#it become a big well appreciated podcast.

[boombox-fuckboy]

In addition to the myriad of other, far better reasons, one of the secret reasons I like indie fiction podcasts is because they fufill an innate draw to be a smug, insufferable little hipster.

[harrysfolklore]

omg i have a question for the bitchy carlos fic -

so nicole piastri came on red flags podcast recently and spoke about oscar and his childhood, what if there’s an au segment of her talking about older piastri & what would his reaction be

okay this turned out being way longer than intended bc i added the scene of carlos and nicole meeting bc why not, i hope i'm not annoying you with too much little bitch content, i'll promise i'll post for other drivers now READ LITTLE BITCH HERE

Host: "So, Nicole, we've heard a lot about Oscar's journey to F1, but what can you tell us about his relationship with his sister, YN? She has quite the personality online, doesn't she? Can you tell us about their relationship growing up?

Nicole:"Oh, those two. They've always had such a special bond. YN is a few years older than Oscar and yes, she's known as the Piastri who fights people online, but she's always been fiercely protective of him. From the moment YN first held Oscar as a baby, she appointed herself his protector. It was adorable and sometimes a bit much, but always came from a place of love.

Host: Can you give us an example?

Nicole: "When Oscar was about six and YN was maybe nine. Oscar had just started school and was having trouble making friends. He was quite shy back then, if you can believe it. One day, YN overheard some kids teasing Oscar in the playground."

Host: "Oh no, what happened?"

Nicole: "Well, YN marched right up to those boys and she told them off in no uncertain terms. She said, and I quote, 'My brother is going to be a famous race car driver one day, and you'll all be asking for his autograph. So you'd better be nice to him now!' The boys were so shocked they just stood there with their mouths open."

Host:"That's amazing! Did it help Oscar?"

Nicole: "It did, actually. Oscar was so impressed by his big sister standing up for him that it gave him a confidence boost. And you know what? Some of those boys ended up becoming his good friends. They still joke about YN's 'prophecy' coming true now that Oscar's in F1."

Host: "That's such a heartwarming story! It's clear YN has always been protective of Oscar. Now, speaking of relationships, we've heard that YN is dating Carlos Sainz. Can you tell us a bit about how that came to be?"

Nicole: "Oh, that's an interesting story! YN actually told us she was dating Carlos a while back, but we weren't surprised at all. We knew she liked him since that time in Singapore last year when our family visited. YN was trying so hard to act mad about Carlos' win, but it was obvious she was impressed."

Host: "So you had suspicions before they even got together?"

Nicole: "Absolutely! Even before that Singapore trip, YN used to go on these multiple rants about, in her words, 'this arrogant Spaniard' who kept pushing Oscar off track. She called him something I won't repeat but I'm pretty sure everyone knows it, it absolutely irritated her. But you know what? We all knew that deep down, she had a crush on him."

Host: "That's quite the turnaround! Have you met Carlos — as YN’s partner this time — yet?"

Nicole: "I haven’t, actually. I’m hoping to do that in Baku after the summer break. But I can see Carlos brings out a softer side of YN that we don't often see in public. Don't get me wrong, she's still fiercely stubborn and outspoken, but with Carlos, there's this gentleness that comes out. He seems to really understand and appreciate her passion, and he's not intimidated by her strong personality at all. In fact, he seems to admire it."

Host: "It sounds like they complement each other well. How has Oscar taken to their relationship?"

Nicole: "Oscar's been very supportive. I think he appreciates seeing his sister happy, and of course, it doesn't hurt that Carlos is someone he respects on the track. It's actually quite funny to see YN now, cheering for both Oscar and Carlos during races. She's always torn between wanting Oscar to win and not wanting Carlos to lose."

Host: "That's nice, Carlos sounds like quite the gentleman. Has YN picked up any Spanish since they started dating?"

Nicole: "Oh, that's actually a funny story. We love to tease YN about this. You see, she failed Spanish in high school - couldn't conjugate a verb to save her life. And now here she is, dating a Spaniard! Carlos has been trying to teach her, but let's just say it's a work in progress. She can now order a beer and ask where the bathroom is, so I suppose that's progress!"

Host: "That's hilarious! I'm sure she'll be fluent in no time."

Nicole: "Bless her, she's really trying. She's determined to have a full conversation with Carlos' parents in Spanish by the end of the year. We'll see how that goes!"

liked by oscarpiastri, carlossainz55 and 498,646 others

ynpiastri our queen is here !! and no one is ready

tagged: nicolepiastri

view all comments

username1 NICOLE PIASTRI IS THE MOMENT

username2 SLAY THE HOUSE BOOTS DOWN

mclaren Icon 🧡

lilyzneimer the besttttt 💓

username3 IS SHE MEETING CARLOS ??

username4 oh i can’t wait to see our queen giving carlos a run for his money again

landonorris Coolest ever

↳ ynpiastri her favorite will always be yuki don’t even try it

↳ username1 HEEEELP

yukitsunoda5511 Nicole is brat

↳ username2 I LOVE THEM 😭

oscarpiastri I’m ready, your boyfriend however…

↳ username3 LOOOOORDDD

↳ username1 POOR CARLOS

↳ ynpiastri leave him alone 😤😤

Baku had a special energy during race weekends. The tight streets and high-pressure atmosphere gave you a mixture of excitement and nerves, but today, the butterflies in your stomach had nothing to do with the Grand Prix. Instead, it was about the lunch you were about to have, where Carlos would meet your mom—officially, as your boyfriend this time.

You walked through the paddock with Carlos by your side, his hand wrapped around yours. Oscar was a few steps ahead, casually walking toward the hospitality area where no other than Nicole Piastri waited. She had met Carlos briefly before, like many of the other drivers, but this was different. He wasn’t just a name on the grid anymore—he was the man you were dating, and Carlos seemed to be nervous about the meeting.

"You think she likes me?" Carlos adjusted his hat for what felt like the hundredth time, his thumb brushing over your knuckles.

"Carlos, she’s going to love you," you couldn’t help but smile at his nerves, "She already does. But, you know... as a mum, she's entitled to give you a little hard time."

"That’s what I’m worried about," Carlos chuckled, but his smile was still tight, "I just want to make a good impression, you know?"

"You will," you assured him, squeezing his hand. "Just be yourself."

Oscar slowed down, overhearing your conversation and grinning like he already knew how this would play out. "Mum’s gonna grill you, mate," he teased, throwing a glance back at Carlos. "She’s been waiting for this."

"Not helping, Oscar," you muttered, giving your brother a playful shove. He just smirked, clearly enjoying himself.

When you finally reached the hospitality tent, your mom was already seated at a table, smiling warmly as she saw you all approach. She stood up to greet you, wrapping you in a familiar hug before turning to Carlos with that same welcoming smile—though you knew there was a glint of mischief behind it.

“Carlos, it’s so good to see you again,” she greeted, shaking his hand.

"It’s great to see you too, Mrs. Piastri," Carlos said, his polite smile fixed on his face. His Spanish charm was dialed up a notch, but you could still feel the slight tension in his grip as he held your hand.

“Please, call me Nicole,” she said, taking her seat again. “I’m not that formal, especially not with my daughter’s boyfriend.”

As you all settled into your seats, you couldn't help but notice the amused glances Oscar and your mom were exchanging. You knew that look—they were up to something.

"So," Nicole began, her eyes twinkling with mischief, "how long have you two been together again?"

You glanced at Carlos, who seemed to relax a bit as he answered, "About two months officially, right, cariño?"

You nodded, but before you could add anything, your mom raised an eyebrow. "And unofficially?"

"Mum!" you said as you felt your cheeks heat up.

Oscar, who had taken a seat across from you, let out a low chuckle, clearly enjoying the show. He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, watching the dynamic unfold.

"That’s what I thought," she teased, making Oscar let out a loud laugh.

You felt your face grow even hotter as your mom's implications hung in the air. Carlos, to his credit, managed to maintain his composure, though you noticed a slight redness creeping up his neck.

"Well," Carlos cleared his throat, his accent a bit thicker than usual, "I think it's safe to say we've known each other for quite some time now."

"Oh, I remember. You two weren't exactly friendly at first, were you?"

"That's putting it mildly, Mum," Oscar snorted, "Remember the time she came home absolutely fuming after a race? She was ranting about 'that little bi—'"

"Oscar!" you cut him off, "We don't need to relive that."

Carlos squeezed your hand under the table, clearly amused. "No, please, I'd love to hear about this."

"Oh mate, you should've heard her," Oscar spoke again, "'Carlos this, Carlos that.' I swear, she talked about you more when she hated you than she does now."

"I did not!" you protested, but your brother's knowing smirk told you he wasn't buying it.

"It's true," your mum added, her eyes dancing with laughter. "I remember thinking, 'This girl protests too much.' I had a feeling even then that all that anger was hiding something else."

You groaned, hiding your face in your hands. "I can't believe this is happening."

Carlos wrapped an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close. "It's okay, hermosa. I love to hear these stories."

You looked up at him, seeing the warmth in his eyes. It was hard to believe that those same eyes had once glared at you across the paddock.

Nicole smiled, watching the two of you with that familiar mom look—part teasing, part proud. "Well, now look at you. I guess all that bickering was just a cover-up for how much you liked each other."

"You’ve gone soft," Oscar rolled his eyes dramatically. "I kinda miss the days when you’d call each other names."

"Don’t worry," you muttered, giving Carlos a playful glare. "He’s still a little bitch sometimes."

Carlos laughed, his arm tightening around you as he kissed the top of your head. "And you’re still my favorite enemy turned girlfriend."

Your mom let out a satisfied sigh, leaning back in her chair. "I knew it all along."

[zalia]

I deeply dislike how certain segments of D2 players have screamed to have ALL THE CONTENT released in one big batch - a whole season at a time and complain about the weekly stuff being 'drip feeding' and now Bungie is gonna be releasing whole Acts all at once (better than a whole Episode at once I guess).

I *like* the weekly releases of content! Liking it even more in the episode format with a few weeks of story, and then a few weeks off. Plenty of time to catch up, without there being a huge swathe of like 6 weeks+ without anything new.

I like having a week to mull things over and theorise and feel *creative* about what I've just played. I like the time and space it gives each bit of story to breathe and really sink in. I find it more impactful when I genuinely *can't* rush through things (ngl, I feel like Lightfall at least would have benefitted from having it's missions spread out over a long period of time instead of being all available at once).

I feel like having spaced out drops of new story is just... more convenient? Easier to catch up on a week of story than a whole Act if you happen to be away for one week. Also playing through a whole Act in one go is a significantly larger time investment if you want to stay up to date and avoid spoilers.

I really hate that in Revenant, it's gonna be required to basically play a whole Act on day 1 of release or be bombarded with spoilers enough to have to completely avoid any fandom spaces. And then... what?

The people screaming the most and loudest about wanting it all at once will just go back to immediately bitching about not having anything to do and 'no content', and there'll just be less fandom energy.

Same as with Netflix dropping whole seasons in one go - it feels like there's just no time to enjoy and appreciate the story in a measured way - gotta binge it all or be completely out of the loop! And then it's over.

I love the Tuesday/Wednesday weekly screaming session over new story with my friends, excitedly waiting till they're done so we can dive into theorising and enjoying the anticipation! I loved the new episode weekly energy with podcasts too! New episodes become an event, and people spend the week thinking about the story and creating rather than just... gulping it all and then it's done. Move onto the next thing. Disposable content.

*sigh*

Ah well, it is what it is. Just annoying.

[tkachuktkaching]

Matthew on the Cam & Strick Podcast

A few things he said

He loves being in Florida & it was his preference out of all the places to go when the trade was going down.

Recapped the trade & how he found out about Johnny Gaudreau's trade just as he got back from his family vacation in Greece.

He gave big praise to brother Brady (unsurprisingly) & his sister for her skills too. He talked and he & Brady got recognised when out in a bar when visiting their sister recently.

He praised Barkov's talent & ability bigtime, his close friend Robert Thomas came in for huge praise as well & he was high on Brandon Montour when he was mentioned by the hosts they interviewed him recently.

His two dreams are to win the Stanley Cup & play with Brady for USA & win Gold together.

If he and Brady were ever to play together it would have to be for team USA or if Brady ever came to Florida because he's not going up there! (to Ottawa) but Brady's a few years from making any decisions about any move but Brady's like a god up there on Ottawa & he (Brady)loves it there.

He said It's sad & a big shame so many of top players haven't played in world cups or Olympics due to lack of opportunities & hopes to be able play in a few in his career.

He's not got his winter clothes from Calgary anymore.

He's looking forward to returning to Calgary when the schedule gives him three days there this next year in January to visit his favourite places for coffee & show off his favourite restaurants.

He's returning to Florida on Friday but he's not driving all that way he's having his car shipped back to Florida.

Big praise for Bill Zito & giving his players everything they need to succeed & for Paul Maurice for helping him become so much a better player & giving him his trust which means a lot to him.

He loves hosting his family & friends at his Florida home.

He tried to not to overstep when he first arrived last year & go with the flow as the new guy but his team mates pushed him to be in a leadership role right away.

Praised everyone, team mates & everyone for helping him settle in so well & feels he's known everyone for 20 years. He's so comfortable in Florida & says he met everyone gradually as they came back in small groups a couple at a time.

He recapped the playoffs and talk about the belief in the room even when they were down v Boston.

He talked about how bad his feet were hurting after the 4x overtime win over Carolina in the playoffs.

Lots of praise for his teammates talking about being surrounding by so much talent in Florida.

He watches practically every game of Brady's, he loves to watch the big games and likes to study certain players mentioning Kucherov.

He's learned he needs to be on the ice & is more valuable on the ice than off & feels he's evolved as a player.

This summer he's worked on PT & Strength & Conditioning & done way more cardio than ever before after recovering after his injury.

He says he's back to 100%

He went to 4 weddings in the off season he was invited to 6 but couldn't go to them all some overlapped with things he had to do.

Talked about the videos of Brady signing Mr Brightside shirtless and the videos that were sneakily taken going viral on SM. Says it's not a true reflection on Brady.

Mentions Brady got more attention than him in the playoffs at Calgary & his dad did last time round!

Talked about his dads 'soft' comments he was more bothered by the timing & being more bothered by how his team were playing at such a vital time with the playoffs on the line. He wasn't upset with his dad & he didn't get a bad reaction from his team. Admits his father was probably right though.

When he got hurt he thought he done his collarbone at first, he stiffened up when being forced to go through concussion protocol. The ovation he got when he came back on the ice, he thought was amazing & meant a lot to him & expresses his appreciation for that.

After the game with his injury he couldn't even wash his body, next day he texted his brother to get him out of bed he was the only one he had at his house at that moment, he even couldn't lift his head due to the pain.

After the game despite the injury. He drove himself home with his sling on! Admitting he knows he probably shouldn't have!!

It was Teddy the head of equipment guy that tied his laces for him ahead of the game he tried to play.

He talked about the Jonathan Quick incident that led to his 2 game suspension refuses to make excuses for his actions but admitted he gets pissed off about goalies bumping into players then losing their minds when players do it back to them. But chalked it up to frustration that boiled over at the end of the game.

His favourite thing to do off ice is play golf & anything he can do that involves being outside he loves & in Calgary he couldn't do anything!

The Elbow Room club also got quite a few mentions, he likes to go out to eat & mentions water skiing but he's still not a boat guy.

Says he used to hate going to the beach when he was younger but now he loves it.

[nemmet]

i want to break my only-art-posts rule on here for just a moment, to talk about about fred jones as a canon autistic character and what he's meant to me personally.

my childhood love of scooby doo suddenly reawaked back in november of 2021, which just so happened to be around the time i was seriously questioning that i may be autistic. the realisation put so much into perspective, but i was equally afraid and uneasy about it all. therefore, i began to rewatch mystery incorporated as a source of comfort.

and just... there was a character who was a good leader, a loyal friend, a desirable romantic partner. there was a character who represented this unshakeable force of good in a town otherwise founded upon cynicism and spite. there was a character who, yes, was treated as the butt of the joke from time to time. but even despite that, was a surprisingly thoughtful representation of how an autistic teenager might navigate emotions, relationships, and the world at large.

the more i watched of this version of fred, the more i doubted that his sheer amount of autistic traits were purely a coincidence. and sure enough, i discovered that mitch watson (sdmi showrunner) confirmed on the unmasked history of scooby doo podcast that fred was indeed written with autism in mind.

(more beneath the cut!)

for a while, this was knowledge that i celebrated quietly. i told a couple of people who were interested, but that was about it. what mattered most to me was that it was canon, and that this character i had loved since i was a child was just like me. talking too much about his interests, missing social cues, being confused by big emotions... the list went on. it sounds silly to say about a cartoon character, but identifying with fred's portrayal in sdmi (and subsequent scooby media influenced by it) genuinely helped me to accept and even love myself as an autistic person, in a time when i was feeling hopeless for realising what had made me so different all my life.

as i continued to fall down the scooby rabbit hole, i encountered fred moments new and old that would always cheer me up. i decided to compile them into a short youtube video, mostly just for my own self-indulgence. i had absolutely no idea what i was getting myself into (/pos).

over a year on, most notably following the release of the hbo velma series, my video absolutely blew up. to the point where it currently stands at 825k views, which is utterly unfathomable to me. thousands of people who cared about this character like i did flooded the comments, expressing anger at his most recent portrayal and genuine love for his portrayals in past media.

however, the comments that especially made my day were those like: "how did i not realise that fred has a special interest in nets?", "he's autistic, let him infodump!", and those of a similar wording. in that comments section, as well as on tumblr, canonically autistic fred seemed to have become widespread, accepted and celebrated, showcased in comments with hundreds of likes and posts with hundreds of notes. it absolutely floored me, and i was delighted to have contributed to it.

i haven't made this post to pat myself on the back for throwing some clips together and getting a lot of views, nor to say "i knew it first!" about fred being autistic. i am simply looking back in retrospective, and getting incredibly misty-eyed over the fact that people are newly appreciating this character that has helped me through so much and been instrumental in leading me to my official autism diagnosis. you can see the sappy post i made about it on my old scooby sideblog here.

in summary, this is yet another story about how representation matters! even if it comes in the form of a historically overlooked teenage mystery solver from a 50+ year old cartoon franchise. what matters most is that it was more than just a headcanon, and has changed my life for the better.

if you're still reading, thank you so much! if you are also neurodivergent, i would love to hear your thoughts on fred, and if you've also identified with him in some way. he's... a tréasure :)

[choco-froggie]

In his late twenties - Sebastian Sallow

Headcanons below

I want to start a series of my headcanons about what kind of person the HL characters would have become in their late twenties. Also I know next to nothing about the 19th century and don’t have the dedication to learn about it so in these, they’re just set up in our time. 😅 Bear with me

Work Life

I love the headcanon that Sebastian becomes a Curse Breaker. It fits his personal story AND personality well.

But he wouldn’t be happy working for a big corporation or the government. He is too much of a free spirit who needs to be allowed autonomy. So he would work in a small structure, a bit like a private investigator agency.

He loves his job and pours himself in it, resulting in a lot of overtime work. His boss has to throw him out of the office some days.

His home

He doesn’t need a big place so a small flat with two rooms is more than enough for him.

But he is prone to clutter and his place is full of books and things he thinks might be useful someday.

His flat is located in a big city, probably London. He needs to live in a place buzzing with life because he is easily bored. He needs a place where he will never have seen everything, with lots of things to do like exhibits, museums, libraries, pubs and restaurants,…

He doesn’t care for decoration but chooses his pieces of furniture with care. Decoration is usually taken care of by his partner.

He doesn’t own a pet, he is not at home enough to care for one and doesn’t feel the emotional need to have one.

He has a picture of his family in every room, even if it’s a small picture, but he wants them close everywhere in his place.

Social Life

He kept in contact with a lot of his former friends back in Hogwarts. He doesn’t meet them every day but is happy to have a drink with them when the opportunity rises.

He is outgoing and comfortable in social settings. He is able to come to a party where he knows no one and blend in with ease.

Despite being quite extroverted, he doesn’t form a strong bond with just anyone. Even though he is friendly with everyone, it’s mostly superficial and his true friends can be counted on one hand.

He doesn’t enjoy being alone so is often meeting friends after work, several times a week, and shares activities with them on the weekend like playing quidditch, go on small trips, game nights, watching quidditch games,…

Love Life

He has dated but has never had a « wild phase ».

He needs an independent partner. He is very busy with his work and all the things he has in mind, so he really appreciates someone who is likeminded. He can’t deal well with needy people. Being in the same room or space is already great to him for most evenings.

Actually self sufficient and people who are their own person attracts him.

He also needs someone with patience. When stressed or tired he can become a bit grumpy or moody, so he needs a partner who won’t escaladate. But he knows he is wrong and will come back and apologize once he is calmed down.

As said, he is a bit busy, but his partner is the person he wants to spend all his relaxing time with. Whether it is by cuddling after a long day in bed, or by exploring the city together, trying new activities, strolling in museums, or trying new food.

He is independant and self sufficient, as a partner he doesn’t slack off around the house and shares the mental load. He is reliable, he is used to live alone and gets things done without being babied.

Quirks

He hates doing laundry and doesn’t tidy his place as much as he should be but it’s always clean.

He can’t handle silence, even when he sleeps. He is always listening to something, most of the time it’s documentaries or podcasts about things he wants to learn about.

What would yours be about adult Seb ?

[omegalomania]

hey gang what time is it its time for another joe trohman podcast. this actually came out like a month ago but i missed it until isa linked it to me and because i like doing these heres a highlights reel

the host says he appreciates that joe opened the book with the question of whether or not satan fucked his wife to which joe replies "well you know, when you have kids, sometimes you wonder that. you truly wonder what are these demons. i love my children btw they're phenomenal."

sometimes it does get tiring playing the same songs over and over. joe says that "thnks fr th mmrs" has a really good energy and tempo that keeps it exciting to play live

he talks about playing a really short iheartradio christmas show pre-pandemic and nobody in the crowd knew "sugar we're goin down" since they were only familiar with the more recent hits like "centuries" and "uma thurman" and joe said that it made him fall in love with sugar all over again in a weird way ldjfldkfd

he laments recently getting the chance to see wu-tang, nas, and busta rhymes at the hollywood bowl but he didn't go

his love language is giving gifts! he got his brother a custom drum set (which his mom attempted to throw out)

he reiterates that when writing the book he didn't want to be mean to any of his bandmates cause he likes them and thats not what the book is about! the host makes a joke: "like how you guys had that threesome with simple plan...i understand, you don't wanna get into that!" joe is offended that he clearly doesn't know how many guys are in simple plan. "there's more than three guys in there! the orgy was far larger than you give it credit!"

he doesnt remember any other names that the band could have been called but he does think fall out boy is a pretty terrible name for a band. "i can't believe i'm in a band called fall out boy."

discussions of the band origin and how joe funded it with his bar mitzvah money ("fall out boy, funded by judaism!") but when asked about financial gains from the band he says they all split everything evenly and it's one of the things that's helped them last this long

talking about scott ian and the damned things and he talks about how managing a supergroup is like herding cats because everyone is so busy with their respective groups. he says he'd LOVE to do a third damned things record though!

he talks about how weird it was to have this boy band aspect to them when they were at their peak pre-hiatus, because they were all hardcore kids and punk kids.

he recalls that around this time patrick asked their manager, with visible concern, "are we...the nsync to panic at the disco's backstreet boys?"

he's glad that they've outgrown that and kept pushing forward and looking forward, and by now they're no longer a boy band. "we're a man band!"

he thinks it's kind of neat to see the emo movement of the aughts become nostalgic and cool now ("it was not fucking cool when we were doing it [...] we stuck around for long enough to Not Be Lame"), but it's a big thing for fall out boy that they do not want to be a nostalgia act and they want to keep making new albums.

the host semi-jokingly says "so you and panic at the disco are not gonna go out on tour, is what you're saying." joe says "no" very flatly and i lose my shit.

he denies that fall out boy is working on any specific new music. he says they're just piecing things together organically and that no real album has coalesced. (note: this episode aired 11/12, ~2 weeks before the fob8 tribune ad)

he talks a bit about working with brian posehn on the axe and how much he loved doing it! he calls the whole story a metaphor for dealing with pain and trauma and the different ways there are to confront that stuff. he said the axe is coming out as a trade "soon" so people who don't have a subscription to heavy metal can read it

his first concert was tom petty and the heartbreakers when he was 10 or 11

he says the two things that matter most for a band's live show are the drummer and the singer. he then proceeds to be extremely sweet about patrick and andy.

"patrick, he's incredible, he's so gifted, and he's worked so hard with his voice lessons and figuring out how to sing from the diaphragm properly, and he really knows how to work through when he's sick and having real issues, so he's quite a trooper."

"and andy is just a great drummer. when he thinks he's had a bad day i'm like...yeah. sure. i don't think you know what that is."

he did not get laid in high school. first time was in a shared tour bus, listening to testament (a thrash metal band), when he was 19. (they never saw each other again)

since testament was the soundtrack the host asks if he ever gets a reaction whenever joe hears chuck billy (testament's lead vocalist). joe says without missing a beat, "when i see him i do, that's for sure."

he is an avid bowler. he has a wristguard and a spare ball and he used to take lessons. he calls it great stress relief!

[lingthusiasm]

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.

[partickleaccelerator]

Intro Post!!!

General Info about me:

Hello everybody! My name is Daniel, and I'm giving this whole tumblr thing another try. I was on this platform for a while under the username "ticklers-to-the-top", and then I had a brief stint under "ficticklish". I tend to write original text posts with a dash of other content thrown in there, including some audio or video content just for fun. I'm 24 years old, but I act like an old ass man, so be prepared for back pain and early bed times. I am a high school theatre teacher, so a majority of my time is spent at school either teaching classes or directing my shows!

Tickle Related Info:

I'm bisexual, and a switch, so pretty much best of both worlds in any scenario. Although, I do tend to lean more towards one side or the other depending on my mood and I kinda have a soft spot for being tickled by guys but that's not important so moving on.

I tend to be more gentle in my approach to tickling! I follow more with the idea of gentle and loving tickles that make you want to melt away than I do with the "suspend you in a sensory deprivation chamber and tickle you until you can't think" crowd. Not that there is anything wrong with that being your preference, mind you, I just don't think that way. I'm also not a big fan of tools when it comes to tickling. Why use a 30 dollar tool that can replicate the same effect that my fingertips might have?

Blog Related Info:

I will be posting mostly my own text posts and content on this blog, with the occasional reblog of content that I like! This blog will be mainly focuses on tickling related content, as well as feet and tummy related stuff cause they're cute! THIS BLOG IS NSFW which means that MINORS SHOULD NOT INTERACT WITH MY POSTS IN ANY CAPACITY.

Also, please remember that I am a married man. Don’t try to come into my dm’s looking for only tickle related talk, or horny shit. I’m not looking for anything like that, I just like making friends and the occasional tickle related conversation, and I’m not looking for anything more than that. My wife will hold my value than every single person on this website combined for the rest of my life, so don’t take it personally.

My content is something that takes time, thought, and effort, and I appreciate all your support on them, but please don't reblog them with some whack ass stuff under it!!! I really do like that you enjoy my posts, but I have a huge problem with people roleplaying under my posts, saying weird things, or using them as a direct callout to a specific lee/ler. At that point, I become an unconsensual member in your play, which is not a good time for me. Other than that, please reblog as I need all the traction I can get :)

Hobbies:

Theatre (Directing, Acting, and Tech)

Music (I play guitar and piano, and I listen to all kinds)

Gaming (Play all kinds of stuff, so feel free to ask about it)

Writing (Although I'm not all that good)

Podcasts (Dungeons and Daddies and Welcome to Nightvale)

Kinks:

Tickling!

Feet

Tummies

Bondage

Occasional pet play

(likes to be called puppy sometimes by close friends)

Praise!

Thank you guys for getting this far!!!

[kingpippthe2nd]

This is going to be a Neil Gaiman appreciation post. Not because I think, the internet needs another person babbling on about how good an author Neil is. There is enough of those. This one is purely egotistical, because I have too many words rattling in my head, and they want out. So, settle in and let me tell you a story. I promise, it will make sense in the end. Or go read something interesting. I’m not your parent. 

I used to read a lot as a kid. The library in my town was open on two afternoons each week: Tuesday and Thursday. So, every Tuesday I would go there with my stack of read books, swap them for a smaller stack of books, which I would devour in the next two days, return them on Thursday, leave with a bigger stack and so on and so on. I couldn’t read enough. I loved disappearing into all the different worlds, all the different adventures. I was the kind of kid, that would read until the middle of the night, illuminated by a flashlight, be exhausted all day in school, just to go home and do it all again.  

I don’t know when this changed, exactly. Only that it did. Something about growing up took away the wonder of printed words. Or wonder in general.  

I remember telling my therapist a year or so ago how I remember being able to see so much beauty in the world. How the tiniest thing could spark so much joy in me. Make me imagine entire worlds. And how I couldn’t find this kind of joy anymore. How I felt that something in me was irrevocably broken. She reassured me, that this was normal. All part of growing up. Childlike wonder at the world is not for adults to have. Never have the words a therapist felt so fundamentally wrong. I was heartbroken leaving that session. My worst fears had become true: I’d never find that joy again. 

Over the years, I never lost my love of stories. I started listening to audiobooks, a form of media which I used to despise. Why listen to a book when you can read it? Hold it? Smell it?  I watched movies and series and listened to podcasts. But I didn’t really read. I had lost the patience for them. Don’t get me wrong: I still loved my books. I have some beautiful editions of my favourite books that I loved showing off to people. I bought new books as well. New stories. And I told myself I’d get around to reading them soon. But I never did. 

I used to write a lot, too as a kid. I wrote diaries, though I never kept up with them for long. I wrote short stories and even started writing a book, which was not very good and is now lost forever. I wrote loads of poems. One of them I wrote sitting on a roof in a night gown while the full moon shone behind the church tower. I still have that one. It isn’t half bad. But I stopped writing years ago. It left me, when I left the books. 

Some years ago, my partner at the time introduced me to a new book. Theyread it aloud to me in the evenings. It was called “Neverwhere” by a man I had never heard of: Neil Gaiman. I fell immediately in love with the story and the writing and the characters. Soon enough I owned all the Neil Gaiman audiobooks I could find and listened to them ravenously.  

Within the last year I have tried to read four books. I finished one of them. Not a big one. And it took me multiple months. I had to force myself to finish it, even though I loved the story and the writing. The other three I abandoned halfway through, feeling terribly about myself and my apparent inability to read. 

And then Amazon Prime released season two of Good Omens and I found myself swept up in a maelstrom of emotions and hype and fan theories. I started reading fan fictions for the first time in my life. Long ones too. I started telling anyone and everyone about how much I loved and missed the show. About how genius a writer Neil Gaiman was. How I had loved his way with words and worlds for such a long time and that he was my favourite author. 

A week ago, I had a realisation: I had never actually read a Neil Gaiman book. I’ve had them read to me. I’ve listened to hours and hours of audiobooks. But I had never ever actually sat myself down and read a book by my favourite author with my own eyes. Held it. Smelt it.  

So, I picked up one of the “I’ll get around to it books” from a stack on my hallway book shelf and started reading. A little thing called “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”. I finished it within three days. I read it on my way to and from work. One night, I walked all the way from the tram stop to my flat whilst continuing to read, phone flashlight in hand, so the darkness wouldn't steal the story away from me.  

And as I finally looked up from on the pages again and looked around, something else happened. It was as if the words had given my mind a little nudge. The world was spinning slightly differently. And all over sudden I could see the world as I had as a kid. There are more colours now. Everything is a bit more sparkly, more magical. I can taste stories on the wind, see them in the early morning sunshine. I have ideas rattling in my head that need writing down for the first time in what feels like forever. Ideas for short stories, for poems. Maybe even for a book.

I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am to Neil for giving me back something, I knew I had lost forever. Because childlike wonder at the world is not for adults to have. With nothing but his words printed on paper he remade the way I see the world. If that isn’t some kind of magic, then I don’t know what could be. And who wants to be an adult anyway.

[lightlycareless]

Hi! I’m a big fan of works and they’ve inspired me a lot to start writing fanfiction again(specifically Naoya lol). It’s been probably over 10 years since I’ve written fanfiction(Although I do write my own original works) and I’ve been horrified to write fanfiction again after how my first fanfic was treated when I wrote it as a kid(the criticism was valid but they were mean af about it). So I was wondering if you have any tips you could share about writing fanfiction and how you balance characterization as well as character growth for a character like Naoya who in canon does not really have any? I hope this makes sense. I’m willing to elaborate further if it doesn’t but if you don’t wanna answer this, it’s totally fine too-💚

Hi!!! Omg thank you so so much!! I'm so flattered :')))) akgakjgjakjgujka I never thought i'd be in this position, idk, like, I was the one that looked up to others you know?

but aaaaah thank you so much for your lovely words 🥺❤️

Now onto the good stuff hehehe.

So, I guess the best way about characterization, at least what I think has helped me (and how I handle it? excuse me if it doesn't make sense hahah) is trying to first analyze the environment in which said character grew in, how it affects him, and how it has affected people in real life. (cause at the end of the day, reality surpasses fiction)

For example: with what little we got from Naoya in the manga (extras included) I can easily say Naoya is not liked, thus, he’s very lonely. The type of person that surrounds himself with “yes-people” because of what they represent, not because of who they really are. Of course, the older he got the more cold/resentful he became, but even then, I was sure that he always craved what he never had in his life, a family. Love. Appreciation for who he is. All humans want that, we’re social people, we live in societies for a reason. We need to have companionship, either through partners, or friendships.

I also get the idea that, even when he was supposed to be the next heir, no one really wanted him. Like, he got the job because “There was no one else” to do it, not because he was the best candidate. I have no doubt that if Naoya failed his weird plan of getting rid of Megumi, or whatever he did he didn’t become heir anyways, he wouldn’t know what the hell to do with his life, an identity crisis would certainly be on his way.

Anyways, in order to get inspiration I tend to hear lots of podcasts about people and their peculiar stories, true crime even, it’s how I concluded that Naoya is definitely a womanizer not because he likes the act (I’m sure he does) but because he craves attention, and he needs it whenever he can. That kind of stuff, you know? A lot of psychology stuff too, it helps you understand what traits a lonely person can inhibit, their actions, what different environments do to different people, so on and so forth.

Also, reading other stories is certainly very inspiring/productive too :> I can easily say that Naoya and his family is based on the Todoroki’s from bnha: prodigy child, rest of the children are neglected, some of then even jealous… it just made sense. And I’m sure there’s more examples like that. There’s no shame in getting inspired by other works, as long as it’s not a carbon copy, you know?

In the end, I guess the best way to do characterization/character growth is to do lots of brainstorming, in the sense of: what is the environment that this character grew in? the problems he can face in such place, the reaction, his main goal, what he’s doing to obtain it, and so on. Developing these things will make the pieces slowly fall into place when it comes to making a character’s background/growth/personality 🤭it’s really fun, more so when you have a blank canvas to work on 😏

Well, I hope it was of any help!! I really don’t know how else to describe how I do these things, I just spend most of my time daydreaming and such. But still, if there’s anything else you’d like for me to further explain, just let me know and I’ll do my best ❤️

Take care, and hope you have a wonderful weekend!!

P.S. Don’t let reviews discourage you from writing fanfiction!! I know everyone has their opinion, but at the end of the day it’s your work, and if they don’t like it, they can write their own!! 🥺 so cheer up!

[istherewifiinhell]

hand on rbing prev post as circling back around on sts thought apparently gave me enough to say it needed to escape the tags and be its own post. um! the emh from voy: my wife is a bitch and i love her so much

i think the emh is like. the exact definition of "the soul first shows itself by a gnashing of teeth" as its all well add good to appreciate the aliveness of nice and polite data who follows all the rules and is like. even MORE real than a flesh and blood person.

(in sense of his tangibility... his mechanical complexity and physical and mental competencies. are MORE than that of a traditionally recognized person. you know? not that that is an accurate summation of how the show acts about him. the only person who thinks that is julian bashir lmao. more often its like the. oh you disrespect him? well disrespect THIS! [he does a feat unmatched by any of the biological life forms around him] which... isnt exactly useful as principled, ideological and philosophic statement, about who gains the right of person-hood. OR RATHER! it is literally and precisely that, its conclusions sucks shit)

[Cam K podcast voice] when someone reaches for abstractions to doubt data's existent, the show throws materialist egg on their face.

The lynchpin in the proof of Data artificiality. Is that he has a PHYSICAL SWITCH, that can turn him OFF. This counters his otherwise uninterrupted verisimilitude of humanity. He looks like a toy. A thing. (Teenage wifi would like to point out if i had a big enough rock i could also turn riker off, but alas)

BUT the thing about the Doc, is that this guy ISNT "REAL". Getting shut down is not grand solemn act to the doc. It happens to him. ALOT. "Computer: End Program"... Hes so much more dependent on those around him. He isnt nearly the same as them. AND HES AN ANNOYING LITTLE BITCH about it. please turn him off when you done! please turn him ON to tell him things, and u could visit sometime... Turn your emergency holographic medical channel! cause this is a SENIOR STAFF MEETING. and hes the God Damn CMO.

AND. its not just mistreatment he gets (RIGHTFULLY!) angry about. Its that (as joelle correctly pointed out, ofc) when confused, or when things are wrong, when he has no control, he default right to agression! He is not a sad kicked puppy that goes 'oh' and 'i do not understand the meaning of ur behaviour' like data does. (again that sounds like data slander its NOT! i love data and wish ppl would stop laughing at him for having questions)

Whereas the biggest actual impediment of data's full recognition of personhood is his feelings, and suppose lack there of. He doesn't react to social stimulus the way people expect him too. If you try to goad him into a response he might say he 'is not capable of experiencing emotions such as you do' cause hes lacking the magic part in his brain that will do that. (to which... every neurodivergent person ever said: data, bestie, baby girl, they say that about a lot of people. you have clearly expressed internal experiences that are just... you baselines for emotion)

But to compare. When people say the doc isnt acting socially normal, which is an assholish thing to do, btw. HES READY TO BE AN ASSHOLE RIGHT BACK. His is INFACT, gnashing those holographic teeth! I don't think anyone has ever accused the doc of a LACK OF FEELING. Like, he has horrible beside manner, he "isn't programed for small talk"... but thats cause he's RUDE! He's too obviously prideful, snide, needling and just general, self involved for it to not seem like a DELIBERATE CHOICE that he is making.

And even when these traits are regarded to simple programing (which makes them... less real? 🤨) Examine the moments that are definitively about him claiming autonomy, engaging in recreation and becoming more self actualized. And find that a lot of them are angled to make him LESS likable. His hobbies, which he WILL speak about, AT LENGTH, include being a tropy writer, a photographer who makes hour long presentations, and a uncompromising operatic tenor diva.

(love when opera singer is used as insult, media wise, oh noooo ur TOO good at singing. your voice is TOO powerful, ur vocal control and ability to perform complex pieces in multiple languages is TOO impressive. lol. mr picardo ur so cool and u looked good doing it. frankly)

In the moments that serve to mark specific advancement in control he gains over himself, he gets to make himself MORE OBNOXIOUS! You do not, infact, get to recognize a someones full personhood without running the risk that you, specifically, might not like them! As a person!

And in dramtic turns. His true psyche breaking, foundation shaking experiences are acted to hell! It's uncomfortable to behold someone so emotional. Confusion and denial not expressed quietly, but belligerently. Meeting of sadness fear that can only be expressed as anger. Unlike the picturesq Adam and Eve figures from the end of R.U.R. (spoilers? i suppose). His awareness of the true personal impact and price of mortality is not signaled by a noble self-sacrifice, gentle weeping and pleading to not have someone taken away. It's a choice he made to save a close friend, instead of a distant coworker, when forced to choose between the two.

And then, his complete and total inability to comprehend, internalized and accept that fact. A person would be dead, truly and utterly gone from this world. Cause he wanted to save his friend instead. And the only way to ingrate this horrible fact of reality, the capital A, Absurd, was to do it as any human might.

Have a very public and loud mental breakdown, spend prolonged period of in which you cannot be left alone because your darkest thoughts will loop forever into themselves as you become more and more upset, and yet, neither can you simply avoid thinking about it, has the only way to come to terms with it is though a mire subjects that cause revulsion. The desert of thought the mind shrink from, and the truth that lies in it. Which. Is very inconvenient for all your friends who would really just rather be having a normal one.

In conclusion? The doc shows autonomy and sentience by being loud, opinionated and embarrassing. Rude, precocious, and easily offended. Self obsessed, high-mined, and anguished. Dependent, vulnerable and inconvenient. Which is to say he possible the most real anyone could ever be. That he has a much of a soul as any of us. That he is a bitch and i love him SO MUCH.

[frozen-snowflakesandsunflowers]

What's your take on Anna and Kristoff? Am I the only one thinking he would be miserable as Anna's husband? He doesn't like palace life or dressing up or being confined. How is he going to manage as Prince Consort ?

Hi again anoymous,

Good question because I think you're on to something here. Kristoff wouldn't like these things of course given the nature he's grown up in and lived, being a mountain man. He wouldn't find it easy at least.

Kristoff didn't change himself when he was Anna's boyfriend, and when he lived in the castle. He kept rolling his way with his love for reindeers, sledges which is good. Besides, Anna loved Kristoff for his personality, for his big heart. Anna never expected him to change and I don't she wil going into marriage. At the end of Frozen 2, after Anna was announced Queen to some citizens, Kristoff along with Sven and Olaf, got dressed in formal for the occasion. It was clearly seen that Kristoff is struggling with dressing the role but is doing it for Anna's happiness. But to his suprise when Anna came over she undid his set hair and tells him she likes him the other way. Anna knows Kristoff's big heart well, so she truly appreciated him and the boys dressing up formal for her but knows they would find it hard to keep up with the act, because they shouldn't have to change themselves for love. So what we take from that scene is that Anna would want Kristoff to continue being himself in his own comfortable looks rather than spend all day feeling restless. I watch a lot of romantic movies and series and I'm a series, someone explains what love is and she says from what I can remember, love is making yourself uncomfortable so that the other person who loves you can feel comfortable. And what Kristoff did, was a perfect example of this. He made himself uncomfortable with the intention that Anna would be happy and comfortable. But like I said Anna doesn't want him to hold the struggle and find himself pressured and like you suggested, become miserable.

So as for your question, how will he handle Prince Consort?, I think he'll do just fine. He'll wear clothes that are formal but comfortable and as for the duties Anna will help him balance it out. As for the "palace life", I don't think he dislikes it. I think from time to time he has been living in a room in the castle because now that he's with Anna, he's going to become a family, he won't continue living scruffy.

But if he still feels the pressure of all this high royal stuff, and if Anna herself is struggling with Queen than I think Elsa will help them find a solution either in the podcast or the movie. But I don't think that will be the case. We'll just have to listen to the podcast first to see what could be possible for the movie.

But to summarise this, I don't think they will have a miserable marriage. Anna wants Kristoff feeling comfortable with this change, and he will do his best either way to make her feel loved especially when the Queenly pressures rise. I really hope we see their wedding in the movie though.

[yourdailykitsch]

Chris Pratt’s ‘The Terminal List’ Gets Second Season & Prequel Series Starting Taylor Kitsch At Prime Video

The Terminal List is continuing — and becoming a franchise for Amazon Studios. I have learned that Prime Video has finalized a Season 2 renewal for the hit series starring and executive produced by Chris Pratt, and also has picked up an untitled prequel/Ben Edwards origin series headlined and executive produced by Taylor Kitsch, from The Terminal List creator/executive producer David DiGilio. I hear other Jack Carr characters who have or have not appeared yet on The Terminal List, an adaptation of his 2018 novel, will be featured in the prequel, including Pratt’s Navy SEAL James Reece and Raife Hastings, a former SEAL pal of Reece’s whose potential arrival was set up in Season 1 of the mothership series. A rep for Amazon Studios declined comment. Talks about a second season of The Terminal List — which has been a big hit for Prime Video, reaching No. 2 on Nielsen’s weekly Top 10 streaming ratings chart — have been going on for months. I hear that during those conversations, Pratt suggested expanding the series with a prequel, which he is executive producing through his Indivisible Productions alongside Kitsch.

According to sources, also executive producing the offshoot are DiGilio, who serves as showrunner; fellow The Terminal List executive producers Carr and Antoine Fuqua; and producers include Max Adams, a writer who is a former Army Ranger; and Pratt’s longtime coach Jared Shaw, a former Navy SEAL. The prequel is described an elevated espionage thriller that follows Ben’s (Kitsch) journey from Navy SEAL to CIA paramilitary operator, exploring the true darker side of warfare and the human cost that comes with it. The Terminal List, a co-production from Amazon Studios and Civic Center Media in association with MRC Television, tells the story of James Reece (Pratt), a Navy SEAL who seeks to avenge the murder of his family. Following the outsized ratings success of the eight-episode first season, which launched July 1, Pratt hinted that more episodes are coming during a September appearance on Carr’s podcast Danger Close. “To the rabid fans of The Terminal List out there, you have nothing to worry about,” he said. “We love you and appreciate your support. It’s our life’s mission to make sure you can come back to the well. We are working away.” Added Carr, “There may be some cool stuff on the horizon being discussed.” Besides Pratt and Kitsch, the main cast of the conspiracy thriller’s first season also included Constance Wu, Riley Keough, Arlo Mertz and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Waco alum Kitsch will next be seen in the Netflix limited series American Primeval and Painkiller, both directed by Pete Berg. Pratt next will be seen reprising his role as Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and heard as Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. His recent credits include The Guardians of the Galaxy: Holiday Special for Disney+, Thor: Love and Thunder, Jurassic World: Dominion and The Tomorrow War, which he executive produced.

[lynniceberg]

I love Marvel’s Micronauts! I’m talking about the comic written by Bill Mantlo with art by Michael Golden that started in 1979. I had one of the toys (Pharoid) and I followed the comic for all of its original run, but it’s really issues 1-12, drawn by Golden, that remain dear to my nostalgic heart. I recently picked up a few of those old issues – some of the last of Golden’s run on the series - and a couple after he left. I was reminded how much I love his artwork. And how disappointed I was with the artwork on the series after he left.

I’m one of those comic collectors who lost his old presumably now valuable comic collection under unfortunate/careless circumstances. Every once in a while I find a random old issue of Micronauts at a comic shop for a reasonable price and pick it up hoping to relive the excitement of my first collection. I recently bought issues 10, 12, 13, and 14 - specifically because they all feature Michael Golden covers.

Golden co-created the Micronauts world with writer Bill Mantlo, who came up with many of the ideas when his son got some of the Mego Micronauts toys as Christmas presents. I think Mantlo’s writing on Micronauts is top-notch for its time in comic history. Mantlo was always creative and weird in a particularly Mavel way and I was an appreciator of some of his other oddball creations and writing while ignorant they were created by the same guy. I’m talking about Rom: Space Knight which I also collected in its entirety, and Rocket Raccoon, who eventually became part of that little movie series Guardians of the Galaxy.

It was the art of Micronauts that excited me the most, though, and after picking up this series I would always remember Golden’s style and name. I’d seek him out believing his work always elevated the stories. He designed the Micronauts world with Mantlo and while it’s clearly influenced by Star Wars, as are the toys, Golden’s art is so gorgeous, detailed, and dynamic that it really pulls one into the story. And so when I saw these Golden covers a couple of weeks ago I held them fondly in my hands excited to relive the thrill of Golden’s art.

I share these covers and some of the pages to show that the art really holds up! Issue 10 is part one of the climax of the big conflict between the Micronauts and the evil Baron Karza. Golden and Mantlo pack the issue with several plot threads that tie the main story together. Look at how Mantlo and Golden switch threads sometimes from one panel to the next (pages 22-23), building the tension to its bloody conclusion. The action is relentless and they don’t romanticize or shy away from the brutality of revolution and war (pages 11 and 22 -27). An exciting precursor to Golden’s work on The Nam, a great war comic.

The issues I picked up were in sealed bags so I didn’t know they included issues Golden didn’t draw. When I opened issue 13 I was reminded of my long ago aesthetic disappointment discovering it wasn’t Golden’s art inside. Golden drew many of the covers even after he stopped being the artist for the series. I include the first pages of issues 13 and 14 to show the contrast with Golden’s artwork. The art becomes simple, cursory, and, frankly, unexciting. It’s surprising to me that the lay outs are actually done by Howard Chaykin who is still another of my favorite comic artists. The art became so stylistically bland after Golden left and Chaykin’s lay-outs don’t hint at his own greatness.

If you enjoy looking at this art as much as me you will be happy to know Marvel is putting out a reprint collection of the series in 2024. You may also be interested in the Comic Kayfabe podcast about the Micronauts issue #1 and Micronauts Artist Edition. Ed Piskor and Jim Rugg and guest Tom Scioli really appreciate the Golden’s art but Piskor and Rugg often scoff at the Micronauts concept and story. Scioli defends the story as well as I could, though.

A story about the upcoming reprint is at this link:

The ComicsKayfabe Micronauts #1 episode is at this link:

And the Comics Kayfabe of the Micronauts Artist Edition at this link:

[traegorn]

Hello! I've been following your podcast (I'm newer and starting at the beginning) but I am really enjoying your content and I appreciate your perspective! In one of your earlier episodes you had mentioned that a lot of satanists you have come across are usually assholes, I was kind of drawn to their 7 tenants and at face value they really resonated with me. I was wondering if you would feel comfortable expanding on that a little or key things to be weary of when exploring different paths. Anyway if not, no big deal. I really just wanted to say thanks for doing your podcast it's been both enjoyable and enlightening.

I should clarify, I have met at least ONE Satanist who isn't an asshole.

It's not all of them. It just happens a lot.

And it's not actually the content or tennants of Satanism that lead to this. I mean, well, Satanic Temple doesn't at least (though they are far from a perfect organization). Church of Satan gets very Ayn Randian in their stuff, so I have issues there. But LaVeyans aren't the be all, end all of Satanism.

The problem is just that Satanism attracts Edgelords. Satanism itself doesn't make someone an asshole, but a lot of people who are already assholes end up becoming Satanists. Some because they want to piss people off, others because they want to socially one up other people.

Satanism is like... well... it's like lifted, shiny red pickup trucks. Not everyone who drives one is an asshole, but they sure do gravitate to them.