#not just for grammar but also words. the only weird thing is the old romanization system but once u recognize the hanzi u can

[mejomonster]

i have... a penchant... for getting really into books which are out of print. not cause they’re like first editions or collectibles or whatever the fuck (i went to an antique book show recently and was SO pissed there was like 50 Alice in Wonderlands, but no 1900 printed french books you couldn’t even find in pdfs online... in fact, no foreign language books at all what the fuck :c... and 2 gone with the winds, 50 lord of the rings... like i get it, the target audience of an antique show is maybe? idk people collecting expensive books? but for me? the point was to find out of print old books that may never have been digitized. thank the universe for archive.org there’s so many 1800s learn japanese, 1900s learn chinese books with different versions of romanization and then later different amounts of character simplification, theres the ‘nature method’ textbooks that i’ve only seen back in print very recently and only for a few languages and probably only cause nerds like me can’t shut up about them, there’s so many BOOKS i’m into that just... :c good fucking luck finding them if not for the kind efforts of archivists or random chance)

[snowdice]

Road Trips and Missing Persons (Part 21)

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Patton & Virgil, Virgil & Janus, Logan & Patton, Emile & Remy, Roman & Remus & Janus

Characters: Patton, Virgil, Janus, Remus, Roman, Logan, Emile, Remy

Summary: Patton was just getting groceries. The next thing he knew, there was a knife at his throat and he was an unwilling uber driver. Virgil’s on the run after the murder of his dad, and it’s not just his paranoia that’s telling him he’s being chased down. He has to get somewhere safe, somewhere he can trust, and all he has is a couple of stories from his dad and a name: “Green Bellow Foods and Dispensary.”

Meanwhile, everyone else is trying to find a missing 15 year old, all with different pieces of the puzzle about where he is. It really is too bad that no one is answering their phones.

Notes: Secret Agents AU, knives, carjacking, kidnapping, murder mentioned, guns mentioned, pepper spray, blood mentioned, drugs mentioned, explosions, car crashes (more to be added)

This is a fic I’ve been writing on study breaks that you have probably all already seen at this point. I’ve affectionately named it the Goblin Brain Fic because it’s helping my brain actually get motivated for studying. I’ve slightly edited it for wording and grammar, but not for content from my previous posts. Feel free to send in asks to direct it because I’m not 100% sure where this is going and you can help decide if you feel so inclined! You can see the process I went through to build this at this link.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 My Master Post

Emile’s car, of course, did not have a built-in button that would let him into the base’s outer gates like Remy’s would have. Instead, Remy had to get out of the car and put his face in front of the security camera. He waved, and someone must have seen and recognized him, because the gate swung open to let them through.

Remy climbed back into the car and Emile drove up towards what appeared to be an abandoned factory.

“Since you’re not an agent they’ll want us to go inside the shell building instead of down to the parking garage for security,” Remy told him.

Emile had never actually been to the base. He usually met with Logan at another location or sometimes Emile’s office and he met any patients in his office as well. Thus, he had absolutely no idea what parking garage his brother was talking about or where on Earth it could be, but he could figure out where Remy must want him to go because there was only one building in sight.

He drove down the driveway towards what looked like the main entrance of the “factory”.

“Weird,” Remy said as Emile pulled up in front of it. “There’s another car here.” They exchanged a glance.

Remy mumbled something that sounded like “damned kid,” under his breath. They were both scrambling to get out of the car the next moment. Remy went ahead of Emile because he knew more about this place, and also Emile would not have been able to stop him.

The door had been left slightly ajar and Emile could hear voices as they approached.

Emile heard Virgil’s voice (and thank god Remy was right about where he’d been going) say, “You know my dad?”

An unfamiliar voice responded with a shocked. “Remy’s dead?” which was right when Remy made it to the door.

Without missing a beat, Remy threw open the door and said, “Quit telling everyone I’m dead!” Now Emile loved a good animated movie reference usually, but today he couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

There were a few seconds of silence before the one figure he didn’t recognize on sight finished the quote by saying, “Sometimes I can still hear his voice.”

“Dad?” Virgil asked sounding all types of vulnerable and confused.

“Kid,” Remy said, “you are the bane of my existence.” He put his hands on his hips. “I’m dead for 5 minutes and you skip town?”

Emile watched Virgil’s face as he quickly adjusted to the fact that his father was not in fact dead, but simply an emotionally constipated idiot with a flair for dramatics. He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, and where have you been, old man?”

“Running after you once the wrist tracker said you’d booked it 50 miles away by the time I knew you were missing! Which then stopped tracking!”

“Yeah, well, I threw it out a window because I thought you were dead, and I’m not stupid.”

“Well, your ‘lack’ of stupidity has made my life a living hell for the past few hours.”

“Right back at you not-dead dad!” Virgil shot back hands on his hips and very much mirroring his father with his sass.

Remy paused for a moment and then snorted a bit. “Come here pipsqueak. Your old man deserves a hug after you nearly gave him a heart attack.” Virgil still looked a bit sullen but went in for the hug anyway.

Virgil caught sight of Emile over Remy’s shoulder and drew back from the hug. “Uncle Emile,” he said, sounding relieved. “I tried to call you.”

Emile turned to glare at Remy.

“Oof,” Remy said. “Yeah, that one may have been my bad too.”

“I,” Logan interjected. By the look on his face, Emile could tell that his willingness to let Remy and Virgil have a moment was wearing thin, “also tried to call him.”

Remy just shrugged. “Yeah, well, Boss, someone drilled it into my head not to give out secret critical information on unsecured lines and I am definitely critical.”

Logan gave him an unimpressed look and Remy shrugged and winked at him after a moment. He dug the flash drive he’d stolen from Barbara out of his pocket and tossed it at Logan. “Oh, and also this.”

Logan caught it and raised an eyebrow at it. “What is this?”

“Enough information to want to kill me for it,” he paused. “Of course, that’s not a high bar considering she tried to kill me before I stole it.”

Logan put the flash drive in his chest pocket. “I’ll decide if I’m going to kill you after I look at what’s on this.”

“Fair enough,” Remy agreed.

“So, you’re a secret agent?” Virgil asked.

“Yep,” Remy confirmed. Virgil looked over at Emile.

“Don’t look at me,” Emile said. “I’m just a run of the mill psychiatrist.”

“Who gives therapy to secret agents,” Remy pointed out.

“Even secret agents need therapy sometimes,” Emile said, “and I already knew about the organization.”

Virgil turned back to his dad. “I’m mad at you,” he said.

“Ah,” Remy said. “Yeah…”

“Teach me to shoot a gun, and I’ll forgive you.”

“NO,” both Emile and the man he didn’t know said at once.

“Trust me,” the other man continued. Now that he looked closer, the man may have been slightly familiar, but Emile couldn’t quite place where he may have seen him before. “He doesn’t need to learn how to use a gun. He does just fine with a knife.”

Remy considered Virgil suspiciously for a few seconds at that odd comment. “What did you do, you little shit?”

“Remy,” the other man chastised.

“He’s heard a lot worse,” Remy waved him off. The other man frowned at him, but Remy just turned back to Virgil. “Now, what did you do?”

“I needed a ride,” said Virgil.

“What about a knife?”

“The knife… helped me get a ride.”

“Did you kidnap Patton at knife point?” Remy asked. Virgil just shrugged. “Kid!”

“And you allowed that to happen?” Logan asked the man Emile presumed was Patton.

“He wasn’t exactly scary,” Patton said.

Virgil looked almost affronted. “I was terrifying!”

“Sure, you were kiddo,” Patton said. Virgil pouted at him, undermining his own point.

“From what I understand, he also incapacitated one of Nelson’s men with pepper spray,” Logan interjected. He eyed Virgil. “We should have a conversation at some point in the future.”

“Logan,” Patton chided. “He’s 15.”

“I’m aware of his age,” Logan said.

Virgil looked at him. “Would you teach me how to use a gun?”

“Hey, if anyone is going to teach my child how to use a gun, it’s me,” Remy insisted.

“No one is teaching him how to use a gun,” Emile said. “He doesn’t even have his driver’s license yet.”

“If I agree to take drivers ed… then I can get a gun?” Virgil asked.

“Maybe,” Remy said.

“No!” Emile exclaimed.

“Okay,” Virgil said, completely ignoring Emile’s interjection, “but Janus is not allowed to teach me to drive after last time. He’s the one who told me the gas pedal was the break on that golf cart. I don’t want to crash another vehicle into a body of water.”

“Wow,” a new voice said from the door. Emile looked over to see a group of damp people walk into the building. Emile did not recognize four of them, but he did recognize the fifth. The speaker turned to Janus. “You must be cursed. Wish you would have told me before we used my car instead of Remus’s”

A woman in the group turned to Logan. “We found your kids,” she said.

Want to read more? Click below!

Part 22

[ms-demeanor]

SOMEONE HAS ASKED ME FOR HELP TRANSLATING OLD ENGLISH (OE). WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT LANGUAGES AND I’M EXCITED.

I CAN’T TRANSLATE INTO OLD ENGLISH BUT I’M STILL EXCITED.

Okay, so, this was partially based on my recent, completely hilarious, translation of the first verse of Baby Got Back into Middle English.

I did that because I’m a complete slut for Middle English (ME). I am, in fact, such a slut for ME that I decided to make a free translation of the Canterbury Tales for people who were more advanced readers than most high-school level translations could help but who had trouble reading ME because its grammar is WEIRD and FUCKED. (I only got through the general prologue and six tales and my analytical asides are insufferable but good job baby Alli I’m so proud of you for wanting to make a free translation you little punk fucking shit up you; now fucking finish it you ADHD gremlin)

SO ANYWAY. Chaucer is Middle English. What you’re currently reading if you’re reading this blog post is Modern English (ModE). POP QUIZ!

What language did Shakespeare write in?

*Final Jeopardy countdown tune*

Wrong! (probably, statistically speaking, you were wrong about that. I’m sorry, I set you up)

Shakespeare wrote in Modern English! It’s Early Modern English, sure, but it is nonetheless the same language that you are reading and speaking and writing today.

BASICALLY

What I’m trying to say is that Lizzo (2019) has more linguistic overlap with Shakespeare (1616) than Shakespeare did with Chaucer (1400) in spite of the fact that Shakespeare and Chaucer were only about 200 years apart and Shakespeare and Lizzo are 400 years apart. That’s because Samuel Johnson was an Absolute Lad in 1755.

(THE PRINTED WORD IS FUCKIGN AMAZING; DICTIONARIES ARE THE SHIT)

Anyway when I was first on tumblr I made a VERY embarrassing mistake and insisted I knew something about OE grammar that I extremely did not (I think this had to do with possession confusion when writing about two people of the same gender and I jumped in with a very bad take) because being a slut for ME doesn’t mean you know shit about OE.

Because Old English is OLD. Like. Really Old.

Like it probably came to England in around 450CE. OLD.

OE is basically Old German. (The development of Modern German is as weird or weirder as the development of Modern English and is no-shit heavily built on work of the Grimm Brothers. The Fairytale dudes.) But also kind of Old Scandinavian? And Frisian. Oh the Frisian. (English speakers: break your brain and listen to this video. Frisian is really closely related to ModE and spoken Frisian sounds infuriatingly close to comprehensible for most English speakers) and basically it’s a messy amalgam of the tribal languages of the various vikings who were continually taking the place over plus all the Brittonic languages plus Latin because of the Romans.

Anyway part of what I’m getting at is that OE was kind of a giant mess (just like ModE!) and translating into OE is also a mess.

Also because OE wasn’t just one language, it was four major dialects and constant moving goalposts as various groups gained and lost power. England didn’t even have a single monarch until almost 200 years after Beowulf was (maybe, probably) written.

So 1066 a somewhat-French dude fought a war with the King of Norway and a bunch of English dudes and long story short that’s how Norman French (which is French with a heavy salting of Scandinavian languages and a soupcon of Celtic) started beating up Old English and eventually turned into ME. (In the General Prologue of the Canterbury tales Chaucer makes a joke that the Prioress’s French is more of Normandy than Paris which is a joke because she’s claiming to be educated in Fancy French but she’s really educated in the form of French that’s like hootin’ and hollerin’ down by the crick can I get a yeehaw).

The deal is that we’re now approximately 4000 permutations away from whatever resembled a lingua franca in England before the Norman Conquest. Our surviving stock of Old English manuscripts is minuscule. Tolkein probably wrote more words in the languages he constructed than exist in OE.

OE is dead. We’ve reconstructed it as best we can and have an okay idea of how the language worked but our understanding of the vocabulary is. A little weird. There are some extremely specific words that kind of just don’t translate to the modern world (“bag specifically for carrying stolen goods” is a decent example). There are some words for which the context is kind of fucked (so if you wanted to translate a proposal it’s hard to ask someone to be your wife if “wife” and “woman” are the same word and “wif” is added to a lot of words to make them apply to women (we retain this in “housewife,” but generally don’t use things like “fishwife” anymore))

But, say you want to learn and translate anyway, what do you do? You make friends with a bunch of nerds and we’ll share our hoarded dictionaries with you. Even the really old ones.

REALLY old.

Actually I don’t have my 1820s Old English dictionary handy so have this one from 1916 instead.

Here’s a site that will translate ModE to OE or OE to ModE as you choose.

The University of Texas at Austen Linguistics Research Center has an online course for learning OE.

Here’s a whole-ass OE textbook.

Some nerds made a podcast about learning OE.

And here’s a very, very short look at the language if you’re thinking of looking into it more.

But if you don’t have time to study a whole new language and want to get something translated fast I recommend finding someone on their way to Kalamazoo and offering them twenty bucks because it’s a hard economy out there for Medieval Studies grad students.

Uh.

Anyway.

[littlebigafterdark]

I'm feeling in a particular mood for some more Logan stuff, (totally not my comfort character who unfortunately is a medium for a lot of angst /s) so maybe the almost-relapse?

the littles accidentally trigger logan's ED (janus and patton help him thru it)

This is a copy pastd from a really long message i sent to liv a few weeks ago, just in case the grammar is weird or somethin!

oOo

context: whenever roman is a brat and refuses to eat dinner, logan gets noticeably more frustrated than with any other bratty behaviour because it hits too close to home to his eating disorder

so...

one day when patton is out somewhere, maybe at his carpentry class ((thats actually slightly spoilers for a big concept for the main blog lol)), logan has both the littles

and roman is bratty and refuses to eat dinner and logan breathes evenly and tries not to worry abt it bc he KNOWS roman always eats, hes just doing it to be annoying, breathe, he isnt actually restricting its ok

and logan was literally holding the baby fork up to vees mouth and suddenly she giggles and pushes it away

"come on baby, yummy time" logan coos and smiles a little but he doesnt feel it, and with his other hand he tickles lightly under vees chin and she giggles and logan smiles and goes to feed her again

but she pushes the fork away and babbles "mo bima!"

and roman laughs "yeah, no dinner! no dinner!" and bounces

and logan is feeling rlly shaky and hot suddenly and swallows thickly and ignores roman, and keeps looking at vee "princess, please open up," trying not to pay attention to how shaky his voice is. "its papa's spaghetti remember? yummy" he nods enthusiastically and goes to feed her again

but again vee just giggles all squeaky and pushes the fork away and looks at roman with a big smile for his approval. and roman is like "yeah vee! rebellion!!!" still so playful

but he hasnt noticed logans chest is heaving a little and hes staring at where vee pushed the fork away and logan was too shaky not to drop it on the floor.

and he looks up at vee and how small she is and how shes genuinely on the lower end of average weight and they need to make sure she doesnt dip down into underweight and thinks about how terrified he is of the idea that if she did develop an ED like he did it would be so dangerous and he cant see his baby go through that and-

it just hits him so so so harshly and hes suddenly crying and roman and vee freeze and look at him. and he hurriedly wipes away his tears and breathes shakily and tries to say again

"vee pl-please just ea--" and his throat closes up, he cant even say the word 'eat' and he gags on his tears and jumps up from his chair to run out to the downstairs bathroom and locks himself in trying to calm down and stop gagging.

and he can hear vee crying and roman - adult now - promising her its okay, mama feels a bit sicky but everythings okay, lets phone nana, its ok baby

and logan is breathing too fast and shaking and crying with his back against the bathroom door, not gagging anymore, but unable to take himself outside

. he hears roman feeding vee, and vee giggling and clearly enjoying the food, but no matter how comforting that is to hear he cant get over that genuine terror he felt when vee refused to eat, its his worst nightmare for vee to develop disordered eating - for any of them, but vee is already very thin and it could be critical, and logan cant get over that

when janus arrives (barely ten minutes later, he must have jumped in the car straight away which is only used for emergencies bc of janus' partial blindness) he speaks quietly to roman, and of course theyre trying to be subtle

but the kitchen is only across the hall from the bathroom and logan hears every word of roman explaining what happened and how confusing it was and how patton wont be home for another forty five minutes and roman didnt want either vee or logan to be alone but they probably shouldnt be around each other right now since vee gets so upset when the others arent happy

roman tries to talk to logan first through the bathroom door, apologising for misbehaving and promising he wont do that again. but can logan tell him what exactly was so bad about it this time? so roman can not do whatever it is in future.

but logan cant bring himself to say anything. he cant tell roman about this at least not yet he hasnt felt ready yet even if its been years and he doesnt know if he ever will be ready to tell roman about his ED

so after realising logan wont talk to him, roman swaps with janus. janus doesnt know the details but he knows theres something about logan and eating and hes made an educated guess from all the fibs hes heard over the years.

"hey, dic" (janus' unsavoury nickname for logan that he insists is just short for dictionary) "do you need a glass of water?"

logans throat is actually dry from hyperventilating and he says with a quiet scratchy voice through the door "yes please"

and when janus brings it to the door he just knocks gently and when logan opens the door to accept it janus doesnt make any comment on logans messy hair where hes run his hand through it or on his glassy red rimmed eyes or on the tremble of his fingers. but he does say "i know it must be so cozy in there" he nods to the cramped cold bathroom "but you might just prefer it in your room"

logan flushes a little and nods, comes out of the bathroom and heads to the stairs, but he pauses at the bottom of the stairs thinking... he doesnt know if he can be trusted alone upstairs. theres another bathroom up there and the gagging has made his stomach churn and he feels FULL from dinner and if only he emptied it then maybe he would feel better right? .... no

so he rasps without turning back to janus "i... i cant be alone"

"look behind you, idiot" janus says and its far closer than logan remembered him being.

he whips his head round to see janus was following closely behind him. janus raises a pierced eyebrow "well, are we going to stand in the stairway all night?" and of course its snarky but its soft too

so logan breathes deeply and they go upstairs to his room. janus makes himself at home, immediately grabbing a book from logans book case and collapsing sideways in logans armchair as soon as they stepped in the room. logan reclines on his bed and sips his water and does breathing exercises and tries to not feel humiliated about this breakdown

every time logan tries to apologise for disturbing janus' evening (he didnt) or asks if janus is sure roman is grownup enough to look after vee appropriately (he is) or insists that he is okay to be left alone now (he's not) janus just murmurs "shut up im reading"

when patton gets back roman just tells him logan isnt feeling good and patton hurries up to see him - and upon seeing his husband logan is overcome by shame that he almost relapsed and relief that his best friend is here and a wave of tears that he tries and fails to blink away

and janus just quietly bids them good night and promises he'll stay a couple hours to keep roman and vee company, but patton insists he stays the night in pattons room (its not safe for him to drive in thr dark) and janus is used to this routine by now that he knows where the spare pillows are

so janus leaves quietly and logan croaks "thanks, old man" trying to sound casual but regretting it when his voice shakes. janus just holds up a peace sign and closes logans door behind him on the way out.

as soon as the door closes logans face crumples and he hides his eyes behind his arm and patton practically bounds over to logan and climbs onto bed next to him and cradles logans head to his shoulder as he cries

they stay like that, cuddling in bed, patton cradling logans head and kissing the nape of his neck and wrapping his arm around logans waist to spoon him and whisper about what happened and how they can avoid it in future

but mainly they just breathe and cry together and patton fills the hours with soft affirmations of love and getting logan a tea and promising its okay if logan wants a cookie with it but logan says maybe later (later turns out to be 2:30 in the morning but at least it really was later)

they barely sleep that night but its all comfort and talking and by morning despite being exhausted, logan feels safer and breakfast goes by without a hitch

oOo

just some notes me and liv made that i think highlights some main points:

logan struggling so much even when he knows that the kids are just playing around and they don't really mean that they don't want to eat, but it's just one of those things that inevitably hits too close to home

it just suddenly hit him! like any other day he can cope with roman doing that, its a small blip usually, but the fact that VEE started refusing food freaked logan out so much bc they genuinely have to keep an eye on her weight just bc shes naturally so small

his emotions about his history with an ED plus his overprotective mama cg space making him nearly go into a panic attack from the thought that vee could develop an ED is very sad and very true

and janus coming right away!! and he and roman handle the siatuation so well, like roman was so smart knowing not to leave logan alone, and janus calling him dic and taking him to his room and staying there until patton gets back

and him crying from just seeing patton because he's his best friend and he can be vulnerable around him is very :'c <3

hes so so relieved to see patton but theres also the slightests "ive let my husband down" bc he thinks bc patton helped him so much he owes it to patton to not relapse - but of course pat reassures him its natural to relapse but he didnt! he caught it in the early stages and asked for help and patton is never disappointed in him

he caught it!!! he caught it and he stopped himself and he let himself be helped by both roman and janus and patton and he didn't even relapse!! and this whole thing is really a sign of how far he's come that he was able to accept their help in his vulnerable state, even if roman and janus didn't have the full story, they still wanted to help him through whatever he was experiencing

[kanene-yaaay-o-retorno]

The Colors of my Soul(mates) [1]

[Second oneshot]

[AO3 link]

Kanene’s Notes:

Nope, I do not regret the pun. Okay, okay! I’ve plaining this AU for almost an year so I’m pretty excited to post it!! dfghjsdfrtyucfvgbhjv yaaaay!! Thank you very very much @olliedollie1204 for such a positive feedback and awesome ideas. it helped me a lot!! 

Warnings, fun facts, random things and stuff:

* That fanfic has Virgil, Logan, Patton and Roman (only a brief mention of Remy) in a platonic relationship (yet), but it can be viewed as romantic, if you wish. 

* Warnings: A bit of swearing and depreciative thoughts. It’s mostly fluff and hurt/comfort, tho.

* This characters do not belongs to me. They all belongs to the amazing Thomas Sanders in his series of Sanders Sides.

* Something around 4.500 words. -w-)b.

* Sorry for any spelling, pontuation and grammar mistakes! Any advice is very very welcome!

* Tô com preguiça de postar a versão em português brasileiro aaaa! Thankys for reading, my lollipops! Say to someone important how much you love them, be safe, talk with the one that you love, drink water and sleep well! Byeioo!~

                           [~*~]

What can do a creature if not, between creatures, love?  - Carlos Drummond de Andrade

  - What the fu-

 Virgil only discovered he had more than one Soulmate when he was twenty years old, more specifically the exact moment he took a wrong turn and kept going even knowing he was in the wrong way because one hour it would lead him to somewhere Virgil would recognize before his mortal being inevitably starved to death in the middle of nowhere and his eyes got dragged from the visions from thousands of futures created by his mind to a Teddy Bear Store - they seemed to replicate worse than bacteria during Valentine’s Day - and two bears from the crimson shelter suddenly dyed themselves in two milliseconds as he slightly glanced at them.

 Two of them. Virgil felt his entire face burn in hot shades of embarrassment with drops of disbelief, almost as if all the people running, stumbling, locked in their own worlds and swearing while walked in the sideway because ‘some stupid teenager decided to just stop and block their way’ could, by only looking at him, stare deep into his soul and realize the one staring astonished the store already carried in his fate another one more Soulmate at home.

One completely different in shape and form, even if also blue, however in a light, sky blue completely opposite shade from the new navy one staring him down - Virgil knew plentily their link wasn’t bonded yet, albeit he was equally sure that the person behind those black glooming teddy bear’s eyes were already judging him, - wondering why, between all the people, he was their soulmate. The other red one was very much likely crackling in his face when an employee came and pointedly turn the adult’s attention to the sign in big, graphed words clued in front of their store:

 “You dye, you buy.”

 Virgil signed, pushing his hoodie down further, wondering how much time it would take of him hitting his head on the wall to finally pass out. This option sounded much more attractive when he realized that this new ‘discovery’ about himself would cost all his month’s saves.

 He asked, to the Universe, the stars, the Earth and whoever was seeing him in that exact moment: why?

 Was it a kind of prank? A punishment from fate when, years and tears ago, Virgil lifted his chin up and dared the Universe to give him more soulmates as he locked all his uncolored – although never really free of some weak drops of paint from what one day they came to be – simply stuffed animals, - and nothing more, anymore, - away and promised he would never, ever allow himself to go all through this shit again?

 But… That had been… years ago. Almost a decade since that soft voice he got to know so well, the impulsive acts, long conversations and warm feelings.

 But…

 Time has passed, that is true. Nevertheless, deep down has he really changed?

 Virgil stared at the bag carried so close to his chest since his bare hands were sweating and shaking way too much for this task. Yes, he knew his Soulmates won’t feel anything until both of them decided to ‘give the First Step’, accepting to link their souls and fates, for the longest as it lasts. However, he didn’t want to risk it, because what if they felt? What if he in some way broke the Soulmate System when got two at the same time and now everything was messed up and they could already feel his touches even through the bag and the first impression Virgil would gave to them was ‘That anxious, weird boy and his creepy, sweaty hands’ and-

 A girl almost hit him as she passed running at his side, making his arms protectively hug further the teddy bears closer to him, arms protectively involving them, the soft touch somehow calming his tumulted thoughts. The lost man took a deep breath.

 Clear your mind. Rational thoughts. Focus on the two sides of the coin. Three people wouldn’t be able to break a millennial, unknown system, don’t matter how good he was in screwin… No, a voice that sounded suspiciously a lot like his psychologist calmly pointed, not like that. Virgil huffed, trying again. He was a magnet of problems and bad…Okay, also wrong. Neutral thoughts, focus on neutral thoughts. Come on. Come on.

 It was okay.

 They wouldn’t feel him until they gave the first step. Right, that… sounded like a start. He didn’t do anything. Now, what Virgil needed to do was go to his house, clean his bed in order to find a good place where he could put and ignore them and then he would get his headphones, listen his playlists and wonder where the fuck his life was going.

 It was okay. Everything would stay okay as long as he didn’t give the First Step.

 Virgil unconsciously hugged tighter the teddy bears, his fingers finding way and drowning themselves in the soft, cozy fur, combing them in light, soothing touches as he continued his way.

 Okay. Everything was okay.

 [~*~]

 Plurinfanto, or Multiple Souls, it’s the nomination used for the cases when a person has diverse soulmates at the same time and in a same period.

 The first known case was with Pharaoh Cleopatra when multiples of her woolen fabric started to dye themselves in various colors and shades. In Ancient Roman, it was believed that the occurrences were blessings from Venus in a sign of prosperity and abundance. Grand, longstanding parties were executed through days nonstop in order to get together those intertwined souls. When the connection broke and the colors disappeared, it meant that days of pain and foreboding were waiting forward.

 It is not known for certain the exact moment when the meaning changed, albeit researchers believe it was around the fall of the Roman Empire, when all the invasions resulted in a cultural reconstruction which led to the loss from much of their costumes.

  CLICK HERE TO DISCOVER HOW TO HAVE THE SOULMATE OF YOUR DREAMS!!!!  

 [~*~]

 The computer made a soft ‘click’ as Virgil closed it and sat on his bed, adjusting slightly his position to stare the three vivid, brilliant stuffed beings contrasting to the general dark theme of his room.

 Virgil growled, resting his back on the cold wall, the shivers calming his flowing thoughts about all the variants this whole thing had. No to mention that people change with time, leading to the souls who they “relate” to change as well, meaning that you can have someone in your life for years and then, one month, or weeks or the next day, you can wake up only to discover you and the said person don’t “match” anymore.

 And NO ONE talked about this just because it was a freak tabu to doesn’t have ‘an only one soulmate who will be with you until the end of your existence’. Oh, for fuck sake. Virgil ran his hand through his hair, wincing when he accidently pulled some tangled strands. That sounds like a line of commercial, does anyone believe that bullshit for real?

 “Hello dear, newer fellow!!” The popping thought broke his line of reasoning, jumping excitedly in his mind and automatically pulling him out of his wanders. It has a strong and full of… about everything, tune demanding attention. Virgil felt a warm kiss on his forehead, meaning one soulmate – a deep part of him turned his attention to the red colored teddy bear, - had given the First Step. The one who in some moment changed his position so now he was sitting on the floor felt his face get hot again, heart thumping strongly in his chest as his arm moved, fingers stopping inches away from the fur, questioning if he was ready to retribute the gesture.

  [~*~]

 Many history icons have reports of being Pluriers, as shown in the book ‘The Romance in the History of Those Who Wrote It’, by historian Henry Senyura. The subject is also beginning to gain more visibility after the protest from the teacher Joan A. in 2010, who got touched towards the situation of some of her pupils being forced to choose only one among their Soulmates for the six-month annual exchange, by the end of that period most of them lost or weakened their bonding due lack of communication, small changes of personality and continuous absence. She held a protest at the front of the school, stating that no one had the right to interfere in ‘matters of the heart’.

 A lot of fiction works are beginning to address the topic more frequently, as in I’m Not One, a movie directed by Devon Stan; The Seven Colors of Rainbow, a book written by Lílian Lee and the psychological analysis Life’s Watch, recently found between drafts by the famous writer Robin Green, published after their husband’s authorization, Josué Green.

 [~*~]

 Logan hummed. As it seems, this was a relatively common thing, since the concept of Soul Mates surpassed the barriers of unity and time, being ‘souls who in a way or other intertwined themselves in some part of their life. Sometimes it didn’t necessarily mean a romantic relationship, as the majority of society and media pointed, but it also didn’t hold any assurance that all of them were platonic.

 He massaged the bridge of his nose. Remy wasn’t in the dorm so everything was silent enough for him to hear his own thoughts.

  It has been a remarkable amount of years since he got his last soulmates, - except for Remy, however they both considered this occurrence as a separate incident - well, until, of course, this day. At least it was a good thing he always carried in his bag extra easy manageable stuffed animals or else maybe the System would dye one of clothes, what would be less than ideal for him in the middle of his philosophy debate. But things got even more interesting when, after his classes, as he arrived at the small, pleasantly well-organized store next to his university, one more stuffed animal colored itself right before him.

 He didn’t exactly understand why. Logan considered himself an owner of a… quite strong, strict personality, this added with his difficulty in managing his and one another emotions usually tended to bring some complex tribulations in his rela-

 Anyway, that is beside the important matter. The one laying his chin on his crossed fingers undid his pose for a bite of time in order to adjust his glasses, barely fixating his gaze on the two plushies in the desk before him, his third – Pat - resting a few centimeters away, closer to Logan’s fingers, who were barely touching. Mind running. Asking, reflecting, wondering what was the exact amount of time to be acceptable to give his First Step?

 ‘The First Step’.

 Logan never really understood from where and how that expression emerged. It didn’t come from the words’ etymology nor some semantic detour. His most concrete hypothesis consisted of the phrase being derived from old romances.

 “Did you know it used to be called the ‘First Kiss’?! But that confused a lot of people who really believed that, to be able to talk and interact with their soulmates they would have to kiss each other, like the Sleeping Beauty! I always got confused in this movie when I was a child, by the way! That ended up messing with a bunch of relationships before they even started, since a lot of peeps don’t feel comfortable enough with strangers kissing them. However, they also speeded up a bunch of them as well…” Logan blinked, his attention escaping from his previous thoughts to the light sky blue plushie of Baby Yoda, for a moment surprised with the sudden input. He felt fingers carefully holding his arms and a bit of ghost movements as Pat probably moved his representation to somewhere else, a hug and warmth engulfing the one yet absolving the new information moments later.

 “That was… enlightening.” His voice danced across the room. Even though he was completely aware they could chat telepathically, the childish act of saying the words out loud still comforted him, in a way. “Thank you for your contribution.”

 He took a deep breath and closed the tab of research on his cellphone, internally thanking from the escaping of his turmoil of thoughts, his free hand carefully combing the Baby Yoda’s head fur, almost methodic.

 “Looo, no!” The other protested with no heat in his tune, leading a toothless smile to resurface in Logan’s features. “Stop doing this. You know I end up sleeping every time!”

 “Oh no, what a tragedy.” He deadpanned, already plugging his phones and changing to a most relaxed position on his chair, his eyes traveling across the countless movies on the device before him. “In which episode did we stop?”

 “I’m going to fight you.” Pat sounded like he was pouting.

 “How so?” Logan asked, trying to hide his amusement.

 Silence followed his words.

 “Pat?”

 “What is the skeleton’s favorite instrument?”

 “Pat, don’t you fucking da-”

 “Language! It’s a xiloBONE!”

 Logan audible growled, fast in his final decision. “I’m going to drop you out the window.”

  “I’m going to hug you!” And immediately the one rolling his eyes felt himself being squished in a strong bear hug, huffing only half annoyed.

 “You are an incorrigible heathen, let me go in this exact instant.” His answer was a ‘butterfly kiss’ – as Pat was fond in calling them – on his forehead. “Urg, affection.” Yet he smiled and mirrored the act, lightly poking the other’s side.

 “We’re on episode 19.”

  [~*~]  

Roman stared the paper, his pencil’s tip stopped in the middle of the biggest petal’s flower, his eyes narrowing in the hope of a clearest way of how to convert the vague idea he had in transforming the night full of stars in a flower. No to tell he also would need to choose a good pallet of colors indication for it, later, and probably re-do all the process over and over and over until got the best result as possible. A yawn found its way from his lips and the designer stretched, getting up to drink a bit of water and rubbing his eyes, wondering if it was really worth it to make a black tea to help him through the night.

 A glimpse of color caught his attention. The navy blue teddy bear on his couch, the main inspiration of his newest tattoo. Roman wondered why it wasn’t resting in front of him while he drew. A corner of his brain, obscured by the tiredness, telling he had a previous good reason for this choice although his actual self carried absolutely no idea of why.

 Well, if he couldn’t remember it, it means the reason wasn’t THAT good, right?

 Roman held the stuffed animal, spinning with it across the room for a couple of minutes, imagining who would be the person behind it. A king, a queen, a non-binary royalty? Did they like Disney? Musicals? Sing? Would they chat for hours at first with a few words exchanged or would they take a bit to warm at each other? Was navy blue their favorite color or…

 Or…

 Navy blue.

 Oh.

 He fixed his glare on the plushie, his hands feeling and slowly drawing in the soft fur of it.

 Navy blue, huh? A humorless chuckled flew in the air. It could have no significance, it could be a world of it. It probably didn’t mean what he, for a moment, a so silly, stupid moment, wished it meant. Of course, one day this would happen, right? It was something normal, something expected. Not the magical, right out of the story books or his old daydreams, occurrence.

 This wasn’t a second chance. The Universe doesn’t give you second chances. He wasn’t the same boy from eleven years ago, holding his own costumed teddy bear crying his eyes out, hugging he – No, it – the closest as possible, wishing with all his heart and soul for the color, the voice, the thoughts, the rambling, their bickering, the forgiveness to come back again.

 No, he grew up. He moved on. He got better.

 Then why did a part of him still felt this way? Like he was about to hear the excited giggles, the soft reprimand, that lovely, deep and so truly -and sometimes boring, Roman had to admit – questions? Why would a part of him still say that he could have it all again if he just… waited long enough, hoped high enough, dreamed long enough…

 …If he was enough.

There aren’t more than seven billion colors in the world. Roman would be stupid if he really believed there was a path where he wouldn’t stumble in that so (un)fortunate well-known shade of blue again.

 Roman growled, his forehead making a loud, dry thumping sound as hit his desk. The one who should be asleep hours ago had absolutely no energy to battle against those thoughts, again. At least for now. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the teddy bear laid on the cold tabletop before him. Well, what a better way to get rid of your own means thoughts than put some stranger’s unpredictable thoughts in the middle of it? Roman slightly pushed the bunch of flowers and some warmup sketches he had out of the way, carefully carrying the representation next to him, nodding. Honestly, that was the best idea he had for a while, why did he even put the lovely thing away?

 Awake Roman was so silly, thinking that… something he couldn’t quite recall right now would be a bad idea, he pointed as snorted softly, pressing his lips on the teddy’s forehead, the quote he knew by heart flying from them in a natural flow.

 “It is not immortal, since it’s flame. But let it be infinite while it lasts.”

 A warm sensation rested on his own forehead moments later, leading the sleepy form to hum happily.

 “Is it… poetry?” Oh shit, Roman widened his eyes. His soulmate heard that?? Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Roman mentally facepalmed himself. So that was why he usually said it before the First Step!

 “Uhh, yeah. Of course. Fidelity Sonnet by Vinícius Moraes.”

 “I see. Classicism, I presume. A literature of very soundly pleasant rhymes, indeed. The first sonnet was probably created by the humanist Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, although it got even more known in the western literature after the works of Camões, who- ”

 “He is from Modernism, actually.” Roman didn’t know why he suddenly sounded so defensive. Logan felt a cold feeling run his body when the other’s hands let go of him, for a piece of second wondering if it was supposed for him to do the same with the red narwhal plushie on his hold.

 “A very common mistake to make due the lack of context.” He retorted, unable to formulate another answer. He had, of course, thought, balanced options and chosen the best topics to discuss with his new soulmates when they bonded. However, his fingers firmly gripped the pen, its tip tapping on the first topic written in the notebook partially forgotten in front of him, the poetry figuratively threw him out of his tracks, leading the decision to be the most impartial as possible due his… not so impartial past memories with that specific shade of red an even more difficult task than it already was.

 “Yes. Sure. Sorry, I- I’m just… very tired right now.”

 “You should go sleep, then.”

 The other snorted with the direct, immediate response. “I should, shouldn’t I? Gotta work, though.”

 Some part of Logan’s brain registered the new fact, separating and keeping it in a special place so he would remember to write it down in the new folder he bought, later.

 “I see.” … poetry? That wasn’t a hard topic to talk about. The one now nervously cleaning the very clear lenses twisted his mouth. He could talk about this for hours. No, correction: he already had previously talked about this for hours non stop.

 Logan strangely felt the urge to rub his face and scream. It has been years, - eleven years and 10 months to be precise – and exactly eight years since the one wearing glasses learned poetry because of him. Because of his constant habit of reciting Shakespeare before they would go to bed, until Logan brought himself to research and decorate all the poems he could muster, taking the task to now wake Prince – the name still carried a strong taste in his tongue – in the same way every single day. Before they realize, that becomes something between them. There were times when both didn’t talk, content in only reciting some verses and hear the other complete them. A part of Logan, that illogical and unfortunately full of feelings one wondered how their rap battles would be if they found each other right now.

 Did Prince even maintain his liking the same things he one day did? Does he still recite poetry? Does he maintain the same dreams? The same habits?  Does he even remember about him?

 Highly improbable.

 “You can call me Lo.”

 Roman slowly blinked, getting out the fog surrounding his brain to realize he was mindless staring at the pan’s boiling water, surprised the other still there. Well, it seems like he hasn't screwed terribly everything yet.

 “Lo? Like Lowrance?”

 “Even though my name does contain ‘Lo’ in it, no. It’s ‘Lo’ like Logic. I came to believe it’s a good idea the nomination after a predominant characteristic, since we can’t actively exchange our real names through the Soulmate System.”

 Roman’s breath hitched, a memory with yellow-ish edges and nostalgic smell unrolling in front of him.

 …

 ‘I think we should choose you a name with more personality in it, ya know?’ He threw himself on his bed, kicking his legs on the air before immediately scoping the plushie and laying it on his stomach. ‘Like a characteristic!’

 ‘I don’t see what is wrong with the nickname I choose.’

 ‘No, no! There is nothing wrong with it! But that could be something just between us!’ Then he gasped, picturing that, if he was inside a movie there would be a lamp shining right above his hair in this moment. ‘We could call you Ro!! You wanted to be a robot, right?’

 His soulmate growled and Roman felt a few pokes on his arm, the verbal protest doesn’t taking long before accompanying it. ‘I was three years old!’

 ‘And I’m never letting you live this down.’ He beamed, both knowing the annoyed scoff he got as response held no real heat. ‘Besides, we could even match our names!!’

 ‘That would be very counterproductive.’ Roman felt his hair being softly smoothed, a usual indication the other was losing himself in his thoughts. ‘Nicknames are supposed to help us. Having two equal names is not the most efficient thing.’

 Roman dramatically scoffed, picking the stuffed animal and half hugging it, his free hand occupying itself in making a couple of gestures to no one, since his soulmate couldn’t exactly see them. ‘It’s not about being productive, Bear! It’s about feelings!!’

 ‘And since when,’ a light poke was delivered on his belly, making him squeak and mess with the teddy bear’s hair in revenge ‘Everything isn’t feelings for you, your highness?’

 …

 “Okay,” Roman and his self past disappearing with the fading memory said, in synchrony “You shall call me by Prince, then.”

 Suddenly he felt himself falling, his hands quickly holding on the tabletop as the cold, nauseous feeling took over his stomach, more like a punch on it, his veins being filled with amounts of adrenaline for a glimpse of a second.

 “Excuse me? Warn a guy next time you decide to just drop his representation, dude! Damn.” Roman shook himself, trying to bring his body to calm down.

 “Sorry, I got… startled.” Logan gulped. The word ‘Prince’ echoing on his mind as a broken vinyl disc. What were the chances? That couldn’t be such a common nickname, right? Nor color. Nor interests. What were the chances? What could be the chances? Maybe he was just projecting, being played, tricked by a dangerous partnership between his own brain and emotions. Maybe he was just jumping to conclusions due the nostalgic feeling fogging his actions, his thoughts. Perhaps-

 “Hey, Lo? Are you there?”

 “Yes.” Logan answered, his fingertips colliding quickly with the fabric of his pants as he visualized his options. “Yes, I am.”

 “Hm. Okay, then. I’m… glad to know.”

 Silence. Logan took a wobbly breath.

 “Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back; Wherein he puts alms for oblivion; A great-size monster of ingratitudes:”

  “Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd; As fast as they are made, forgot as soon.” Roman continued without even noticing until the words danced in the air, just like the years haven’t passed.

 Then he understood.

  His heart stopped for a second, his eyes widening and his voice disappearing, as if his whole being was afraid to break the moment, the spell; as if this was a dream and a miscalculate step would make everything fade.

 “Bear?” Roman felt a light poke on his cheek.

 “Hello, Prince.”

 Roman choked a laugh, quickly crawling the teddy bear next to his chest, hugging it both firmly and yet so caring, curling around its - no, him - feeling an equal warmth involve his form as he hided his face on the soft fur, giggling and hugging, feeling so happy, so alive and right and good and he would never, ever, ever again let him go.

 “I missed you, bitch. Never scare me like this again.”

 “I… missed you, as well.” Logan tried to not let the emotion take over his tune, his hand petting the narwhal plushie softly, the words had abandoning him, as it seems. “This reunion is a… good surprise.”

 “Oh, shut up, I know you’re having a blast somewhere in that logic soul of yours, too.”

 Logan huffed, grinning. “Stop crying on my hair, your troglodyte.”

 “Make me, I dare you.”

 “Always so dramatic.” They both rolled their eyes, letting the moment be bathed in the deep waters of a comfortable silence.

 “Eleven years.”

 “We have so, so much to talk about!! Oh, my goodness gracious, I’m going to get my tea. Do you remember about that play I wrote about zombie princes and a dragon witch? You will NOT fucking believe what happened with it!”

 “Good thing I have you to explain to me then.” Roman stopped, a gigantic smile taking over his features as he closed his eyes to feel everything even more.

 “Yeah, I agree.”

 Somewhere in the world Patton and Virgil smiled during their sleep, unable to control themselves when a gigantic wave of pure joy and delight filled every corner of their hearts, coloring it on the most brilliant gleam, just like their stuffed animals resting peacefully on their grip.

[icouldntresistit]

The hidden language in Jimin’s Birthday Video (Warning: Long)

to Jeongguk. 

So, I’m finally talking about this like I said I would--but not in the same way as everyone else. When this video was first released, some people were endeared that Jimin posted a whole video birthday card, and some were curious as to why he didn’t post more. But me, I was curious for one key reason that I want to explain in detail. I’m calling this “The Impersonal Personal Message”.

I personally like to approach these sorts of things as more or less a lesson in language than a lesson in the nature of two people’s relationship, but you can apply these ideas as you will. Please understand that I’m just interested in looking at the language and not necessarily trying to make any claims here (though I do have my own opinions).

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

The Impersonal Personal Message

In this video Jimin says the following: 정국씨! 생일축하합니다! 생일 진심으로 축하하고 맛있는거 많이 드시고...어.....만수무강 하세요. 나중에 술을(?) 합시다!

(Romanization: Jeonggukssi! Saengilchukhahabnida! Saengir jinshimeuro chukhahago mashineungeo mahni deushigo...eo.....mansumugahng haseyo. Najoongeh sooreul(?) habshida!)

The reason why I wrote the Korean is two-fold: A) You probably already know the english translation but haven’t seen the Korean transliteration; and B) The tone of what he’s saying can only really be relayed by explaining the hangul. So, let me explain, line-by-line so to speak.

정국씨!

First, let’s talk about “정국씨! (Jeonggukssi)” - Right off the bat, we can tell he’s being overly formal by his use of “씨 (shi/ssi)”, meaning Mr./Ms. You only really see this type of formality for 2 reasons. 1) The person being spoken to is a stranger and authority figure for the person speaking. And 2) The two people speaking are extremely close and joking around--though this reason can have a romantic undertone

Formal Language Between ‘Close Friends’

Next, “생일축하합니다 (Saengilchukhahabnida)” - This is to be expected as the video is more so toward ARMYS than it is Jeongguk. I say this because it’s released on a public forum for more than just one end user to interpret. However, this usage of “Happy Birthday” gets another layer when you take into account the previously established tone of the video. As many may know, the verb conjugation ~ㅂ니다 (~bnida) is the formal present-tense high respect form. You may recall from my last language-related post that there are generally 3 respect forms to conjugate into in Korean. One is the informal low respect (ILR) form, predicates ending in ~아/어 (~ah/eo); one is the formal low respect (FLR) form, predicates ending in ~요 (yo); and one is the formal high respect (FHR) form, predicates ending in ~ㅂ니다 (~bnida). ILR is commonly used between close friends, individuals of the same age, lovers, and immediate family members. FLR is commonly used between strangers and with individuals who are older than the speaker. FHR is commonly reserved for authority figures (boss, president, CEO, etc.), strangers, and when addressing or speaking in front of large groups of people

I’ve discussed the uses of FHR before (see this post) as it pertains to idols, but not in close relationships. You typically only see this use in close relationships in more of a joking or even flirty tone. It’s almost never seriously used like this in close friendships. This is important to note because the entire tone of the video takes this weird detour when you consider exactly what Jimin is saying. Now, I want to backtrack just a bit to say that 생일축하합니다 is not at all uncommon for idols to say to their fellow members/friends when giving birthday shoutouts. It is really not playful at all in that sense. Even in this case it doesn’t seem playful. BUT, I still needed to point this out because of the overall formal tone of the video and as an excuse to explain respect levels in Korean grammar

Now, let’s look at “생일 진심으로 축하하고 맛있는거 많이 드시고 (Saengir jinshimeuro chukhahago mashineungeo mahni deushigo)” - This stood out to me for one main reason--the use of “드시다 (deushida)” (this is the verb stem of what Jimin actually said, which is “드시고”), instead of “먹다 (meogda)”. Both of these words (먹다 & 드시다) mean “to eat”. The only difference is that ~드시다 is very formal. It’s the honorific version of “들다 (deulda)”, which is another less commonly used version of “to eat”. You only really use this word when the subject of your sentence deserves high respect. It’s very polite. The only way I can even kind of translate this directly is to think of it as “Please eat, kind fellow” lmao. This sentence helps add to the very cold atmosphere the video has. But if you consider that the video is ‘to’ Jeongguk, it makes it seem more playful than cold

Now, I want to take a look at “만수무강 하세요”. This is where meaning can get a little shaky for me because, in my understanding and experiences, “만수무강 (mansumugahng)” is like...something people in their advanced age say more often than young people.... And then you have 하세요 (haseyo), which is common to use with 만수무강. It’s the formal version of 하다 (hada), meaning “to do”, but in this case it simply just makes the noun 만수무강 a verb. 하세요 itself sounds more like a request because of the use of the honorific ~시다 (shida) and the FLR conjugation ~요. Note that ~시다 + ~요 = ~세요, and 하다 + ~세요 = 하세요. The reason why I liken this to a request is because the translation is something like “I hope you live long and prosper/Please live long without any difficulties”. It gives the added sense that the speaker is being polite to the receiver

Now, let’s talk about “나중에 술을(?) 합시다 (Najoongeh sooreul(?) habshida)” - Jimin kind of slurs his words, he also has a bit of a quirky speech pattern and can sometimes speak very quickly as well, so it’s hard to really pick up on every little particle ending, verb conjugation, etc. But, we do know that he says “Let’s have a drink later.” Here, I’m concerned with 합시다 (habshida), which takes 하다 (again, meaning to do), and the FHR propositive verb conjugation ~ㅂ시다 (bshida), which gives the meaning of “let’s do (something).” Propositive mood is when the speaker is making a suggestion (e.g. “Why don’t we go here?” “Shall we do this?” “Let’s have a drink,” etc.) The propositive conjugations are as follows: ~아/어 is ILR, ~자 (~ja) and ~ㅂ시다. Here, Jimin is using a higher respect form than necessary, though not as high as what it could be

The Meaning of It All

So, what does this all mean? It just means that Jimin’s been extremely formal with Jeongguk this whole time as demonstrated by his use of FHR & FLR verb conjugations (~ㅂ니다, ~시다 + ~요, & ~ㅂ시다), honorific verbs (드시다), really old-timey nouns (만수무강), and honorific titles (씨). This is not necessarily strange, but given their closeness it gives off a slightly playful vibe when taken ALONE (i.e. not counting the mood of the video/his perceived nervousness, etc.) I made this post because so many people felt it was cold and impersonal based on the atmosphere, the almost stiltedness of Jimin’s disposition. But, that can be explained by the idea that the video was covering for a surprise of some sort (for whom--I don’t know). When you look at the language, contrast that with the context and relationship (that we know of), the video is actually kind of playful in a sense. He was laying on the formality very thick but it didn’t seem shady at all, just mischievous

Anyway, I hope this was interesting to someone 

[hanguk-berry]

안영~~ i just discovered your blog and absolutely love it!! I’m 16 too and hope to carry on teaching myself german (my college doesn’t offer languages as a subject ;-;) and also to teach myself korean!! How did you start learning korean? And how do you keep up with learning so many languages at once?

안녕!~~ Hallo and Hi ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Firstly, thank you so much for your kind words ㅜㅜ This made my day (although it is currently almost 9 p.m. here ... heh~) It makes me really happy to see people enjoying my blog! @.@

What makes me happy too, is that you study German?! :o That is really cool but you must be very determined ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ since German grammar can be really tough, even for Germans 💚 Keep it up! If you need help or advice (I hope these two words don't exactly mean the same thing ㅋㅋ), please do not hesitate to contact me ^-^

So, moving on to your questions (I always tend to talk too much ㅋㅋ):

I started studying Korean by learning the alphabet first. Frankly, I did not even know that romanization was a thing at that time, which turned out to be good to not to know.

1. Start with Hangeul - 한글

Probably the MOST important thing when studying a new language is getting familiar with the alphabet. I read/heard a lot of people say that "You can use romanization at the very beginning but you should not depend on it"

[DISCLAIMER: I am not quoting any specific person, so please do not be offended by my words. ♡

+

Those are all my own opinions, based on personal experience. None of these are guides on how to study Korean, but rather advice that has helped me to get where I am now. ♡]

I disagree with the quoted sentence. Be hard on yourself. Do not study to an unhealthy extend. But do push yourself to train your body and brain, as well as your mind, to actually study. Although my words might sound harsh, trust me - it is worth the result you'll get at the end.

So, to conclude my first point: Study 한글.

It is worth the time. (Actually, it doesn't take to much time. I learned it within two hours. LEARNED. That does not mean that I was fluent in reading it. It means that I understood the basic principle of the Korean writing and reading system and knew the sounds connected to each character.) (To clarify, the last sentence doesn't mean that I could read every word I saw from then on. I could - when I saw the single character written in front of me - associate a sound with it.)

2. Practice Hangeul - 한글

The key is practice, practice, practice. I assume everyone of us in the language study community was or is tired of hearing this at some point (including myself). But it is true what they say.

I practiced reading Korean by:

a) writing down basic words

e.g. months, days of the week, numbers, most common names in Korea

b) following many, many Korean accounts on Instagram

Call me a Koreaboo. (I honestly do not understand the point of that. Let people do what they want as long as they do not show disrespect towards a group of people/a culture or hurt anyone.) But I am - and always have been, and always will be - attracted to East Asian men. (In fact, I am more attracted to Japanese people than Korean, and I love the sound of Japanese more, too.) (Japanese is so hard to study, though. That's why I chose Korean.) (I am talking too much again and drifiting off. Oops. Back to the topic,heh~)

FOLLOW AND INTERACT. Read their stories. Really read their stories. Read the captions before translating. (This obviously works with official accounts [Korean musicians/actors/etc.], too.) Your first ten attempts won't be the best but after a while you will be able to read faster and recognize words that are often used. Make Korean friends. Talk to them. They will be very pleasured to see someone being interested in their culture, country and language!

(I created a whole new account where I am only following Korean people, mostly students around my age. I made it for the sake of the Korean content not drowning in the much more understandable english content ㅋㅋㅋㅋ.)

3. Basic Grammar

I started out with studying very basic grammar (sentence structure, basic conjugation, basic particles,...). For this, I took an old folder, emptied it and made it my Korean folder. Then I went through the first 10 lessons of Unit 1 of howtostudykorean.com

For every lesson I made handwritten and color coded notes. (Color coded means that I used different colors for • basic information about the grammar rule • important information • main examples • more/own examples .)

As everyone has his/her own methods of learning languages, try to find your own and do not be afraid to experiment!

4. Follow your heart :)

Afterwards, I began studying wildly ㅋㅋㅋㅋ. I learn whatever I want or need in the very moment. I try to stick to a schedule but that does not work for me since I have a lot of extracurricular activities.

E.g. when I read Korean webtoons and notice a particle I have never seen before, I study it. When I wonder at 3 a.m. about how "What if..." is expressed in Korean, I look it up the next morning.

5. Use what you have learned

Show the world what you know. Talk (text, if you aren't confident.) (Yet.) (Don't worry, I am still too shy to speak Korean in front of literally ANYONE. Do not pressure yourself. Be comfortable. ) Post photos with short (or long) captions in Korean.

By having conversations with native speakers, you will automatically pick up natural-sounding speaking habits. (Be careful, though. Especially in Korean language, there is a rather big difference between written and spoken Korean. As long as you are casually texting, it is more every-day/conversational and informal Korean. (Except you and your chat partner both talk on a very professional level.) (Which would be weird, to be honest.ㅋㅋㅋㅋ)

If your Korean friend uses a grammar pattern or slang etc. try to use it as often as possible to manifest it into your brain. (Maybe you should warn them or else they are gonna thunk you are some psycho being all 근데 근데 근데 근데 근데.) (근데 means "but", by the way. )

♡♡♡

I think that is all for now, regarding how I have started studying Korean. And this blog is already longer than anything else I have ever posted 😳.

♡♡♡

Last but not least, you asked me how I kept up with studying languages. Honestly, I don't. And if you have other priorities, for example school, let them be your priorities. There is no rush with studying a language. (Well, except maybe some aliens force you to do so within a month or else they will destroy our lovely planet...which...let's be honest, is very unlikely to happen.) (Unless?) (Ok, I am so unfunny and it is definitely too late by now.) (Wow, I spent an hour writing this o0o it is 9:45 p.m. now.)

I hope this helped you at least a little ^-^ If you ever have any question I am here and will try to answer them for you!♡

[themehconlanger]

A Short Look into Modern Standard Aptalyan Elvish

Now, before I get into all this, it is important to stress the variation in the Aptalyan Elvish Language. It is a very culturally important language for the Solar Confederacy, and thus is spoken wide. However, this has also led to weird dialects that had weird changes to grammar due to improper teaching. We will focus on the dialect of the capital mostly, leaving the Forest, Kathron, Ithrin, and Kwа̄llaran dialects/dialect groups mostly alone. I will also later make a much more broad look into the language, that will obviously be longer and more in-depth.

Phonology

Phonemic Inventory

The Phonology of the language is in certain points simple, in others complex.

The consonants are pretty much as described. However, there is a bit of complications due to the breathy consonants. These are, in my analysis, just a sonorant followed by /h/. These breathy consonants only come word internally in Standard Aptalyan Elvish, however they can appear word-initially in other dialects. And along with this not all phonemes can appear in all environments, but that will be elaborated upon in Phonotactics.

As would be expected, these phonemes are not present in every dialect, and some dialects have more phonemes or even have radically different expressions of the diaphonemes (for instance, the broad //j// is in almost all dialects /j/, but in many Forest Elvish dialects it’s /d/ in a lot of environments)

The vowels are pretty standard for the most part, the most interesting thing being the four vowel system, missing any kind of phonemic /u/ (though people will sometimes pronounce /o/ or /o:/ as [u] or [u:], particularly in unstressed syllables of Forest Elvish dialects)

However there is also a debatable phoneme /ă/. This only appears in words that have /ăNC/ at the beginning of a word. This phoneme is often elided when preceded by a word ending in a vowel, while words with /aNC/ don’t have the same thing happen. This vowel doesn’t exist in all dialects, those that don’t have it allow for word-initial NC clusters (for instance the Forest Elvish variant for the word /antielo/ is /ndielo/

Allophony

Elvish Allophony bleeds into Phonotactics and Morphophonology often, but there are some distinctly allophonic things.

As said earlier, there is a serious of breathy sonorants, which are in my analysis treated as an allophone of underlying /Ch/, due to their purely word-internal status and inability to form clusters.

Stops generally voice inbetween voiced sounds, while fricatives are less common to do so.

/kw/ causes consonants it is clustered with to also become labialized, and in some dialects actually loses its labialization and passes it on to the following consonant. 

/r/ inbetween vowels is a tap instead of a trill.

Phonotactics

The language has decently simple phonotactics, summarizable as (F)(C)(C)V(C). Clusters are allowed internally, only of two consonants, but never finally (though this does happen in some dialects). 

Generally, fricative-consonant clusters are the most common word-initially. This is due to the sound change that cause vowel loss between fricatives and other consonants. In fact, it is by far the most common cluster. Other initial clusters are rare but do happen. An example would be stop-consonant clusters. These come from older *hCC clusters, but the *h would be lost in such environments. Due to the relative uncommonness of this, clusters of this type are rare. In many dialects however some historic fricatives became stops in certain clusters (for instance, Standard Elvish /sfrato/ vs Kathron /sprato/). Some rules of phonotactics dip into Morphophonetics, and thus will be discussed there.

Stress

Stress is a bit confusing and hectic in Elvish, and is in part phonemic and in part not. I still need to work on how stress works a bit heh.

Morphophonology

This is partially a grammar thing, but we’ll put it here anyways,

In both derivation and inflection of words, you will come across many challenging clusters. However, these clusters are often changed by a set of morphophonetic rules.

Many of these are to do with Cr clusters. For intsance, sr always becomes thr in most dialects, while any nasal will turn into a stop before r (or l or ly for that matter). nl and nly will usually turn into ll and lly, shown most obviously in pluralization of nouns (the plural is generally -al, however sometimes the a in the suffix is deleted, this leading to many words ending in n changing it to just an l, and those in ny change the ny to llya). h behaves weirdly. Whenever it appears in an initial cluster it is generally lost, unless preceded by a sound in which it sometimes becomes k. Whenever it becomes a coda the preceding vowel is lengthened and the h is deleted. Following another consonant (except for the liquids) h will cause it to lengthen and then be dropped. 

Romanization

The Romanization is something I might need to redo, since it does have a few problems, but as of now this is what I have: 

As shown earlier, the main table has the specific phonemes and how they are written. However, instances show up in which it becomes more complicated. 

Whenever /c/ clusters with a stop (that isn’t p) or a fricative (that isn’t s) it becomes just a geminated cluster, instead of being written as <ty>, it is written as <tty>. A similar deal with /ɲc/, being written as <nty>.

Geminated /ɕ/ is written as <ssh>.

/kwt/ [ktw] is written <ktw>.

Grammar

Basic Summary

Elvish grammar is more on the analytic side of things, having much less morphology than many of the languages of my world (for instance look at the monstrous Dwarvish, Dzvrahhan, and  Rghvaz languages, filled with complicated morphology), It has SVO~SOV~OSV basic word order, with adjectives following nouns (the OSV order only happens when pronouns cliticize onto verbs), 

Pronouns

Personal

The personal pronouns have a bit of variance depending on dialect, and sometimes usage of one over the other is used to give off of a specific vibe. As usual, there is quite a bit of irregularity. Primarily the plural formed by -telet~talet. This is found nowhere else in the language and might be a holdover of ancient systems. The Accusative 1st Person Pronoun displays the rare -bra Accusative, found only in a small amount of Declined Nouns. It also appears that the original 2nd Person Pronoun was *sen, but to further distance itself from fnee, it shifted to san. The locative form maintaints this older *sen fully. 

Paranouns and 3rd Person Pronouns

The Paranouns are a set of 3rd Person pronouns that are often put after nouns to indicate their role in a sentence. Usage of the Ablative and Locative paranouns is essentia to Elvish grammar, and not using them in such circumstances would doubtlessly cause confusion. However with the genitive it is sometimes ommitted. The Nominative and Accusative are never marked accept for in complex clauses or for emphasis.

Though generally each noun has a gender assigned to it, usage of other genders can be used for implications, like praise or scorn. Using inanimate pronouns/paranouns was very rude and disrespectful, while usage of Holy pronouns/paranouns was often flattering.

Within these pronouns is a lot of suppletion and complicated patterns.

Now it would be good to mentions what these cases are and their purposes. 

The Nominative is for the subject of a sentence.

The Accusative is for the direct object.

The Genitive is for possession or relation.

The Ablative is for motion away from generally, but in Elvish it also marks purpose.

And the Locative is for locating things.

Nouns

Nouns are pretty simple. The most complicated part would of course be derivational morphology, but for inflectional morphology there is little. The only inflectional suffix that most nouns can take is one for plurality. However, a small set of “Declined Nouns” preserve the old system of case. These do follow vague patterns but the small amount of them just makes them deserve treatment as just irregular nouns.

Plurality and Number

The suffix for the Plural is a bit complicated, forming many declensions. The general idea is that it contains -(a)l in some way, though not always.

Most nouns belong to the First Declension Group. This one is you can usually tell by looks. It is easily explained by the table above, with some important notes: the -e subdeclension is extremely small, only consisting of a few words and thus could be considered just irregular.

The -V subdeclension causes lengthening of the preceding vowel.

Whenever the plural is formed, and the stem is monosyllabic and has a short vowel preceded by a nasal or fricative and followed by another consonant, this will lead to the vowel being deleted. In words that have this resulting in wordinitial NC cluster, the nasal has an a (which is often elided when preceded by a word ending with a vowel) added before it (this vowel deletion happens in all declensions and is not specific to one).

The 2nd Declension is less common than the 1st, but it is still pretty common. This declension is charactarized by two main traits: the plural suffix having a different vowel or a glide preceding the suffix, and in the A and O declensions shortening of long vowels in monosyllabic words. Whenever vowel deletion leads to the only syllable being the plural suffix of a 2nd Declension noun, the suffix lengthens (ex: sar (O Declension)>throol not *throl). All nouns ending in -s are in the 2nd Declension group.

The 3rd Declension Group is ultimately the Wild Card Group. It might make sense to split these up into their own declensions. It is as described, nothing too special to note.

Within the dictionary, each noun is noted with its declension and subeclension.

Adjectives

Adjectives are very simple, they agree with their head noun in plurality (most of the time) and are put after the noun. 

The adjectives have the same declensions as nouns. However with a few caveats. Some adjectives (derived from nouns in the genitive (the most common), ablative (less common), and locative (pretty rare)) do not at all agree in number, staying the same no matter the plurality of their head noun.

Whole Reduplication of an adjective intensifies its meaning. ex: firim theermohon (angry person) firim theermohon theermohon (very angry person)

Verbs

Verbs are pretty simple, but they still have their complexities. They can come in 6~8 different forms, 4~5 of these finite and 2~3 of these non-finite. 

Non-Finite Verbs

The form listed in dictionaries is the infinitive. The infinitive is very easy to form, you just take the bare form and add -(a)n to it. Of course, there are many irregular verbs so this isn’t always the case but for all declensions of regular verbs it takes this suffix. The participle is kinda dying, and for those who still use it it is marked as aa-. All three Non-Finite forms heavily overlap in usage. The main difference is between the infinitive and the bare form. The bare form is basically the form you use as a subject, object, or as part of some auxiliary constructions. The infinitive is more often used in the other cases, like the Genitive, Ablative, and Locative. The Participle is usually used for modifying nouns, but the bare and infinitive forms in many dialects have started to also fill this role. 

It is important to mention that unlike in Indo-European Languages, the infinitive doesn’t carry a feeling of “in order to do x”. In this language it serves purely as a way to make a noun or adjective from a verb.

However, it is important to mention that the Bare Form is used in a few finite ways, particularly in the Imperative. The imperative has a sometimes used particle “neer” put at the end of the sentence, however, this is not always the case and neer is optional to most speakers (note, “neer” means fool, and technically it is a noun used in the vocative). There are also a few more particles that are used with the bare form to form certain verb meanings. Due to the fact that the bare form doesn’t inflect for any kind of aspect, these verb forms have no marking whatsoever for aspect.

Finite Verbs

Finite verbs are much more diversified than non-finite ones. They have 4~5 different aspects: Perfective, Progressive/Continual~Imperfective, Habitual (somewhat dying out), Prospective, and Terminative.

The Perfective is roughly analagous to the past tense, but is best described as treating an action as a complete whole. This tense is referred to as the “root” tense, due to it’s use in Elvish to establish specific concrete events. It is marked by either an -i or -e depending on the declension, though irregular verbs will treat it differently. Verbs with an -i perfective will cause palatalization on the end of the verb stem, which affects some but not all consonants. The primary changes being: k>ty and th>sh. However, verb roots ending in a vowel will generally overpower the suffix, and have the base and perfective forms be marked the same.

The Progressive~Imperfective describes an action as ongoing or as a somewhat incomplete action. This tense is referred to as the “soil” tense, due to its use for setting a background. This tense is usually marked by -(a)san, but there are a few caveats. Whenever it suffixes onto a stem ending in a nasal, the s turns into a t (though this is a general feature of the languages phonotactics/morphophonology you can find elsewhere).

The habitual marks an action as being a habit, something repeating but not entirely ongoing. It is referred to as the “job” tense (straying from the tree metaphors now). The habitual is variably marked as -tye or -sh, -tye for stems ending in consonants and -sh for those ending in vowels (or belonging to the second, third, and fourth declensiona). The -tye will cause assimilation of nasals to n, stops to t, and fricatives to t; except for p and f, which stay the same, and qu which does assimilate, but adds a w after the geminate ex: raaqu(an)>raattywe (in some speech the ttyw cluster has become kqu instead).

The Prospective marks an action as starting. This is referred to as the “seed” tense. This is either marked by -tyo or -sh, a very similar deal to the habitual (this being the driving cause for the death of the habitual aspect). Everything said about the Habitual applies here as well.

The Terminative marks an action as ending. This is referred to as the “death” tense. It is marked with -tyen, with the same rules applying from the last two aspects. In monosyllabic stems with long vowels, the vowel is shortened ex: raaqu(an)>rattywen.

(It is important to note that, despite these nature related grammar terms, the Elves are not a particularly natural people in tune with nature. To the contrary in fact, the Solar Confederacy has negatively impacted bio-diversity in the area. These terms simply come from Elvish Grammatical Tradition.)

Byebye

Anyways yeah that’s the basics and stuff that I don’t think will change too much. I will definitely come back to edit this later, since I am not sure about a few of the decisions I’ve made (and on top of that I am bad at explaining things). I have a few ideas that I like but upon further thought some of these ideas can’t really coexist or don’t make as much sense anymore with the historical context.

[kanene-yaaay]

The end [Or ‘Unsual Tool’- 12º Day TickleTober]

Author’s notes: Heyiooo, my lollipops! A little late? Yeah. But here we go. xDD. I’m translating my fanfics to english to improve my vocabulary, grammar and stuff, aaaaand now I (finallyyyyy!) have a little free-time! So, hopefully I’ll post a little more! Yaaaay! \(^w^)/.

Warnings, fun facts, random things and stuff: 

* The 12º of October, in Brazil, is Children’s Day, so I got a bit of inspiration by that and in this oneshot The Sides (and Thomas) have 8 years old! 

* Hmmm... This is a Tickle-Fanfic! If you don’t like this kind of stuff, please look for another blog, there are plenty of amazing art in this site!! ‘u’).

* Something around 1500 words. -w-)b.

* Sorry for any spelling, pontuation and grammar mistakes! Any advice is very very welcome!

* Here the fanfic in Portuguese (Brazilian’s one)! Thankys for reading, my lollipops! Have a awesome Thanksgiving (or, if you don’t celebrate: An awesome day! ). Byeioo!~

                                         [~*~]

- And then they died! The end!! – Roman laughed and threw away all the toys up, letting himself fall down so they would collapsed on him. Heard the applauses and quickly put himself up, bowing to the audience, which consisted of a very happy and euphoric Patton lying on his feet, and a Logan and a Virgil with equally outraged (funny) faces.

 - ‘They died’? Is this how it ends? But it doesn’t make sense!! – Logan protested, his cheeks puffing, a frown forming in his forehead, an expression he always had when face a illogic problem, something that, living with Roman, happened almost every day.

 - Sure it does!

 - No, does not!

 - Does!

 - I liked the part where they died. It was funny. – Patton commented, smiling and trying to stop the fight that probably would wake up Thomas, who was sleeping peacefully on the sofa.

 - No, they dying is cool, but Lo is right! They can’t do it out of nowhere! It gets boooooooring! – Virgil longed the ‘ooo’, facing Roman with the best dull expression that his eight-years-old face could reached.

 - You could have a new villain. – Logan pointed out.

 - Yes!! Yes!! Virgil could be the new villain! He has a black jacket! – Patton jumped excitedly in the same spot, holding the shoulders of the group’ shortest and shaking him euphorically, making Logan’s eyes bright for having his idea accepted.

 - I want be a dragon. – Virgil showed a little grin, doesn’t seem too bothered with the shaking.

 - No! No one will change the ending! – Roman stamped his foot, tears starting to been seem at the corners of his eyes.

 - Why?!

 - Because Thomas today was my day to make the grand finale!!

 - But your ending is boring! – Virgil countered.

 - Is not! – His voice began to cracking; he began to feel the tears stinging his eyes.

 - He also said we were supposed to play together. – Logan said calmly, as if he was trying to remember everyone of this fact.

 - No fighting, no fighting! – Patton got up; putting himself between the two sides in discussion, calling everyone’s attention before goes at Roman and clumsily wipe his tears. – Don’t cry, Ro-ro! – And squeezed his cheeks, because that was a techinque, which always make the aspect of creativity giggle, but only when it was Patton.

 This time it was not different. The responsible for the end of the story sniffed and clean the remains’ tear with his sleeve, murmuring a ‘Princes don’t cry’.

 - Don’t be mean with him. – Patton, turned around to face the others two, now being his time to puff the cheeks and frowning his forehead. Virgil and Logan slowed down theirs heads, the one with glasses more for the shock due the royal side’s tears.

 - Sorry. – whispered guardian’s ‘Flight or Fight’ instinct.

 - Par-par… - Logan tried to recall in his memories the word read some previous days in a book, it was almost possible to see his neurons working. – Pardon.

 The representation of the heart stared incisively Roman.

 - I’m sorry. – He said, taking the opportunity to catch some toys as an excuse for escape from the eye contact. – What is pandon?

-  It’s ‘pardon’. – The most logic of the four corrected. – It’s ‘sorry’, but more correct.

 - So, is ‘sorry’ wrong?

 - No, it is just that ‘pardon’ is more right. It is like ‘hero’ and ‘superhero’. – The one who wear dark blue adjusted his glasses, a proud smile opening in his face for knowing the difference.

 - Ah.

 - Princes do cry. – Virgil has a thoughtful expression as he played with his shirt’s tip.

 - No, they do not! – Complained Roman.

 - But, then they weren’t babies? Babies cry. – Patton asked, genuine curiosity in his glare.

 - They were… - Roman thought a little. – But they didn’t knew that they were princes, so it doesn’t count!

 - So are you only a prince if you know you’re a prince? – One more question.

 -  I think so… - Virgil answered, this time staring ate the others as he spoke. – I mean… Is not how the movies work? You don’t know you’re a prince, and then you find out and BUM! Everything changes.

 - Yeah! – Roman agrees enthusiastically, the little past fight already forgotten.

 - However, Thomas is a prince. – They all turned to look at the mentioned child, who was resting happy on the couch. – And he knows that, and yesterday he cried. – Logan contested.

 - But he is Thomas. – The royal side shrugged as this sentence already explained everything.

 - And you are Roman. – Patton refuted.

 - … ‘Kay.

 Everyone was silent for a moment.

 - The dragon could have a brother!! – Patton almost shouted excited, glad for have had that idea. – You can be the brother, Ro!

- However, why would there be another dragon?

 - I can be the good dragon! Fugitive because our family is a family of villains, but I didn’t wanted to be a villain, because I am a hero, so I came after you! – Roman turned to Virgil, the eyes sparkling with the rain of ideas that now roamed through his mind. – To stop you hunting the hunters!

 - It would be weird have you as my brother… - Virgil scowled. – And I don’t want to be a evil villain. – He crossed his arms.

 - But he could come to bring you to the good side! – Patton gesticulate with his hands, trying to emphasize his words. – Right, Ro?

 - Yes, yes!!

 - They could be twins… - Logan dreamed aloud. – What would be their difference?

 - Hmmmm… a mark on the neck!

 - I don’t have no mark on my neck.

 - We could paint!! – Patton clapped his hands, getting more and more excited with the forwarding of the idea.

 - Thomas will be mad with us if we make a mess, and we always make a mess painting. – Logan remembered, receiving instant solution from the side guardian of the creativity.

 - We could paint with colored pencils! – And pulled one from his pocket.

 - Is it purple? – Virgil questioned, a little afraid. However, when receiving a positive answer resolved to put some of his fear aside and took off his hoodie, feeling a little shivering for the suddenly cold that lightly hit him. – Ok, then. – And turned his head, showing his neck.

 - I don’t think colored pencil will work.

 - See and lea-

 The rest of his phrase was cut off by a squeal from the purple’s lover, who pulled himself over, a wobbly smile in his face and hands in a defensively in front of his body.

 - No tickles!

- You’re ticklish?? – Patton twinkled, almost literally. In a blink of an eye, he takes the pencil from the royal side and scribbled on Virgil’s neck, who shrank even futher, falling on the floor and being quickly followed by emotions’ guardian aspect.

 - Nahahahahahahahahahahahaha!! NohohohOHOHOHoho tihihihihCKEHEHEHEHEHEHES! – His nose wrinkled and the laughs flowed happy, high and strident through all the room. Roman couldn’t help but laugh along, summoning two more pencils from his pocket, throwing one at Logan’s direction as he began to draw pictures which only him could see on Virgil’s tummy with his own, getting snorts and shrieks as a reward and increasing the squirms.

 - ROHOHOHOHO! STOHOHOHohohohohohop!!!

  He squirmed from a side to side, but that doesn’t seem to work. Nothing stopped his high pinch laugh bubbling from his mouth or the unbearably persistent tickles that painted a smile across his burning blushed face.

 Something held his feet.

 - I think he should have more marks, to best difference. – And then Logan put himself to scribble random patterns on the sole of Virgil’s feet, a shy smile in his face, a little crazy shining in his glare.

 LOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOGAN! – Now yelps, laugh, snorts and squeals were the only things that his lips could proper say, his free feet kicked, but in vain. His head going back and forth, part trying to run away and part trying to hide the big and rare smile in his face. Tears started to fall down his cheeks. - NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHA.

 The tickling stopped, and Virgil curled in a ball, attempting to rub the skin to remove the remain sensations; however find to be a impossible task in trying to get that bright smile off his face, as much as the blush.

 Only after his breathing had been controlled and his mind started to think on to threaten the other three with ‘I’ll tell Thomas!’, he realized that the laughter in the room haven’t stopped yet.

 He sat, noticing that the attention had now been directed to the royal side, who apparently also needed to ‘differentiate from his brother’. Virgil felt his smile change with the new chance of revenge. He didn’t even picked up the red pencil abandoned on the floor, quickly attacking Roman’s armpits with just his fingers.

 - And his brother seeks for his revenge!! Raaaaaw! – The high, happy and care-free laughs from every side danced through the entire place.

 And we can say that in the end any end was really decided.

[icecoldflames]

The Pinnae Flower Chapter 1

Masterlist

The Fifth Pinnae Book???

People seem to want to know my opinion on Raz Keeran’s soon-to-be-published fifth and final book in the Pinnae series. So, I’m gonna give it to them.

I know Pinnies—fairies and spirits alike—are freaking out. Who wouldn’t? I’m freaking out right now, sitting up in my bed, nursing a cup of tea and writing this blog post. But I’m not freaking out for the same reasons everyone else is freaking out about.

I’m freaking out because I want to know what’s going to happen in the fifth and final book. We never knew there would be five books in the series, only four. However, Raz Keeran stated on his Twitter that five books in his series was always the plan. It wasn’t unprecedented. So, it’s not a money-grab like some people think.

Also, I’d like to point out (or, more specifically, my friend Logan pointed out to me) that there is no actual proof that Raz Keeran is going to kill off Parisa and Arel. I don’t know where that rumour started but, on Raz’s official sites and social media, it doesn’t say anything about killing the two main characters from the previous four books!

I know that the summary for Pinnae: Spelunca that Raz gave us is pretty nerve-wracking. I mean, come on Raz! We need to kill now what this last book is going to be about! His exact tweet says this:

“A short summary of PS:

It will not have Arel and Parisa in it but will focus entirely on a new MC. Fairies and sprites will not have a major role either.”

Thanks for that hint, Raz.

But anyway, with some sleuthing with Logan, we managed to headcanon what this last book will be about:

Number 1. It will probably be about dragons. I mean, this is pretty obvious I think. Dragons were mentioned in the previous books. Also, in PM and PE, their titles are the names of the fairy and sprite villages: Magus and Exsul. This is obvious latin and anyone could put those words into Google Translate and find the words “magical” and “outcast”/”banished person”. The latin of Spelunca is “cave”. Where do dragons live? Exactly. A cave.

Number 2. We’ll figure out who took the pinnae flower. Raz never did answer the question as to why the dragons stole the pinnae flower (I know Raz never did say the dragons actually did take the flower but it’s pretty much canon by now. Unless some fairy or sprite rubbed glitter on a dragon scale).

Number 3. Raz also NEVER TOLD US WHO FREAKING KILLED SIDNEY. I know some people think that maybe it wasn’t a person but I’m not buying it. Raz wouldn’t kill off that character and then say “oh, he died of a heart attack” or “he died by glitter suffocation”. No. Sidney died at the hands of another person. Who, you may ask? We’ll find out in PS, we’re sure.

Number 4. We’ll find out why Arel’s little sister, Kaida, was in that last scene. We’re sure it wasn’t a vision or some weird magical hallucination. Kaida was there at the battle. Sure, she vanished in, how Raz put it, “a blink of an eye” but do you know how that could have happened? Oh, I don’t know. Magic?

Which brings us to Number 5. Kaida, Logan and I think, is going to be the new MC. We both think it won’t be a full-fledged magical character like a sprite, fairy, or dragon, so human (or at least half-human) will probably be the main character. I mean, why else would Raz add that tidbit about Kaida there if they didn’t plan on using this character in the first place?

So, yeah. These are five things Logan and I think will happen in PS. I’m not mad at Raz for making a fifth book. Sure, the ending of PTNE was pretty good and cry worthy but there is just so much Raz hasn’t answered. Something tells me we’re in for a big surprise.

No one was expecting that bloodbath at the end of PTNE and I think Raz might be preparing us for something darker. The first four books might be about cute fairies and sprites but this last book, we know, is not going to be focused on them.

Thanks for reading my loyal plebeians.

Prince Roman Falco

~~~

Roman read through his post once again before hitting the “publish” button. Then, he heard the familiar whoosh as the post went onto his blog, “The Prince’s Crown”. His blog was his most prized work. A blog—his blog—with a massive and loyal following.

While he started writing posts about musical theatre first, it slowly morphed into a Raz Keeran blog dedicated to Raz’s most famous series: the Pinnae series about fairies and sprites. He still did other posts like everyday life posts and still about theatre. But he was known famously for his Raz Keeran posts. Though, he couldn’t give all the credit to himself. As much as he wanted to, most of his fame admittedly came from his best friend since high school, Logan Holmes.

Logan was incredible with thinking up theories and backing them up with the most forgettable quote from the series. And, amazingly, they usually made sense. Logan also edited all of his posts to make sure he used correct grammar and spelling and sourced everything well.

Logan was not an avid Pinnae series reader or a, as the fandom called themselves, the Pinnies. And Roman could understand that. Logan wasn’t into fantasy worlds with fairies and sprites. He liked mysteries and non-fiction and something that puzzled his mind.

Roman constantly teased about Logan’s last name. Holmes. As in the famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.

With some persuading on Roman’s part, he had managed to get Logan to pick up the Pinnae series. There had been only three books out at the time and Logan had read them in three days. One 700 paged book a day. And Logan was working at the university on those three days. It was like he ate them up and gained the knowledge inside them.

While Logan still wasn’t a full-on Pinnie, he enjoyed the book and had respect for Raz Keeran. “That author can sure write a fantasy novel.” Logan had said after he had finished the fourth book.

Roman watched as his blog post began to be read. His first and most loyal plebeian, an unknown face under the name “theazureflower” commented first, like usual.

Amazing read Roman! Tell Logan that he did a fantastic job! I feel as though this fifth book will not be like any others. And not just because it’s the last book in the series! Your headcanons always seem to make perfect sense! (◕ ˬ ◕✿)

Roman grinned and pressed “reply”.

Glad you liked it! I’ll definitely tell Logan your praise when I see him next!

Roman finally closed his laptop and stood up. He stretched his back and wrists as he made his way to the kitchen for a snack.

He loved Raz Keeran’s series. Maybe some would call it childish for a 25 year old to read such a fantasy novel, but he didn’t care. He had been called many things in life and childish was definitely the one he preferred.

The only thing that really bothered him was that he didn't know who Raz Keeran was. No one did. Raz wrote under a penname and had, so far, not been found out by the public. There was little known about Raz. All Roman and the public knew was that Raz lived in a small town in the USA. No one even knew what gender Raz was. They were completely anonymous and Roman wished he knew who Raz was.

It would be an incredible feat. It would be in magazines, on blogs, in the news! POPULAR BLOGGER UNCOVERED THE MYSTERY BEHIND AUTHOR RAZ KEERAN. He would be famous! It was a secret dream of his to find out Raz’s identity. He knew a lot of people frowned down upon those who wanted to figure it out. They said that if Raz wanted to be found out, they would have shown themselves long ago. They said it was Raz’s own, private, business.

But that still didn’t stop Roman’s dream. He wanted to find Raz. The first one to find Raz. Before anyone else did. He knew there were other people trying to find them. Most of them were large news corporations who could allow that much time spent looking for clues.

But Roman had something that the news corporations didn’t have. He had Logan Holmes.

Roman had hinted at the idea of Logan helping him search for Raz plenty of times. In conversations, in texts, anytime he could speak to Logan. But Logan refused. He had the same opinion as most Pinnies—that trying to find Raz was an invasion of privacy and was wrong.

But Roman’s counter argument was always “but Raz puts themself in the spotlight, they should be in the public. It was their choice to write the Pinnae series.”

However, Logan, always the intellectual, would say “but it was Raz’s choice to stay out of the public eye. You can’t dictate another person’s choice to either stay out of the brutal views of the public eye or put themselves in the limelight where they would no longer have the privacy they want.”

Roman sighed as he opened his cabinet, taking out some crackers and getting some cheese from the fridge. He was sure that if Logan helped him find Raz, they would be able to find them. Easy peasy.

These few months were the perfect time to try to find Raz, too. It was coming up on summer vacation and Logan was taking his summer vacation too. They would both be free from work to travel to wherever Raz lived and find him before their time would be up and they’d have to go back to work.

Roman cut up his cheese in little pieces, humming to himself. Maybe he should phone over to Logan’s house and see what’s up later. Maybe today would be the day he would convince Logan to help him find Raz.

~~~

Logan looked down at his computer screen, reading the picture of theazureflower’s favourite passage from the whole Pinnae series written by Raz Keeran. theazureflower did this every time they messaged each other. He must have at least 10 different favourite scenes in the Pinnae series. Not that Logan was complaining. The passage he sent Logan was from the first book, Pinnae: Forests and Flowers.

Sidney looked absolutely terrifying. The other sprites seemed to think the same too for they made sure to keep a good distance between them and Sidney. His hair was a curly dark red and his eyes were haunting—a smoky grey and golden flecks, sunk deep into his face. He seemed almost impossibly skinny—skinnier than the sprite queen herself.

He was the only one who had a dark grey cape wrapped snugly around his neck with a hood. Most of the sprites had short sleeved shirts on of varying colours. It was like Sidney was a dark stormcloud amidst a large rainbow.

But Sidney didn’t seem to mind the obvious difference between him and the other sprites.

“Hi!” Arel said, looking at Sidney with a toothy smile. “It’s nice to meet you. I like your cape.”

A couple nearby sprites seemed astonished that Arel was even speaking to Sidney and I had to nudge Arel in the side. “They’re staring at us!” I hissed.

Arel looked at me. It was almost a confused look. “Why does it matter? Besides, we’re humans Parisa. Or,” his eyebrows drew down, “at least half human”. He shrugged and turned back to Sidney. I huffed and crossed my arms.

Sidney gave a curt, tight-lipped, smile to Arel. “Thanks. I made it myself.”

“Wow! I wish I could make my own clothes! Normally my mom just buys it at the store.” Arel rambled kindly, making me even irritated.

“That sprite is constantly wearing that stupid cape,” a sprite next to me sighed, climbing onto a branch near my ear. I turned to see a female sprite with bright purple hair. I think Titania introduced her as Mauve. She was frowning deeply. “Once,” she said more quietly, “me and a couple other sprites tried to pull that thing off.”

I looked at her and glanced back to where Arel and Sidney were now having a conversation about leather. “And? What happened?” I asked quietly, urging her to go on.

Mauve shivered just slightly and I was afraid she would fall off the branch. “Let’s just say no one saw him for a whole month. Rumour has it he was exiled.”

“Was there anything you found?” I asked, cocking my head to the side, keeping Sidney and Arel in my peripheral view. “Underneath his cape?”

Mauve shook her head vigorously, her purple hair shaking with it. “Didn’t even get that close to him…” she trailed off and crossed her arms tightly.

Mauve glanced over at Sidney and Arel and I followed her gaze.

They were both laughing silently, as if they’d known each other for eons.

Logan liked Sidney’s introduction too. While the sulky, dark, character was often a cliché there was just...something about Sidney’s character that made him think there was a reason for the cape—a reason for his death in the fourth book. He wasn’t just any morally grey character who would no doubt get an arc in the last book.

But, then again, maybe it wouldn’t happen. Logan had been wrong before. Raz had pleasantly surprised him in the fourth book. He had thought that Raz wouldn’t include such a bloody war. It seemed more like a children’s book than a young adult novel and the blood and descriptions really threw him for a loop.

That was what made Logan like Raz. It was unlike any YA novel Roman had made him read. While some things were alike—fantasy universes, action and conflict and romance—The Pinnae series was something else entirely.

It had hints of dark but children could still read it. It was hidden so well that Logan almost didn’t catch it himself.

theazureflower: I just love sidney’s character!!!

theazureflower: And arel and parisa’s and mauve and lewis’!!!

Logan grinned down at his screen and rolled his eyes.

Lewis’_Journal: You love all the characters. I don’t think you’d be able to choose a favourite character if your life depended on it.

theazureflower: Guilty is charged ;)

theazureflower: But they are all so amazing and raz does such a good job at making their characters feel so...real!!!!

theazureflower: I mean, none of the characters are perfect and their flaws don’t seem like an afterthought. They just...ASDFGHJKL! I relate to all of them all at once!

Logan loved this about theazureflower. He was always so excitable and happy and reminded him of—no. He wouldn't think about him now. Not when he was talking to theazureflower and having a good time.

He did agree with theazureflower, though. Raz’s characters all seemed to be real characters—save that most of them were magical creatures who could fly and speak to animals.

theazureflower: What character do you relate to most???

Lewis’_Journal: Definitely Lewis. I feel like he’s almost exactly like me.

Logan didn’t want to delve too deep into Lewis’ character with theazureflower. It felt almost...too personal to talk about with an online friend he didn’t even know the first name to.

Lewis, Logan felt, was the perfect embodiment of himself.

Lewis was a fairy who was mentioned briefly in the first book before being introduced more thoroughly in the second book, Pinnae: Magus. He was intelligent and smart and did not speak much with the other fairies. Logan liked to think he was the opposite of Sidney to a degree—the outcast character but on the fairy side.

But Lewis accompanied Parisa in her quest to find the missing Pinnae flower. He was, at first, silent and incredibly stoic. It was only when Parisa brought her laments that she was missing Arel that they really bonded.

During that chapter the reader finds that Lewis has a brother. While Logan doesn’t have a brother himself, he can still empathize with Lewis’ emotions connected to his gone missing brother.

theazureflower didn’t reply for a long moment. Logan didn’t think about it too much.

That was when the phone rang. He reached for the phone and groaned at the caller ID. Roman. Roman Falco. His co writer of the popular blog, “The Prince’s Crown”. Logan’s name was never mentioned in the About page but Roman mentioned him enough that almost all the readers knew Logan helped write Roman’s posts.

What really annoyed Logan, though, was that Roman was a, rather scatterbrained and b, was obsessed with the author of the Pinnae series, Raz Keeran.

While scatterbrained was fine (it was only the fact that Roman never had a schedule for his posts and they always came out on random days at random times), it was Roman’s obsession that was borderline stalkerish and just plain wrong.

“Let the author live their life!” Logan had said late last week when Roman had asked him to figure out where Keeran lived for the thousandth time. “If Keeran wants to stay anonymous, that’s their business, not yours.”

Logan was hoping Roman would eventually drop it. But, Logan knew his friend well. Roman was very strong minded and when he wanted something, he would try his darned hardest to get his idea to become a reality.

Logan put the phone to his ear after heaving a deep sigh. “Hello?”

“Logan—“

“—No, Roman. I’ve already told you I’m not going to stalk Keeran and find out where they live so you can unveil them in your blog.” Logan said crossly.

It was silent on the other end for a split second. “...It’s your blog too, ya know.” Roman’s voice finally said. “You help me with all my posts.”

“But you started the blog.” Logan pointed out. If Logan were to have a blog, it wouldn’t be about a book series (no matter how good of a series they were) and he would definitely not call it “The Prince’s Crown”.

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean anything.” Roman said emphatically.

Logan didn’t know why he was arguing with Roman. Besides, Logan and Roman didn’t get paid for the blog. Sure, sometimes they got ads on their blog but, more often than not, “The Prince’s Crown” to Logan was more of a hobby.

Roman seemed to be thinking about the same thing as Logan as he immediately dropped the argument. “Anyway. Logan, you’ll never believe what I just read!”

Logan crossed his arms, squatting the phone between his ear and shoulder. He raised an eyebrow. “What did you find now, Roman? Something about Keeran on another sourceless blog that only relies on speculation?”

“No—well...yes.”

Logan pushed up his glasses and took a breath. “Okay, Roman, what did you find?”

One of Roman’s “brilliant” ideas to find information about Keeran was to search up their name or something about the Pinnae series and then go to the very last Google page.

Most so-called “interviews” with Keeran and “Raz Keeran Revealed!!!” posts were fake and were in the last pages of Google for a reason.

“There’s this new interview! Speaking to Raz Keeran over email!”

“—Literally every interview with Keeran is over email,” Logan said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No one has heard Keeran’s voice. No one knows what gender Keeran is either, that’s the whole point of email.”

“Anyway,” Roman continued. “It said that they managed to learn a couple things about Raz. It said that they managed to weasel out of them that they go to this cafe every morning. And!! Listen to this! It says that Raz lives somewhere around the coast and their town does annual art exhibits around their streets!”

Logan’s back stiffened and he instantly began scrolling backwards in his conversation with theazureflower. “Art exhibits in the streets?” He repeated. “What is this blog anyway?”

“‘The Pinnae Flower’.” Roman replied. “Some tiny blog run by this girl.”

“Isn’t that the one who also said Keeran was some big corporation?” Logan asked, still scrolling. He was into last year’s conversation with theazureflower.

“...Well...yeah. But still!”

Then, Logan found it. A conversation he had had with theazureflower two years ago. June. Almost exactly two years earlier.

theazureflower: I can’t wait for this weekend!!!

Lewis’_Journal: How come? What’s happening over there?

theazureflower: There’s this thing my town does

theazureflower: It’s kinda of like this art thing

theazureflower: Artists in our town do some art and over the weekend they hang them everywhere in the town

theazureflower: Like a scavenger hunt but you find wonderful art everywhere!

Logan wasn’t sure if any other USA town did an art exhibit like theazureflower. It felt odd for Keeran, though. If their town and theazureflower’s were the ones to do an art exhibit, then wouldn’t Keeran be more secretive with it?

But when Logan searched it up. There were a couple of small towns that did something like what theazureflower explained.

There were multiple towns but none of them were theazureflower’s home town. Logan knew theazureflower’s hometown, Mayflower Town, and it wasn’t there.

“Logan?” Roman asked, making him jump. He had forgotten Roman was still on the line. “You still there? What are you doing?”

“I think…” Logan said, trailing off. He straightened his spine. “I think you should leave Keeran alone.” He hung up before Roman could say anything else.

Logan went back to the computer and theazureflower.

...What if theazureflower and Keeran lived in the same town?

Logan and theazureflower sometimes talked about meeting each other summer. Maybe…

He quickly shut the computer. No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t try to unveil Keeran. It would go against all of his morals. It was wrong. Just plain wrong.

But Roman would want to travel with him—they always did in the summer. And if Logan told Roman about Keeran and theazureflower, Roman wouldn’t leave that town until he found out Keeran’s identity.

Unless...what if theazureflower was Keeran?

No. That was impossible. Keeran explicitly said in previous email interviews they did not read theories about the Pinnae series because they didn’t want to be accused of plagiarism. “The Prince’s Crown” was just about all theories and ideas.

No. Logan couldn’t go against his morals. He wasn’t a hypocrite. Logan did not want to be the one to put a spotlight on Raz Keeran.

Logan got out of bed and poured himself a cup of coffee in a cup that Roman had given him last year for his birthday—a Sherlock Holmes mug that said “It’s elementary, my dear Watson”.

It was going to be a long day. He could feel it.

~~~

Roman loves to teach. Children were always bursting with excitement and ideas. Roman was glad he was a drama teacher—he couldn’t imagine teaching children math or science.

It was nearing the end of school and since elementary schools had no exams, he didn’t have to do major correcting like Logan did.

Thank goodness.

By the end of the day, Roman was feeling electricity running through him. He didn’t think he could go home and do something productive and static right now.

So, he called up the only person he wanted to see. Logan. Maybe they could go to the mall or go out for an extra early supper.

“Hello?” Logan asked from the other end. His voice had a sharp edge to it.

Roman put his phone on speaker and began pulling out of the school’s parking lot. “Want to chillax this afternoon? I just got out of the school. I can come pick you up. I don’t think I can stay at home on this beautiful June afternoon.”

Logan didn’t reply for a long time and Roman had to check his phone to make sure he hadn’t hung up on him.

“As long as you don’t bring up trying to find Raz.” Logan said bitterly. “I’m sick of you always talking about it.”

Roman didn’t even think. “Of course. No talk about finding Raz. Got it.”

“Good.” Logan said. “I’ll just pack some stuff to correct and I’ll be out at the front of the university in five minutes.”

Before Roman could protest (who brought stuff to correct on an outing?), Logan had hung up.

Roman got to the university in less than three minutes and, soon after, Logan walked out. Roman glanced at the dash and grinned. Exactly five minutes since their phone call.

“As always, very punctual.” Roman commented as Logan pulled himself into the passenger seat.

“Why are you surprised?” Logan asked, buckling himself in and putting his massive canvas bag at his feet. “I am always punctual.”

Roman grinned as he put the keys in the ignition. “So, where do you want to eat? We could go to—“

Logan rolled his eyes. “Why do you always ask? We always go to the same place.”

Roman shrugged. “Just making sure. What if you suddenly become sporadic and choose some place different?”

“I’m not messing with tradition.” Logan protested. “We’ve been going to the same place since we were in high school.” His eyebrows knitted together. “And when have I ever been sporadic?”

“Well, there was that one time,” Roman chuckled. “When you signed up for the soccer team on a whim.”

“I need exercise.” Logan protested. “The place where I normally walked went under construction—“

“Sure, sure, sure.” Roman grinned as he pulled up to Fairy Cakes and Fantasy Books.

The whole building was decked out in pink and glitter with fairy statues near the door, greeting customers.

The building was squat between a law firm and a grass lot that seemed to permanently hold a “For Sale” sign beneath it’s uncut grass.

It was far away from most of the city and pretty secluded.

Fairy Tales and Fantasy Books was a cafe and library all wrapped into one. It was mostly booked out for birthday parties and for special events.

Normally, it was empty. Like now.

“I can’t believe this place is still open.” Logan muttered. “And still looks pretty okay.”

Roman stepped out of the car and Logan did the same. The air felt thicker even though they were nowhere near the center of the city.

As Roman opened the door, a bell above tinkled and Logan patted the head of a statue of a fairy clad in pink and doused with a fine glitter.

“Ah! Roman and Logan! My favourite two customers!” The lady behind the counter exclaimed. She had her dyed blonde hair up in a bun and was wearing a green dress like Tinkerbell.

“Good afternoon Breena!” Roman called out, striding over to the desk where all the baked goods were.

Logan was immediately drawn to the books and he began to gravitate towards them.

The books were in the corner and the wooden bookshelves were covered in pink glitter and sparkly fairy stickers. Logan’s eyes read the spines.

Most of them were fantasy novels. Hence the name Fairy Cakes and Fantasy Books.

Logan recognized the Harry Potter series, the Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Six of Crows duology. And, in the very middle, was the Pinnae series.

They were the American version. The cover was a glossy pinnae flower with an old time-y map as it’s background. They were all hardcovers.

The first book in the series, Pinnae: Forests and Flowers, was the only book here at the cafe that he had read. All the others he had bought himself.

Scrawled throughout the pages, however, young children had marked it with crayons and the pages were dog-eared again and again, some pages were missing corners altogether. It infuriated Logan to no end.

So, after he had finished the first book, he had bought the entire box set which included a complementary map of the world Raz had created.

“So, what’ll it be?” Breena asked, gesturing to all the pastries and cakes behind the glass.

Roman leaned against the counter, clicking his tongue while making his decision. “I think I’ll have the usual, Breena. Thank you very much.”

Breena grinned and slid open the glass, taking out three churros which had been rolled in pink, edible, glitter. The card next to them read “Fairy Wands”.

“And you Logan?” Breena asked.

Logan came up to the glass and peered inside. He’d been seeing the same baked goods since high school yet he could never really choose “a usual” like Roman.

“I think I’ll have two of those Fairy Cakes,” Logan finally decided, pointing to the powdered sugar topped Berliners.

Breena nodded and put two of the Berliners on a plate.

Once they had paid, Logan and Roman found themselves in their usual spot—in the back corner next to the fairy book display which included a couple of the Rainbow Magic series, the Artemis Fowl series, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

“I literally love this place,” Roman sighed as he bit into his churro. “It always seems so magical to me.”

Honestly? Logan didn’t see it. All he saw was a cafe-library covered in pink and glitter and fairy pictures and drawings hung on the walls.

But he loved it all the same. Just not for the reasons Roman had.

He loved how the books were all Tetris-ed in the bookshelves perfectly. It was like an oddly satisfying video.

He loved Breena’s desserts even though he didn’t have much of a sweet tooth.

And lastly, the fact that it was almost always empty. While Breena probably hated that there wasn’t a lot of business, Logan was perfectly content eating Berliners with Roman in an empty cafe with books.

They sat in comfortable silence as they munched on their treats.

As always, Roman was the first to talk. “Guess what I saw today.”

“What?”

“I saw one of my students, Matilda, reading the first Pinnae book! I think she’s going to do her novel presentation on it too!” Roman grinned from ear to ear.

“I, as well, saw a student in my astrology seminar with a t-shirt with the pinnae flower on it.” Logan said, remembering the student and his green shirt.

Roman finished his churros in record time, Logan just starting his second Berliner.

He could feel the pressure building up in Roman’s voicebox, about to ask the inevitable question. Logan knew Roman couldn’t refrain from it. He never knew why he always made Roman promise not to bring it up when Logan knew for a fact Roman could never bite his tongue.

Roman shifted in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “Logan…” he hesitated. “I know that I promised not to say anything about it but...could you please reconsider trying to find Raz?”

And there it was. Logan sighed and shoved the rest of the Berliner in his mouth to keep from screaming. He didn’t think he could handle Roman right now.

Roman twiddled his fingers like a child as he waited for Logan to chew and swallow the Berliner. “I just,” he sighed, “you’re so good at mysteries and stuff and—“

Logan swallowed and angrily shook his head. “No,” he hissed, trying not to raise his voice and alert Breena. “Roman, I’ve told you every single time you’ve asked: no. I will not find Raz for you. There is a reason Raz is anonymous.”

He didn’t know why right now, in a glittery cafe-library, he was finally breaking. After years and years of Roman asking, he had never really gotten mad or angry with him. Logan would just shake his head or logically explain why finding Raz was wrong, hoping it would get into Roman’s brain and he’d finally realize that his dream was unethical. Maybe it was pent up anger from all the years.

A small part in Logan’s brain reminded him of his theory that theazureflower and Raz might live in the same town.

He shook it away. Not now, he told himself.

Roman shrunk for a split second in his chair before seeming to come to his senses and lean forward and straighten his spine, meeting Logan’s height. “I understand why it’s wrong but don't you see it? Our blog could get so many new readers and we could become famous!”

“I’m not interested in becoming famous, Roman. Maybe that’s why I empathize with Raz so much.” Logan snapped back. “I’m not finding Raz for you.”

Roman wasn’t giving up that easily. And neither was Logan. He didn’t know how the two of them—both rather hotheaded—became friends, to be honest. Or, actually, stayed friends after all this time.

“What if—”

“—No, Roman. I won’t take any of your compromises. You’re atrocious at keeping promises. Like this one.” Logan inturpted, not in the mood for one of Roman’s compromises. “Oh! But what if we found Raz but didn’t tell anyone?” or “What if we found Raz and hinted at it on our blog to grab followers?”. Logan was sick of them. Roman would never keep Raz’s identity a secret after he knew, Logan was sure of it.

“This summer is perfect, though, Logan!” Roman exclaimed wildly. “It’s summer and you’ve got a couple of weeks from last summer we didn’t use!”

Logan gritted his teeth and brought his hands into fists. “Roman, for the last time, I am not—absolutely will not—find Raz Keeran for you.” His voice was loud and Logan prayed Breena wasn’t in earshot.

Roman slouched in his chair and sulked, rolling his eyes. “I bet I could find someone on Craigslist that could find Raz quicker than you anyway. They can be my new best friend.”

Logan felt his anger rise and rise until it consumed him. “Craigslist?” He repeated. “Craigslist?” He pounded a fist on the table, the plates slightly jumping off the table. He was better than any random person on Craigslist.

Logan heard the words come out of his mouth before he could logically go over the consequences. “Oh yeah? You think, Roman? Well pack your bags and book us two plane tickets to Mayflower Town. We’ve got some sleuthing to do.”

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 26 show notes page.

[Music]

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

Lauren: And I'm Lauren Gawne, and today, we're getting enthusiastic about palatalisation. That is to say, “What the heck is going on with G and C?” But first, thanks to everyone for your enthusiastic recommending during our November Recommend-A-Thon.

Gretchen: Yes, thanks so much for all your tweets, and posts, and shares, and all of the new people that you've brought in with you to listen to Lingthusiasm.

Lauren: We will be thanking every one of you who made some kind of public declaration about their love of Lingthusiasm. We'll give you until the end of the month to add yourself to that esteemed group of people, so we can thank you all in our annual anniversary post.

Gretchen: Yes, so you have till the end of November 2018 to be part of this year's Recommend-A-Thon thank you post, which will live in perpetuity on our website. Last year we thanked 100 people. This year, I think we can thank even more. I'm really excited by what we've seen so far.

Lauren: I'm feeling very confident about that. And of course, you can continue to recommend us to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life any time of the year.

Gretchen: I also want to thank everybody who came out to the live shows.

Lauren: Yay! I'm not gonna lie, we're recording this before the live shows.

Gretchen: So we're really hoping people actually come.

Lauren: We are just going to have to assume that they were an absolute rolling success.

Gretchen: We're recording well in advance at the moment to make sure that we have episodes for when Lauren's on leave. We're very excited about those live shows. I assume they were great. Thanks so much to everyone who came out in Melbourne and Sydney. It was so fun to get to see those cities. We also want to remind you that if you're thinking about getting Lingthusiasm merch for any linguists or language enthusiasts in your life, if you want to get someone a scarf with the International Phonetic Alphabet, or tree symbol diagrams on them, or a tie with the IPA on it, or various baby outfits, or T-shirts that say, “Not judging your grammar, just analysing it,” or many other things, now is a great time to place an order so that arrives towards the end of the year.

Lauren: Remember, it's also totally okay to use this as a list of suggestions for other people to buy you, or if you enjoy doing a bit of holiday shopping for yourself, we're not gonna stop you.

Gretchen: We definitely noticed from last year that RedBubble typically runs some sales this time of year, so hopefully, you can take advantage of those to get you and/or your friends and family some great Lingthusiasm swag.

Lauren: Speaking of the holiday season, it's a very important holiday season coming up that's the Northern Hemisphere winter conference season, which I'm usually excited about. Not doing so much travel this year.

Gretchen: Well, the Australian Linguistic Society is also having its annual meeting in Adelaide in December, which I'm going to be at because I'm still in Australia. Our latest Patreon bonus episode is all about the academic conference circuit and how to make it work for you.

Lauren: I had a lot of fun in this episode. This is all of mine and Gretchen's favourite survival tips for navigating academic conferences. If you've never been to one before, or you've only been to a couple, they're lots of fun, and they can be even more fun.

Gretchen: Yes, so you can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to check those out, or lingthusiasm.com/merch for the merch. We’ll repeat those links at the end of the episode, so you don't have to write them down now.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, G and C are really weird letters because they're these two letters that, in a whole bunch of languages, often come with multiple sounds. You have the sounds in their names like /dʒ/ and /s/, and then you have other sounds like /g/ and /k/, and then even more sounds. These letters are so weird.

Lauren: I'm not known for being the most reliable when it comes to a spelling bee, and I feel like it's often letters like G and C that trip me up because they have so many different pronunciation disguises that they put on.

Gretchen: They really do. They especially do that in different languages. You can do a brief sample of this through different languages' words for “cheese.”

Lauren: Ooo, let's do a cross-linguistic cheese platter!

Gretchen: Cross-linguistic cheese tour! First, we have the Latin “caseus” (/kaseʊs/) meaning “cheese.” And this gives rise to a whole bunch of other words for “cheese” in different languages. You have English “cheese” (/tʃi:z/), you have German “Käse” (/ke:zə/), you have Spanish “queso” (/keso/).

Lauren: Yeah. Because I was like, “Well, in Italian you have ‘formaggio,’” which is like a completely different historical word. But then I remembered that my favourite Italian pasta from Rome is cacio (/katʃo/) e pepe and that's – the Italian-Latin word for “cheese” is still hidden in that very excellent pasta dish.

Gretchen: And then because I started thinking about this, I was looking up other languages’ word for “cheese,” and I saw the Dutch “kaas” (/kɑːs/), which, I don't speak any Dutch, but there's one Dutch word that I know which is “pindakaas,” and “pindakaas” literally translates as “peanut cheese.”

Lauren: Oh. Oh, hang on. Like peanut butter?

Gretchen: Yeah, so the Dutch word for “peanut butter” is literally translated as “peanut cheese,” which at first seems like, “This is maybe an interesting dish,” but then you're like, “Is ‘peanut butter’ really any better as a term for it?” Because it's still a dairy metaphor.

Lauren: Yeah, because I was like, “That's a weird choice,” but actually, it's not that different.

Gretchen: It's really not that different at all. Especially, if you think of a cream cheese, which is like a creamier cheese, maybe? Peanut butter is kind of creamy sometimes.

Lauren: I'm still gonna eat it no matter what it's called.

Gretchen: Then you have Irish “cáis” (/kɑːʃ/), which is also from Latin “caseus”. “Caseus” is spelled with a C and an S. They're pronounced /k/ and /s/.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: But “cheese” takes that initial /k/ and makes it /tʃ/. “Käse” and “queso” and “cacio” keep that initial /k/ sound at the beginning, but “cacio” changes the /s/ into /tʃ/.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Dutch keeps it the way it was. And then Irish also changes the second one into “cáis” (/kɑːʃ/). Different languages have taken this one word that seemed like it had a fairly straightforward pronunciation and altered it in slightly different ways.

Lauren: I was trying to make a cheese metaphor about things, like, fermenting and going funky with age, but I guess this is why we’re a linguistics podcast and not a food podcast.

Gretchen: “Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a food podcast about linguistics.” And this is all this weird stuff that C gets up to between different languages, historically, and in different languages in the modern era. G does the same type of thing. If you were a kid, you might have learned about hard G and soft G, or hard C and soft C.

Lauren: I really struggle with the idea of hard C and soft C, and hard G and soft G. Just to help other people who might as well, hard G is the /g/ sound and soft G is when it's used more like /ʒ/.

Gretchen: Yes, /ʒ/ or /dʒ/, which is one of the reasons why this terminology is not generally linguist-approved.

Lauren: Yeah, I just – I think about, for example, when I was chatting with Suzy Styles on the work we do about how we have this cross-sensory idea and “hard” and “soft” as a metaphor just don't work for me for those sounds. Apologies if I leave Gretchen to do all of the explaining the difference between them today.

Gretchen: Well, I don't think I'm really going to use the terms either. I'm just gonna mention the specific sound because you see when it happens cross-linguistically, there's a lot more going on than just that. These are two letters that both have that hard-soft thing going on. We don't talk about “hard Q” and “soft Q,” or “hard P” and “soft P.”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So why do these letters come in hard and soft versions, even if you can't remember which version is which? To do this, we need to also go back to the Romans.

Lauren: Yes, there were simpler times back in Old Latin.

Gretchen: The Latin alphabet comes from Greek, as a lot of people know. But this is one of things that always puzzled me as a kid – because I was a kid who was into the Greek alphabet – I was like, “Look, the Greeks have this letter, kappa, which stands for the K sound, and it looks like a K, and it's where we get the modern K. And they have this letter, gamma, which was very clearly supposed to be a G. Who invented the C? Why is it there, and why does it cause me so much trouble?”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: It turns out that this is explained by the Etruscans, who were people that didn't make a distinction between the /g/ sound and the /k/ sound, like the sound in “gamma” and the sound in “kappa.” They borrowed the Greek alphabet for their language, which we don't know very much about, but we know that they didn't care about the difference between gamma and kappa because they just borrowed one, which was gamma, and they used it for both because it didn't really matter for them. Then, the Romans actually didn't initially borrow their alphabet from the Greeks. They borrowed it from the Etruscans.

Lauren: Because the Etruscans were living on the Italian peninsula, so they just borrowed it from the locals.

Gretchen: Yeah, so they just borrowed it from the locals.

Lauren: I do love an ethically locally sourced alphabet, personally.

Gretchen: Nice, locally sourced alphabet. We have fragments of pottery from the Etruscans, but we don't know a whole lot about their language. We know it wasn't Indo-European because all the Indo-European languages do distinguish between the gamma and the kappa sounds. So the Romans borrow it from the Etruscans, and then they're left with like, “Oh, geez, we actually do want to make this distinction between these two sounds that we have, but the Etruscans don't have.”

Lauren: And so someone invented the letter G.

Gretchen: Like an actual person?

Lauren: Apparently. I mean, I'm quoting from Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Do we know their name?

Lauren: Apparently, his name was Spurius Carvilius Ruga, which definitely doesn't sound like a spurious name at all.

Gretchen: That's a really spurious name. So he invented the letter G?

Lauren: Yeah, so at this point the letter C was the third letter in the alphabet, still, and he was like, “Well, look, we have this /k/ sound.” K wasn't cool anymore as a letter to represent /k/. They were all using the rounded – what we think of as C now. He was like, “We need to make more of a distinction.” And so apparently – there are people who disagree with this, but I like this story about young Spurius – created the letter G and was like, “Now, we can make the distinction again.”

Gretchen: If you look at a capital G, it just looks like a C with an extra stroke added on to it, right?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: A gamma is like a right angle in the top left corner (Γ), and then you can curve it to make a C, and then you can add an extra stroke to make the G.

Lauren: So that's where the Romans got to. And he popped it in the alphabet in the seventh position, which is originally where a little Greek letter known as "zeta" used to live.

Gretchen: So is he responsible for the demotion of zeta as well?

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, well, no, Z also wasn't cool anymore, because the Romans didn't need it, so they never really borrowed it from the Greeks. Because, again, they got all their alphabet from the Etruscans. So the Romans weren't really down with –

Gretchen: Oh, that’s it. Okay.

Lauren: – zeta. They kind of had it there. He's was like, “Well, let's just drop that letter out, and we'll add this cool, new G thing that I invented.”

Gretchen: So he kicked out zeta and replaced it with G?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: That's great. I love that. Latin actually pronounced – all of their C’s and G’s were /k/ and /g/.

Lauren: Imagine doing a Latin spelling bee. It would be so great. I mean, I guess that’s why they don’t have spelling bees in most languages that have regular orthographies.

Gretchen: Yeah, so easy! You know, you have your classic Latin phrase "veni vidi vici" (/weni widi wiki/) “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Lauren: I like that you’ve used the original Latin pronunciation there, so you sound a little bit ridiculous.

Gretchen: I'd always pronounced this /vɛni vidi vitʃi/, but then I had a Latin teacher who told me, “No, no, it's actually /weni widi wiki/," and it just sounds so foolish.

Lauren: Yes, every time I hear it. So that "vici" is the C – what we think of as C – being pronounced as /k/, as in the word for “cheese.”

Gretchen: Then, in Late Latin, everything starts to go wrong. And by “wrong,” I mean “great.”

Lauren: For the Empire as well as the language.

Gretchen: Yeah, the Empire was a bit messed up. But also the language started fragmenting and becoming all these different versions. In many of the different areas, people started pronouncing the C and the G in a different way, sometimes.

Lauren: I love the “sometimes” bit. We talk about the environment that sounds are in can make them change, adds a bit of context. And that's really where the fun and the messiness of language can really play out, when you have language changing over time.

Gretchen: Yeah, we need to talk about a particular area of the mouth. This is the roof of your mouth. I'm touching it right now, but you can't see me, because it's inside. This isn’t gonna be a very useful demonstration.

Lauren: If you have clean-enough hands, and you don't mind looking a bit ridiculous in public, you can turn the tip of your finger up to the ceiling and press it into the roof of your mouth or use your tongue.

Gretchen: This is the back part of the roof of your mouth. Not the front bit right behind your teeth, but the back bit by your molars. There's kind of a little lump there. This is known in linguistics as the “palate.” There's a whole bunch of sounds that involve the palate and involve some sort of constriction at the palate, the back part of the roof of your mouth.

Lauren: It's a big chunk of space. You've got that soft bit further towards the back that you might not want to prod if you have a sensitive gag reflex.

Gretchen: Yeah, we don’t advise that.

Lauren: And you have that hard bit closer to the teeth. There's a lot of space to play with there.

Gretchen: Yeah, so there's a lot of space. You can drop your jaw and let a lot of space happen there. What's crucial about the palate is it's a space where you can make both vowels and consonants. You could make an /i/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate. You can make a /j/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate. You could make a /ʃ/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate.

Lauren: I'm just sitting here quietly going “sh, sh, sh” to myself.

Gretchen: I was teaching a roomful of Intro to Linguistics students about the palate, and I was saying, “Okay, we're gonna make a distinction between where S is produced, which is towards the front of the roof of your mouth –" and we don't call that the “palate,” we we use the “palate” just refer to the back part of the roof of your mouth – “and the /ʃ/ sound, which is on the palate or near the palate." I was getting the room to say “sss,” “shh,” “sss,” “shh,” back and forth. Then, I was like, “You guys thought you were enrolled in Intro to Linguistics, but you're actually enrolled in Intro to Parseltongue.”

Lauren: The very “sss-shh”-y sounds of the snake language of Harry Potter, for the three of you out there who aren't familiar. If you don't feel like making these sounds, or you want to see what other people's tongues are doing, as always with these episodes, I'm linking you to one of my favourite websites, which is where they stuck a bunch of phoneticians in an MRI machine, and you can see their tongues doing all these things, if you just click on the column of sounds called Palatals.

Gretchen: That's great. I like that website so much. So the palatals, and the /dʒ/ sound is also towards the palatals. At least it's a lot more similar to the palatals than /k/ and /g/.

Lauren: In contrast, /k/ and /g/ are made a bit further back from the palate, closer towards the back of the mouth.

Gretchen: If you’re just thinking about these palatal sounds, the thing is that because there are both vowels and consonants that can be palatal, and you have a vowel that's produced near the palate, and a consonant near it, the vowel tends to attract the consonant and make it more palatal and make it more similar to each other, because humans like to be efficient about these things.

Lauren: Even if you don't remember any terminology, and you certainly don't have to, the takeaway here is that our mouths are very good at being lazy, and they will strive to do as little moving as possible. It's like, “If I'm already there for the vowel, why am I taking myself all the way to the back of the palate? I'm just gonna hang here.” I'm always happy to celebrate laziness.

Gretchen: These palatal vowels, these vowels that are produced near the palate, tend to pull certain consonants with them. This is what happened to the /k/ and the /g/ sound.

Lauren: And it didn't necessarily happen the same way in all the different languages that descend from Latin.

Gretchen: Right, so in French, which is probably the most familiar to English because we borrowed a lot of words from French – so, sometimes you have /k/ becoming /s/ in English from Latin, sometimes you have it becoming /tʃ/ in English from Latin. You have things like “caseus” becoming “cheese,” but also something like “circus" (/kirkus/) becoming “circus” (/sɝkəs/). All those /k/’s get pulled more towards the roof of the mouth.

Lauren: But only if the vowel is luring them there, right? If the vowel isn't near that palatal bit, if the vowel is already back where the /k/ is, then it just stays there.

Gretchen: Yeah, so that's the thing. In a word like “circus” the /k/ is before an I, which was pronounced /i/, /sirkus/, whereas, the second C is before a U and that one stays /sirkus/, not /sirsus/.

Lauren: I like how I’m like, “/sirkus/ sounds completely normal. /sirsus/ sounds very wrong.”

Gretchen: Yeah, /sirsus/ is just like, “No, that didn't happen.” So, /i/ and /e/, which became I and E in English, are the ones that tend to pull the consonants towards them. Whereas /u/ and /o/ and /a/ are the ones that let the constant stay where they want to be.

Lauren: Which solves a mystery of – I mean, spelling bees are entirely mysterious to me, as I think we've established – but it solves that mystery of spelling bees, because I was always like, “Why would you ask...” – because you can ask in a spelling bee the origin of a word. And so if you ask like, “I have to spell the word 'circus.' Please, spelling bee master, tell me the origin of the word.” If I know it's a Latin word, like, “Well, that means it probably is C-I and not K-I, because originally it was probably /kirkus/”

Gretchen: Yeah, because you don't have K's in Latinate words because all of their C's changed when they were in front of an I or an E.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: This also explains why there's some disagreement about how to pronounce the word “Celtic.”

Lauren: Oh, yeah, there's a really great post by Stan Carey that goes into the history of this, but – I don't know. I have to think really hard if I say /kɛltɪk/ or /sɛltɪk/. But I think I say /kɛltɪk/.

Gretchen: I definitely say /kɛltɪk/, but there's some sports team that's correctly pronounced /sɛltɪk/, because that's what people say when they talk about the sports team?

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: I've definitely heard people say /sɛltɪk/. This is one of those ones where if you're obeying the Latinate rules, you're like, “Well, C-E, that must mean that the C is pronounced like an S.” And yet – because when Irish and Scottish Gaelics borrowed the Latin alphabet, it also hadn't had this sound change happen yet. All the C's were still pronounced like /k/, so all of the C's in Gaelic are hard. And so “Celt” /kɛlt/ is – there's no K in Gaelic. The C's are all pronounced /k/.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So if you use the Gaelic pronunciation, then it's /kɛlt/, but if you're looking at it, and you're like, “Well, but I thought my rule was the C gets pronounced like S," then it's /sɛlt/.

Lauren: Which brings us to another major scandal in terms of how words are pronounced, which is, of course, the word that I say as /dʒɪbəɹɪʃ/ (gibberish).

Gretchen: And the word that I said on a previous episode as /gɪbəɹɪʃ/ because – I don't know. Why not say it that way?

Lauren: Yeah, I – to be honest – had not paid much attention to your pronunciation, but we had quite a few people draw attention to the fact that we have different pronunciations for this word.

Gretchen: Yeah, and this is the same thing like with /dʒɪf/ and /gɪf/ (GIF) where –

Lauren: Which is definitely not a major argument at all.

Gretchen: No, no one cares about that one on the internet. I've never heard any argument about it. With the G's, when we get a word from French, or from Latin, or from Italian, or sometimes from Spanish – but generally, Spanish, that's its own thing – we tend to pronounce that G as a /dʒ/ or a /ʒ/ like in “rouge.” But when we get it from a different language, we often pronounce it as a /g/ instead.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So of course, when we get it from an acronym like with GIF, all bets are off, really. There's no statistical bias in either direction.

Lauren: We have been talking exclusively about C and G, but they are not the only letters that cause me grief with spelling, which is fundamentally about palatalisation. There are other sounds in English that are also very attracted to the palate.

Gretchen: Yeah, and these are both /t/ and /d/, T and D, and /s/ and /z/, or S and Z. They're pronounced more towards the front of the palate, but, again, if they're in front of an /i/ or an /e/ sound, they tend to get pulled back towards the palate instead of pulled forward. They all get pulled toward the centre of the mouth.

Lauren: The palate is like the black hole at the centre of the mouth universe.

Gretchen: It's got gravity pulling everything towards it. Yeah, it's a very attractive place. I think it's also kind of a very easy place to say because it's just right there in the middle. So it could be anything. You don't have to go to a lot of effort to make it happen.

Lauren: Yeah, the tongue is just kind of going straight up from its neutral spot. What kind of examples do we see with these letters?

Gretchen: There's some ones that are really old that are embedded into English spelling, words like “station” and “ratio” with that T-I-O-N ending. They were at one point pronounced like /statiʌn/ and /ratio/.

Lauren: Again, would have made spelling tests a lot easier.

Gretchen: Way easier, /ratio/! The Romans said this. But /ratʃio/, /io/ gets shortened into /raʃio/ or /steʃiʌn/ and eventually gets /steʃʌn/ and /reʃio/, and other words like that. Then there's also some that are super new, and they're not even reflected in standard English spelling. They're only in representations of informal speech. That's the words like "didja?"

Lauren: As in, “Didja find out any good facts about palatalisation? Yes, I did.”

Gretchen: Yeah! If you have “did” and “you” – well, “you” can become “ya,” obviously. Then that "ya" sound, the Y at the beginning, it's also palatal, so it can pull the D towards /dɪdʒə/. I went to . a really great restaurant when I was in New York City a couple months ago, which was pointed out to me by someone on Twitter as a linguistically interesting restaurant that I should go to. It is called “Jeet Jet.”

Lauren: “Jeet Jet?”

Gretchen: “Jeet Jet,” spelled J-E-E-T J-E-T.

Lauren: Oh, as in, “Did you eat yet?”

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: “Jeet Jet.”

Gretchen: “Jeet Jet?”

Lauren: That was great. Everything is just lapsing into the palatal centre.

Gretchen: So palatal! It's a palatal palace of food.

Lauren: This is why we're not a food podcast.

Gretchen: Every so often when I used to mark linguistics papers for Intro to Linguistics, you’d get somebody who would write – instead of “palatal,” they'd write “palatial.”

Lauren: Did you draw a little palace?

Gretchen: It sounds like it’s a little palace! But also, why is it not “palatial” because “palatial” is actually the palatised version of “palatal?”

Lauren: It makes sense. We might have to let the language kick on for another couple of centuries to let that process happen.

Gretchen: What's really cool about palatals is that they keep going with the trajectories of the language. In French and Italian, the C's and G's became /dʒ/and /ʒ/ and /ʃ/ and /s/, and that's pretty well-established. In Spanish, they did this other thing. The Spanish C in front of E or I went to /θ/ in Spain, like "cerveza" (/θerbeθa/), and to /s/ in South America like /serbesa/. The J, and G, and also the X – they’re now like a /h/ sound, like in "Xavier” (/havier/). But they stopped for a while at a /ʃ/ sound. For a while, this X in Spanish was pronounced /ʃ/.

Lauren: Hmm, just hung out there for a while?

Gretchen: Yeah, you can see that trajectory happening. It happened at a very specific point in Spanish history, because this point when X was being pronounced /ʃ/ also happened right around when the Spanish conquerors were first coming in contact with Nahuatl speakers in Central America. In Nahuatl, there was a sound /ʃ/, and the Spanish speakers were like, “Well, we have a letter to represent /ʃ/. It's an X. We're going to use the X to represent /ʃ/ like we do in our own language.” They transcribed certain Nahuatl words, like the word “Mexico” – /meʃiko/ – perfectly reasonably.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: But then Spanish kept changing, and not a lot of people spoke Nahuatl, and so /meʃiko/ became /mehiko/, because the X sound was shifted from /ʃ/ to /h/.

Lauren: And so “Mexico,” did the pronunciation of it – just went with it even though it was meant to be /ʃ/?

Gretchen: A representation of the Nahuatl word.

Lauren: Ah, there you go.

Gretchen: Other languages looked at it – like English looked at the spelling of this word and said, “Well, you have an X there. We have an X.”

Lauren: “We pronounce it /ks/."

Gretchen: “Here's how we pronounce the X.” And this is where we get /mɛksɪko/, but it's actually an attempt at representing this Nahuatl sound, but then Spanish changed out from under it.

Lauren: It reminds me of when “Beijing” was updated from the older word, “Peking.” We still have “Peking” in “Peking Duck,” and you have that /k/ there in the “-king.” When it was updated, it becomes “-jing,” because over the centuries since it was originally written down, palatalisation has occurred in Mandarin Chinese.

Gretchen: Oh, that's so good! I just thought the Europeans are really incompetent at transcribing things.

Lauren: I mean, the Europeans were pretty incompetent, and I'm sure that was part of the problem. But you actually have that palatalisation happening in Mandarin as well. It's not just an Indo-European phenomenon.

Gretchen: Oh, so there's just a sound change happening in Mandarin as well at the same time. That's so good.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: There's also a really interesting historical example of other languages doing palatalisation, because once you can spot palatalisation, you can find it everywhere. It's in so many languages. I'd be honestly more surprised to find a language that had never done any sort of palatalisation – that hadn’t done it – than I would be surprised to find it in another language. Bantu languages, which are spoken in a wide swath of Africa, they have a set of prefixes that go at the beginning of certain nouns and verbs to indicate which category the nouns belong to, in a very, very simple explanation of that. One of these prefixes is used before a noun to make it the language related to that noun.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So you have things like – in the Congo, the language that’s spoken is Kikongo.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: In Rwanda, the language that’s spoken is Kinyarwanda. In Botswana, the language that spoken is Setswana. What's really interesting here is that this prefix, you can tell it's started out as /ki/, but in some languages it's become /tʃi/ or /ʃi/ or /si/ or /se/. You can tell that's because this palatal vowel has brought it more towards the vowel. So you have Kiswahili, but isiZulu or isiXhosa], or Tshivenda. Some of them still have the /ki/, some of them have changed it to /si/ or /tʃi/. You can see this relationship because they all have the same prefix, but it's changed differently because the sound changes have happened differently in the different languages.

Lauren: Exactly the same set of changes as we get with our cheeses of Europe.

Gretchen: The same cheese-changes. I have a very vivid memory about when I first learned about palatalisation. This was when I went to Scottish Gaelic summer camp when I was 10 or 12?

Lauren: The thing is we don't have summer camps in Australia. So I find all summer camps mysterious. I'm like, “Of course, you went on summer camp for Gaelic. Like, that's that weird thing that North Americans do. They go on summer camp.”

Gretchen: It is not very common to go on summer camp for Gaelic. Most of the other kids that were there, were there to learn, like, fiddle, or step dance, or something, which is still fairly rare. Most people go, like, canoeing or something.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: But I was a budding linguist, and I wanted to learn Gaelic. So when I was learning Gaelic, they told me about this distinction between broad vowels and slender vowels. This is super important in Gaelic and in Irish as well, because a whole bunch of consonants in Gaelic change the way they're pronounced depending on which vowels they’re next to.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So you end up with all these silent vowels where the vowel itself is silent, but it's just being used to tell you how to pronounce the consonant that it's next to.

Lauren: This is a bit like when I realised the reason you don't hear, in Spanish or in English – the word “guitar,” you don't hear that U – is because Spanish uses U in the same way there, to indicate that it should be a /g/ and not a /ʒɪtɑɹ/.

Gretchen: Exactly, it means the same U that's in, like, "Guillaume" to indicate that that is a /g/ – or in “guerre,” “guerrilla,” for “war.”

Lauren: Yeah, it was a complete revelation for me when I was like, “I'm not meant to – the U is just there to help me, not to hinder me.”

Gretchen: Yeah, it's to help you according to a completely different system that you only understand incompletely.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: This is the same thing for Gaelic. If you have a word, “fáilte,” which is the word for "welcome," and the last two letters are T-E, the way you know that that T is pronounced like a /tʃ/ is because there's an E next to it. Or if you have names like “Sean,” or “Sinead,” or “Siobhan,” the way that you know that that S is pronounced like a /ʃ/ is because it has an E or an I next to it.

Lauren: Just, like, “Come with me towards the palate.”

Gretchen: This is the kind of thing that they teach you in Gaelic 101. They’re like, “Here's the broad vowels. Here's the slender vowels. Here's why they're so important,” because they tell you how to do this with all your consonants. And yet, afterwards, I was like, “But English also kind of does this. Because if you have a word like “circus,” the way that you know how each of the C's is pronounced is based on the same distinction between what Gaelic traditionally calls “broad” and “slender” vowels, but we can call “palatal” or “non-palatal” vowels. The slender vowels in Gaelic are the same thing as a palatal vowel, or a front vowel to use the proper linguistic term. All of those are the same class of things that all cause the same types of sound changes. The “broad” vowels, or the “non-palatal” vowels, or the “back” vowels are all the same category of stuff that doesn't cause the sound change. And that totally rocked my world when I figured it out the first time.

Lauren: I think the thing is, given my general spelling issues, even though I have trouble with spelling, I really appreciate that palatalisation makes pronouncing things easier. In many ways, it's really great that the writing system we have captures this history of how these sounds were all the way back to Latin, all the way back to our friend Spurius, and they're there to help us.

Gretchen: Yeah, it makes certain connections easier to see. A word like “electric,” “electricity,” the C is still there, and when you add an I on to it with the “-ity” ending, you can see it change pronunciation. You can see the connections between those words more straightforwardly. Whereas, if there was a K at the end, you wouldn't necessarily know that it was one that was going to change its pronunciation if an I was added to it. I think what fascinates me about palatalisation is it's one of the ways in which linguistics lets us peer deeply into the soul of a language, or into history of a language, and into the connections between languages, and lets us think of these things that we think of as messy and anomalous as actually a unified part of our shared anatomy across all of the spoken languages that we have this in common, which is that we all find it easier to pronounce things in a certain area of our mouths the same. That makes us part of this really big human story in what seems to be just annoying ways to spell things.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We're also now on Spotify, so if you use that, you can find us there. You can follow us at @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. And you can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, and my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions, help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include: hyperforeignisms, multilingual babies, homonyms, and how to have a good time at academic conferences. You could help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. Can't afford to pledge? That's okay too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. Especially this month, we're doing our special anniversary round to help the show grow.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are A.E. Prévost and Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, Our production assistants are Celine Yoon and Fabianne Anderberg. Our music is by The Triangles. Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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

[sosa-sketch]

Fright or Flight: Chapter 2

Parings: Prinxiety // Logicality // Platonic LAMP

Story Summary: Virgil and Patton investigate the New Prince Castle, when a brutal accident kills Patton. Patton wakes as a ghost and meets friendly ghoul Roman, who has been haunting the castle for 20 years. Virgil is determined to bring Patton back to life and brings Logan, the ghost expert, to help him out. Time is quickly running out, and the four must work together to undo death. If only it was as simple as Logan made it sound.

Unknown to them, a secret entity in the castle does not plan on letting them succeed.

Previous Chapter   Next Chapter 

When Patton first met Virgil, his last intention was to become friends with him. Virgil had built up a notorious reputation over the first few months of school, and his grades did nothing to disprove his status. Patton wasn’t the type to judge a person’s character based on rumors nor looks. No one was a higher believer in the benefit of doubt than Patton! However, Virgil’s first impression did not help his case.

Virgil transferred into Patton’s English class the second semester due to a schedule change. When the teacher stated a new team project was to be completed, Patton did not shy away from offering to be Virgil’s partner. He understood how difficult it could be being the new kid in a class full of friends and cliques.

The project was hefty, an collection of novel analyzing, essays, vocabulary, and journal entries. Patton was not looking forward to the Shakespearean project-Shakespeare’s language was alien to him. It occurred to Patton that pairing up with the soon-to-be-dropout may not have been his best idea. Nonetheless, Patton refused to be jaded.

The first day of the project, Virgil refused to touch the work.

“There’s no way I’m touching this project.” Virgil sneered. “Especially about Shakespeare.”

“Huh?” Patton had not fully processed Virgil’s words. “Is it because you don’t understand it?”

“Sure.”

“Neither can I! I guess Shakespeare really has our brains shaken up! Maybe we can ask the teacher to go over it for us?”

The teen huffed and shook his head. Virgil laid his head on the wooden desk and his eyes slipped closed. He napped for the rest of the period.

His behavior continued for weeks. Patton had tried everything in his power to get Virgil to help him out. Patton’s seemingly endless supply of compliments and encouraging gestures served no help.

Patton’s mind had conjured countless excuses for Virgil since Virgil himself refused to give one. At the beginning the excuses had seemed feasible. Lack of sleep? Family issues? However, by week three, Patton was already scraping the bottom of the barrel, trying to justify Virgil’s dismissive attitude with clones and possible mind control. Virgil was no closer to lifting up a pencil, there were ten days left of the project, and Patton still understood little to nothing about Shakespeare. Patton was flying solo and time was ticking.

The final week before the project was due, Patton caught the flu.

Patton would chalk up the flu to the top three sucky sicknesses of his lifetime. His fever was raging, his skin drowning in sweat while the insides of him iced over. Patton couldn’t tell when being awake ended and when sleep began. The only alarm in Patton’s body was the churning in his gut that rushed him to the toilet.

Understandably, the project was the last thing on his mind.

Patton would not remember his Shakespeare mission until the Sunday before it was due, when he was shaking off the final remnants of the flu. The realization hit him like a train, but by the time he went flying off his bed and hurriedly logging on to his computer to check the time, Patton knew it was hopeless. There was no way he could get the project done in a few hours and counting. Not when all his energy was going into fighting of sneezes and headaches.

Patton was dejectedly scrolling through his email filled with newsletters from adoption sites and animal protection agencies when a subject line caught his eye: “English Project.” Linked to the email were word documents and an audio file. Perplexedly, Patton opened the email.

To: patpetspups@gmail.com

From: killjoy_2001@icloud.com

Subject: English Project

Patton,

so apparently you’ve been sick. class is way more quiet without you their, which is wierd.

i think i did everything you hadn’t done. it’s gonna be really mispelled and confusing and shit. sorry. i’m not the best with righting. feel free to fix anything.

get well soon.

-V

p.s. sorry for acting like a jerk. i owe you a explanation monday.

Patton hugged his computer screen and laugh with relief. He had no idea why Virgil was so nervous. His ideas were brilliant. A week later, Patton would see an A in his gradebook for the Shakespeare project.

There was a reason why Patton never lost faith in people.

True to his word, the next week Virgil explained his mistreatment to Patton. Virgil struggled with dyslexia. While he was getting tutoring in overcoming his learning disability, Virgil’s writing made him incredibly insecure. His old teacher always let him work individually, but the new teacher wasn’t having it. Before class, the teacher pulled him aside and told Virgil he was no different from any other student and would have to work with a partner. Virgil, determined to spite the teacher and anxious to seem like an “idiot” in front of Patton, would pretend to sleep the whole period.

“All your writing took was a quick grammar fix. The ideas were so good! I’m not just saying that to say that, they actually were! I could never think of something like that.” Patton reassured enthusiastically.

Virgil flushed a bright red. “I didn’t do much. Shakespeare is a lot easier to understand with audio.”

Patton listened to the audiobook of Macbeth that night. Virgil clearly wasn’t giving himself enough credit.

Virgil and Patton quickly grew close once the project was done. Virgil was still quiet, snappy, moody, and detrimentally insecure, but he began to open up more as the months went on. By senior year, Patton and Virgil was joined at the hip. Two peas in a pod.

Virgil had grown a lot since freshman year.

Being joined at the hip with Virgil meant that Patton got to understand Virgil by the simplest change in body language or expression. It also meant that Patton became aquatinted with anyone close to Virgil.

Patton already had a bad feeling while Virgil’s tone had shifted on the phone the night they were chatting about yearbook quotes. Remy sending Patton a text only confirmed the ball of dread in his stomach.

Rem: pat can we talk ?

Patton: You don’t even have to ask! Everything ok?

Rem: it’s about v

Rem: have you guys talked recently ? out of school

Patton: We talked last weekend. Over the phone. Why? Is Virgil fine??

Rem: idk. he came over to my house a couple nights ago at like 5 am. talked about some ghost shit.

Patton: He woke you up to talk about ghosts??(language!)

Rem: looking for affirmation that he wasn’t some obsessed ghost freak. i told him nah

Rem: but tbh he kinda is obsessed

Patton: He is passionate about his ghosts! But that’s not a bad thing.

Rem: v strongly disagrees. the whole thing about the yearbook and ghost quotes really messed with his head

Patton: I didn’t mean anything bad by it! It was just an idea! I promise! I’ll apologize to him!!!

Rem: wait no thats not what im saying. no one blames u

Rem: is he doing any ghost stuff anytime soon

Patton: Yep. He’s going to visit a castle!

Patton: Is that bad?

Rem: don’t you remember last time v became paranoid abt something? he pulled some real stupid stuff just to prove ppl wrong

Patton: Yeah. I know.

Patton: Gosh now I’m worried :(

Rem: i just dont want him doing anything he’ll regret on the trip. can u just…idk watch out for him pls ? ik v can take care of himself. but sometimes he gets into this headspace that’s self-destructive

Rem: tbh i dont like his ghost stuff as it is. i dont need him doing something dumb either

Patton: I understand Rem. That’s really sweet of you <3 <3

Patton: I’ll look out for him! I promise!!!! :-) :-)

Rem: ty. dont tell v abt this convo tho

Despite feeling uneasy about it, Patton understood Remy’s request to keep silent. Telling Virgil about their conversation would only push Virgil away and make him defensive. It’d be impossible to look out for him.

Virgil had already given Patton a way in. Patton had to talk to Logan for Virgil and get any supplies he might need. Patton loved visiting Logan in and of itself. Maybe Logan could help him out.

Logan’s business was located near small shops clustered along the beach. It was a hotspot for tourists, where knickknacks and souvenirs were sold and expensive attractions were advertised. Patton walked along here with Virgil sometimes, stopping at the arcade or mirror maze. Patton had met some of the most interesting people in the small touristy town.

Among the attractions was a dark blue shingled building with a pointy-roofed top. Painted letters on a wooden board spelt out “Afterlife Exposed.” Patton stepped through the door and a bell gently ringed, signaling his arrival.

At the sound of the bell, a tall, dark-haired man turned around. His navy suit blended in with the darkness of the shop. The man’s lean body was captivated beautifully in the suit. Patton quickly averted his eyes, blushing furiously.

“I have been expecting you-oh. Greetings, Patton. What a surprise.”

“Hi Logan!” Patton waved enthusiastically. “Who were you expecting?”

“No one. It’s a new rule Father has implemented. I must say it to every customer to ‘set the mood,’ as he calls it.” Logan dragged his hand over his face exasperatedly. “I find it quite ridiculous. But business shall be business.”

Logan’s father technically owned Afterlife Exposed. But he was always hidden in the back, gathering supplies or experimenting. Logan was currently studying entrepreneurship in college in order to take over the family business someday.

“How may I help you today, Patton?” Logan inquired, stepping around the counter to stand in front of him. He was even taller up close.

Patton filled Logan in about the New Prince Castle family murder and Virgil’s plan to investigate the castle for one of his ghost routines. Logan nodded politely the whole way through.

“I see. What an intriguing case. What exactly does he need from me?”

Patton shrugged cluelessly. “Anything you think might help, I guess.”

“What’s his budget?”

“A coffee and cake pop from Starbucks, if he uses his gift card.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “And he sent you to purchase something from here? Why, he couldn’t even afford a keychain.”

“Come on, Logan! He’s one of your most loyal customers and between us, he’s going through a rough patch. Can’t you help him out? Please?”

Logan massaged his temples and sighed. “Patton, it’s just not something the business can afford to do right now. My Father and I have been dealing with a sort of rough patch as well. You and Virgil have my sincerest apologies-truly, you do.”

Patton nodded dejectedly, “I understand.” Spotting Logan’s hesitant expression and tense form, he rested a hand on Logan’s shoulder and grinned. “Really, I do. I don’t blame you.”

Logan gave a small, tight-lipped smile in return. Gently shaking Patton’s hand off his shoulder, he clasped his hands together tightly. “Well, is there anything else I can do for you?”

“I’m not too sure.” Patton pursed his lips in thought. “Well, actually. I was wondering if you could tell me the dos and don’ts of ghost hunting. The yays and nays. The cats and dogs-actually no scratch that, both of those would be a yay.”

“With all due respect, Patton, I think Virgil has got that covered.” Logan reassured. “He must have asked me a dozen times prior to his first investigation.”

“Oh yeah, I know. It’s for me.” Patton corrected.

Logan raised an eyebrow in perplexion. Patton had never shown an interest in ghost hunting when Virgil wasn’t to be found.

Patton thought quickly. “I just want to understand more. For when I talk to Virgil. Sometimes I really don’t get half the explanations coming from the kiddo’s mouth.” It wasn’t a lie. “Just…how do you deal with ghosts?

“I see.” Logan clicked his tongue. “I’m sure Virgil could explain it to you more in depth. But, if you’re ever in doubt, chalk it up to one thing: respect. Is what you’re doing respecting the afterlife and their home? Are you portraying common courtesy? Treat them with the same respect as the living, if not more. There are exceptions, as with anything, but for the most part, that should keep you out of trouble with spirits.”

“Respect.” Patton repeated.

“You have strong morals, Patton. If you’re concerned about involvement with the afterlife due to your closeness with Virgil, I would not worry. Lack of respect is the last of your weaknesses.”

Logan pulled out his phone from the back of his pocket. “I apologize, I must return to my work. However, if you or Virgil have any more questions, feel free to give me a call.”

Patton gushed and thanked Logan, jotting down his number. Logan flushed a gentle red and held out his hand for a handshake.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Patton.”

Patton swatted Logan’s hand away and brought him in for a hug. “Thank you, Logan.”

Logan awkwardly pat Patton on the back before ungracefully untangling himself from the embrace. “I was only doing my job. Now, I understand it’s none of my business, but I recommend getting some rest. You look exhausted.”

“High school has permanently carved bags under my eyes.” Patton shook his head defeatedly.

Logan gave an amused smirk. “You sounded like Virgil.”

Patton beamed. “Like father, like son!”

Just as Patton was about to turn around to leave the store, something in the corner of the room glistened, catching his eye. “Hey Logan? Just one more thing?”

Logan hummed at him, encouraging Patton to continue.

He pointed to the object at the corner of the room. “How much can I get that for?”

 “Walkie-talkies. I sent you to Logan Berry, one of the smartest, most knowledgeable people about the afterlife in this town, and you come back with a Ghost Buster walkie-talkie.” Virgil grunted, dangling the toy by its antennae.

“You can have the Casper the Ghost one instead.”

“What? No! Ghost Busters is better, anyway.” Virgil groaned. “That’s not the point. How about advice? Did Logan say anything?”

“Just to respect the ghosts. Have common courtesy. Which you better be doing anyway, even without Logan telling you to do so.”

Virgil threw his hands up in exasperation and fell down into his sofa as the cushions engulfed the skinny man. “Obviously I respect them! The last thing I need is coming home possessed and cursed! He knows I know that. That’s really all he said?”

“Besides giving us his number.” Patton confirmed. “Which I already gave you.”

Virgil grumbled. “Whatever. One day I’ll get enough money to- wait. The walkie-talkies. There’s no way you could have bought them with my money, I would not have had enough. Please don’t tell me…”

Virgil got a glance of Patton’s sheepish look and groaned. “Patton, we have a rule! No buying each other anything!” He buried his head in his hands. “I can’t pay you back. You know that.”

“Hey…” Patton took a seat next to Virgil and laid a comforting hand on his knee. “It’s okay. They weren’t expensive. You don’t have to pay me back.”

Virgil looked at Patton in between his fingers. His voice was muffled against his palms. “You know how I feel about that, Pat.”

“Virgil, come on.” Patton pleaded.

Virgil shook his head. “Thank you. But, you need to return them.”

Guilty silence settled among the two, but neither made a move to leave. Both were lost in their own worlds when an idea struck Patton.

He nudged Virgil. “I know a way for you to pay me back without money.” At Virgil’s unimpressed look, he protested, “Seriously! It would mean a lot more to me than whatever these walkie-talkies cost.”

“Yea?” Virgil lifted his head from his hands. “What is it?”

Patton stared at Virgil’s stormy eyes as his heart pounded. In all honesty, this was the last thing Patton wanted to do. He was terrified. But, he thought back to the conversation he had with Remy, and the last time Virgil did something senseless unsupervised due to paranoia. “I want to go ghost hunting with you. At the New Prince Castle.”

Virgil’s jaw dropped. His eyes darted around Patton’s face before he shook his head and gave a weak chuckle. “Sure, Pat. Whatever you say.”

“No, I’m serious!” Patton insisted. “I’ll respect the ghosts and do whatever you tell me to do!”

Virgil was dismissing Patton before he could finish his sentence. “No, no, no. You hate ghost stories, Pat! Especially ones that are spooky and gruesome. You’d hate ghost-hutning. It’s dark and there’s lots of weird noises and tons of spiders. No way. I’m not adding more guilt to my conscience.”

Virgil made a move to get up from the sofa, but Patton refused to let the conversation drop. He grabbed Virgil’s hand and pulled him back to the seat. Virgil landed with a clumsy thump.  

“Kiddo, I know I hate all those things. I’m sure I’ll be scared. But, you’ll be there too! I love you more than I hate all those things combined.”

“Patton, we can do something else together. Go to the movies. Or bowling. Normal teen stuff.” Virgil reasoned.

Patton retorted, “But ghost hunting is important to you.”

“It’s not that important. It’s a simple hobby. I don’t care that much about it.” Virgil cut off.

“I know, I know!” Patton quickly backtracked. “What I meant was that ghost-hunting has been a cool way for us to bond. It intrigues you-a perfectly normal amount-and I like seeing you happy! Just like you go walking with me along the shops by the beach even though it’s super crowded and you hate it.”

“Patton, what’s your point?” Virgil grilled.

“My point is I want to try this thing that you enjoy with you. Just like you try things for me. It’s senior year, Virgil. No one hates thinking about it more than me, but we don’t know what things are going to be like after high school. I want to find a husband, start a family. Maybe study veterinary science. You could have a publisher for your writing, become a famous author, and move. I want to do this with you. I want to get over my fear.”

Patton stared at Virgil hopefully and held out his hand. “What do you say? One more big adventure for the dynamic duo?”

Virgil stared at Patton, looked down and roughly shook his head, froze, then stared at Patton once more. Virgil’s foot rapidly tapped against the floor, creating a dizzy, distracting melody. Finally, Virgil pulled his hair and glared at Patton. “You’ll be careful?”

Patton nodded eagerly.

“And you’ll stick with me no matter what? At all times? I want you in my sight.”

Virgil dramatically groaned, closing his eyes and throwing his head back. “I guess you can come.”

Patton shot up from his seat, whooping with joy and hopping around the sofa. “Thank you, Virgil! Thank you! We’re going to have such a great time!”

Virgil peeked one eye open and gave a soft grin. “Yeah, I guess we are. You’re sure you wanna do this?”

“Never been more sure of anything in my life besides my love for you and cats! I pinkie swear it.”

Patton and Virgil intertwined pinkies before Patton winked and let go, embracing Virgil.

“Let your moms know you’re going to be gone for the weekend.” Virgil smirked. “We have a haunted castle to explore.”

[haunting-kind-of-high]

Vampire!Roman headcanons

So, this is part of my Being Human AU, based on the awesome show Being Human. This one focusses mainly on Roman and a bit on his relationships with the others. 

This turned out much longer than I originally intended oml

Warnings: Mentions of blood, death, the plague, that's it, I think

He was bitten when he was around 20

It happened at night, when Roman was alone in his chambers

It’s a miracle the intruder snuck into his room, but it’s a vampire we’re talking about so what’s more miraculous?

After that, he just… disappeared

He travelled across England at first

But there were too many memories, and after a few decades it got painful

So many people died

And then the Plague came and even more people died

He just had to get out

So he did

And he travelled the world after that, watching how society changes

He would stay somewhere for a while and then leave if staying got too risky

Either because he went a little too far with his blood-drinking needs, or because too many people close to him had died

Sometimes he’d leave if all his friends were dead, and staying around just hurt him too much

He was in Rome when the Renaissance started and he still loves every memory he made there

Seeing the world changing like that… it was fantastic

Loves ancient mythologies

He probably knew a lot of famous painters let’s be real

I also really like the thought of him knowing Hal (an awesome vampire in the show who’s cool)

Maybe he was the one who recruited Hal? I’m not sure if it fits in the show’s canon though

He has at least heard of him because every vampire has

Roman is a hella gay vamp

Goes to pride every year he’s able to

Is so happy pride exists because he needed that when he was a young 100 vamp

Rome was probably one of the best periods of his life and he never wanted to leave

But after a while, when everyone he knew was dead and he couldn’t stand to be there for much longer

So he continued his travels

He travelled through Europe and Asia

Somewhere in the 1880s/1890s he briefly joined the Old Ones

The Old Ones are a group of vampires who are… well… pretty old

They’re also super powerful, immune to religious symbols, and they’ve got more cool perks

But Roman wasn’t too fond of their way of living, so he left them and returned to England in 1915 to fight in the war

After the war, he went to America

He didn’t want to stay in England anymore

Too many painful memories

That was when he decided he wanted to stop drinking blood

Or try at least, because it is fucking hard

And he started to remember the people he killed and he couldn’t stop thinking about it and he hated it, but he hated blood more, even though he needed it so much

At first, he went to New York first and travelled a bit

He met Logan in 2011

It was in Michigan somewhere

He saved Logan from being beaten up by asshole vampires but that’s a story for another day

They weren’t super close at first, but Roman helped Logan find his way in the supernatural world, Logan helped Roman find his way in the modern world, and they grew pretty close

Logan tried to help Roman with his resolution to stop drinking blood but he didn’t know how to help

Roman appreciated the help though

After a pretty bad relapse, Roman decided he had to move and Logan insisted on going along, even though Roman protested this

But Logan didn’t give up so they moved in together

They moved to Florida

Once they moved into their house, he really had to get used to Patton being around, but he warmed up to the ghost pretty quickly

It was strange, though

He has a lot of nightmares

About the night he was turned into a vampire, about the people he killed, about the wars he fought

It’s not unusual for him to wake up in the middle of the night, convinced he is in the middle of a war, or back in medieval England

At first, Patton tried his best to comfort Roman. He didn’t need to sleep anyways

But it was difficult because Patton had no idea what it was like, and Roman hardly told anything about his nightmares

Roman liked having someone around at night, though

When Virgil moved in, he grew more open about his dreams

He wasn’t planning on it, but he plans on spending the rest of his life with Virgil and he can’t exactly hide his nightmares for all of eternity

And once he does, he’s glad he opened up to Virgil

Virge seems to know exactly what to do to help him out and his presence is a comfort

Sometimes, Roman will wake up thinking he is in the middle ages and he will be disoriented for a while, before Virgil reminds him that it’s 2018 and everything is fine

Roman is so intrigued by modern technology

I mean, phones can fit entire portraits in them, and it takes just a few seconds to make?

You can contact someone on the other side of the world in mere seconds?

Witchcraft, that’s got to be it

Smartphones don’t always work well for him, because his touch is pretty cold but that doesn’t stop him

Huge space geek

Believed the moon landing was fake for a little over 50 years, though

He just couldn’t believe that something was out there and that people can walk on that something

Still in denial about it

But Logan knows

In fact, he was the one who told Roman it was real

He still teases Ro about it every now and again

But yeah space geek Ro

Can't believe there are things out there other than small dots of light

Gets defensive when people make flat Earth memes because he believed that for ages

“I mean, it’s not that unbelievable, right? You can’t see that it’s round, what else are we supposed to believe? How were we supposed to know it was round?”

Every time he brings it up, the others reassure him that it's a joke and it's not meant to ridicule him or whatever

Still forgets the concept of round Earth sometimes

Same with the heliocentric model

"You can see the sun moving! How can it move across the sky if it isn't actually moving? It doesn’t make any sense!"

He has had a lot of discussions about this with Logan

Still doesn’t understand it

Loves Candy Crush

“It is so colourful and cute! How does one come up with this ingenious design?”

The others don’t tell him that there are tons of other games like it

He texts like parents

You know, using correct grammar, lots of emojis

I’m looking forwards to the movie *tons of emojis but for some reason I couldn't get them to work*.

He used to start every text he sent with a “hello (…),” or something similar and he used to end them with a signature thing

But the other convinced him that everyone knew it was him sending the texts and that it was only more effort for him

So he stopped that

The emojis and correct grammar still stand tho

Ok.

Virgil and Patton still haven’t convinced him to give up the ‘Ok.’

It’s agony

He is adorably naïve when it comes to spam and phishing mails

He’s lucky the others are there to stop him from clicking the damn link

“But it says right here that I still have to pay-”

“That’s a lie, darling, they just want your money.”

“But-”

“Just delete the mail.”

Always goes to Logan when he has a problem with technology

Constantly mixes up the slang he learned across the ages

“Don’t flip your wig, Lo! Everything is going to be fine.”

“I had a gas tonight, guys.”

But no one knows what it means

The fifties slang are his favourite. They’re just so fun.

He also uses medieval words a lot, as that is what he grew up with

Keeps calling water Adam’s ale

One time Logan got hurt and he requested an ‘acopon’

No one knew what he meant and it took him ages to explain because he couldn’t come up with the modern equivalent of the word (which would be a plaster)

Sometimes he’ll be stuck in like medieval language for an entire day and no one will understand what he’s saying

Like, it sounds kind of familiar, but not familiar enough to be sure of the meaning

It’s really frustrating to all of them

Also misuses modern slang a lot

“Would you look at the weather outside? It is so bright, and not a single cloud! How wonderfully lit!”

“I… I’m not sure lit means what you think it does, buddy.”

It is hilarious

When he starts dating Virgil, he finds out about Vine and because Virgil loves vines so much, he starts watching them too so he can understand the references and surprise Virge by making references himself

But he gets them wrong a lot too

One day, Logan and Patton are talking in the kitchen

Roman just looks at them and turns to Virgil with a

“And they were roommates”

Virgil almost chokes on his drink

“Oh my god, they were roommates”

Roman’s favourite vine is the croissant one

“I could have dropped my croissant” becomes his thing

It’s cute, but it starts getting annoying when he says it to everything

The others just let him be, he is a 700-year old dork, he needs this

He is upset he doesn’t show up on camera, because otherwise, he’d be all over vine

He had so many great ideas for vines

He has definitely seen some of his old stuff in museums

“Oh my goodness, my old sword!”

For a 700+-year old vampire, he doesn’t know when to chill

But he just gets excited when he sees his stuff

At one point in his life, he has definitely seen an old portrait of him in a museum

And someone definitely saw him looking at it

And they definitely saw the resemblance

And they definitely told Roman about it

He just nodded and told the person that his friends told him about it too

Wishes he could just steal the portrait because it makes him look so good and handsome

He thought about it, but quickly realized that telling staff of the museum that “he wants this portrait because it is him” would sound just a tad… weird

He’s really upset about it

Gets really nostalgic a lot

He has experienced so many things and seen so many amazing things

Met so many people

He misses them a lot

It just hurts to know that you’ll outlive most people you will meet in your life

He has always tried not to get too attached to people because they’re going to die anyways

But somewhere along the way, he let this attitude go

One way or another, he always grew to like a few people

He likes to tell his friends about what he remembers of his travels and experiences

Especially Logan, cause that man is a fucking history nerd

Roman loves Logan so much, because he’s so smart

They have the best conversations

A lot of them are about some event in history, or about modern-day society, cause that still confuses Roman

Loves cartoons

They’re just so cute and so amazing and sweet

He and Patton watch a lot of them together

As a ghost, Patton doesn’t need to sleep, so sometimes they will stay up until four am binge-watching some cartoon

Virgil and Logan try to tell them to stop – especially Roman

But it doesn’t work

Roman is very protective over Logan, because he is the only mortal of their group

Of course, he and Virgil can still die, but there’s a smaller risk of it happening

Patton is already dead

But Logan can still die

And Roman wants to keep Logan around as long as possible

So every time something even remotely dangerous happens around Logan, Roman is there to safe him.

Can’t have their favourite werewolf die

He is scared to lose Logan, but he knows it is inevitable

He just wished it would be different

Roman has quite a few of vampire contacts – they need to work together in order to avoid being discovered, after all

I mean it would be weird to have a passport that says you were born in 1296

So there are vampires to take care of that

Roman knows quite a lot of them personally and they always question his scent

It’s blood-like, as it is supposed to be, but there is a hint of dog

Roman mostly says that it’s because he has a dog, but there are a few people who know he doesn’t have a dog

There’s one or two who know about Logan and they don’t understand him

Why would a vampire be friends with a werewolf? That is unheard of

Roman is also friends with a few vampires who like to organize dog fights

Where a werewolf – during full moon – is caged with a human, who has a knife. At the end of the night, just one survives

And Roman lives in constant fear that one day, they will go after Logan for their sick forms of entertainment

Roman has seen a few dog fights when he was younger, and it is absolutely horrible

He doesn’t want Logan to have to go through that

And then there’s the risk of Logan dying, which makes it even worse

He thought about asking them to not capture Logan, but he feared that they would do it on purpose, just to spite him

So Roman thought of a system

If Logan was ever out and vampires came up to him, he would call Roman, but not say anything

Roman is in his emergency contacts, so that works well

And if Roman heard what was going on, he would track Logan’s phone to see where he was going – taking a few wooden stakes with him – and save his friend

There’s no way he would allow them to put Logan through something as horrible as a dog fight

Sometimes, the age difference between him and Virgil is quite… difficult

They’re both from different generations, obviously, and their experiences are just totally different

They try their best to understand the other, but it’s difficult sometimes

Virgil doesn’t know what it’s like to fight in a war, to see your best friends dying, to wander the earth, knowing that you will never die. He doesn’t know what it’s like to see half your city dying to the Plague

Virgil tries

But he just doesn’t understand

But it’s fine, because Roman loves him and they will have an eternity together to understand each other

He really loves Virgil a lot dude

On multiple occasions, he’s written Virgil a super romantic love letter

You know, one of those extra ones

Super extra

Lots of “my love”, “my darling”, lots of romance

But it’s cute

Virgil has kept every one of those letters

Roman listens to classical music a lot

But he also sort of likes rock

Nothing too heavy though

He can handle most genres though, but rock and classical music are some of his faves

Tries to headbang

But he can’t do it

Virgil says it’s because he’s to old for that crap

Roman doesn’t believe him

He’s young at heart how dare Virgil

Yeah Roman is v cute

[realtalk-princeton]

hey sulpicia, have you ever read the secret history by donna tartt? if so, what are your thoughts on its depiction of classics/the work as a whole? lol i had read it and was curious to hear what an actual classics student would think about it. also, thanks so much for all of your great answers on rtp over the years! i'm gonna miss you after you graduate :')

Response from Sulpicia:

Thanks so much! I’ll definitely miss giving my (very non-anonymous) opinion on here. I actually didn’t read The Secret History until last fall and I liked it a lot; obviously Donna Tartt is such a great prose writer, and the story just becomes more weird and bizarre and confusing the more you read it. I really liked that in a lot of ways the work argues not that modern life is patterned on Classical Greek ideals, but that there’s a danger in uncritically accepting whatever version of the ancient world we have as an aesthetic ideal; I feel like a lot of the problems the characters have arise when they try to turn real life into something that plays by the rules of fiction.

In terms of the actual work they do, obviously the course is very weird and idiosyncratic (as was the point) but it also didn’t seem to far off-base for a really old-school Classics education; I think Julian is supposed to be a relic of a time when Classics courses were on the one hand more rigorous in terms of how much you read, but also had a much narrower perspective on what questions you asked of a text and how you used them. At Princeton you don’t do Greek or Latin prose comp until the graduate level which I remember the characters doing a lot, and they seem to have a fairly narrow focus on Greek art and literature whereas most Classics programs today push for more history/culture.

Overall I also think the philosophy of education in the Classics that a character like Julian pushes is much more about the admiration of an ancient aesthetic than most modern Classics courses are. There’s a real push now to recognize the brutality and cruelty of the ancient Greeks and Romans and try to move away from the idea of a continuous “Western Civilization” in favor of more inclusive approaches to the ancient world, and a lot of language pedagogy is trying to shift Latin and Greek pedagogy from being “look at this puzzle with all these hard words that’s only for ‘smart people’” to being more like “this is a language that real people spoke and wrote so we’ll teach it like a human language.” I learned with a really traditional grammar-translation approach so I’m always unlearning bad habits, but it makes me sad that people feel like Greek and Latin aren’t for them because they’re coded as being HARD. In reality they’re no more challenging than a lot of modern languages, they’re just taught in a way that often takes the humanity out of them, sadly.

The great thing about the novel is that it first romanticizes this older approach before pointing out that it’s not really helpful to living as a human being in the world--and indeed (mild but unsurprising spoilers) all the characters end up dying or having very sad lives. I was reading something about the novel a while ago and it talked about how Henry’s project of translating Paradise Lost into Latin is so emblematic of who he is; on the one hand it’s a very hard intellectual project that requires a ton of knowledge and learning, but on the other it’s one that indicates such poverty of imagination and an inability to innovate (the arrogance of his project is also underscored by the fact that Milton was well-known as a writer in Latin as well, so if he wanted Paradise Lost to be in Latin he would have done that!).

This ended up being very rambly and probably too long, but I I do think The Secret History is super fun and also highlights some of the tensions that exist in studying Classics. The slogging through long texts with grammar books and dictionaries is very accurate though (it is absolutely not surprising at all that a Greek dictionary/grammar ends up being such an important object to the plot).

Response from Orion:

I just wanted to say that I'm currently reading this book and highlyyyyy recommend even if you aren't a classics person! It's such a gripping tale and beautifully written.

[heavensentgohansrage]

Recap and Notes: Heracles!Stiles Ch. 1

find the chapter here

So, wow, I actually posted it xD Originally I’ve always planned to start posting the chapters once I finish the whole fic (as of the time I’m writing this I have three left, even less considering that I have some of their parts already written and planned out, so don’t worry!), and that’s it’s anyway going to be before the show ends.

Three years later and I didn’t mange to do it as I really wanted- with writing blocks, other fandoms and life in general interrupting me a lot, and I really wish I could blame it on the huge amount of research I’ve done.

But yeah, now it’s here and there’s no way back (even though I want to scream thinking about it T-T) and hopefully I’ll be done with the three left soon enough- and surely before I finish editing the rest of the chapters.

And the editing process (and when I say editing, keep in mind that I’m not a native English speaker, and it’s only done with the best of my abilities so it’ll at least being able to be understood even when grammar isn’t right; can someone tell me again why did I choose to write in past tense??) is a much bigger project than what I anticipated- I had to stay up two whole nights just to be done with this chapter, which is currently the shortest of all the chapters (though I really wish I could keep them all around 8k).

So, without further ado, let’s start with some background of the fic itself:

After getting into the Sterek fandom in 2014 (I’ve watched the show since the fisrt season but was not full on shipper like today), I found this post while browsing through the 2014′s Sterek Week tag. It really caught my attention above any other post I’ve seen about them for some reason (because not only the characters really fit their roles, but I love the Greek myth in general, even more so after reading the Percy Jackson series; I’d include references to it, but decided against it for the sake of my friend, who’s the biggest fan of the series), and after daydreaming about it for a few days- the idea of writing it according to the original Greek legend popped into my head, and I decided to try it out (btw, I was embarrassingly surprised to find out how different it was from the film, along with the fact that the Roman name is more famous than the original one).

As I was taking it more and more seriously (at my first few months in the fandom I was so excited about the unending amount of posts about them that I spent my free time basically stalking many old posts in random blogs xD), around 2015, I translated what I’ve written to English and finished the chapter. As I started reading about the legend in general, I found out these interesting points that drove me more than anything to write the fic, because now I had answers to why I was so instinctively drawn to this AU, why it felt so right (can also be read as: the amount of times I fangirled because of my own stupid AU >< ) :

1. His canon real name, Mieczysław, means “fame by swords”- with name Heracles meaning “fame by Hera” (and now I’m really glad I’d waited until this name was revealed, instead of only using Alcaeüs, which supposedly means “strength”, as his lone first name like I’d planned). As we know Stiles, though, neither of them is needed in order for him to reach glory :P

2. According to the original legend, Heracles actually has an average size body, and isn’t as well-built as the Romans fantasize him to be and as we imagine him to be today.

3. Heracles’ preferred weapon was a club, which is as close as it can get to  Stiles’ modern bat lol.

4. Like Stiles, some of Heracles’ most known features were being vengeful and preferring to kill anyone who stood in his way (though Stiles only suggests it) but also struggling a lot with guilt. He used his cunning skills in some of his labours, too.

5. In this interview with Jeff Davis, he stated that not only the show is inspired by Greek mythology, but Stiles itself is inspired about non other than another Greek Hero, Perseus (Heracles’ ancestor): “...He needed to be Perseus, given a sword and shield by the Gods, but he has to rely on his own wits when he faces the monster, in the same way Perseus chased Medusa and used his own wits to show her own reflection and turn her to stone. That is Stiles. You give him mountain ash, he can spread a circle around it, but he has to rely on his own wits as well.”

* mind you, I’d still write the thing even without Jeff proving that the legend fits Stiles and the Teen Wolf universe to perfectly, but as a real Sterek fan I take whatever little good he does leave to us and make the best out of it. In the end I didn’t even write him as Perseus, because it was Heracles’ legend that inspired me in the first place, and I preferred to give Stiles to go through the most legendary journey of them all (which is also why I didn’t go with the “legend repeating itself” trope). I did use the comparison in some instances in the fic, though, as the most known feature of both of them is cunning. 

But when we leave the plot aside and focus on the ship that really was the cause of it all (and fair warning: THIS FIC IS AS SLOW AS A SLOW BUILT CAN BE)- I’m a sucker for stories where a character’s mentally doesn’t for with the level of his power, and with that I could write the best story I could give to Stiles and Derek.

So with that’s done, let’s get to the chapter itself. ^^”

Myth and Historical Overview

Alcaeüs is the name Heracles was born with, before it was changed later on in his life to Heracles- though no one knows at which point it happened. A less common name that is associated with him is Alcides.

The story about Stiles lifting the car doesn’t represent anything in the legend of Heracles, who, unlike Stiles, was always aware of Zeus being his Father.

General Recap

Additional car scene to the Magic Bullet episode! :D This is the first scene I’ve written to the story, though I translated it after originally scrabbling it to myself during my time off at the office in Hebrew, my native language, before translating it later when I got it on my computer: 1 2 (HOW COULD I THOUGH, IT’S NOW SO WEIRD TO ME TO READ IT LIKE THIS XD also, there isn’t a good translation in Hebrew to the word “Dude”).

Poor Derek, though- everything crushes around him and he’s about to die, but he still had the patience to let Stiles take his time while telling about the tough parts T-T 

So yeah, in this universe Stiles finds out that Deaton knows stuff, but still prefers to treat Scott’s condition after the bite on his own at the beginning.

I find that scene with Scott to be adorable, and presenting what I wish their relationship will always be like in the canon, but don’t get your hopes up for something similar to that to happen again. I may write the story from Stiles’ POV, who is led by his incredible loyalty, but I don’t like Scott or his friendship with Stiles in canon, so prepare for subtle criticism at future parts.

The “incident” will be explained further in the story.

Fun Facts

The idea for the aura that Stiles came from S3B, where Derek sees Kira’s. It doesn’t have a shape like her for Derek to know what Stiles is, though.

Reading the first draft, apparently I planned for Stiles to know he is connected to the Greek Deities somehow- probably scene Heracles has always known about it according to the legend. I’m glad I changed that, though, because if Stiles knew enough to be aware of that- he’d figured out already about being a Demigod, and it could ruin... the drama, I guess? “XD

And that’s all for this time, since I don’t really have anything from the legend or history fact being used in that one. I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter and that you will with the rest too! ^^

And if you want to ask anything, feel free to send me!