cuckoo for cocoa puffs?" Gloria asked. "We didn't' say that." (Y/n) said. "It's all right. I know what people must think." Gloria said.

"What do you think?" (Y/n) asked her. "I think what I saw was real." She replied and (y/n) and Sam look around, pull up a chair for each of them and set the clipboard down. They lean forward, elbows on knees, and give her an intensely earnest look. "We'd like to know what you saw." Sam said.

"It was all over the news. I stabbed a man in the heart." Gloria said. "Why would you do that?" (Y/n) asked her, curiously. "Because it was God's will." Gloria replied, smiling, and the two give her a curious look.

"Did God talk to you?" Sam asked Gloria. "No. I get the sense God's a little busy for house calls. No, he, he sent someone." She said. "Someone?" (Y/n) said, questioning. "An angel. It came to me in this beautiful white light, and it filled me with this feeling. It's, it's hard to describe." Gloria said.

"And this angel..." Sam said, curiously. "Spoke God's Word." Gloria replied. "And the Word was to kill someone?" (Y/n) asked. "I know, it sounds strange. But what I did was very important. I helped him smite an evil man. I was chosen. For redemption." said Gloria.

"This man you stabbed, did the angel give you his name?" Sam asked her. "No, he just told me to wait for the sign. And the very next day I saw it, right beside the man's doorway. And I knew." Gloria replied. "Why him?" (Y/n) asked. "I just know what the angel told me: that this man was guilty to his deepest foundations. And that was good enough for me." Gloria said and (y/n) and Sam give her a worried look.

*(y/n)'s POV*

Sam and I enter the hotel room to see Dean lying on the motel bed, which is vibrating, as he listens to music on his phone. He looks sort of blissful and also doesn't notice us. "Hey." Sam said but Dean doesn't respond. I rolled my eyes then I go up to him and smack his boot. "Hey!" Sam and I said, loudly, and Dean looks up at us.

"Hey. Man, you guys gotta try this. I mean there really is magic in the Magic Fingers." Dean said as he puts airquotes on the last two words. "Dean, you're enjoying that way too much. It's kind of making me uncomfortable." Sam said and I nod in agreement. "Yeah, same here." I said.

"What am I supposed to do? I mean, you guys have got me on lockdown here, I'm bored out of my skull." Dean groans. "Hey, you were the bank robber on the eleven o'clock news, not me. We can't risk you just walking into a government facility." I said to him, reminding him of the news broadcast that happened back at the bank, and he just hums at me.

Sam waves a dismissing hand at Dean as he turns to go into the bathroom. The bed shutters to stillness. "Aw, dammit! That was my last quarter." Dean growls then he turns to me. "Hey! You got any quarters?" He asked me as he pulls his headphones out and gets up. "No." I said then he goes across the room and leans against the doorway as Sam washes his face.

"You got any quarters?" Dean asked him. "No!" Sam shouts and Dean sighs. "So did you get in to see that crazy hooker?" He asked us. "Yeah. Gloria Sitnick. And we're not so sure she's crazy." I said to him.

"But she seriously believes that she was...touched by an angel?" Dean asked. "Yeah. Blinding light, feelings of spiritual ecstasy, the works. I mean, she's living in a locked ward and she's totally at peace." Sam replied. "Oh yeah, you're right, sounds completely sane." Dean jokes.

"What about the dude she stabbed?" He asked us. "Uh, Carl Gully. She said she killed him because he was evil." I replied. "Was he?" Dean asked. "Don't know. I mean we couldn't find any dirt on him." I said. "He didn't have a criminal record, he worked at the campus library, had lots of friends. He was a churchgoer." Sam added.

"Hm. So then Gloria's just your standard-issue wacko. I mean, she wouldn't be the first nutjob in history to kill in the name of religion. Know what I mean?" Dean asked. "No, but she's the second in town to murder because an angel told them to. Little bit odd, don't ya think?" I said to him. "Well, little odd yes, supernatural maybe. But angels? I don't think so." Dean said.

"Why not?" Sam asked him. "'Cuz there's no such thing, Sam." Dean said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Dean, there's ten times as much lore about angels as there is about anything else we've ever hunted." I said to him. "Yeah, you know what? There's a ton of lore on unicorns too. In fact, I hear that they, they ride on silver moonbeams, and they shoot rainbows out of their ass." Dean said and I snorted with laughter.

"Wait, there's no such thing as unicorns?" Sam asked, deadpanned, as he sits down. "That's cute." Dean said before he continues. "I'm just saying, man, there's just some legends that you just, you file under bullcrap."

"And you've got angels on the bullcrap list." Sam said to him. "Yep." Dean replied. "Why?" Sam asked and Dean looks up in annoyance. "Because I've never seen one." He said.

"So what?" Sam asked. "So I believe in what I can see." Dean replied. "Dean! The three of us have seen things that most people couldn't even dream about." Sam pointed out. "He's got a point." I said to Dean. "Exactly. With our own eyes. That's hard proof, okay? But in all this time I have never seen anything that looks like an angel. And don't you think that if they existed that we would have crossed paths with them? Or at least know someone that crossed paths with them? No. This is a...a demon or a spirit. You know, they find people a few fries short of a happy meal, and they trick them into killing these randoms." Dean said.

"Maybe." Sam said and Dean rolls his eyes. "Can we just — I'm going stir-crazy man. Hey, let's go by Gloria's apartment, huh?" Dean asked, desperately. "We were just there. Nothing. No sulfur, no EMF..." I said. "You didn't see any fluffy white wing feathers?" Dean asked me, sarcastically. "I think so, but I'm pretty sure it was from a pillow." I said with sarcasm and Sam sighs.

"But Gloria did say the angel gave her a sign, right beside Carl Gully's doorway." Sam said, ignoring our comments. "Could be something at his house; it's worth checking out." Dean said, eagerly.

Dean drives as we pull up in front of Carl Gully's house. It is a moderate single-family home with steps leading up to the front door; to the left of the door is a plastic angel figure. Dean mounts the steps and sees it. "Oh hey, Sam. I think I found it." Dean said as he gestures to the angel. "It's a sign from up above." He teases and Sam rolls his eyes as Dean and I peer into the window.

"Well, I think I learned a valuable lesson: Always take down your Christmas decorations after New Year's, or you might get filleted by a hooker from God. Ha." Dean said and i gucr a weak chuckle. "I'm laughing on the inside." Sam said as he wanders around back, through a gate, and Dean and I follow.

There we find a wooden storm cellar. "You know, Gloria said the guy was guilty to his deepest foundations." I said to them. "You think she literally meant the foundation?" Dean asked and we go to open the door and go down the steps, shining flashlights.

"Hey." Sam said and Dean and I go over to him as he looks at the wall. "You got something?" I asked him and he digs at the wall and pulls something out. "What is it?" Dean asked as Sam holds up the thing. "It's a fingernail." He said and we look at each other.

Dean pulls three shovels from the wall and we begin to dig. Sometime later, we created a deep pit which had a pile of skeletons inside of it. "So much for the innocent churchgoing librarian." I remarked. "Yeah, well, whatever spoke to Gloria about this knew what it was talking about, I'll give you that." Dean said.

The next day, Sam and I enter the motel room as Dean sighs and looks back sadly at the Magic Fingers controller. "D'you bring quarters?" Dean asked, desperately, Sam and I frown at the controller.

"Dude! We're not enabling your sick habit." Sam said as I toss Dean a sandwich. "You're like one of those lab rats that pushes the pleasure button instead of the food button until it dies." I said to him.

"What are you talking about? I eat. And I got news." Dean said. "So do we." Sam said. "All right, you go first." Dean said. "Three students have disappeared off the college campus in the last year. All of them were last seen at the library." Sam said.

"Where Carl Gully worked." Dean said.

"Yep." Sam and I said.

"Sick bastard." Dean growls.

"So Gloria's angel —" Sam started to say until Dean looks up at him. "Angel?" He said. "Okay. Whatever this thing is..." Sam said. "Okay, well, whatever it is, it's struck again." Dean said.

"What?" I asked. "I was listening to the police radio before you guys got here. There was this guy, uh, Zach Smith, some local drunk; he went up to a stranger's front door last night, stabbed him in the heart." Dean said. "And then I'm guessing he went to the police and confessed?" Sam asked. "Yep. Roma Downey made him do it." Dean said and he crosses the room to take a Post-it note off the mirror. "Now, I, uh...got the victim's address." He said.

The boys and I climb over the fence into the yard and sneak in through the window. Sam sits down at the computer as Dean and I search the house. "Find anything?" Sam asked us as Dean and I come back into the room. "Well, Frank liked his catalog shopping, but that's about all I we got." I said.

"Not much here. Except he's got this one locked file on his computer, I can't..." Sam stops as he looks through thr laptop. "...hold on." He said and he presses a few buttons, then grins in triumph. "Not anymore. God." He said, shocked.

"What?" Dean and I asked. "Well, he's got all these emails. Dozens, to this lady named Jennifer. This lady who's thirteen years old." Sam said and I suddenly started to feel sick. "Oh, I don't want to hear this." I said as I turn away and Dean comes up next to me and places his hands on my shoulders, trying to comfort me.

"Looks like they met in a chat room. These emails are pretty personal, guys Look at that. Setting up a time and place to meet." Sam said. "Great." Dean said as I shake my head. "They were supposed to meet today." Sam said and Dean and I turn to face him. "Huh. Well, I guess if you're gonna stab someone, good timing." I said, shrugging.

"I don't know, guys, this is weird, you know? I mean, sure, some spirits are out for vengeance, but this one's almost like a do-gooder, you know? Like, like a --" Dean said, trying to find the right words. "Avenging angel?" Sam said and Dean turns away. "Well, how else do you explain it, Dean? Three guys, not connected to each other, all stabbed through the heart? At least two were world-class pervs, and I bet if you dug deep enough on the other guy—" Sam said until Dean picks up something.

"Hey." He said. "What?" Sam asked. "You guys said Carl Gully was a churchgoer, right?" Dean asked. "Yeah?" We replied. "What was the name of his church?" Dean asked. "Uh...Our Lady of the Angels?" Sam said. "Of course that'd be the name." Dean said and he holds up a church flier for Our Lady of the Angels. "Looks like Frank went to the same church." Dean said.

Sam, Dean and I walk through the sanctuary of the Our Lady of the Angels church, speaking to a friendly priest named Father Reynods. "So you're interested in joining the parish?" He asked us. "Yeah, well, you know, we just don't feel right unless we hit church every Sunday." Dean said.

"Where'd you say you lived before?" Father Reynolds asked. "Fremont, Texas." I replied and the boys nodded. "Really? That's a nice town. St. Teresa's parish, you must know the priest there." Father Reynolds said. "Sure, yeah, no it's uh, Father O'Malley." Dean said. "Hmm, I know a Father Shaughnessy." Father Reynolds said, thinking. "Shaughnessy, exactly. What'd I say?" Dean said as the priest looks at him then Sam steps in.

"You know, we're just happy to be here now, Father." Sam said. "And we're happy to have you, we could use some young blood around here." Father Reynolds said. "Hey, listen, I gotta ask — no offense, but uh, the neighborhood?" I asked him.

"Well, it's gone to seed a little, there's no denying that, but that's why what the church does here is so important. Like I always say, you can expect a miracle, but in the meantime you work your butt off." He replied. "Huh. Yeah, we heard about the murders." Dean remarks. "Yes. The victims were parishioners of mine, I'd known them for years." Reynolds said.

"And the killers said that an angel made them do that?" Sam asked. "Yes. Misguided souls, to think that God's messenger would appear and incite people to murder. It's tragic." Reynolds said. "So you don't believe in those angel yarns, huh?" Dean asked. "Oh, no, I absolutely believe. Kind of goes with the job description." Reynolds said then I nod to painting on the wall.

"Father, that's Michael, right?" I asked and he looks at the painting and nods. "That's right. The archangel Michael, with the flaming sword. The fighter of demons. Holy force against evil." He said. "So they're not really the Hallmark card version that everybody thinks? They're fierce, right? Vigilant?" Sam asked.

"Well, I like to think of them as more loving than wrathful. But, uh, yes, a lot of Scripture paints angels as God's warriors. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, the glory of the Lord shone down upon them, and they were terrified." Reynolds explains while Dean looks confused. "Luke. Two nine." Reynolds said and Dean nods sagely.

"Well, thank you for speaking with us, Father." I said to Reynolds as we walk out of the church. "Oh, it' s my pleasure. Hope to see you again." He said and Dean looks down at something. I follow his gaze and see a collection of tribute items at the bottom of the steps.

"Hey, Father, what's, what is all that for?" Dean asked. "Oh, that's for Father Gregory. He was a priest here." Reynolds replied. "Was?" Dean and I asked. "He passed away right on these steps. He's interred in the church crypt." Reynolds said.

"When did this happen?" Dean asked. "Two months ago. He was shot for his car keys." Reynolds said and I frown and give him a sympathetic look towards him. "I'm sorry." Sam said, sympathetically. "Yeah, me too. He was a good friend. I didn't even have time to administer his last rites. But like I said, it's a tough neighborhood. Ever since he died I've been praying my heart out." Reynolds said.

"For what?" I asked. "For deliverance. From the violence and the bloodshed around here. We could use a little divine intervention, I s'pose." Reynolds replied and Sam and I frown. "Well, Padre, thanks. We'll see you again." Dean said and Reynolds nods at us then goes back inside.

At this moment, the boys and I begin to investigate the shrine. "Well, it's all starting to make sense. Devoted priest dies a violent death? That's vengeful spirit material right there." Dean said and Sam shifts uncomfortably. "And he knew all the other stiffs, because they went to church here, in fact I'm willing to bet that because he was their priest, he knew things about them that nobody else knew." Dean replied.

"Then again, Father Reynolds started praying for God's help about two months ago, right? Right about the time all this started happening?" Sam said and Dean sighs. "Aw, come on, man, what's your deal?" Dean asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Sam. "Look, I'll admit I'm a bit of a skeptic, but since when are you all Mr., uh, 700 Club? No, seriously. From the git-go you've been willing to buy this angel crap, man. I mean, what's next, are you going to start praying every day?" Dean asked him.

"I do." Sam replied.

"What?" Dean said, confused.

"I do pray every day. I have for a long time." Sam replied, firmly, and I give a small smile towards him. "The things you learn about a guy." Dean said, startled. "Next thing, you'll say is that (y/n) prays." Dean said and I bite my lips. "Not as much as I should but I do." I replied and Dean looks between us as I start to fiddle with the little cross necklace around my neck.

"You're still wearing it." Sam said as he nods at the necklace as I fiddle with the cross pendant. "I-I just never noticed." He said and I smiled. "What? You thought I was gonna throw away your gift to me?" I said and Sam smiles while Dean looks between us and shakes his head.

"Well, come on, let's go check out Father Gregory's grave." Dean said and Sam and I start to follow him.

*3rd Person POV*

The church crypt is a maze of stone hallways, with numerous stone angel figurines. The trio wander through slowly, Dean and (y/n) a little ahead of Sam. As Dean and (y/n) go into another room, Sam stops and looks back at one of the angels.

He frowns as it, and then the entire room begins to shake. A brilliant light appears behind him and he turns, confusion washing away to a look of awe.

*(y/n)'s POV*

Dean and I hurry back into the room after we noticed that Sam didn't follow us. "Sam, come on, get the lead out." Dean calls out but Sam doesn't respond. "Sam?" I shout then we see Sam was passed out on the floor.

Then Dean and I rush over to him. "Sammy? Sammy! Hey!" Dean and I said, panicked, and Sam jerks awake, groaning. "Y'okay?" I asked him, worried, as he stares at the stone angel. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay." Sam replied. "Come on." Dean said and we haul Sam to his feet and guide him into the sanctuary, a hand on his arms, and Dean shuts the door behind us.

"You saw it, didn't you? Didn't you?" Dean asked Sam. "Yeah. Yeah. Guys, I saw an angel." Sam said and Dean and I give a shocked look at him. "You..." Dean mumbles and Sam sits on a pew and I sit next to him. Dean pulls out a flask, unscrews it and hands it to him. "All right. Here." He said.

"I don't want a drink." Sam said then Dean holds his flask to me. I shake my head and Dean shrugs then takes a swig. "So. What makes you think you saw a, uh, angel?" I asked Sam. "It just, it appeared before me and I just, this feeling washed over me, you know? Like, like peace. Like grace." Sam replied.

"Okay, Ecstasy Boy, maybe we'll get you some glow sticks and a nice Dr. Seuss hat, huh?" Dean teased and Sam glares at Dean. "Dean, I'm serious. It spoke to me, it knew who I was." He said. "It's just a spirit, Sam. Okay? And it's not the first one to be able to read people's minds." Dean said as he sits down on another pew.

"Okay, let me guess. You were personally chosen to smite some sinner. You've just got to wait for some divine bat signal, is that it?" Dean asked. "Yeah, actually." Sam said. "Great." I muttered and Dean growls under his breath. "I don't suppose you asked what this alleged bad guy did?" Dean asked him. "Actually I did, Dean. And the angel told me. He hasn't done anything. Yet. But he will." Sam replied then Dean stands up and starts pacing.

"Oh, this is, this is...I don't believe this." Dean mutters. "Dean, the angel hasn't been wrong yet! Someone's going to do something awful, and I can stop it!" Sam exclaims. "You know, you're supposed to be bad too, maybe, maybe I should just stop you right now." Dean said and Sam looks up at him.

"You know what, Dean? I don't understand! Why can't you even consider the possibility?" Sam asked him, angrily. "What, that this is an angel?" Dean asked. "Yes! Maybe we're hunting an angel here, and we should stop! Maybe this is God's will!" Sam shouts.

"Okay, all right. You know what? I get it. You've got faith. That's — hey, good for you. I'm sure it makes things easier." Dean said as he sits again. "I'll tell you who else had faith like that — Mom. She used to tell me when she tucked me in that angels were watching over us. In fact, that was the last thing she ever said to me." Dean said and I frown towards him.

"You never told me that." Sam said, softly. "Well, what's to tell? She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her. There's no higher power, there's no God. I mean, there's just chaos, and violence, and random unpredictable evil that comes out of nowhere, and rips you to shreds." Dean said then he looks down then back over to Sam. "You want me to believe in this stuff? I'm going to need to see some hard proof. You got any?" Dean asked Sam, who doesn't reply.

"Well, I do. Proof that we're dealing with a spirit." Dean said.

Later, we approach Father Gregory's tombstone to sed it covered in creeping vines. "That looks like—" Sam said, shocked. "It's wormwood. Plant associated with the dead; specifically the ones that are not at rest." I said to him and Dean nods. "I don't see it growing anywhere else, except over the murdered priest's marker. It's him, Sam." Dean said and Sam shrugs, slightly.

"Maybe." Sam replied.

"Maybe?" Dean asked, confused.

"Dean, I don't know what to think." Sam said.

"Okay. You want some more proof? I'll give you more proof." Dean said.

"How?" Sam asked. "We'll summon Gregory's spirit." Dean replied and I turn, quickly, to him. "What? Here? In the church?" I asked him, shocked. "Yeah. Yeah, we just need a few odds and ends, and that, uh, séance ritual in Dad's journal." Dean replied. "Oh, a séance, great. Hope Whoopi's available." Sam said with sarcasm.

"That's funny, actually. Seriously. If Father Gregory's spirit is around, a séance will bring him right to us. If it's him, then we'll put him to rest." Dean said, deadpan. "But if it's an angel, it won't show. Nothin' 'll happen." Sam said. "Exactly. That's one of the perks of the job, Sam: we don't have to operate on faith. We can know for sure." Dean said and I look at Sam. "Don't you wanna know for sure?" I asked him and he looks down then nods.

That night, we leave a small grocery store, Sam holding a paper sack and smiling. "Guys. I'll admit we've gone pretty ghetto with spellwork before, but this takes the cake. I mean, a Spongebob placemat instead of an altar cloth?" Sam said, questioning. "We'll just put it Spongebob side down." I said and Sam laughs but stops and stares at something.

"Guys, that's it." Sam said. "What?" Dean and I asked. "That's the sign!" Sam said. "Where?" We asked. "Right there, right behind that guy!" Sam said as he points at a guy that was holding some flowers in his hands. "That's him, guys. And we have to stop him." Sam said and the young man crosses the street.

Sam starts to go after him but Dean and I stop him. "Wait a minute." I said, urgently, and Sam looks at us. "What are you doing? Let me go." He exclaims. "You're not going to go kill somebody because a ghost told you to, are you insane?" Dean shouts at him.

"Dean, I'm not insane, I'm not going to kill him. I'm going to stop him." Sam said. "Define stop, huh? I mean, what are you going to do?" I asked Sam, worried. "Guys, please, he's going to hurt someone, you know it." Sam said as he looks between us then Dean and I share a look.

"All right, come on." Dean said as the young man has gotten into a car and starts it up, pulling away. Dean gets in the driver side of his car and starts it while I get into the passenger side. Sam tries to get in the back seat but the door is locked.

"Dean. Unlock the door." Sam said, firmly. "You're not killing anyone, Sam. We've got this guy, you go do the séance." Dean said and I look over at him then to Sam. "Guys!" Sam shouts before Dean pulls away, following the young man at a short distance.

The man stops at a corner and gets out with the bunch of flowers, handing them to a woman waiting on the corner. They both get in the car and drive off again and we follow them.

After following him for a few minutes. The car turns down a dark alley and we temporarily lose sight of him. Dean slams the steering wheel in frustration. "Dammit!" Dean growls. "Okay, calm down. We'll find him." I said and Dean let's out a sigh and continues on.

Eventually, we find his car parked in an alleyway and Dean parks the car and we watch through the back window of the man's car. We get out of the car and slowly make our way to the car just as we hear the woman let out a scream then the man yelling at her.

Dean smashes the driver side window then reaches in, punches, and slams the man's face into the steering wheel as I go over to the passenger side. Dean unlocks the doors and I help the woman get out. "Are you okay? Are you okay?!" I asked her and she begins to cry. "Thank God!" She cries as Dean comes over to us.

Behind us, the car starts up and the man drives off. "Dammit!" Dean growls and I turn to the woman again. "Are you sure you're okay? Do you have a cell phone?" I asked her and she nods, still sobbing. "Call 9-1-1!" Dean and I shout at her and we run off and get in Impala to chase after the evil young man again.

DeN grips the steering wheel tightly after many tense and frantic moments of this chase. We cut across lanes, over grass, and generally cause mayhem. At a cross-street, a small pickup truck, carrying long metal pipes, screeches to a halt in front of the man's car.

A pipe spins off the truck bed, bouncing once on the ground and plowing straight through the man's windshield. "(Y/n) hang on!" Dean shouts as he stops the car in shock and I hold the door handle.

Once we stopped the car, both of us get out and walk towards the car, where we saw that the pipe had gone through the windshield and impaled the man through the chest. "Holy..." Dean mutters in surprise as my jaw drops and my eyes widen in shock.

Later, we approach the motel room and enters to see Sam packing. "How was your day?" Dean asked him. "You were right. It wasn't an angel. It was Gregory." Sam said in a sad, dull and demoralized tone.

Dean pulls the flask from his inner pocket, takes a drink, then I hold my hand out towards him. He hands me the flask and I take a sip and hand it back to Dean. Then he offers it to Sam, who takes it. "I don't know, guys, I just, uh..." Sam said as he sits on the bed. "I wanted to believe...so badly, ah...It's so damn hard to do this, what we do. You're all alone, you know? And...there's so much evil out there in the world, guys, I feel like I could drown in it. And when I think about my destiny, when I think about how I could end up..." Sam said and I go and sit next to him and place my hands on his shoulder.

"I know how you feel, Sam." I said to him, calmly, and Dean sits on the other side of Sam. "Yeah, well, don't worry about that. All right? I'm watching out for you." Dean said. "Yeah, I know you are. But you're just one person, Dean. And I needed to think that there was something else, watching too, you know? Some higher power. Some greater good. And that maybe..." Sam said.

"Maybe what?" I asked him. "Maybe I could be saved." Sam replied before he let's out a nervous laugh. "But, uh, you know, that just clouded my judgment, and you're right. I mean, we've gotta go with what we know, with what we can see, with what's right there in front of our own two eyes." Sam said, sadly.

"Yeah, well, it's funny you say that." I said, letting out a small chuckle, and Sam looks at me. "Why?" He asked and I look over at Dean. "Care to explain what we saw, Dean?" I said and Dean looks down. "Gregory's spirit gave you some pretty good information. That guy in the car was bad news. We barely got there in time." Dean said.

"What happened?" Sam asked.

"He's dead." I replied and Sam's eyes widen and he looks between us. "Did...you?" Sam asked and we shake our heads. "No." Dean and I replied. "But I'll tell you one thing. If...The way he died, if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes and if (y/n) wasn't there to witness it and confirm it, I never would have believed it. I mean...I don't know what to call it." Dean said.

"What? Guys, what did you see?" Sam asked and Dean and I share a look. "God's will." Dean and I replied.

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