#me analyzing stuff

[flameintobeing]

i’m absolutely loving tessa violet’s new album but also... i had to make a playlist with all the songs but in a different order. i was just not vibing with the original order - and i totally get the need to optimize the song order for streaming! but it didn’t feel like a smooth narrative. so i re-ordered it to make sense of the story it’s telling, the themes, ups and downs, and important moments

my preferred order of the songs (and my lengthy reasoning) is ahead:

1.  MY GOD! keeping this early in the album and bumping it to being the first song. there are 3 songs on the album that are in the CAPITAL LETTERS, fierce, bad bitch category and i think they should be spaced out, creating flickers between confidence and sadness (between being a bad bitch and things just being bad). this is the first of these songs, all about hot hot amazing sex.

2  Play With Fire keeping this the song that comes immediately after MY GOD!, this one is still sexy and hot but with creeping fears - relationships are dangerous - or this particular relationship is (i’m not at all certain the album’s Big Breakup is with the same person this song is about, doesn’t matter)

3  Kitchen Song  THE love song of the album. keeping this right after Play With Fire and early in the album - before it all falls apart

4  Good Things Go Bad Time for our first SAD song. bumping this to much earlier in the album to let the bad flicker in. this is also not really a breakup song just yet - it’s just, a very personal song about Bad Feelings

5 YES MOM coming back hot!!!! one of the best songs everrrrrr i love it. after sadness and concerns, it’s time to be confident again and HOW 6  You Are Not My Friend I love love love this song and i don’t really get why it was chosen to be the final song on the album (not including the kitchen song voice memo). this is a song about a relationship she had when she was a teenager, clearly not part of he main narrative of the album but still very important and part of the condident, bad bitch side of the album

7  Again, Again it’s breakup time. this song lays it out perfectly (and devastatingly). after the previous song announces, “now I write another chapter / my own ‘Happy Ever After’” - this relationship was supposedly IT. but it was not. 8 Breakdown a sad/bad bitch song. I should mention this song is not part of the 3 CAPITAL LETTERS songs - it’s not written in all caps on spotify. it’s a confident song, about the powerful popstar persona - but it’s also very much about this persona being a shield against the terrible sadness and loneliness. 9 BAD BITCH time for another confident, fierce, bad bitch song - this song is kinda about making CAPITAL LETTERS song (it directly references YES MOM) and about rightfully and amazingly embodying the powerful popstar persona 10  When The Curtain Falls suuuuuch a sad song, the bad bitch waking up alone and meeting her sadness and loneliness again, and head on  11 I Don’t Know Who I Am Without You this one’s a sad Big Breakup song but it’s not as sad as the previous one. it starts out with a violin - When The Curtain Falls ends with a violin!!! they fit so well. but after that, it picks up a beat and becomes a song about soldiering on (and on and on, bracing for another day), about facing the sadness with triumph, despite of the medium itself threatening to fall apart - “I don't know how to sing without you”

12 ​​song without a title a perfect conclusion of the narrative, imo. after not being sure if she can even keep on singing, this song is even lacking a title. how do you write outside of this relationship? outside of this person? when all you want is to be pulled back in? it concludes with a hopeful/wistful/hopless wish for the person to come back to her (again, again...): “so if you ever fall, you can always call / I don't mind, I don't mind / if you need a friend, a place to rest your head / I don't mind, I don't mind / I just miss you” this song also samples MY GOD! - perfectly bookending the album (i have a feeling it also kinda references other songs on the album but i might just be making this up)

13 ​kitchen song (voice memo) keeping this the last one:)

[prisma-palace]

my favorite thing about the ranchers will forever be that their entire relationship was built on Trust. they failed 2/3 of scotts couples games but they objectively did the best out of all the pairs because they never got mad or annoyed when the other failed

tango couldve gotten mad at jimmy for getting hit by the goat but he just laughed it off. jimmy couldve gotten mad at tango for not catching him with the water at the fall but they both just joked about it instead. tango even WILLINGLY let them both get down to half a heart in the powdered snow but jimmy never picked the snow up with the bucket, and even asked tango if he was proud of him for that which he WAS. ("did you appreciate that i didnt pick it up?" "i appreciate that trust! that says a lot, my friend!")

i feel like theyre genuinely one of if not THE healthiest relationship in the entirety of the life series cause they never got mad at eachother for any of their faults. tango lost their green life episode one in a stupid way; out of everyone on the server jimmy had the most reason to leave his soulmate but he DIDNT. jimmy forgave him for dying the second tango explained what happened (he even made digs at himself??? ("i feel like im gonna die in the future and youre gonna have to take the punishment of it")) and they recovered the best they couldve in that situation

jimmy even trusted tango enough to let him go into the Exact Same Cave he JUST died in to recover his stuff and later let him go down to the deep dark alone to Intentionally Summon A Warden when if it was anyone else they wouldve not let tango out of their sight for the whole season. hell, tango held it against himself for dying more than jimmy did. they basically just met after being strangers for two seasons yet they already trust eachother more than some season-long alliances

long story short, the ranchers are everything to me and i love them very much

[fumifooms]

Kaka compilation

Because everyone is sleeping on him. Witness his greatness!! First two Kaka colored icons were colored by me, lineart by Ryoko Kui though!

Kaka & Kiki are kinda like Laios & Falin… Kaka being stoic and giving repressed energy like early Laios, Kiki being cryptic and always smiling and kinda soft-looking. Autism siblings 2, ostracized and othered as kids and have a deep bond due to sticking together through it all, though unlike with Laios their parents are very loving so Kaka developed family as a big value more than Laios (bc asides for Falin Laios doesn’t care much about it).

In the gnome festival comic you can see Kaka is more emotive than he seems! Full with a :3 face, and he’s the one crying at the end. He’s insecure about his legs and being tall… It really got to him. Conceal don’t feel. In the gnome festival comic you also see him sensing others’ gaze on him and that something is off unlike Kiki, again Laios-like in the way that judgement from others gets to him more than her.

[civetfish]

Nerd-to-nerd communication

Something super pointless and self-indulgent I've had on the backburner for a while. I love trying to make the pieces they gave us fit together!

Al-AN and Robin would absolutely bond over learning about each other's biology. I could talk about this forever but I'll get into all of the headcanons I have for these two in another post eventually

Below the cut is another version with some extra bits and pieces and the transcription

Transcript :

Architect Anatomy A. Architect "Brain" - Doesn't "store" information so much as allow for easy communication with the network B. Brainstem - connects the information received to the central nervous/circulatory system C. "Heart" - Circulatory system pumps the bioluminescent fluid to other organ systems and surface veins. Each node connects to a vast vasculature network D. "Kidneys" - Organs that filter the bioluminescent "blood" and other bodily fluids, absorbing and distributing collected material E. Nerve Center - Receives raw sensory data and filters it. Filtering can be unconscious or intentional

F. "Respiratory" Tract - Intakes gases or liquids and filters out material for use. Disposes of waste on exhale. Provides cooling to internal systems

The respiratory tract functions less like a set of lungs and more akin to a computer's cooling system, with the ability to absorb material from the environment to use in other parts of the body. It also would likely help the architect's body analyze the environment it is currently exposed to on a molecular level. It is also truly unidirectional, with the intake vents near the "collarbone" and the exhaust vents on both sides of the abdomen

The architect organ cache in-game felt like it was definitely not a complete model of the internal organs, so I wanted to come up with something to fill some more space. I also just really liked the idea of Al-An being capable of something similar to breathing, without having a respiratory system in the traditional sense. Feel free to use any of this in your own headcanons if you would like :)

BONUS - a gif of all the layers!

[fandomunsexyman]

SVSSS is a novel with a fandom.

[ID: A Scum Villain edit of the "missing the point" meme. A bullet arcs from velinxi art of child Shen Jiu kneeling while furiously glaring. The bullet says, "People are not entirely one thing or the other and holding them to these extremes ignores the complexities that come with their humanity." It arcs over the head of a person across from it, who ignores the bullet and exclaims: "Wow!! Shen Jiu's only crime was being mean and was wrongly hated!" End ID]

[miquella-everywhere]

"My loyal blade. And champion of the festival. Both your deeds will ever be praised in song."

Yeah this is absolutely Miquellas voice, no doubt about it. I would say that it's obvious, but Miquella is clearly addressing Malenia, his loyal blade of his own name, and us, the Tarnished, the champion of the Radahn Festival.

He clearly holds us both in high regard and praises us so.

The Stars needed to be freed and so too Miquellas fate. He sent Malenia with the hopes that it would be done by her blade, but ultimately we were the one to finish the job. Radahn is dead and fate moves once more, and so too shall Miquella.

"Promise me you'll be my consort."

Oooooh my sweet child I would slay every Outer God in the stars for you 😭

When I said that I hold Miquella in the same regard as Ranni this is what I meant. The whole idea of "Lord" is something that is reserved solely for the Tarnished, the story of Elden Ring revolves around us and our journey to become Elden Lord, and to become Lord we must become a consort in some capacity. Whether it be Marika or Ranni, and now Miquella...

All we can do is wait and then finally arrive to the Realm of Shadow so that we may find Miquella the Unalloyed.

Also a third Godwyn has hit the Pentagon lmaoooo 😂

[canisalbus]

My absolute favorite thing about your blog, even more favorite that Vachete, is the care and interest you put into each response. Be it an ask or an art piece, you always eloquently break down each individual aspect and comment on them. It always makes me smile.

.

[pespillo]

belos redemption fics

[h-didanart]

it’s the fishes again!

finally some more mermay shtick with my Bloodmoons! Enjoy the doodles!

Ooh, I don’t think I said it before, but each twin set is based off different fish! The separated ones are both sharks, a great white shark and an orca respectfully; the ones mostly in greyscale are deep sea fish, an angler and a Black Sea dragon; and the ones in the jacket are extremely poisonous, blue (technically red) ringed octopus and box jellyfish!

[apollos-boyfriend]

saw this on twitter and i am killing and maiming jimmy is So Angry he has never accepted his fate as the first one out he constantly fought against it. as much as he jokes about it once he’s actually died every second of his living moments are spent fighting and biting and clawing at life. he sees the warning signs and he walks towards the chasm not because he’s accepted his fate but to attempt to circumvent it. scientific studies need to be ran on the consequences of canary jimmy and his woobification

[ruvviks]

it's been a hot sec since i've talked about cyberpunk and i was initially working on a fic that would tell the story of this whole thing, but i've abandoned it many months ago and cannot say when i'll be picking it up again SO! i've decided to instead make this timeline. sorry in advance for how much information is in this thing the cyberpunk extended blorboverse essentially refers to the story parallel to the in-game events of cyberpunk 2077 that @mojaves and i came up with. we don't really have a better name for it but at this point the term has been used so many times that i feel like everyone here knows what it is by now, but at the same time we've never really explained the full scope of what the story is by now (it's a lot sorry). so in an attempt to get you guys a little bit more up to date with it all, here's a semi coherent timeline that describes the core events of the story and every branching story that came out of it! for additional background information, you can check out the following posts (timeline 1 / timeline 2 / timeline 3) to catch up with the continuation of the in-game storyline that's referenced in this timeline, but it's mostly irrelevant to everything here save for a couple of referenced events that cross over between the stories. it all ties together very intricately sorry about that. don't worry too much about it i've included my taglist down below to make sure people who are interested won't miss this post, but feel free to skip over this if it's not your thing! won't be doing a lot of this kind of stuff in the future but i'm trying to get back to the cyberpunk roots so this is kind of like, a good starting point and reference point for later posts!

The story starts in early 2077 and is centered around Sebastian Vidal, gang leader of the Cobras and previous test subject of Arasaka Special Programs (the linked page is a lot of information but gives the most coherent overview of what the branch actually is). The current director of the SERPENT projects, Andrew Colton, and Dr. Alana Cartier, both want him dead, to tie up their last loose end before the rest of Arasaka can find out and shut down Special Programs once and for all.

Over the past months they’ve been hiring various assassins in secret, to try and get Seb killed; however, these assassins keep failing, and their latest attempt lies in the hands of Cassidy Shaffer, an ex-corpo turned assassin with a strong moral code and plenty of experience to his name. With little to work with, as his mysterious client doesn’t give out much information, Cassidy starts with what he thinks is gonna be a quick and easy job– but he ends up hunting after Seb for essentially a year.

During this year, the two men have a series of wild encounters that get more and more insane the longer it goes on; it includes, but is unfortunately not limited to, Cassidy biting off a chunk of Seb’s ear, the two of them running over the highway, the two of them getting handcuffed together and chased by the NCPD then hit by a car right in front of the hospital, and Seb sensually licking blood off Cassidy’s face after having stabbed him when Cassidy wanted to strike at a concert Seb is visiting.

All of it comes to a sudden stop when Cassidy learns his client has been lying to him the whole time, and since he does not appreciate lying clients he ends up jumping sides and teams up with the Cobras to do some cleanup duty in Arasaka Special Programs. He and Seb work together to go after a list of targets to get the still ongoing projects mostly to a halt, while remaining in the shadows themselves as to not draw too much attention their way; and during this collaboration they meet several people from their past, bringing back both good and bad memories.

One of these people is Hanan Chisaka, the Head of Security at Special Programs. She ends up becoming the next test subject of Project Cobra after the last successful subjects, Xavier and Gabriel Mason, end up escaping in the midst of the chaos of Hanako Arasaka’s capture in mid-2077. Once Seb’s best friend and Cassidy’s mentor, she’s now forced to hunt the both of them down; but in their final confrontation she snaps out of the controlled mode Arasaka keeps her in and runs away with them, effectively leaving Special Programs without any test subjects. Another one of these people is Reid Bennett, Cassidy’s ex and ex-coworker back at MaxTac. He still works for the corporation and has been on an ongoing investigation into Arasaka Special Programs; seeing Cassidy alive and well, working together with Seb no less, piques his interest and he continues to look further into the case, which will cause him to make a very big mistake later on in the timeline.

By September 2078, Seb and Cassidy have successfully taken down all their planned targets and retreat back into the shadows, leaving Special Programs with many losses and no test subjects. With the APEX program discontinued a month earlier (incident discussed in this fic, which is a continuation of the in-game events), and Hanako Arasaka recovered and ready to take the corporation back from the hands of her corrupt brother, Special Programs ends up having to retreat for the time being, and cook up a new plan in the background.

Special Programs by this point is run by Andrew Colton, Alana Cartier, and Kaida Akiyama, three players who have been in the game for a long time already in the SERPENT projects’ runtime. Colton and Cartier are married– Cartier used to be married to Seb and cheated on him for a good amount of time when he was still at Arasaka– but their marriage is starting to fall apart. Akiyama has had to watch over Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne for a while during his chase after the Mason twins, which ended up with the twins dead and Hawthorne going into early retirement (Arasaka doesn’t know the twins faked their death and Ambrose is now dating one of them lol), and xe is now determined to help Colton and Cartier get Seb back into Arasaka so the projects can continue.

Cassidy’s initial plan was to leave as soon as the collaboration would come to an end, but he has found his place with the Cobras and instead ends up officially joining them.The next chapter in the story is a more laid-back and easygoing chapter, in which Cassidy learns to be part of real life again, and in which Seb learns to let people get close to him again after spending years trying to convince himself he doesn’t need any help. Over the course of a little over a year (all the way to November 2079), the two grow even closer than they had already done, going on gigs together and, you guessed it, slowly but surely falling in love until they inevitably end up together at the end of it.

Not long after the two get together, Reid returns into Cassidy’s life. He wants to try and be friends again and Cassidy gives him a second chance, though this soon enough turns out to have been a mistake, with Reid trying to create distance between Seb and Cassidy and then going as far as trying to sell Cassidy to Kang Tao (one of the few corporations that have been hunting Cassidy down for a while now) in exchange for his own freedom from MaxTac (where he would have otherwise been stuck at for probably the rest of his life). Naturally, Reid can’t watch Cassidy get tortured for long and leaks his location to the Cobras, who find and free Cassidy and take Reid into captivity instead– he does not get killed, but instead has to sit out some time at a safehouse somewhere in solitude, where he gets to decide what kind of person he wants to be in the future.

This brings us to Elysium; a gorgeous spaceship which was supposed to be a relatively cheap escape from reality for everyone who wanted a refreshing break from Earth, but through Arasaka sponsorship has become just another cash-grab project to compete with the Crystal Palace– and considering the megacorporation has its greasy hands all over it, the secret labs in the spaceship are used for a series of very unethical experiments. Naturally so, it would be the perfect place for Colton to continue his SERPENT projects without the risk of Hanako Arasaka finding out and shutting the place down. He sends forces up to Elysium (obviously after his other attempts at relocating the project to space have failed tremendously, having lost contact with every single crew in the smaller Arasaka stations in orbit around the planet), but since he’s not there himself his cousin (one of the CEOs of Elysium), Maxwell Crane, unbeknownst to Colton, takes control of the SERPENT projects in space instead. From the earlier linked Special Programs page: “Project Eryx used the technology of previous projects, but took a completely new approach in the hosts it used; rather than focusing on the human psyche it attempted to create a new type of cyborg which would lack the humanity that caused previous projects to fail. The Cobra chips were no longer used and the software was instead installed directly onto the host’s mainframe. The flexibility of the new hosts– more robot than human, and in some cases the entire human aspect was lacking altogether– allowed for experimentation with highly advanced cybernetic enhancements and military grade tech and upgrades, turning the test subjects– dubbed ‘prototypes’– into dangerous, unstoppable killing machines.”

Things settle down for Seb and Cassidy, but this moment of peace does not last long. In January 2081 the two find themselves traveling to the spaceship Elysium, to investigate a curious situation in the laboratories– they’ve been hired by Arasaka without their knowledge and it’s a setup to get Cassidy killed and Seb back in Cartier’s control.

While in space, they learn that the secret labs have suffered an outbreak of the above mentioned prototypes. They quickly connect the dots and realize Special Programs is back in the game, and they work together with security guards Aubrey Valentine and Leon dello Russo to try and fix the situation before it gets out of hand. Obviously this fails tremendously and Elysium ends up on a complete lockdown after a ship-wide outbreak, which is eventually contained in late March of that year, with CEO Maxwell Crane dead, leaving only his wife Kinsley Osborn behind.

Elysium continues to exist and is rebuilt after the crisis, and Kinsley Osborn can now finally turn it into the retreat it was always meant to be. Previously, most Elysium employees were to be stuck in space for the rest of their lives; however, with Arasaka out of the picture they are free to leave as they please, which results in a gigantic cut in total employee count in the months that follow.

Seb and Cassidy return to Night City and take Aubrey and Leon with them. Aubrey reunites with his sisters; Becca, James, and Rikki, and soon after his return to the city he opens an LGBTQ+ nightclub called Bodytalk with them, found Downtown, City Center, in June 2081. Not only is it a fun place to hang out at, it’s also his main hub as a fixer, and he starts a collaboration with the Cobras to get business going between the gang and the club; and soon enough it grows into a large and powerful network of connections, which is the foundation on which the rest of the stories are built.

After this point in time, many many more things happen but it would take me another hour or ten to go into full detail of all of that, so instead here’s a quick rundown of some of the other things that Bodytalk gets involved in:

Reid Bennett is handed over to Aubrey and he starts working at the club, and he becomes a very valued employee as well as a good friend to many now that he’s no longer fucking insane

Kaida Akiyama returns from Elysium and shows up to Hanan’s doorstep, to ask for her help with getting out of Arasaka for good; much later on, xe starts working for Bodytalk as well, in an attempt to put xyr past behind xem and become a better person

Urban Dynamite starts performing at the club regularly, and it becomes their home base

Luna Serratos, Cassidy’s ripperdoc friend from all the way back to killing era, gets involved in the Harbinger case from Maelstrom (one of the gang’s most feared members); turns out the Harbinger is in fact Reuben de la Rosa, a by then 22-year-old kid who has ended up in Luna’s care with his friend Noah Telavera after the two got caught up in an explosion. She requests the Cobras’ help with getting Maelstrom to let Reuben go

Officer Michele Diaz from Militech (who used to be Cassidy’s boss) is demoted following the lawsuits after the Elysium incident, and her investigation into the incident in hopes to get her job back leads her to Bodytalk; she begins threatening them and sends the whole club and their allies into uncertain times

Many people get married. There’s so many fucking guys here we went a little insane with the numbers but there’s several weddings and there’s a whole polycule going on too feel free to send asks about this if you’re interested

Cobra Cybernetics releases a new line of cyberware, which is incredibly buggy and dangerous to the public; it’s brought to the club’s attention and it makes them realize that Luiza Vidal (Seb’s sister), who not that long ago asked them to kill her husband (William Colton (Andrew’s brother), CEO of Cobra Cybernetics), has gone missing; they now need to get involved without getting the news out that they actually didn’t kill William and that he is still alive somewhere, while also balancing out dynamics between Biotechnica (angry at Cobra Cybernetics for stealing their designs) and Arasaka (the actual reason why Cobra Cybernetics’ designs look like Biotechnica’s designs, because William stole designs from Special Programs after halting their partnership after the Elysium incident, but these designs had been stolen by Arthur Jenkins from Biotechnica even BEFORE that to be able to hijack the European Space Council’s cybernetics following the Frankfurt incident. Are you still with me)

Vitali Dobrynin (fixer and main character from the in-game events storyline and the continuation of it; Vincent “V” Mayer’s boyfriend) ends up visiting Bodytalk after meeting Aubrey at a Fixer Council meeting, which happens in late 2083; this essentially ties the two main storylines together, which means that yes, a lot of the characters from the two separate storylines end up meeting :]

Officer Ulysses Dimakos (used to work with Reid at MaxTac) is sent to investigate Bodytalk following the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and ends up teaming up with the club to get MaxTac on a dead trail in exchange for his freedom of the corporation

On top of the Bodytalk / Cobras centered storyline, there’s a couple of side stories that are still connected to the whole thing but are more of a standalone thing with only a few touching points to the rest of it all:

This obviously takes place a lot earlier because it’s already mentioned above, but Special Ops agent Ambrose Hawthorne is tasked with chasing after the escaped Mason twins; naturally he lets them go and ends up going into retirement, and Xavier Mason later on ends up becoming Bodytalk’s part-time repair guy on account of knowing Kaida

Gabriel Mason ends up in a car crash with retired security specialist Ames Ortega, who was also in Elysium during the incidents there, and the two end up babysitting Ambrose and Xavier’s kids together while those two are helping Hanan with getting Kaida out of Arasaka (Are you still with me. Blink if you can hear me)

Mercenary Frankie Sayyad gets a promotion from his fixer, Vulture (real name Diana Crane, Maxwell Crane’s older sister and cousin of the Coltons), and becomes one of her Bloodhounds; he works together with Evelyn Harris, Nimue Nkuna, and Beckett Rydel, the latter being one of the very first test subjects of Arasaka Special Programs, and the four accidentally get themselves mixed into a mystery concerning their secretive fixer

Caleb Harris, ex-security at Biotechnica, ends up back at Club Bodytalk not long after the conclusion of the Cobra Cybernetics scandal, and starts working for Aubrey; he is partnered up with Ramiel Al-Masri, a mercenary who has been working for Vitali Dobrynin for a while and has recently joined Aubrey’s mercenary roster too, and together they dive into a series of gigs neither of them had expected

Journalist Bodhi Shankar has finally found more evidence and information surrounding the mysterious cult gang Umbra and its so-called Prophet, Thiago Salazar; however, his antics have led to him accidentally becoming part of the gang himself, and he has to figure out a way to get Thiago to stop listening to the supposed deity that the gang worships known as Scintilla, before she makes him do things that will get many people killed

taglist (opt in/out)

@velocitic, @deadrlngers, @euryalex, @ordinarymaine, @gurathins;

@mojaves, @shellibisshe, @dickytwister, @mnwlk, @rindemption;

@ncytiri, @calenhads, @noirapocalypto, @florbelles, @radioactiveshitstorm;

@strafethesesinners, @fashionablyfyrdraaca, @aemondtargeryen, @radioactive-synth, @katsigian;

@estevnys, @elgaravel, @aezyrraeshh, @carlosoliveiraa

[the-converse-high-top]

Another Käärijä Research Project

aka: käärijä style-shifting project

as a preface, here are my (non) qualifications for this project and the circumstances under which it happened:

I am a linguistics student, and this past semester I took a course on sociolinguistics. the goal of this project was to become familiar with the concept of and analyze style-shifting (it's more commonly known as code-switching online but theres a difference and this is style-shifting), specifically by analyzing the speech of one person. We had the option to study oprah or to have someone else approved by my prof, so you know I had to ask my prof if I could study jere. This project is solely my intellectual property; even though I had a tutor help me a lot, everything written in this paper and on this post was my work alone.

now, on to the actual findings! the full paper and transcripts will be linked at the end :D

the actual variables (words or sounds) that I studied were the pronunciation of r, and use of the word "the".

to make things a lot easier from the get-go, i'm going to introduce you all to one of my favorite websites, ipachart.com (the international phonetic alphabet [ipa] chart is a big chart with an entry for every sound that exists in a language. this handy dandy website has an audio recording for each one of those sounds).

go to this website, and then scroll down to the table. go to the column labeled "post alveolar" and then click on ɾ and ɹ. those are the sounds i studied in this paper! ɾ is the finnish r and ɹ is the american r :)

so basically what i did to find instances of my variable was i just looked up a bunch of esc interviews and listened out for use of the different r sounds. i also transcribed the entire dinner date live because i love torture apparently :) the specific interviews and lives/stories are in the bibliography of the paper :p

after i transcribed all the interviews and lives/stories i went through and highlighted every instance of the r sound. then i calculated the ratios of ɾ to ɹ based on the context they were spoken in. the two contexts i looked for were formal contexts (sit-down interviews) and informal contexts (literally anything else).

i found that jere uses ɹ WAY more often in formal contexts than he does in informal contexts, and the same in reverse with ɾ.

i then went back to the transcripts and looked for all instances of the word "the". i also looked for instances where i thought it should be present, but was omitted. i calculated the ratio of present vs omitted "the"s in formal vs informal contexts and made some charts.

the graph with the smaller black section is "use of 'the' in formal settings" and the one with the smaller green section is "use of 'the' in informal settings" (the images are transparent, sorry)

i found that jere uses "the" WAY more often when in formal settings! there were also some instances where he added a "the" where it was unnecessary, which is studied at length in this wonderful paper by @alien-girl-21

something i also noticed that i elected not to study because this paper took enough energy on its own was that in formal contexts, whenever the "or" sound came in the middle or at the end of a word, jere wouldn't pronounce the r. it stuck out to me mostly because i heard words like "performance" turning into "perfomance", which i thought was an interesting quirk.

unfortunately i was somewhat limited by both my brainpower and capacity to do more work on this paper in the relatively short timeframe i was given (2 weeks) and the fact that i was given a 5 page MAX for this paper (not including a bibliography). i had a lot of fun doing this though and am definitely planning on studying jere for for academic credit again in the future if given the chance!

also i would like it to be known that i spent an hour searching for that 5 second clip of the urheilucast where jere said that he used to sell kitchens and understands english better than he can speak it.

link to a google drive folder with the actual paper i wrote and the transcripts of the interviews with notation:

please feel free to send me asks and dms with questions or comments about this paper! i absolutely love rambling about linguistics :3!!

[finisnihil]

Analysis with Penacony spoilers ahead, read at your own behest

I love Acheron so so much and one of the main reasons is how human she tries to be. She‘s trying so hard to stay human, to be human.

She’s killed people the blood debt is a burden she carries. She only sees the world in black, white, and red, but she gets lost easily and guides strangers home and she thanks you for trusting her even though you don’t have to and she protects a little boy from the mafia and she mourns your friend with you even though she didn’t know her because she knows you’re hurting and she helps you calm down after you watched your friend die horribly and she stays with you and looks after you and tells you to stay level headed and she apologies for being held back from protecting those you love because she isn’t human anymore and then she does one of the most human thing of all and blesses the soul and mourns her with you, guides her home like she did with you. Acheron is gentle like a psychopomp, like Death. She cries blood but it’s still crying.

Onto the allusion, the name Acheron comes from the river Acheron, one of the five rivers of the Underworld in Greek mythology. The Acheron is the River of Woe/Pain/Lost Souls. The River Cocytus (River of Wailing/Lamentation) and River Phlegethon (River of Magma) both flow into the River Acheron and the River Styx (River of Oaths/Border to the Underworld/Makes one invulnerable if they bathe in it) stems from the Acheron. The final river is the River Lethe which causes forgetfulness when bathed in or drunk from and usually used by the souls of the dead to be reborn. These allusions fit Acheron well, as she cries blood which is fitting for one named after the River of Woe. Her difficulty to hold onto memories is also reminiscent of the Lethe, especially now that we know she’s an Emanator. She was technically “reborn” as when she became one.

Building off this, she fulfills the role of a psychopomp. In folklore and mythology psychopomp are entities that guide souls of the dead, such a Thanatos in Greek mythology who is the personification of peaceful death (Who Seele has allusions to but that’s another analysis). Aventurine associates Acheron with the Finality a few times and we see her act like a psychopomp when she does things like “take us home” when we first meet her and she mentions guiding again when she sends Firefly off. She gets lost in the waking world but never seems to in the Dreamscape.

Building even more off this allusion, in Greek mythology the twin brother of Thanatos is Hypnos, the personification of sleep. Sleep and death are often tied together even outside of Greek mythology, like the Epic of Gilgamesh where Gilgamesh is literally told he can’t think about conquering death when he can’t even conquer sleep.

This all leads me to a theory about why Acheron said she had no choice in whether to draw her blade. She wanted to but she had no choice in the matter. We’ve seen her draw her blade twice so far in the story and it was to wake the Trailblazer and to fight Sam. If Acheron is an agent of the Finality maybe her blade can’t be drawn because it can only be used against those dying or dead or not living? We know Firefly was dying and we know she has a weird connection with Sam. The weird “Death” monster also seemed to target Firefly. I think Acheron couldn’t draw her sword against the “Death” because she is also an agent of Death and cannot attack one of her own, but she can use it against Firefly because Firefly is dying and it would be seen as a final severing of the soul from life or as “harvesting” the soul. Of course I could be completely and utterly wrong I’m literally just making an analysis based on allusions and motifs but still I think it’s interesting. Plus Aventurine calls Acheron and Sam enemies and Sam uses fire, an element typically seen as representing life.

Pulling a little bit away, Acheron sees the world in black, white, and red. The red is fleeting according to her and it reappears when a choice is made. If Acheron is a psychopomp this makes sense, she would mostly see the world as the living and the dead and the red could be a tie to the idea of the red string of fate, as we know destiny is a major theme of HSR’s story. When we make choices that change the direction of fate, we interact with the red strings of fate. This could be another reason she’s at odds with the Stellaron Hunters, they adhere strongly to the idea of destiny but to death destiny would have a different meaning. Her sword has an eye and is adorned with red which is where the majority of the color in her design is centered, going back to my theory around her sword it could represent how it cuts strings of fate and the eye matches the one on the “Death” nightmare.

We also know she apparently hijacked the Ever-Flame Mansion party to come here, maybe because she sensed there would be a lot of death here and came to collect the souls?

Finally, I would like to reiterate I do not play HI3 this is just something I’ve noticed, so correct me if I’m wrong:

She seems to be a Raiden Mei Expy and I know nothing of that character but I did notice when she says “Do you remember me?” there’s the answer of no and yes, and she akins us to a dear friend she had. We, the protagonist, fulfill the same role in this game Kiana (I think that’s the HI3 protag) does in HI3 and I’m vaguely aware Raiden Mei and Kiana have some sort of relationship in HI3. This asking if we remember her could be two things to me: Either she’s asking if we remember her as we have faced death before or she’s asking if we the player remember her from HI3, which she may have an awareness of if she is a personification of death and that may link her to knowledge of the Imaginary Tree as trees seem to be associated with death in HSR when you remember Yaoshi is associated with trees as well and the fruit of their tree on the Xianzhou gives immortality, where if Luocha is an Emanator he would have that tree motif too and we know he has tree motifs because he’s an Expy of Otto who did interact with what I think was the Imaginary Tree and that carried over when Luocha was given the element of Imaginary (Of course I had to talk about Luocha who do you think I am)

Anyways there’s so so much more but this post is already really really long and probably incomprehensible so if I think of any more I’ll make like a part II post anyways thanks for reading this far if you did and feel free to add discussion, mwah!

[fumifooms]

his flower...

Aww, from the signing doodle board and the Adventurer’s Bible long illustration… He likes flowers he likes shells, just a guy and his flower he picked from the side of the road, what’s not to love. Nature lover boy…

[gods-favorite-autistic]

I feel like a lot of fantasy high parents are just like yeah in the context of the fact that it’s 1 a comedy show and 2 a dnd suburbia combo a lot of this stuff is normal for who these people and how they raise and interact with their kids but oh my god that is fucked up

[syncrovoid-presents]

Wally and the Colour RED

Wally and the colour Red have an interesting relationship in Welcome Home. This is a rambling/analysis of different things I've found that makes me believe it's an important detail moving forwards with the Welcome Home Mystery!

First! Why do I think this matters?

There's a few reasons why I think this matters! First, while all the members of the cast seem to be tied to a colour, none is as focused or as consistent as Wally and the colour red! The two primary examples I'll use to cover this is one that we've had for a while, and two that we got in this update. Those being the signatures at the bottom of the guestbook, the interactable telephone, and the name graphics on the transcript page!

Interestingly, all of the cast are directly tied to a specific colour! The signatures at the bottom of the Guestpage and the colours of the "calls" on the telephone are the same for each character. This being pink for Julie, orange for Sally, yellow for Frank, green for Poppy, turquoise for Howdy, blue for Barnaby, purple for Eddie, and red for Wally. This is consistent (and possibly something to pay attention for in the future?)

Notably however, Home is signed by Wally, while the audio file for Wally's "call" recording is also called "duet" when you open it in another tab. Audio files with "duet" is a sign that Home is present. This means that red is not strictly a Wally colour, but also the colour for Home!

(if you're curious, the other audio called "duet" is Wally's little song he sings)

This is interesting, because Wally and Home are often treated as a duo, moreso than any other characters of Welcome Home. I would also like to point out another detail, one that I think ties into this tie between Wally, Home and the colour red.

The Records

All the records from Wally's hidden message ("I will help you understand neighbor, I will find a way soon.") are red! Sure, some are glitched, but they are all red. As is this record with the strange audio (has anyone decoded this yet?). This audio is directly tied to Wally, as it's called "(DRAWING?) WITH WALLY DARLING".

However the hidden one's may not just be Wally. Though they are all name the tab "answer" when opened, I'm tempted to say that "answer" is wally prompting us to answer (or, alternatively, Wally is trying to answer us, however he perceives us).

I believe that Home is there too in the audio. If you listen to all of them in a row, turning up the audio will reveal that there is a heart beat in the background. This, I want to say, is Home and not Wally, as Wally does not seem to register them. It peaks about halfway through with Neighbor, coincidentally the audio that is both glitching and is made of a series of clicks rather than voice lines.

I have seen people say that this is "Help Me" or "Hello" in morse code. I do not know which is the agreed translation is (to me it sounds like "…. . ..-.. .. -.. ---", which translates to "HEĘIDO", which is not a word. However it most resembles "…. . .-.. .-.. ---" which translates to "HELLO")

Regardless of what Home may be saying, it shows that the hidden recordings can be put together into a timeline that sounds like one recording, which means it's most likely all recorded at the same place. Ergo, Home is in the hidden recordings as well!

Other spots where red is brought up

There are other instances of red being tied to Wally. Some are obvious, like his love of apples (red ones specifically), the Wally prints/finger paint on the bottom of the guestbook, the background of the "i <3 Wally" gif/sticker in the sticker section of the site (also shared with Home. Wally's character description is also shared by home!), Wally himself in the "so-below" page, among other things. Such as the Wally themed telephone being red, despite his more iconic blue swirled hair (or blue and yellow-trimed sweater), his clothing in multiple official artworks, the Wally cereal box, and more.

(Like something I've noticed, which is that Home is the only house that's a solid colour (red!) without any pattern breaking it up, plus the most "standout" red that Wally typically wears being tied around his neck (symbolism?). Plus the "W" of Welcome Home is red! That's fun too!

There's also some... stranger ones. Such as this hidden piece of morse code found by this person, which spells out ".. -- .-. . -..", or "IM RED" when translated to english.

And more hidden ones too, that tie into the hidden staff page (I have a post breaking that down that you can find here!! I cover everything I could find plus went through the website code, if you want to know everything about the secret staff site check it out!)

There is the red safe, which has in WHRP universe lore!! I delve into this in my other post, just know that it is something that exists both in the secret website (it is what introduces you to the hidden website!) AND it exists in the WHRP world, both written about in printed emails and as a physical object seen within The Room:tm:. You may also notice everyone is represented by their original colours, except for home, who is now white (or blank?).

There's also scrap pieces of red paper spilled on the ground in The Room:tm: (that have drawn spirals), a red clock in the style of Wally's red car, a red painting of some sort on the wall of The Room:tm: (that we never get a good look at, though it may have a drawn yellow eye in the upper center), a red apple, and most importantly of all, this:

The Red Notebook

This is no ordinary notebook. This here is the notebook that the WHRP team have "loaned" the Question Answerer, also known as the Head Curator of Question Answer! according to the printed emails. This book is very important because there are multiple signs that it was written by Wally. Inside is a sketchpad attached to the lefthand interior bookcase with little paintings and a handprint suspiciously similar to that on the bottom of the GuestBook page and doodles in the styles Wally has used (spirals, finger paint smiley face, the drawn apple, etc).

(by the way, if you're interested in what the note says the most accurate translation I've found is by Tumblr user truckfreaks

"Hello,

My name doesn't matter. I am here to catalogue something I'm not sure is fully real. But it must be. I'm holding all the evidence in my hands. Pictures. Characters. Text I can barely read. It's called "Welcome Home" and it looks like it might've been a children's book? Like I said, I can't tell.

It was sopping wet when I found it. When I first reached into one of the brightly colored envelopes, my hand was already covered in some gross, [unknown - possibly “oozing”] material. It feels like antiques are always covered in some kind of grime. I'm trying to clean up what I have and do a little more digging.

There's only one name I can make out right now... Wally. Probably important, but like I said, I'll keep looking.

XOXO"

The wrap up (don't want to make this too long!)

Regardless of what you make of this, it shows that there is even more proof of Wally, not just the character but the Wally ""haunting"" the website and the Wally within the WHRP universe, all being tied to the colour red. (Quick clarification: The Wally we see in branding, clips of the show, etc are all Wally, however he isn't current Wally. He is the Wally of the past, the original Wally, the base Wallly, whatever you want to call him. Therefore I separate him from the "now" Wally. It's unconfirmed whether the Wally that's seemingly trying to communicate with us through the website is the same as the Wally that seems to be related to all the objects being sent to Question Answerer, who is the same Wally that is constantly calling them. If so, then there is only one "now" Wally. If they are separate, then there are two, possibly one in the website itself and one focusing on Question Answerer. Please note, this is all speculation).

While it's true that red is Wally's favourite colour, I believe that it's far more than just that tying Wally and the color red together. Going forwards, anything red that isn't immediately branded as a Wally related object should be considered important, at least I think so.

As for the connection between Wally and Home, both sharing the colour Red? I think this primarily is a display of how the two characters either rely on each other or are, in the vaguest of ways, tied together by fate.

Good bye for now!