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aethersea · 3 years

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you know what, I never do these things, but actually I’ve decided I would like to get to know people better! I would like to partake of the mortifying ordeal! I would like to talk about myself for a bit!

ok for the next...let’s say five days I will answer any of these things that people tag me in, or any random personal questions you plop in my ask box. I don’t have an ask meme on hand but just....pick one you’ve seen recently, or make up questions of your own, and I’ll answer. (the answer might be ‘nope that’s private’ but I will answer.) (@ the anon who asked for book recs - I see you, I’ve been thinking of books all day, I’m going to give you SUCH a long answer, I hope you don’t regret your choices bc it WILL be full of gushing)

alright, let’s go!

🌻 Tag 9 people you want to get to know better

Tagged by @booksandchainmail

Last Song: I’m currently listening to “Falcon in the Dive” from the Scarlet Pimpernel musical on loop. I watched one or two Scarlet Pimpernel movies when I was just barely too young to fully get what was going on, and the story’s held an odd but deep-seated place in my heart ever since. A few years ago I found out there’s a musical and most of the songs are pretty stellar (go listen to “Madame Guillotine” if you like big ensemble broadway numbers, it’s a banger, the bit where he cries out for God has been running through my mind on and off for a few days now haha not like that’s topical or anything), so every once in a while I spend a few days listening to them a lot.

Sometime last year I read the actual book, and got super into the whole concept of the Scarlet Pimpernel for a while. I plotted out Pimpernel aus for several fandoms, I read the entire wikipedia article, and I went looking for bootlegs of the musical. I didn’t find one, but I did find a full radioplay-style recording of the script, complete with full musical numbers, and listened to it like a podcast.

Reader, I was so disappointed. The play adds some scenes, bc a lot of the dramatic tension of the novel comes from internal conflict and that doesn’t stage super well, and the very first scene of this play – a play written in the NINETIES – features our dashing hero rescuing some aristocrats from a French prison, and then saying to the person in the next cell, who begs for rescue but is not an aristocrat, “We have enough of your kind in England.”

Enough! of your KIND! What in the merry frickety HECK my dudes!! The book has some rather unfortunate™ takes but it is from 1905, it’s regrettable but sadly to be expected. This play is from 1997. It has NO excuse. This scene wasn’t even in the book! What! the heck!

I was so disheartened that I lost my excitement for the play, and a couple songs later I stopped listening. It occurred to me just a few days ago that you could actually stage that ironically, with the person in the cell giving the audience a “can you believe this” look, and then the rest of the play could feature assorted non-aristocratic ensemble members constantly looking at the audience like they’re on The Office. And hey, maybe that’s what they did, or something similar – maybe that was never meant to be taken as a cleanly heroic stance, and the play deals with it in a complex way. It’s possible. I wouldn’t know. Kinda doubt it though, based on song lyrics.

Favorite Color: red, probably

Last Movie: I watched that new lesbian christmas movie with my family for christmas, the one with kirsten stewart and the guy from schitt’s creek. it’s very sweet and good and kinda sad, and I really enjoyed it. it also incidentally has the best gay best friend trope in probably anything ever, bc it’s not a trope (I didn’t realize until several hours after watching that it technically fits), it’s just a guy who is the protagonist’s best friend, and they’re just all gay, and then when he Gives Relationship Advice as a gay best friend always does, it’s advice about how to deal with your partner’s hangups around coming out.

actually every part of the gay best friend trope becomes better when they’re just best friends who are both gay. the big dramatic gestures (in this case, driving some ungodly distance in the snow on no notice) go from “haha how kooky” to “queer man will do anything he needs to to rescue his queer friend from an isolating & potentially triggering situation”. the relationship advice isn’t “honey you deserve some self-respect, treat yourself”, it’s a deeply sincere reminder of the vulnerability that is shared across almost everyone’s queer experience, and look I could ramble about this for a long time before reaching a coherent point but I’m INTO IT, okay? I’m into it.

Last Show: you want me to remember what show I last finished???? impossible, cannot be done, it was a long time ago and the adhd has eaten everything that happened before last week. here, instead I’ll tell you about another movie I watched, late at night with my mom in cozy companionship just a couple days ago. it’s called Quigley Down Under and it’s about a cowboy who goes to Australia and kills a bunch of racists, 10/10 would watch again. it’s from 1990 but it feels much older, with the music choices and the cinematography of a 70s Western. the cowboy is great, honorable and fearless and kind, but the breakaway star of this movie for me is the woman who attaches herself to his side and refuses to leave. her name is Cora, and she’s crazy, in the sense that she’s not altogether tethered to reality, but this never for a second diminishes her agency. she’s fierce and clever and compassionate, and she basically never does anything she doesn’t want to in the whole movie. her arc is about overcoming trauma by taking charge of her own fear and facing it head-on, she is never belittled or dismissed by the narrative or the protagonist, and look she’s just so cool. I love her. she’s so vibrantly alive. her story could probably have been handled with a bit more nuance, but honestly for the 90s it’s pretty great. I’m no expert, but I found nothing objectionable in it, just a bit of heavy-handedness.

anyway the theme of the movie is that racism is evil and racists deserve to be shot, and this too could have been handled better (not a single aboriginal character speaks a single line of english in this movie), but it follows through on that message in every way, while still being a fun kinda campy cowboy movie. overall a very good time.

Currently Watching: started showing my sister Hilda the other day, and she’s liking it! I love that show, it’s so incredibly cute. can’t wait to see season 2

Currently Reading: lmao I wish. lately the brain has firmly rejected all attempts to read anything of any length. currently pending, bc I was halfway through them when my brain stalled out, are tano’s fic What Does Kill You Can Make You Stronger, Too, a Toby Daye book - I think it was The Brightest Fell, I got like half a chapter in and haven’t picked it up in over a month, the Locked Tomb series, and probably a few other things too. ooh! also a book called Making Sex by thomas laqueur, which is my fancy academic reading that I’ve been doing in short bursts for the past year or two when I feel fancy and academic. it’s about the development of the concept of biological sex and of gender in Western society, and it’s fascinating. has among other things introduced me to the idea that until quite recently, fathers were a matter of faith. the mother? yeah, you can watch the baby pop out, we all know who the mother is. but the father? how can you know? how can you really know? we have paternity tests these days, but for all of human history up until now, we've just had to take fatherhood on faith. (not to mention we didn’t even know what fathers were contributing to the production of a fetus. clearly it was something, since you can’t get pregnant without a penis getting involved, but we have literally not known what until the past few decades. and that is wild. it has colored ALL of human history, all of our conceptions of society and family and kinship and gender, all of it, and it hadn’t even occurred to me until it was spelled out for me in this book, and it’s just......wow.

Salty, sweet or savory: for christmas my sister and I made seven different types of cookie, most of them involving chocolate somehow.

Craving: no bc I ate so many cookies. unless sleep counts. or maybe pringles, it’s been many moons since last I had a potato chip and I miss them.

Coffee or Tea: no thank you

Tagging: @coloursisee, @krchy-tuna, @sam-j-squirrel, @xzienne, @mirandatam, @viciousmaukeries, @sepulchritude, @elidyce, and @navigatorsnorth bc it’s been a while since we’ve talked, and I’m super hyped that you’re married now. v happy for you!

#finx rambles #finx has friends on the internet #be sure to tag me if you do this so I can go read it!#also you don't have to yammer on as much as I do #I'm just Like This you know #hmm perhaps I should readmore this actually #hmmmmmmm #I think I will use the excuse that it is 6 am to not do that #on account of how surely there are not many people up #and anyway this isn't meant for reblogging; you will only have to deal with this post once

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linguenuvolose · 4 years

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Why I don’t succeed at my language goals

I’ve tried to analyze a bit why I don’t manage to complete my goals that well and these are my conclusions. I didn’t think it would be this long and I don’t really know what to do with this information but yeah. I’ll put it under the cut because I ramble a lot.

I think I dislike doing things outside of my routine. I don’t have a habit of actively studying languages and therefor I don’t really know how to do it and it makes me uncomfortable and I end up doing nothing. I don’t have any active study resources (outside of apps) so I have no idea where to start and I get overwhelmed. I don’t like doing stuff I don’t know how to do, I know I can’t learn without being bad first but I find it very hard.

Connected to the previous one, I tend to set goals with resources I haven’t actually used yet. I think this is a bad because then if I don’t finish/start something because I realize it won’t help me like I thought it would I might still feel bad because I didn’t finish what I set out to do.

I go to bed too late. This mostly affects my reading. I almost exclusively read before bed but if it’s late I just want to sleep. Sleeping too little also affects my overall stress and happiness of course and that also has consequences for how much I manage to do.

I’m too stressed in general. I have a lot to do and it doesn’t feel justifiable spending focused time on things outside of uni. And honestly, I straight up don’t have the mental space and calm needed to focus on languages.

I set too ambitious goals. Deep down, every period, ever week, I know that I won’t finish all the goals but still I keep on setting too difficult goals for myself. That also makes it not a big deal not succeeding because “Well, I didn’t succeed last week either so who’s surprised really?” It also makes my goals feel too big so I don’t even bother starting them. I think a part of my planning process should be setting part goals for my bigger goals already at the beginning.

Not having a clear why for my goals. Language learning is a slow process and I have quite a hard time seeing how my goals would benefit towards actual progress. Probably linked to the fact that I’ve had a super long period of not learning languages actively and therefor feel like I’m at more or less the same level I’ve been at for the past 2-3 years in all of my languages. This might not be 100% true (I do feel much more secure in French again now which is nice!) but that’s how it feels. Sometimes I set goals because I think “that might be a fun activity” but I don’t know exactly what I want to learn from it and therefor don’t get that much from it. Okay, you want to listen to a podcast, but why? Is it to learn vocab? Immersion? Shadowing to train your accent? Cultural immersion? The goals should be based on improving my weaknesses, not on just doing something because it “might be good.”

Not having a clear why for my language learning. Except for Italian I don’t know if I have a super strong why for any of my languages which makes it hard to find motivation. I think I’ve discussed this before but since getting more involved and attached to Italian it has gotten extremely clear to me how unattached I am culturally to the other languages I study. @lagom-languages‘ posts on polyglotism has made me think a bit and idk, I feel like I might just be learning languages because I associate prestige or even identity to it. Recently it has also been partly because of academic utility (i.e. reading academic articles in other languages) and while there’s nothing wrong with knowing a language because it might be useful for your career, it doesn’t feel like a very strong reason.

Setting goals just because I feel like I should. Posting about my language goals really did help me a lot back in 2017-2018 and I did it for almost a full year I believe. But now, I don’t know how much it actually helps, a bit for sure but... I love seeing people posting about their progress every week (@nordic-language-love, @lagom-languages, @mediocrelanguagelearner, I think you all are super cool!) and I want to be a part of it but I don’t know if it’s actually the right way for me to go. I do identify myself as a language learner, I spend a lot of my life in foreign languages (mainly Italian and French) by listening to music, watching youtube, uni work etc. but I can’t help but feel that that isn’t enough. Everyone else here on tumblr and on instagram seem to be doing so much, you actively study, you write posts, you use the language but I... I don’t. And I know you post a lot even about things going badly, or when you’re feeling down about languages, and I appreciate that a lot. But still my brain is like nope, look at all of these people being perfect. And I know I only see a sliver of your lives, I know it’s impossible to compare myself progress to others’ because we are not the same, we do not start from the same point but still I do compare myself. I want to study languages actively because that’s what “everyone else” does. But that can’t be my reason, that can’t be my why.

I think in the end it comes down to stress, lack of “why” and motivation. Unfortunately these are things I actively have to think about to solve, I have to do some reevaluation, some thinking. A part of me wants to have language goals for these last 2 months of the year, I like the structure. But another part of me really can’t see the benefit, it’s not like I won’t be in contact with languages if I don’t have any goals. Idk, maybe I’ll turn my goals updates into progress updates to keep some kind of accountability. But I also find it hard to track what I do since a lot of it is just immersion. I don’t know. I think I’ll let the goals be for this week, feel how I feel and then see what I decide to do next week.

#this feels catharcic in a way #why do I feel nervous about this?#I also think my planning process is too short and not thought out enough to work well for me #I base it around what I've done before what I think others are doing what resources I have around #when I should more actively analyze my strengths and weaknesses and see what I really do need and how I can incorporate that efficiently #in my life as it is right now #your goals should work for you as the person you are right now - not the one you want to become in the future #snicksnack #langblr #language learning #goal setting #language goals

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ctrl-alt-languages · 4 years

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tips for people learning multiple languages

i’ve recieved a good amount of messages/asks about how i learn several languages at once, and how i manage my time! so i thought about it a lot and made this post to share how i do it! :)

in this post, i will discuss what to focus on while learning multiple languages, the idea of time management in language learning, parallel language learning, and outside resources.

so to start, there are different ways you can simultaneously learn different languages, and that sometimes depends on which languages you specifically chose to learn and also your proficiency level. some things that you may find helpful if you’re just beginning your multiple-language journey is if you focus on these aspects:

language families: take note of whether your target languages are from the same or similar language group(s) (i.e. japanese, korean, chinese or spanish, french, italian). this will be super helpful to know about from the start when it comes to language compare/contrast. if your target languages are not from the same group, that is okay, you’ll just know that they won’t be as easy to compare when to comes to grammar structures or vocabulary.

proficiency: if you are more proficient in one target language than another, you can practice “parallel learning” (i’ll get more into parallel learning later in this post). this i would say is one of the most helpful tips i could ever give anyone. being a complete beginner in a lot of languages without being proficient in at least one target language will be difficult because you have to start from basically nothing.

differentiation: notice the similarities but ALSO differences in each language before deep-diving, so that you can draw connections but also be able to compartmentalize and not mix them up

foundation: have a strong baseline for each language. learn the script, alphabet, basic grammar structures.

immersion: i have personally been successful if i don’t start learning the language until i have some level of linguistic or cultural immersion of each language. for example, i didn’t start seriously learning korean until after being surrounded (more like gently bombarded) by korean media like movies, tv shows, music, etc, so i highly highly reccommend immersing yourself completely before diving into the academics of language learning, because it really helps you get the feel for what it will be like (and plus you’ll be able to pick things up quicker as you were exposed to them before to some degree)

relativity: beware! some languages will be harder but some will be easier compared to your native language. comparing your target languages to your native language is actually a very good gague as to how much you will need to dedicate to each language. for the specific case in the ask above, assuming that your native language is english, i would say you might find yourself spending more time on russian than french because it is from a different language group. however, french is far more specific than english in terms of grammar, so you’ll probably find russian grammar more simple. don’t fret though, just because a language is completely different from your native language doesn’t mean that it will be impossibly difficult to learn.

time management:

i think you might find that the more you learn languages, time management becomes less of an issue because you actually enjoy it. also, you will eventually find that you aren’t placing aside equal learning time for each language, and that is very normal. to be honest, i actually wouldn’t even recommend thinking too much about time management unless you feel that it really helps you succeed in this arena. language learning is a very fluid journey, and it’s actually a lot less academic in a way than we would like to believe. i would say, if you divide the language into its parts: immersion, speaking, listening, reading/writing, the academic, “sit down and study for an hour” part of the language only makes up like 25% of the actual language learning. so i would spend most of my time off the books and trying to practice other things.

use the books as something to fall back on or reference rather than something to prop up your language abilities. because usually it helps more to see something you don’t know in a real life situation than in a book so that you have some level of prior knowledge and proper context.(obviously don’t do this with grammar though, that part i do suggest that you sit down and study.)

but,,,regardless of how you chose to learn multiple languages- whether it is to set aside time and peruse through books or to avoid books at all costs and dive into the deep end- here are some time management tips:

if you chose to take a more structured path for language learning (this applies to less structure as well in a way):

tailor your time to your own focus: set aside a little time every day. don’t make it a school class where you lose focus halfway through and then you force yourself to study for all two hours. if you find yourself losing focus, that’s when you should take a break or call it a day. and it doesn’t have to be that long either. as long as you were able to learn something from your study session, regardless of how short it was, you were successful.

goal-setting: have one or two daily language goals. making a giant do to list can sometimes be counterproductive and it can lead to you feeling defeated if you don’t complete everything. focus on the core parts of language-learning when you set these goals too: immersion, listening, speaking, reading/writing. keeping it simple will help you be satisfied as well.

stay holistic: always take a step back and widen your perspective when you are doing formal studying. it is very easy to get caught up in a few vocab words that you can’t get memorized or tenses that you don’t feel secure with. while staying in the shallow end until you feel like you are ready does help, it is mostly a security blanket. throw yourself in the deep end. try to write full sentences, a paragraph, a story. do journaling. read an article in your target language and see what you picked up. you’ll be surprised at how much you know when you see the end product. and, you’ll also know what to work on.

don’t worry about time management but be mindful of it: it’s okay if you don’t study a language every single day, and it’s okay if you jump around a little bit. keeping a routine is great, but following it may not always help you succeed. studying too much is just as bad as studying too little because you will end up having this overflow of information that you will have trouble retaining in the long run. don’t study too little either, because you will end up forgetting what you learned too. find that happy medium that works just for you and study in those increments.

parallel language learning:

this tip is my absolute favorite thing, not only because of how important it is for those learning more than one secondary language, but because it’s such a good way to learn multiple languages at once.

so what is parallel language learning?

parallel language learning is a method used in which you effectively stop learning a target language through your native language, and you start learning through another target language in which you are more proficient. for example, i am learning japanese through english, which is my native language. however, because i am learning french as well, which is a language that i have a stronger grasp on because i am more proficient in french than japanese, i chose to learn japanese through french instead.

how is parallel language learning helpful?

parallel learning is an incredibly good tool to use in order to advance both the language in which you are less as well as more proficient. using the previous example, by learning japanese through french, i am not only learning japanese, but advancing and refining my french as well. therefore, you learn two languages with half the effort.

other resources:

this is all i have for now but i will keep updating as i find more. these are some articles/blog posts that i have found incredibly helpful:

https://lindiebotes.com/2020/03/25/making-time-for-languages/

https://lindiebotes.com/2019/09/26/how-to-choose-language-to-learn/

http://www.howtolanguages.com/juggling-multiple-languages-some-practical-advice/

well, i hope you all found this helpful! if you have any more questions or any more tips, drop an ask or comment :) i would be happy to add to this or make other posts with language learning tips!

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trans-cuchulainn · 5 years

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academic articles about queer arthuriana for @intersex-ionality and @gawain-in-green

okay first up i’m not an arthurian specialist, i mostly do medieval irish material, also this is heavily skewed towards medieval french arthurian material with some english influences -- not welsh material (sorry), and not other continental material generally. just bc i did medieval french more than i did anything else, and i did a bit of middle english but i know more about lancelot and chrétien than about malory so yeah

this is a very incomplete list but it’s stuff i have references to (in past essays, or because i have a photocopy of it in a folder somewhere). if i were not so fucking disorganised i would be able to give you so many more but i am a disaster, so.

not all of this stuff is like... directly about queer readings, but it feeds into queer theory (e.g. looking at non-normative expressions of sexuality, construction of gender and so on). also strong emphasis on things that overlap with the supernatural, monster theory, that kind of stuff, because that’s just what i’m interested in

* ‘the armour of an alienating identity’ by jeffrey jerome cohen and the members of interscripta, in arthuriana vol. 6, no. 4 (winter 1996) -- has some good shit, it’s cohen so it’s kinda dense but i found it interesting

* ‘masoch/lancelotism’ by jeffrey jerome cohen in new literary history vol. 28, no. 2 (spring 1997) -- all about the fact that lancelot is the original masochist, some interesting explorations here, again it’s ... dense (why cohen, why)

* ‘the prose “lancelot”‘s galehot, malory’s lavain, and the queering of late medieval literature” by gretchen mieszkowski in arthuriana vol. 5, no. 1 (spring 1995) -- this RUINED MY LIFE, if you want to have feelings about lancelot-galehaut then read this one, i will never be over it

* there is another Extremely Gay article about lancelot/galehaut and i think it is from the book of giants: sex, monsters and the middle ages by jeffrey jerome cohen (who is like half this list)... it made me cry. i think it’s that chapter that @finnlongman posted a couple of excerpts of here

sidenote: i do really rate cohen’s work but omg he’s like... dense af sometimes. his prose isn’t quite judith butler levels of incomprehensible but HE’S NOT FAR OFF. so just be warned about that. you settle into it, it starts making sense after a while, but ... he should use shorter words.

other books that might be interesting, though they don’t deal exclusively/directly with arthurian material:

* monsters, gender and sexuality in medieval english literature by dana m. oswald includes some arthurian material and looks at the differences between old english and middle english material with regard to sex and also monsters woo. we love a monster.

* sodomy, masculinity and law in medieval french literature: france and england 1050 to 1230 by william burgwinkle for some french stuff. don’t think there’s much that’s directly arthurian, but there’s some stuff about marie de france, so that’s kinda tangentially related

* constructing medieval sexuality ed. by karma lochrie, peggy mccracken, james a. schultz (lots of interesting chapters in this one exploring different aspects of sexuality in a medieval context)

also not arthuriana but like. while we’re here:

* ‘“for to be sworne bretheren til they deye”: satirizing queer brotherhood in the chaucerian corpus’ by tison pugh in the chaucer review, vol. 43, no. 3 (2009) has some interesting things to say about the whole idea of oaths of brotherhood within a queer framework/interpretation

* between medieval men: male friendship and desire in early medieval literature by david clark deals primarily with old english / germanic material, so substantially less useful for arthuriana but some useful (?) approaches to queer readings of medieval texts

* sexuality in medieval europe: doing unto others by ruth mazo karras was an interesting read... frustrating for me because of karras’s failure to engage with irish material at all and how poorly defined ‘europe’ was within this book (what does ‘medieval europe’ even MEAN? way too broad), but far from useless re: how sexuality was understood in a historical context so with caveats, would rec

* ‘heroes and their pals’ in one hundred years of homosexuality and other essays on greek love by david m. halperin offers a paradigm for looking at heroic / warrior relationships like achilles/patroclus etc, which can also be explored in the context of medieval material

anyway this is not nearly as complete or arthurian-specific as i’d hoped it would be because it turned out! i keep shitty notes! and i am astonishingly disorganised in how i keep track of this kind of thing! sorry. i tried. there was an attempt.

but i have a few followers who may be able to help, so @ all of youse, pls share your favourite articles on queer arthurian stuff, thank

#arthurian #queer theory #medieval #tc does academia

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tawneybel · 5 years

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Okay, I haven’t written a personal post in a while because I’ve been focused on schoolwork. Right now I’m super busy with a project where I have to read and evaluate lots of research articles. :( At least my academic writing is improving.

Ugh, I accidentally deleted my extensive review of Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. It was a really good book and I finished that page turner months ago. It’s easy to see why it has numerous adaptations and has influenced countless media in the Anglosphere alone. Perhaps even Heathers and Saw, what with the Erik’s plan to explode the opera house and the rosy hours of Mazenderan.

Sadly, the rest of Leroux’s bibliography seems to only be well known in French-speaking places. When I get around to getting a passport and go to Quebec I might duck into a library real quick. Even though she’s my fave mystery writer, I gotta read more detective fiction other than Agatha Christie.

For something rated PG, The Dark Crystal sure is dark. Not as bad The Adventures of Mark Twain being G-rated, though. I prefer its spiritual successor, Labyrinth. If I’d seen Labyrinth as a child that would have become one of my favorite movies, up there with Alice in Wonderland 1951 and The Wizard of Oz. Audiences need less CGI, more puppetry and animatronics!

I kind of want a Skeksis. (And maybe a Fizzgig, too.) Buzzards get a bad rap. We get flocks of turkey vultures and they’re kind of cute despite the smelliness. Let them scavenge! From now on, whenever I want the last slice of pizza or something: “TRIAL BY STONE!”

“Watch your tongue, harridan, we are lords of the Crystal.” Next time I roleplay I’m going to try to get the bae to say something like that to me.

When Aughra sat down in front of the Skeksis table, I honestly thought she was going to go to the bathroom. XD She and Kira were my favorite characters, though. Are wings like the Gelfling equivalent of b00bs?

The God Emperor of Dune was kind of a let down. And I couldn’t get into Heretics at all. When I was in middle school I checked out one of those but I can’t remember which then years later I read both Dune and Dune Messiah twice. I’m not sure if “get” Dune now but they were definitely too advanced for young teen Tawney.

Ever since I found out The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy parodied this franchise, I wanted to read Dune. “Mandy the Merciless” and the gom jabbar from “My Fair Mandy” are so much funnier now.

1,000+-year-old Leto’s slow transformation into a giant sandworm monster was something I was expecting to be hot but it was eh. Obviously, Frank Herbert didn’t intend for it to be bodacious. However, there are certain charming aspects to the Tyrant.

“Do not search for parts of me which no longer exist. Some forms of physical intimacy are no longer possible for me.” (But can Leto Atreides still perform cun/nilngus?)

“Everything about her reaffirmed his awareness that she was precisely the kind of woman who, if he had grown to normal manhood, he would have wanted (No! Demanded!) as his mate.” (Kind of jealous of Hwi, TBH.)

He looks like this in one of the miniseries:

One of my friends came over and got introduced to A Nightmare on Elm Street. The first time I watched that movie, I hadn’t really watched any other slashers. Now I can say Nancy is one of my fave final girls.

Some highlights from our commentary:

“Everybody runs stupidly in this movie. Is that Freddy’s k!nk?”

“How the f*ck could someone…” “We’re sw!ngers, Nancy!”

“How can [Glen] be h0rny at a time like this?” “Anyone can be h0rny on main if they try hard enough.”

“You look deep in thought.” “I am. I want to know the lore.” “If I ever get cheated on, I’m going to say ‘You’re deep in thot!’”

“I just want my hat and glove back. I feel so nak3d without them.”

The first shot of A Clockwork Orange had me hooked. I loved the sets so much. The book was on my to read list and then the kid who sat next to me in Latin showed me why he was having trouble reading it. That futuristic slang. After watching the film, its source is back on the list. At least everyone talks normally once Alex goes to prison.

I like when fictional gangs wear “go to hell” clothes but those were douchesuits Alex and his buddies were wearing. I’m glad he got whacked in the balls. Even if it was by the creepy Mr. Deltoid. Well, he’s -nowhere- near as bad as the protagonist. Alex is an interesting character because he’s amusing but possesses zero likability. And you don’t even feel sorry for him. There was something really satisfying about seeing him bl00dy on the ground. How the hell did he convince those two girls at the record store to go back with him for speed s3x?

More commentary highlights:

“This happens in real life.” “In those outfits?!” “Yes.”

“They’re not very nice people.” “Why would you say that?” “He’s p33ing in front of us.”

*Alex has his hands down his drawers* “Look at that!” “I’d rather not.”

*cat lady doing her stretches* “Do you think she’d get along with Angela [Martin]?”

*discussing the sculpture* “How do you think Malcolm McDowell explains this in interviews?”

Sleeping Beauty was rewatched for the first time since I was very young. It was one of my favorite Disney movies but Aurora wasn’t my favorite princess. That honor went to Ariel. Now I’d say Tiana and Belle are my faves because they get stuff done. I want Disney to go back to cartoon fairy tales sooo bad. Aurora’s sweet and likable but her godmothers are more interesting. I want Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather merch now. Also, was that the broom from Fantasia?

Maleficent and her minions apparently don’t meet up with her often enough to properly confer information. XD She’s into b0ndage and I ship her with Phillip now. Somehow the fact the prince was a total babe went over my head. He was kind of handsy with Briar Rose during their first meeting, though.

Lifechanger couldn’t really hold my attention, which is a shame because I love shapeshifting so much. I expected the MC to possess his victims but it’s okay he didn’t. But the absorption could have been more unsettling, they could have shown more of it.

This post is getting long so I’ll write about The Silence of the Lambs and Scream: Resurrection in the next one.

Song of the Day: “Riding” by Tiny Jag and “Girl in the Machine” by Dedderz.

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lobsters-on-their-heads · 6 years

Text

Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 2, Ch. 9

Hey, look, I finally wrote something! And it has smut (eventually)!

The mention of Delphine stitching behind Sarah's ear comes from @mlleclaudine's delightful Cophine series. If you haven't read it yet, I don't know where you've been. Get reading it! <https://archiveofourown.org/series/314495>

Speaking of @mlleclaudine, thank you so so so much for checking this over and making sure I don't get too much wrong.

Also, thanks always and perpetually to @afrenchclone for helping me with all of the French. Merci toujours !

The entire Continuing Travels can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13525500

No matter how much time she spent with Charlotte, no matter how recent that time had been, every time Delphine saw her, she thought of the night she first saw her – bundled from head to toe, wrapped in Cosima's hypothermic arms. Her face was much the same for each new interaction with Delphine as it had been then, skeptical, closed off, wary. Delphine was never sure how much of it was an act, and how much a genuine defense mechanism.

“Bonjour,” Charlotte said.

Well. Maybe it was just her resting face.

“Bonjour!” Delphine replied. “Ça va?”

Charlotte nodded but gave no reply, instead limping across the room with her bearded dragon perched on her right shoulder and kittens frolicking around her feet. She'd been studying French for a few years, Delphine knew, but only for the past several months had those studies taken place in a classroom with multiple students. That “Bonjour” a moment ago was the first French word Delphine ever heard Charlotte speak. “I thought Cosima was coming with you,” Charlotte said.

“Yes, she needed to use the bathroom, so - ” She pointed upstairs to indicate where Cosima was at the moment.

“Oh.” Charlotte looked down at the bags they'd brought in, and her resting wary face opened up. It might've been Delphine's imagination, but it seemed that the bearded dragon perked up, too. “Are we going to use all of that? That's a lot of eggs.”

Before Delphine answered, Sarah thumped down the stairs just behind Kira, who treated Delphine like she'd been there for Kira's entire life. “Did you get any chocolate?” Kira demanded.

“Oi, say hello first,” Sarah said. As Kira mumbled a quick hello, Sarah faced Delphine and said, “Took you long enough. I thought you'd be here an hour ago. Where's Cosima?”

“She's using the bathroom,” Charlotte said. To Delphine, she said, “You didn't answer my question. Are we going to use all of those eggs?”

The varying pulls on her attention raised Delphine's anxiety, and there were still two other adults in the house. “We might,” she told Charlotte. To Kira, she said, “and no, we didn't get any chocolate.”

“Can we throw them at people?” Kira asked, hoisting one of the egg cartons in one hand.

Delphine and Sarah spoke in unison. “No.”

Kira pouted and slumped onto the couch with her phone. In a few seconds, various bloops, bings, and plops emanated from the device, and Kira's eyes and fingers darted around the screen while the rest of her body remained perfectly still. A dozen academic articles popped into Delphine's mind, all proclaiming the dangers of too much screen time for developing brains and eyes, but Sarah let it slide, so Delphine followed suit.

Cosima bounded down the stairs with her hands flapping beside her. To Delphine's arched eyebrow, she said, “The towels are damp. FYI.”

Sarah gave her unresponsive daughter a kiss on the head, hugged Charlotte, and then threw on her jacket. “Yeah, we don't quite have room service here like you two are used to. You a'right otherwise?”

Delphine looked over at Kira on the couch, and at Charlotte in the kitchen feeding a piece of apricot to her bearded dragon. “Euh, yes, I think so. We'll call you if we need anything.”

Sarah was halfway out the door before Delphine's comment registered, and she turned around. “Uh, you can do that, but I can't promise I'll answer. The girls know where everything is, and emergency numbers are on the fridge. Oh, and Art said he'll be here at seven.”

“Sounds good to me,” Cosima said. “Have fun, okay? You deserve a little time to yourself. See you later.”

After Sarah left, Delphine's first instruction was for the girls to wash their hands, but when Charlotte's bearded dragon stepped down Charlotte's arm towards the counter, Delphine stopped her. “Could you put... euh, what's its name, again?”

“Saphira. She's a girl.”

“I think Saphira should go back into her cage right now.”

Charlotte leaned against the counter and fixed Delphine with a small-mouthed stare. “She likes being on my shoulder.”

“I'm sure she does, but I don't want her getting into our food.”

“She's allowed to have human food sometimes, like fruits and vegetables. It says so in the book of bearded dragon care.”

Delphine looked around for some backup from Cosima, but Cosima was trying to pull Kira away from her phone, and both of them were giggling. “Charlotte,” Delphine said, “please put Saphira back in her cage. I don't want her roaming free while we're preparing food. It's not sanitary.”

Charlotte jutted her chin out to one side like Cosima and Sarah both did when they dug in their heels and gripped the counter top like she expected Delphine to physically pull her away, so she needed to brace herself. Before Delphine could ask again, or explain her request further, Cosima steered Kira into the kitchen.

“Yo, Charlotte,” Cosima said, “you should probably put Saphira back in her little house before we start in with the food, okay?”

Charlotte sighed and dropped her shoulders. She didn't reply, but limped away, up the stairs to her room, and for just a moment, Delphine hated both clones equally.

They spent the rest of the morning in the kitchen, more or less following Delphine's written and spoken instructions for deviled eggs (oeufs farcisto Delphine and Charlotte) and carrot cake with crème fraîche frosting. Delphine had cooked with the girls before, during their Christmas holidays and with Alison's participation, but she had never cooked with Cosima before. She'd assumed going in that cooking with Cosima would be like running a science experiment with her – Cosima would be diligent, methodical, and professional despite frequent bad jokes and pop culture references.

None of that was the case now.

Cosima was not concerned at all about the specifics of their recipes. Instead of weighing and sifting the flour and sugar, she directed Charlotte to simply dump the dry ingredients into a bowl after leveling off the measuring cup with her finger (of all things), and then she showed Charlotte how to blend the wet and dry with her bare hands. The girls, at least, found it delightful. When they tried doing that with the deviled eggs filling, though, Delphine put her foot down.

“Use a spoon, Chérie, please.” The cake batter was at least cooked after mixing. The eggs were not.

They smeared caked batter on each other. Cosima, Kira, and Charlotte all dabbed or wiped globs of the ochre gloop on each other's faces, necks, and arms, and while they exclaimed some version of “Oh no, you don't!” they all laughed together. When Kira lunged at Delphine with a handful of mayonnaise, though, Cosima grabbed Kira by the waist and spun her around to face the other way.

“Nuh uh. Nobody puts food on Delphine but me.”

In fact, the one time they'd tried using chocolate syrup with sex, the stickiness put them both off of doing it ever again, but the children didn't need to know that. Delphine kissed Cosima's sticky cheek while Charlotte fended off Kira's mayonnaise attack with a wooden spoon. “Thank you, mon amour. And please tell me that all of you are taking showers after this?”

“Oh, yeah. The girls can shower before Art gets here, and then I'll clean up real quick at the Rabbit Hole before the party. We've got time.”

And Kira talked the entire time. She talked about her school, her classmates, her teacher, and everyone in the neighborhood. She talked about Minecraft, Minecraft videos, and the children's hockey league she had recently joined. She talked about her mother, her late grandmother, her father, and all of her genetically identical aunties. She talked about her Uncle Felix and how he and Colin were having a bit of a rough patch right now because Colin wanted them to be exclusive and Felix was having a hard time with that.

“What's it mean to be exclusive, anyway?” she asked.

Delphine was washing out the mixing bowl they'd used for the cake batter, and exchanged a look with Cosima.

“It means you only date one person,” Cosima said. “One person at a time.”

“I thought that's what dating was,” Charlotte said. “Like, when people are dating, that means they don't kiss anyone else or whatever.”

Cosima's face was much calmer that Delphine felt, but Cosima still took a moment to answer, making a show of checking on the cake in the oven. “That is sometimes what it means. But sometimes people have open relationships, where they're allowed to kiss other people. Or whatever.”

“But then they're not dating,” Charlotte insisted. “They're...” She waved her hands around in a way reminiscent of Alison Hendrix. “They're doing something else.”

For the first time since they'd all gathered together in the kitchen, both girls' attention was fully on Cosima and Delphine.

“An open relationship means that two people love each other,” Cosima said, “and they put each other first, but they're allowed to... see other people on the side. They just need to communicate really well so no one's feelings get hurt.”

“Does that mean they have sex with other people?” Charlotte asked.

“Sometimes,” Cosima said. “But only if their partner is okay with it. Communication's the most important thing. And consent, of course. But that's true for any relationship, really.”

The girls thought that over. Charlotte had her serious face on again, and she watched Cosima and Delphine more closely, like she was putting their relationship into the context of what Cosima had just said. Delphine was on the verge of clarifying and she and Cosima did NOT have an open relationship, by mutual agreement, but Kira changed the subject to a story about a recent afternoon she'd spent with the Hendrixes. Delphine took a deep breath and went back to washing up, tuning Kira out for several minutes and letting Cosima do all the little “uh huh” noises. When Delphine tuned back in, Cosima had her hand on her hip and her eyes were narrowed.

“Oscar tried telling us we couldn't be there,” Kira was saying, “`cause him and his friends were gonna build a fort or whatever. Like, their yard isn't even big enough for a stupid fort! But then Gemma said that he used to wet the bed until he was, like, ten, and then he got really mad.”

Charlotte giggled at the story, but neither of the adults did.

“That doesn't sound very nice,” Delphine offered.

“We were allowed to be there!” Kira said. “He didn't, like, reserve it, or anything.”

Cosima adjusted her glasses. “Yeah, but there were better ways to handle that than embarrass him in front of his friends like that.”

“Well, maybe he shouldn't have told us to leave! He was being rude first.”

“That's not the point, and that's not really how people work,” Cosima said. “Just because someone else is mean to you, that doesn't give you the right to be mean back at them.” She tapped Charlotte's shoulder. “You and I have talked about that before a couple times.”

By the time the kitchen was cleaned up, with Cosima's insistence that the girls helped, the cake was out to cool and the eggs covered and stored in the fridge, Delphine was swaying on her feet. The girls went off to shower without encouragement, and Cosima rested her hands on Delphine's waist. “You might need a nap. I think the kids took it out of you.”

“A nap sounds good.”

The master bedroom, the best room to nap in at the moment, was remarkably tidy for what Delphine had come to expect from Sarah. Hell, it was cleaner than Cosima's living spaces were once Cosima spent more than a few days in them. The queen sized bed in the middle of the room was made, if not neatly, and the floor was clear. Books and papers littered the desk by the window, but it was clearly used as a desk rather than as storage. Delphine flopped on top of the bed, on the fleece blanket rather than under it. She was asleep in minutes.

Cool Mediterranean breezes blew sand all around her as she waited at the light rail terminal. No one else on the platform seemed to mind. In fact, the sand didn't even touch them.

They jostled onto the train, speaking in tongues and smelling of stomach acid. The train hit bumps on the track that no one else noticed. Only Delphine lost her footing and needed to grab at the back of someone's seat to stay upright. Then the train sped up onto a raised track overlooking the city. The view was beautiful, but no one else looked at it. At the next curve, the train hit a gap in the rails and bounced everyone up in the air...

“Oh, sorry, Delphine!”

Delphine panted, face up in the bed, clutching the blanket beneath her. No one else was in the room with her, but the bedroom door was open, and water was running. No. Not water. Someone was peeing. The air was cool with a hint of pine scent, and the pillow was wet right next to her head. By the time the toilet flushed, the sink ran, and the master bathroom door opened, Delphine's breathing and heart rate were almost normal again, but nothing else made sense.

“Sorry,” Kira repeated. “I forgot you were here, and I really had to use the bathroom.”

“Nnnh,” was all Delphine could manage, and then Kira was gone again.

Through the open door, Cosima's voice called out, “Okay, this time try to get it in without touching the edge, okay?”

Delphine propped herself up on one elbow and rubbed her face. The curtains were closed, but sunlight winked through the cracks. Her phone was nowhere, and there was no other clock in the room. She stumbled into the bathroom, awake enough to lock the door behind her in case anyone else forgot she was there, and took in the varied marker graffiti that edged the bathroom mirror. Some of the words (like pay taxes,, Kira dentist, and in prime place at the top of the mirror, BOLLOCKS) were clearly Sarah's, but others (I <3 kittens and Boys are dumb) were scrawled in childish writing, along with various flowers, mushrooms, and cat faces. Cosima's bathroom mirror back in Minnesota had had a similar ascetic, albeit with different messages.

She found the girls in Charlotte's bedroom, surrounded by scraps of fabric, string, ribbon, stickers, tape, and markers. A carton with five remaining eggs sat open on Charlotte's desk. Cosima joined them a moment later with a box of bendy straws, some broken-down cardboard boxes, and a pair of scissors. At least it wasn't a box cutter or a blow torch.

“Oh, hey, sleepy head!” Cosima grinned at her and pecked her cheek on her way into the room. “How'd you sleep?”

“Euh, well, I think.”

“We're doing science class!” Kira said.

“With crafts,” Charlotte added. “So it's like science art.”

Delphine ran her fingers through her hair and took in the mess. “It looks like fun. What are you doing, exactly?”

The girls looked to Cosima, but she gestured for them to answer. “We're dropping eggs out of the window,” Charlotte said.

“But we're not allowed to break them!” Kira added. “And now we have to get them to land in that tub down there, but without hitting the sides. Cosima keeps making it harder.”

Kira was not the first person to make that claim, and Cosima knew it, because she gave Delphine a pointy smile. “You wanna try?”

“Okay.” She sat on the edge of the bed and sorted through the supplies, not awake enough yet to form a plan. An egg appeared beside her, accompanied by another kiss on the cheek. “How many have you broken so far?” she asked. “These were $6 a dozen.”

Cosima sat beside her, careful not to upset the egg, and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Not very many. The girls have some pretty good designs so far, so most drops have been successful. It is no more or less wasteful than make two dozen deviled eggs that might not all get eaten.”

As she spoke, Charlotte tucked an egg into a little basket with a plaid parachute, leaned out the window, and dropped it. A few seconds later, she cried, “Oh no! It's in the neighbor's yard!”

“Well, sounds like you have to go get it, then.”

“Can't we just let them keep it?”

“Uh, no. That's called littering. Go on, we'll still be here when you get back.”

Delphine picked up her egg and considered it. It could have been an omelette, an oeuf farci, or part of a cake. Some countries would have pickled it and eaten it that way. Instead, it would be cloaked in cardboard, fabric scraps, and plastic, decorated with markers, and dropped out a residential window into a tub of dirty water. And considering Delphine's experience with this activity, the egg was just as likely to simply smash open on the ground, feeding invertebrates instead of people. Delphine picked up a Sharpie and drew a sad face on the shell.

Dropping eggs from Charlotte's window for another hour, as Cosima put more constraints on the girls' projects like size and material requirements, and the girls seemed halfway to jobs with an aeronautics firm. Delphine's own eggs did better than she expected, although the girls were divided in how many points to give her for style.

“They're sleek,” Charlotte asserted. “Missiles don't have frilly ribbons on them, so Delphine's eggs don't have to, either.”

“But they're not missiles!” Kira argued. “Eggs need to have some fashion sense when they go down.”

Delphine leaned against Charlotte's desk and took in the feedback. To Cosima, she remarked, “You know, I keep thinking we're talking about different kinds of eggs entirely.”

Cosima giggled. “Me too, sometimes. It's true, though. Your eggs don't have to have frilly ribbons if you don't want them.”

* * * * * *

After handing the girls off to Art at 7, going to the Rabbit Hole just long to clean up and grab presents for the sisters, then they were off again, in another Lyft car, to the address Alison sent that morning.

The resort overlooking Lake Ontario was reminiscent of their hotel in Muscat, except that here the temperature was in the 60s and the ethnic blend of patrons and employees was a bit more mixed. Clone Club had an entire spacious wing of the property to themselves for the night, including an indoor and outdoor bar, heated pool and heaters outside under a partial roof, and table and pub games inside. There was also a kitchenette tucked in behind the games area, where Alison puttered away. When Cosima and Delphine arrived, the rest of Clone Club was already there, many of them in some kind of swimwear. Helena was the only one not prepared to swim. She stood in a sweater and baggy jeans, watching Scott and Sarah play foosball and eating from a heaping paper plate.

Adele intercepted them just as Cosima handed off the carrot cake and eggs to Donnie at the food table. “Oh hey y'all! Welcome back to civilization and all that shit.” Despite the multiple sources of alcohol present, Adele did not have a drink in her hand. Yet.

Delphine returned Adele's hug. “Did you just arrive?”

“Oh, yeah. Flew in this morning. Last minute. Felix only just told me a few days ago that you were having this little shindig, and you know I can't turn down a good party. Besides, I missed everybody.” She looked over at the food they’d brought in as Donnie set it on the table. “Delphine, honey, if you made that, I'mma have to get me some. That looks too good.”

Delphine would have been flattered, but she could serve Adele a plate of week-old carrot shavings with a dusty radish on top and Adele would gush about “French haute cuisine,” and pronounce it “hoat kwezeen.”

“The girls helped,” she told her.

“Oh, well, that's another reason to try it. I have to tell them what a good job they did.” She waved to Cosima. “Happy late birthday, by the way. You and half the people here. Well, I guess some are early birthdays. Whatever. Twenty-one's the last birthday anyone really cares about, isn't it?”

“Euh...”

“Anyway, Felix'll be here in a minute. He had to run back out to the car for something. Oh, shit, hang on.” She rushed over to Alison in the kitchenette, who was balancing a few trays in her hands.

“Can I offer you ladies something to eat?” Donnie Hendrix wore blue swimming trunks and flip flops with a hooded sweatshirt, and his hands were clasped in front of him like any good customer servant. The poor man had probably had to serve guests at his own wedding, too.

“Um, sure,” Cosima said. “I see Helena's already been at the buffet.”

Donnie chuckled and handed them each a paper plate as he moved around to the other side of the table. “Helena's been to every buffet in Ontario, I believe. She makes them reconsider their pricing policies.” He picked up some tongs and clicked them a few times. “What can I get you?”

Nothing on the table would have prevented Cosima and Delphine from helping themselves, but Donnie seemed to enjoy his role as host, so they let him load up a single plate to share with bruschetta, mozzarella with basil, sliced vegetables, and cucumber sandwiches, some of the deviled eggs they'd brought, and a slice of carrot cake. Then they sat quietly together on a waterproof sofa under an outdoor heater, nibbling on the healthier foods first. All of it was good, almost certainly made by Alison, but like most food they'd had in the past few days, it had a certain blandness after two months of Middle Eastern and African dishes.

“Hello Sestra.” Helena slid herself into a cross-legged position on the floor in front of them, her plate freshly piled with carrot cake, eggs, and various brownies, just as Cosima and Delphine's plate was almost empty. “Much birthday happiness, yes?”

“Oh, yeah,” Cosima said. “Happy birthday to you, too, bub. Cheers.”

Helena giggled as they clinked their drinks together, but then she sat up straight to look at Cosima's. “You have only water tonight, sestra? Why not something better?”

“I don't drink if I'm swimming. Personal rule.”

Helena made a face at that but did not argue. “No drink, okay, but food, yes? You need more food, with all of the traveling around the world. You cannot save our sestras if you are hungry.” She transferred a piece of carrot cake, two brownies, and two eggs from her plate to theirs and gestured for them to eat it.

If Delphine ate as much as Helena wanted her too, she would most certainly not be as trim and fit as Helena managed to be. Not for the first time, Delphine wondered at the levels of malnourishment Helena must have experienced growing up that prohibited her from putting on more weight as an adult. She'd met enough clones by now to know that svelte wasn't necessarily genetic. Cosima was eating more carrot cake, though, and Helena was telling them to tell the girls how good it was, so Delphine went along. She'd had enough carrot cake already to last a week, though, so she took a brownie instead. It was delicious, heavily dotted with butterscotch chips, and she ate all of it before Cosima even picked at hers, but all the brownies lack Alison's tell-tale sharpness. In other words, it looked like a human made it, rather a team of cake robots.

“Who made these?” she asked Helena, as Cosima broke a corner off the other brownie, sans butterscotch, for herself.

“Brother-Sestra Felix made them. He said they are all special.”

At the same moment, Cosima swallowed her brownie piece and made one of the most interesting faces Delphine had ever seen. “Holy shit. That is very special. Um, babe? How much of that did you eat?”

“I ate the whole thing, why?”

“Oh, shit.” And now Cosima was laughing and waving at Felix, who stood in Donnie's place at the food table. “Felix! Did you seriously bring space brownies, man?”

He sashayed over in form-fitting shorts and a T-shirt with a rainbow dinosaur on it. “Yeah, why? D'you want some?” Looking down at Cosima, Delphine, and Helena, and at their plates, his face and posture drew together and pulled back. “A bit late for me to offer, though, I see. Shit. How'd you get some? I only just brought them in from outside.”

Cosima and Delphine looked to Helena, whose mouth was chipmunk-full. “Sorry,” she managed.

“How many did you eat?” Cosima asked her.

Helena shrugged.

Delphine looked down at the crumbs on her fingers. “Let me guess. Cannabis?”

“You could say that,” Felix said.

“Even the butterscotch ones?”

He nodded and Cosima put a hand to her own forehead. “And you haven't had any in a while, so...”

Felix draped his hand over Delphine's shoulder. “So you're about to have quite the interesting evening, I'd say. Stick to the short end of the pool if you get in, yeah?”

“I don't feel any different, I swear. And the water is wonderfully warm. You should come sit with me.”

Cosima crouched down beside her and brushed back the stray cluster of hair escaping Delphine's ponytail. “You're not feeling anything yet, but you will. Edibles just take longer to kick in.”

“You had some, too.”

“I had, like, two bites, and I'm way more used to pot than you are. You had a whole fucking brownie, a big one at that, and you haven't been high since Rachel had both of her eyes.”

“That's not true.”

“Okay, when have you been high since then? Don't tell me you toked up with old PT on the island?”

Delphine splashed a handful of water up at her and got a satisfying yelp in return. “I have smoked with you, mon amour, in the Rabbit Hole, before we left for Latin America.”

Cosima flicked Delphine's arm in retribution. “Smoked, my ass. I smoked, but you took, like, one drag and passed out.”

Delphine was not about to argue about that, and anyway it didn't change how she felt right now, which was full, content, loved, and a delightful mix of cool and warm at the same time. A hip-hop artist she didn't recognize played on the speakers and at the other end of the pool, Sarah, Alison, and Adele were doing something that looked vaguely like water aerobics but probably wasn't. Adele was starting to look an awful lot like a scarlet ibis when Cosima's phone rang.

“What the fuck?” Cosima muttered. They had their purses with them at all times out of habit, so Cosima could grab her phone before it stopped ringing. “Hello? Yes? Oh, hey, Gabriela! How's it going? Yeah, hang on, lemme go somewhere a little quieter.”

Gabriela. That could be anyone. She watched Cosima's shorts-clad ass hustle inside. It really was the cutest butt Delphine had ever seen.

When she turned back around, the chlorine vapors coming off the surface of the pool were green, reminding Delphine of nothing more than the absinthe fairy, and Adele had gone full scarlet ibis. Absinthe. Now that was something she hadn't had in looooong time. The last time had been, when? 2004? 2007? Too long ago, at any rate, and now here she was, sitting on the edge of a whole pool of it, it's little waves massaging her calves and the soles of her feet and singing a little song for her.

She slipped in, up to her ribs, and bounced. She bounced! It was the funniest thing she'd ever felt, so she bounced some more, up and down and side to side in the steamy green pool, laughing her head off and watching the stars dance around overhead to a mixed up mash of the hip-hop song playing and “Prét-à-Porter,” that song she'd listened to endlessly on the island because PT deigned that she could have a record player with one record and somehow or other she never hated it. Him, yes, but never the song.

And Sarah'd killed him with an O2 tank to the skull, and that's how she tried to remember him, but instead, the green water turned red and his gnarly fingers crept up her waist and she

did

not want

this.

“Oi, Delphine, you doing a'right over here?”

Cosima stood in front of her, but it wasn't Cosima. It was Not Cosima, with wet loose hair and a British accent. She'd said oi. The clones didn't say oi unless they were Sarah. Delphine twisted her head side to side and confirmed that, indeed, this was Not Cosima, and Not Another Clone, but Sarah. Then she laughed at her own cleverness and slipped on the pool floor. “Quoi?”

“I said, are you doing alright? You seem a bit, uh...” Sarah moved her hands in a way Delphine didn't understand, and when she tried to follow them, the world tipped sideways, but everything was funny again so it was okay.

“A bit?” Delphine dropped her knees and floated with her chin just above the water so the vapors went up her nose.

“Oh shit, did you eat one of those brownies Fe brought in?”

“Mmmm...” Brownies would be perfect right now. With some of that frosting they'd made for the cake today. However. “You know what I really want?” Still floating, she put a hand on Sarah's shoulder, which was damp and covered in little goosebumps, but curved in a way Cosima's didn't, in a way Delphine had never noticed before.

Sarah giggled and looked around everywhere except Delphine. “If you say more brownies, you're not getting any.”

“No. No no no.” Delphine now had both hands on Sarah's shoulders. “A döner kebab. With extra sheep’s cheese, and... and and and and...” The English and tripped over her tongue until it because a blur of “dudududududududu” and the only thing keeping her from slipping under the surface of the absinthe pool was Sarah's shoulders. Delphine dangled from her shoulders and bumped against Sarah's body, distracted by the scar behind Sarah's left ear.

“Okay, this won't work.” Sarah nudged her back up onto her feet and pried her hands away, but Delphine leaned in to point at the scar.

“I remember that. I stitched that.”

“Yes, you did. You were sober for that, thankfully. Come on, now, let's get you back up on this ledge before Cosima fuckin' murders me.”

“She won't. She loves you too much.”

Sarah's laugh had a strange tone to it then as she turned Delphine 180 degrees. “Not enough for all that. Come on, up you go. Outta the water.”

Now, though, the ledge of the pool was continents away, and despite soaking in absinthe, she still hadn't drunk any, so she cupped her hands and drank a few mouthfuls. “It doesn't taste like I remember it,” she told Sarah. “It tastes like... like grade school.”

“I... I don't even know what to say to that. Come on, sit up here.”

The ledge was rough, with pebbles and craters to dig into her skin, and it was moving, crumbling under her hands and sliding back and forth. Never mind the height. She couldn't possibly pull herself up there. “Non. Je ne peux pas.”

“That so?” Sarah turned and gestured into the distance. Her hair was wet, falling over her skin and leaving rivers of water that pulsed with her heartbeat. When she turned back to Delphine, she was smirking. Only then did Delphine have the fleeting thought – Sarah might not speak French.

“You have Cosima's eyes.”

And Sarah thought that was funny! She was laughing, so Delphine laughed along. “Do I really?” Sarah asked. “Isn't that something?”

A hand caressed the back of her neck, under her hair, and the pleasure was so strong she almost fell over.

“Hey, babe? You doing okay?”

Cosima's lips were the best of all the clones. They had so many different shapes and her bottom lip gave just the right amount of resistance between Delphine's teeth. When she tried to kiss her now, though, Cosima pulled away.

“You're feeling those brownies now, aren't you? Ho-ly shit.”

Sarah asked Cosima where she'd run off to, anyways, and Cosima said something about Puerto Rico and infertility and vaccines and uteruses, but she had the cutest little toes Delphine had ever seen, so Delphine didn't really catch most of what she said. She stroked each little Cosima toe individually, then ran her finger over the tops of all of Cosima's toes and kissed the top of her foot.

When she looked up, Cosima had that little sideways dimpled smile, and when she stroked Delphine's cheek, Delphine almost lost her legs again. “Let's get you out of the water, yeah?”

Delphine slid her hands up Cosima's calf and lost herself for a moment in the shape of her muscles. “Can I kiss you then?”

“You can kiss me all you want, just on dry land so no one drowns.”

A few moments and an eon later, she sat on the couch near one of the outdoor heaters, alone. The absinthe vapors flickered in the distance to the undulating beat of the music while the scarlet ibis flitted in and out of the water. Her heart beat to a different tempo, expanding until it filled her entire self, rubbing against the backs of her eyeballs and her nasal passages and worming its way into her pelvis and the soles of her feet. If she squinted, she saw her heart beat pushing out from her toenails. Then her heart contracted again, and her body shrank into itself, smaller and smaller until she imploded into her own navel like a Popple. Blood in, heart expansion, explosion. Blood away, heart contraction, Popple.

Repeat. And repeat.

“Drink this.”

She took the glass of water and drank it, gulping at first and then sipping to feel the drips and drizzles down her esophagus. Food stirred inside of her along with her blood and breath, food breaking down and turning into energy, each little molecule sucked into the lining of her stomach and intestines and moving along through her ever pumping blood stream to her brain, her liver, her muscles, her skin.

“We should do a study,” she told Cosima, “with brownies. To see how much of that brownie is in each skin cell.”

Cosima giggled. “Uh, somebody's probably already done that study.”

“We should do it again. For my skin cells, and those brownies over there.”

“You are not getting any more brownies.”

Music washed over her and burst in the air beside their heads. Like a blaze of light, ready to ignite, we are made of dynamite “We are,” Delphine said, nuzzling the side of Cosima's neck.

“No,” Cosima said. “No more brownies.”

Delphine didn't know what she was talking about now, but Cosima smelled like cloves and oranges and her skin was warm and soft. She ran her tongue over Cosima's neck to her throat to nip her chin. The texture change from Cosima's shorts to the skin of her waist distracted her, though, and she pulled back to watch her own hand move back and forth, from warm soft skin to cool crisp fabric.

“You're dry,” she remarked. “Why?”

“Um...” When Cosima laughed, her stomach quivered. “I, uh, I wasn't in the water like you were.”

“Why not?”

“Because I had to take a phone call.” She stroked Delphine's hair and the back of her neck so Delphine purred like a kitten. “I'll tell you about it tomorrow, when your sweet beautiful brain is working again.”

Tomorrow didn't exist yet, but Cosima's legs did. They were firm and silky smooth with subtle moving valleys of muscle conforming to Delphine's hands. Cosima gasped when Delphine moved her whole hand up the inside of Cosima's right thigh.

“Delphine? Babe? We're, um, we're in public. People can see us.”

Maybe they could, but all Delphine could see was the cute little hollow at the base of Cosima's neck, which was just the right size for her tongue, and the rise of her shoulder muscles from her clavicles. “So?” she whispered.

“So, I don't really want to do this in front of everyone and their sister.”

“You don't want to?” Cosima never said she didn't want to. Okay, maybe sometimes she did, but that usually coincided with Delphine's agreement. She pulled back to look at Cosima's face, and the world swam around again for a minute.

“Not right here. But...”

Cosima stood and led her by the hand to the room with all the games and the little kitchenette, grabbing a bottle of water along the way. They passed Scott and Helena playing a violent game of air hockey, and Helena laughed until she was bent over and banging on the table while Scott shouted something about cheating. Four empty, crumb-covered plates sat nearby. Helena's curls snaked and twisted around her head in time with the Hozier song playing softly on the speaker in the corner of the room.

“They're different songs,” Delphine remarked.

“What's that?” Cosima held her finger tips in hers, both of their arms extended as Cosima tried pulling Delphine along.

Delphine pointed outside and then to their current location. “There. And there. Different songs.”

Cosima's smile was sweet as she cocked her head and stepped over to her. “Yup. They sure are. Come on.” She hooked a finger into the waistband of Delphine's shorts and tugged a little.

Through the door beside the kitchenette was a storage room, filled with folded metal chairs, stacks of bar towels, extra game equipment, and pool toys. Off-white canvas bags were piled up in one corner, and Cosima pulled Delphine down beside her after flopping down herself. Delphine peeled off her bathing suit, rubbed her arm across the low-thread-count fabric, and smelled salt in the air. “Amatique Bay,” she said.

“Hm?”

Delphine positioned herself to hover naked above Cosima. “It's like Amatique Bay, remember? From Guatemala to Belize?”

“Oh, yeah, right. On Latin America's cheapest legal ferry during a tropical storm. We had more clothes on then. I'm surprised you're still smiling at that memory, even if you are high off your gourd.”

“I was with you.” And she bent down and her kissed her lips.

Cosima's mouth was everything. Sweet and salty, soft and firm, wet and giving all at once, and Delphine gave it all of herself. She pushed into it, into Cosima's body against the lumpy bags of laundry or whatever was in them, and she raked her fingernails up Cosima's torso, up under her bathing suit top to brush the soft undersides of her breasts. Cosima arched her back to let Delphine's hands behind her, but as much as she fumbled, Delphine failed at removing the garment separating her from Cosima's chest. She dropped her forehead onto the bag beside Cosima's head, and pouted.

“Having trouble? Here.” She wriggled out of the top and caressed Delphine's face, and Delphine's mouth went dry. Uncomfortably dry. “Here,” Cosima said again, and there was the bottle of water Delphine had forgotten all about.

Delphine drank a few mouthfuls and let the water molecules permeate the membranes inside her mouth and her throat, filling each cell to a plump ripeness, like grapes on the vine.

And speaking of plump, Cosima's nipples were right there! Delphine dropped her mouth onto Cosima's left breast and licked her nipple until it puckered up in her mouth. Only when Cosima laughed did she realize that she'd still had water in her mouth, which now covered half of Cosima's torso and part of the canvas bags they lay on.

“Oh. Sorry.” She tried to mop the water up with her hands, but her hands failed at being absorbent, and Cosima took her wrists to stop her.

“It's okay. A little wetness never hurt anybody, right?”

There was that cheeky smile, and Delphine giggled, too. “Right.” She dug her fingers into Cosima's hips and kissed her breast a few more times. “Touch me?”

Cosima didn't answer right away, but ran her hands over Delphine's back, shoulders, neck, and arms while Delphine nipped at the underside of Cosima's breast. “If you want me to touch more of you, you'll have to let me up.”

She would have, but mixed in with the Amatique Bay salt and canvas smell was Cosima's smell, and what she needed more than anything was Cosima. The little string on the front of Cosima's shorts came undone easily, and then Cosima was naked, too, on her back with her knees spread and her thighs framing Delphine's head.

And she knew this taste. She knew these textures, the tiny soft ridges and loose folds; she knew the flavor of Cosima's body when she was aroused, the heady mixture of vanilla and citrus, or sometimes it was sweeter like a freshly baked custard tart, and then sometimes, every good smell in the world made her think of Cosima.

From across the universe, Cosima whimpered. Each movement of Delphine's mouth elicited another little squeak, moan, or whine, and when she adjusted herself to put her fingers inside Cosima's body, she heard a low rumbly, “Oh, fuck.” Before long, Cosima's heels beat against the canvas bags she rested on, and her cries echoed in the little storage room.

“Stop,” she said, her voice shaky, “that's enough, no more.”

So she stopped, and pushed herself on shaking legs to lay beside her. The scent in the air was thick now, so Delphine swam in it as Cosima flopped her arm over her waist. When Cosima twitched against her, hips spasming in tiny recursive orgasms, Delphine laughed. “You can swim with me,” she said into Cosima's hair.

“One day. When you're sober.”

Delphine's leg found its way around Cosima's, and the pressure and heat between both of them yanked her heart down into her groin. “We can swim right now. You can swim inside of me, if you want to.”

“Hmmm... You've taken all my energy, though.”

Cosima's hand slithered down her side, though, to cup her right ass cheek, and Delphine wiggled herself against it. “I can give you more energy if you need it.”

She smiled against Delphine's neck. “Oh, really? You gonna spit more water on me?”

“No.” In reality, it didn't matter how much energy Cosima had, so long as she was awake. Delphine took Cosima's hand from her ass and tucked it in between her legs, fingers in just the right places. The simple presence of her hand there nearly pushed her over the edge, but Cosima pulled away. “No!” Delphine cried.

Cosima kissed her lips, then her chin. “Shh, it's okay. It's just easier if I'm on top right now. I can use my body weight that way. Don't worry, you'll get there.”

Still, Delphine grabbed at Cosima's skin as she moved herself to Delphine's other side. “Come here. Just come here.”

“I'm here, gorgeous, don't worry.”

And then Cosima's fingers were inside her and her mouth was on Delphine's breast, and her body opened like a ripe peeled plum. She pushed herself against Cosima's hand and body and dug into her scalp and the back of her neck and the room sucked into her before exploding in countless points of light and sound and taste and sensation blended together in every speck of her being, forever.

Otters swam with dolphins all around her. One of them whispered in her ear, “I'm pretty sure everybody heard that.”

She would have laughed if she had the energy. A talking otter, with breath like a fresh clementine. Instead, she just smiled.

Soft lips brushed her shoulder. “Are you gonna fall asleep here?”

“Hm?”

“I asked if you're gonna fall asleep here. It's not exactly comfortable for me, but I'm not baked like you are.”

“Am I baked?” Images of bread and cookies floated around with the otters, who themselves turned into dinner rolls with eyes. It wasn't entirely pleasant.

Another giggle. “You are super baked, my love. You probably don't even know where you are right now.”

Nonsense. “I'm in space,” she said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Another kiss. “It's pretty cold in space, though. And you're not allowed to go outside naked.”

Come to think of it, it was a little chilly here. She moved her head from side to side, and the dinner roll otters vanished. In their place was a cluster of pool noodles watching her with disapproving expressions. “Mais putain, allez tous vous faire foutre,” she told them, and raised her middle finger.

“Hey, I didn't make the rules.” Cosima stood and stretched, her strong little body marked with red lines.

Delphine watched her put her bathing suit back on and retie her hair. Then Cosima opened the door and leaned halfway out. She said something, called out to someone out there, but her words were drowned out by the judgmental chatter of the pool noodles. “Écoutez,” she told them, rising off her seat to point at them. “Je m'en fous!”

“Hey, babe?” Cosima touched the small of her back and steered her away. She had a bag on her hand. “We're gonna get you dressed, okay? Then we're gonna get you back home and in bed. Can you help me with that?”

“Mmm. Okay.”

She didn't remember getting dressed, but there were lights flashing outside the car window and Cosima's hand held hers. When the door opened, she almost fell out.

“It's red,” she said.

“Yup,” Cosima said. “Alison's van's been red the whole time. Come on, up inside now.”

Alison said something, and then Delphine was in bed, a heavy comforter weighing on her, and Cosima kissed her temple. “Goodnight, beautiful. I hope your dreams aren't too fucked up.”

#continuing travels of cophine #cophine fanfiction #my writing #my fanfiction #delphine cormier #cosima niehaus #orphan black fanfiction

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lizziesquire · 6 years

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that is sooo ridiculous about your honors thesis!! like just plain messed up, i’m sorry, but glad you made the most of it

aaah b!!!

thank you so, so much for your kind sentiments–i am so grateful for the support and the love :’)

Quite honestly, what hurt the most was being told that my academic endeavour–that I had absolument poured my entire heart, soul, and energy into–was not “worth” graduation with honors. It was not the fact that I would not have “with honors” in teeny tiny letters beneath my name on my diploma; it was not the fact that I would not wear the yellow stole given to honors candidates who successfully defend their honors thesis. Because, at the end of the day, my GPA is my GPA. That does not change, with or without honors. My GPA is my blood, sweat, and tears that they could never take from me, even if they could withhold “with honors” from my academic record.

What hurt the most was being told that the biggest academic undertaking of my life was “not enough”–which would have been fair, had I felt the same way. Had I had a shred of doubt that my work was not good enough, that my endless hours of research, poring over articles (in English, Spanish, and French!), pulling self-imposed all-nighters, and developing my own thoughts and analyses to fill the gap in the existing literature were not adequate, I would have taken it gracefully. I would have simply bowed out and not said a peep more, accepting the fact that my work does not merit honors.

But the fact of the matter is, I was confused, and still remain confused, at the fact that my advisor chose to fail me on my defense–never having given me a single warning amidst all of the working drafts that I’d sent to her over the course of spring semester, when I’d done the bulk of the writing. Without even a single specific reason, providing a mere, “at the end of the day, it just… didn’t come together,” when, during the two (!!) hour (!!) defense, I’d answered all the questions–even the unfair ones irrelevant to the topic at hand–that both she and my second reader had expressed, verbatim, that they’d been convinced of my argument.

When broke the news to me, I was in shock. All I could do was nod stupidly, and repeat, “okay,” over and over–my second reader could not even look me in the eyes, and I have a hunch that they had deliberated for so long because he had disagreed with her, but that’s neither here nor there.

What hurt the most was the fact that I could have taken two more undergraduate classes in place of writing the honors thesis. For ya girl dearly loves to learn; she loves school so, so much, and hesitated from doing a thesis in the first place because that would mean having to give up 2 potential classes that she could’ve taken. (@ Liz why are you talking about yourself in the third person) It hurt so much because all of the times I could have had a fun night out with friends and just hang out doing nothing, simply enjoying senior year sans the crippling guilt of feeling the need to spend every free minute working on the thesis–all of that came rushing in, all at once, like running head-first into a brick wall.

And I cried.

I held my head high, wished them a great weekend, and walked out of the building and headed straight for the ROTC building, reckoning that no one would be there, especially in the women’s bathroom–and I sat in one of the chairs and I just cried. Shoulders shaking, tears streaming, everything.

And I’d thought to myself, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. Perhaps it had been back in freshman year, when running a 100+ fever, clutching my unicorn pillow pet to my chest and feeling each of the 391.2 miles from home more acutely than ever, wanting nothing but my maman but instead getting the hollowness of my empty dorm room, with my roommate nowhere to be found. But I cried, four years later, for all of the missed opportunities. For Liz the senior who had been so weighed down by the stress of this goddamn thesis, who wrote 70 pages of pure analysis, having combed through economic formulas and documents written in other languages, telling herself to push through, that it would be worth it, that it would be worth it.

And maybe it wasn’t worth it, having missed out on so many things, to have spent senior year so effing stressed all the time, with this outcome. But maybe it was worth it, to have produced a solid 70 pages of own thought, of own analysis–the most thought-provoking, challenging intellectual endeavour that I’d ever undertaken in my 17 (?) years of schooling.

And, really, what is the word of one professor? She will never take away from me the experience of having written a thesis, nor my work. Nor will her denial of honors invalidate the research that I’ve done, nor the analysis that I’ve written, nor the social science theories that I’ve coined.

It is not our failures, but what we do in their wakes that defines us, no?

Onwards and upwards, always :’)

Thank you for giving me an excuse to ramble, bb–and thank you so, so much for your support. Thank you. xx

#Anonymous #asks

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frequencyfound · 5 years

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TAGGED BY • Tagged by @lovehurried! ♥ TAGGING • I’m really bad at this so? Anyone who thinks this looks like fun? Please feel free to say I tagged you, because I want to read up your answers!

ONE • NAME / ALIAS • M. I’ll also answer to other nicknames/my actual name if we know each other (& am likely to just introduce myself by my nickname if we talk privately, to be honest), but I’m trying to keep a distance between me and the big wide internet that I don’t know. TWO • BIRTHDAY • November 13th. THREE • ZODIAC SIGN • Scorpio. FOUR • HEIGHT • 5′3″. FIVE • HOBBIES • Going to see way too much theatre, eating way too much good food in the company of friends and family, binge-watching tv shows and reality tv (especially the ones I’ve already binge-watched before), writing a plethora of unfinished novels and roleplays and a few short stories, daydreaming and analysing fictional characters who wouldn’t give me a second thought, swatching make-up I won’t buy and doing a smudge test for liquid lipstick swatches which always ends up with me saying they’re not good enough because they didn’t adhere to my hand, going to fun fairs and other parks and standing by the roller coasters with people’s bags and some cool soda, spending time with cats (especially mine. Dogs can be okay too, and also horses). SIX • FAVOURITE COLOURS • Purple, green, black. SEVEN • FAVOURITE BOOKS • I’m going to exclusively name fiction books, but please know my favourite ‘genre’ (if you can call it that) are academic books and articles on topics I care about. I love Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal so much that I bought it twice when I couldn't find my original copy (right in front of me...). Plays are also my go-to (Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello, La dama del alba by Casona and Antigone by Anouilh, most notably). I loved Good Omens. I have a weird relationship with Harry Potter where I love the universe and the books give me so much nostalgia. EIGHT • LAST SONG LISTENED TO • Today’s ‘me doing any work’ music is brought to you by the french musical Le Roi Arthur. Advienne Que Pourra is currently playing. NINE • LAST FILM WATCHED • Probably Falling Inn Love? I have a thing for easy romcoms. TEN • INSPIRATION FOR MUSE • My own brain and imagination, mostly. I associate certain songs/writers/movies/tv shows/quotes with certain muses, which can help kick-start inspiration but, usually, there is no guarantee that it 100% will. And then someone will say something or I’ll read something or see something and it will just click for a muse, without much rhyme or reason to it. ELEVEN • DREAM JOB • I’d love to do research in international relations, most of all, and hopefully get to teach others about it in some way, shape or form (Not necessarily in an academic context, though). I’m sadly really far away from that. TWELVE • MEANING BEHIND YOUR URL • Originally from the song No Reason, from Beetlejuice: “I’ve found my frequency, crystals speak to me.” I wanted a url that reminded people of at least one of the muses on this blog, but that also felt intemporal/not too tied to one single muse/with more meaning, so frequencyfound felt like it met all those criteria. I like the idea my frequency is writing and roleplaying, too.

#( out of character ) ◊ IF I KNEW THEN WHAT I KNOW NOW #( about the mun ) ◊ AT WORDS POETIC I’M SO PATHETIC #( tags ) ◊ STICK OUT FROM THE CROWD

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dontcallmesensei · 7 years

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The Truth About Learning Japanese

(I’m going to start with a random side note: If I ever get a book deal to write Japanese primer, I’m going to call it I Eat Cake Everyday: A Complete Guide to Japanese with Stupid Sentences.)

It’s been a while since we’ve just talked, so I wanted to just take a moment to do that.

I think every Japanese platform at one point write an article about “the deep truth” of learning Japanese, claiming to give you the golden key that you need to become fluent in only 6 months or 1 year or whatever.

The argument for those kinds of posts isn’t hard to understand: People are fundamentally similar. If people are fundamentally similar, it is very likely that works for me will will work for you. Thus, if this works for me, it will work for you. This does work for me. Therefore, it will work for you (most likely.)

This is why all articles start with something like, “I guarantee you that I’m no genius. [Insert daily task that the writer struggles with on a daily basis.] I’m just a regular person that tried out a few things until I found a winning formula.”

I, personally, want to do my own take on this kind of article. I won’t offer a golden key, but I’ll talk about learning Japanese.

1. Japanese is Coded in the Most Inefficient Writing System in the World

Kanji, the logographs that are the bane of all Japanese-learner’s existence, comes from China. Kanji itself, 漢字, means “Chinese characters.” Kanji were invented to suit the needs of the Chinese language (from way back when, before Mandarin/Standard Chinese was a thing.) Japanese, on the other hand, is a language isolate, and it is not related to Chinese. So the use of these Chinese characters has over time been used in different ways for different words and with different readings- for Kanji tend to have multiple readings, sometimes being just 2 and at other times 8.

In Eastern Asia, the use of Chinese characters was widespread. It was used in Korea, in Vietnam, in Japan, to some varying extent in Malaysia, and the territories these nations conquered.

Korea developed an ingenious writing system called Hangeul, which now has all but totally substituted Chinese characters. Vietnam adopted the Roman alphabet with many diacritics. Japanese, well, Japanese developed two writing systems based on morae. These two writing systems could be used to write out the entirety of Japanese. Kanji is not really necessary. Further, there is no evidence to suggest that there are so many homophones such that even with context one could not make head or tails out of what was being said.

So, Japanese does have a potential unique writing system that is easy to learn (it’s easier than Hangeul in my opinion), but it does not use it exclusively because of cultural reasons. Kanji is just hardwired into the culture.

But here’s where my personal opinion and advice come in: If you have to choose between loving Kanji and hating it, hate it. Don’t romanticize it. Don’t go “above and beyond” what you have to know because of your love for Kanji. Just learn what you have to learn, and leave it at that.

“How many Kanji must someone learn?” The official common use Kanji list (the Jōyō Kanji) lists 2,136 Kanji. How many readings are among these Kanji? Somewhere around 3,869. There are also some variations on Kanji that one should keep in mind and some Kanji that one sees only in names, so add around 400 Kanji to the official list and about 400 new readings.

“How many Kanji must I learn for my first year of Japanese?” All of them. That’s my honest advice. Don’t aim to learn only a few Kanji. If you’re going to learn Kanji, learn them all. Think in that mindset. As soon as you decide you want to learn Japanese, work on Kanji. Before you enter a classroom and learn your first few greetings and whatnot, make sure you know all the common use Kanji, or at least that you’re well on your way to knowing all the Kanji.

2. Language Learning is an Intensive Process

Learning a language is a process that scientists haven’t quite been able to describe accurately. We do know, nevertheless, that it’s a heck of a lot different from learning chemistry or carpentry or bicycling.

In the Western world, there is this idea that one can learn a language in a classroom, normally as a subject period, with periods lasting somewhere from 50 to 70 minutes. Here’s the truth: it doesn’t work very well. (There are historic reasons for this way of learning a language, but we can talk about that some other time.) The success rates of language acquisition in classrooms is ridiculously low. This does not mean that language classes are bad: but it means that it just isn’t enough.

There are many reasons why learning a language in and of itself may be hard. It’d take forever to talk about all of them.

But let’s talk a bit about lexicons. A lexicon, here, refers to the dictionary in your brain where you store the words you know. If you’re monolingual- you have a standard dictionary in your brain with a word and definitions. If you were raised bilingual, then you have one lexicon with two words and definitions. That is to say, if you’re an English-Spanish speaker, then you have “cat” and “gato” in the same space in your brain and you know that what applies to one applies to the other. Then, depending on your fluency and use, you may have two supplementary dictionaries where you store all the information about words that don’t exist in the other language and idioms and expressions and things like that.

Now, if you’re an English speaker and, say, you want to learn German, part of what you’ll learn to do is to process your English lexicon entries into German. What that means is that you learn to engineer English words into German. “Father” turns into “Vater,” “to drink” turns into “trinken,” “Love” turns into “Liebe,” etc. So the words that have no relation with English (the non-cognates), turn into a supplementary lexicon and everything else is put through a mental processor.

Because the brain can do this is the reason why many people in Europe can speak many languages. The fact that someone can speak Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, and French is not terribly impressive. The overlap in words (and in grammar) is so immense that what you’re doing is processing one language into another and you’re guaranteed an astonishing success rate.

Japanese, however, is different because it’s a language isolate. You can’t process one language into another. You have to learn words one by one. That takes time. It takes repetition. Memorization is as much an active process as it is a subconscious process. When people talk about the benefits of “immersion,” what they’re talking about most of the time is putting your brain into survival mode, i.e. either you learn all these words (and grammar stuff) or else you will not be able to survive and thus you will die. That is one way of doing it, and if you do not choose this path you have to commit some serious time to this. I believe that if one knows around 5,000 of the most frequently used words in any given language, one is guaranteed to know at least 95% of all the words one will hear/read in a day (given that one doesn’t go read a super technical manual on how to calibrate a nuclear reactor or something like that.) So, the question becomes how will you memorize 5,000 words? How long will that take? If one learns 10 a day, then it’s 500 days, and if one learns 50 a day, it’s 100 days.

The tradeoff when it comes to speed is that the faster you learn something, the faster you forget. (When you relearn something, it should be faster nevertheless.) So how much time will you commit to learning a language? How will you follow that up? These are important questions.

3. Japanese Media is Considerably Insular

Japan isn’t like the United States. The United States wants every nation to know what music it likes, what fashion it wears, what it believes ideologically and socially, etc. The U.S. is everywhere.

South Korea, recently, is everywhere. K-Pop, K-Dramas, K-SNL, K-Beauty. If you want to know what Korea is up to, it’s pretty easy to find out. They want you know!

Japan... eh. Japan is pretty good at making anime available globally. People know about Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon and the Mighty Atom and all that. When it comes to dramas and movies and tv shows, they’re not quite interested in that. Ages ago I wrote a post on the misconception of “Whacky Japanese Game Shows,” where I basically explained that most of those shows aren’t game shows but segments on variety shows, the only person in my mind having totally insane game shows being Beat Takeshi.

Okay, fine, what does this mean? This means two important things. First, one’s expose to the language outside of going to Japan or talking to Japanese people will be based highly on anime, which is fine but there are other styles of expressing oneself. One needs a bit of variety. If one goes the information/news route, then one is exposing oneself to something very formal and literary, but dull. Second, it means that when people teach Japanese, they’re going to assume that one wants to speak Japanese for business purposes. This sounds strange to say, but let me put it like this: Japanese is an important part of the world economy and STEM and anime, on the other hand, is not a sufficiently large part of Japanese culture so that the Japanese can figure you want to learn Japanese for that sole purpose. If you want to speak Japanese, then it must be for business purposes (and we’ll consider academics to be within business.) So you learn Japanese through the perspective of honorific and respectful language. This isn’t a bad thing either, but the desire to make you sound nice will often lead to lies about how Japanese actually works at a grammatical level.

(On the other hand, in South Korea the K-Pop/K-Drama boom is such a big deal that people around the world start learning Korean in hopes of auditioning for the big production companies in hopes of becoming actors, singers, dancers, and hosts.)

So here’s my advice: Once you have your feet wet with Japanese, once you know your Kanji and you know how to analyze a sentence (even if the lexicon isn’t all there yet), look at something that isn’t anime. I recommend movies, a lot of which are quite nice. Okuribito (Departures) was a great movie. An (Red Bean Paste) is a more recent film that was wonderful. Look up some movies. Sit down, and watch them. Watch it with subtitles, so you know what the movie’s about. But watch it a second time and a third time without subtitles. Try to see if you can make out a few sentences, read a few signs that appear in the background, take note of expressions or words you keep hearing. No, you won’t be able to understand the whole film all of a sudden, but it’s something new and something good and the more Japanese you learn, the more you will be able to return to the film and make out. Eventually, you will be able to listen to a sentence, pause the film, and look up the words you don’t know.

4. Learning Japanese Doesn’t Happen with One Method Alone

This is rather obvious, but it’s worth finishing this off with. There is an abundance of book series, CDs, cassettes, and even online resources (our own included.)

A language is greater than any method, than any curriculum, than any teacher. No one source has all the answers. One has to be encouraged from day one to look at many resources.

A library is a language learner’s best friend. Why? Because books can be expensive, and you will probably not need all the resources you dabble into for a long time. So, when you begin learning Japanese, look at the entire Japanese section, order a few famous books through InterLibrary Loan, if you have access to that, and sit down and just read the books, as if they were novels. Don’t memorize a thing. Don’t do the exercises. Just figure out their style, their aims, their perspective. Do read the footnotes! The more footnotes a book has, the more useful it tends to be in the long run. Information that isn’t relevant in Lesson 1 may be absolutely vital in Lesson 10.

Check out some old books if you can. The way people learn a language today is not the same way they learned it 50 or 100 years ago. The most useful Italian grammar book I ever read was written in the 1800′s. Japanese books published before World War II may have some slightly outdated things, such as the /we/ and /wi/ morae, but they will be good for most of everything else. I’m personally dying to get library privileges again somewhere to be able to look into these, so if I find some good book titles I’ll let you know.

Because a lot of language instruction was, until recently, modeled after the way Greek and Latin was taught, reading some of our own material gets you familiar with the lingo, should you heed my advice. So people like to talk about cases and declensions and conjugations and moods and all that. The works of William George Aston are some of the most important books on Japanese historically. So, if you can find originals of those, please do read them.

So yeah, food for thought

#Japanese #Langblr #Studyblr

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gardinerhouse-blog · 7 years

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Spotlight on Preeti Reddy Dasari

Preeti Reddy Dasari ’17 is an Economics major and an Applied Statistics minor. Home for her is Hyderabad, India, and she speaks four languages—her native Telugu, English, Hindi, and French. She got to put some of that French in action when she studied abroad in Geneva, Switzerland for her junior year! She has a job on Smith campus as the Coordinator of House Events, where she works closely with Hannah Durrant in the Office of Residence Life to make sure that all our awesome events are approved. She also enjoys traveling, journaling, and watching movies. She is a secret dancer and singer, and also likes to garden, and cook when she’s at home. At Smith, she is a member of Gold Key, and also works on The Sophian—which is what she’s going to tell us about in this post, along with a little bit about her study abroad experience!

What are you looking forward to in general at Smith, or in the Gardiner community, this semester?

I know the semester is winding down but I’m really looking forward to Senior Banquet. I’ve been dreaming of our Senior Banquet since my first year and I’ll admit – having a funny story for SB has served as my incentive several times to say YOLO and jump into crazy situations. But mostly, I’m looking forward to celebrate our time here at Smith and in Gardiner with our class and fellow housemates. I’m also really excited for Senior Week – watch me run down the hallways of G screaming, “We are the champions” and get hyper about (possibly) going to Six Flags.

What was study abroad in Geneva like? Do you have any favorite moments that you can share with us?

My stay in Geneva had a pretty rough start. It was like starting college all over again – a new place and strangers I’ve never seen on Smith campus. Worse, my grip on the French language was dismal after spending 3 months at home speaking my native language and there were all these strange customs that made me wonder if I’d teleported to 19th century France. But it soon began to feel like a home as I made friends and my French grew stronger. The program itself was very enriching academically and professionally. In the span of a day, I would go from discussing 14th century economic history to writing travel memoirs in French and then to corresponding with WTO analysts for a trade article I was writing for my internship.

All of that was well and good but my favorite moments in Geneva came from my taste of adulthood. I worried about not having enough money to visit Agatoni and Sadaf in Paris because Geneva was bleeding me dry. I would rush to finish that trade article so I could join my colleagues for a drink after work. I learned all there was to learn about rugby so I could participate in the office betting pool during the World Cup. On Sundays, I woke up early to walk to the farmers market to buy home made cheese and freshly picked strawberries. Little things like buying groceries and getting my travel pass renewed would make me happy because there were a sign of my strengthening French and more importantly, my ability to be truly independent.

What are some of the most valuable takeaways you have gained from studying abroad?

The interesting thing about Geneva was that it was geographically small but historically, it was endless. The city was home to one of the United Nations headquarters (there are four in the world) and the evidence that it served as a home to international diplomacy for centuries was everywhere.

But the most significant experience of my time in Geneva was my weekly visits to The Broken Chair. The first time I saw the monument, our tram had just pulled around the Ariana square. We were going on a tour to the UN HQ and I could hardly wait. But I remember going silent and still as I took it in the sculpture. The Chair is this five feet wooden sculpture of – you guessed it – a chair. It has one broken leg and is surrounded by little water jets that go as high as 5 feet at random times. The monument was erected in a protest again land mines and cluster bombs, and played a significant role in banning land mines across the world in the 90’s.

I would go to the square almost every weekend and sit on a stone bench, hoping the nearby water jets wouldn’t spray my writing book. It was a prime spot to look at the UN, the Red Cross museum and the Chair. Some of the days, it would be almost unbelievable that I was in that square, 50 feet away from my teenage fantasy of being surrounded by international organizations. (Yes, I had weird dreams for a teenager, okay)

Often, that square acted as a source for my existential and my “what the hell am I doing” thoughts. But mostly, it served as a space where I could bring out my inner idealist, a place where diplomacy was effective and people overcame boundaries to make this world a better place. And sitting there on a bench and watching tourists take selfies beside the broken leg; I could pretend to be part of History.

How did your time studying abroad in Geneva spark or develop your interest in journalism?

Economic Development has always been one of my passions and during my time in Geneva, I was able to work in this area and trade by interning with the International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development. As a junior associate with Bridges Weekly, the publication team, I took up responsibilities that ranged from writing trade/development articles to helping our experts gather data on the potential impacts of the TPP and TTIP. It had been a great time to get involved with ICTSD as among many other things, the TPP was finalized and the 10th round of WTO negotiations was held in Nairobi while I was there.

My experience proved to be unique because it taught me the importance of getting the message across to the masses. These trade deals, as arbitrary as they sounded, would, eventually but surely, affect the common man struggling to compete in the face of globalization. And I had the privilege to be a part of a team that was writing articles in six different languages to bridge that intellectual gap between policy makers and average news consumers so they could be aware of how their world was changing. The possibility that I’d contributed towards a reader’s understanding of current affairs inspired me to become more interested in journalism.

How long have you been working with the Sophian, and what is your role with the paper?

I became involved with The Sophian just before I returned to campus in Fall 2016. I was fresh off my journalism and Geneva fever, and I was interested in exploring my interest further. Given my commitments to an on campus job and job search for post-graduation, I knew I wouldn’t be able to join the team as a staff writer. So I reached out to Hira Humayaun, the Editor in Chief and my good friend, and asked to join the management team and integrate my finance knowledge with journalism. During fall semester, I worked as the assistant managing editor, learned the ropes of managing the budget and got acquainted with our regular advertising clients. It was a lot of pressure because our managing editor was going to China for the spring semester and the responsibility of successfully emerging out of 2017 without any debt had fallen on me. While I missed the writing aspect of journalism, I quickly learned there is a lot more to a college newspaper than articles.

For starters, it was incredibly difficult to find reliable advertisers who mailed checks in time and to have the OSE keep them safe. (my close friends often hear me complaining about the OSE losing checks). The college also wasn’t very keen on supporting the only independent publishing outlet on campus because it believes newspapers are a dying form of journalism. A majority of my time in the fall was spent reaching out to the OSE for more funding and to the President’s Office for a meeting with Kathy so we could discuss ways to increase the quality of our newspaper and the readership base. The newspaper had to go through several structural changes, such as outsourcing our printing to a third party, printing the paper in black and white, putting out more digital content such as vlogs and montages on our website.

Some of them were hard decisions to make, especially having our newspapers printed in black and white, as it was more likely to decrease our reader base. And our editorial board jokes that, hey, our paper might be ugly AF but at least we’re not broke anymore! But the struggles with the college and the subsequent receipt of support reminded me again of how essential journalism is. More importantly, how important it is for college students like us to have a voice. To be a part of the process of giving them an agency to make their opinion heard is incredibly satisfying.

If someone were interested in working with the Sophian, how would they go about doing that? Are there regular meetings they could attend? An account to email? Do you need previous experience working with a school paper?

If you are interested in the Sophian, you can email [email protected] or download the application from our website! The editorial board meets every Thursday at 6 pm in Chase/Duckett dining hall if you’re interested in attending. You don’t need previous experience to be a staff writer, although you will need to submit an article every week. We are always looking for guest writers and happy to hear from interested students!

Thank you to all of Gardiner House, and especially to Lily Pearl and Kathryn Maurer, for a fantastic Senior Banquet last night! The semester is coming to a close, but keep an eye on the blog for a few more special surprises that will be coming out as quickly as your Social Media Chair can manage it!

#smith college #gardiner house #Gardinerite Spotlight #study abroad #geneva #wto #journalism #college newspaper #college life

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