#that scarf! and Thee hoop earrings

[jonathanhulten]

Jonathan Hultén during filming of his set for Metal Injection's "Slay at Home" initiative (22/12/2020)

(📸) by Jakob Johansson

[dathen]

Word Search

Characters:  Jonathan Sims & Sasha James Word count:  1,172 Spoilers:  None Other Tags:  Nonbinary Sasha, Nonbinary Jon, Agender Jon, Autistic Jon, Autistic Sasha Link on ao3

Summary: 

Despite the unwelcome shift his promotion brought to their interactions, rambling about linguistics with Jon was an easy pastime to fall back on. -- Featuring burgeoning Jon and Sasha friendship, mutual infodumping, and Fun with Gender (or lack thereof).  Set during early season 1; written for the @t4tma event.

Sasha fidgeted with her jewelry.  It wasn’t the usual nervous energy that she rode like an ocean wave while chasing down a lead or digging into a subject that snagged her attention.  No, today, she just felt...off.  Was it the new outfit?  It was a bit dressier than her usual trousers-and-cardigan style, with a full length skirt that she’d finally found to be long enough for her height, and a scarf that she bought for the soft texture alone.  Maybe it was the jewelry…?  But that was the same as she usually wore, and yet each time she passed the mirrors in the break room or washroom that off-balance feeling returned.  Finally, she gave in to the impulse to take off her earrings before snatching a file from her desk and marching towards Jon’s office.  A distraction would help.

“Found that statement you said was missing in the sequence, Jon,” Sasha announced as she opened the door and poked her head in.  (Oh good, he wasn’t recording.  Though she was pretty sure the others were exaggerating how grumpy Jon got when interrupted; he never seemed too bothered when she dropped by out of unannounced boredom.)  “Looks like it’s still missing a page, though—no translation with it.”

Sasha was surprised that Jon’s answering sigh didn’t send papers flying off his desk.  “If it was translated at all.  Nothing about the state of this place would surprise me,” he answered.  Jon took the offered file and peered at it with what was now a too-common scowl, but the sourness radiated exhaustion.

Oh, he was wearing earrings again today.  Small silver hoops not too different from a pair she saw Tim wear sometimes.  I wish I could look like that when I wear earrings.  She stomped on that thought with a short shake of her head.  Where on earth did that come from?    

“Looks like my staples were a good idea,” she pressed on with as much brightness as she could muster.  “At least if we get a translated copy, we can be sure it won’t get separated from the rest.”

The tired scowl melted into a tired smile. “Thank you, Sasha.  That has been a very helpful solution.”

The gratitude in his voice stifled the usual irritation she felt at being called "helpful" by someone she’d seen fidgeting before his first interview with Mr. Bouchard.  How someone who’d been hired during her fourth year here ended up with her dream job...no, she wasn’t in the mood to wallow in that on top of everything.  Instead, she flopped down into the chair across from him.  “Mandarin, looks like.  Don’t we have a sister institute in Beijing?  The Pu Songling Research Centre?  Maybe it’s from their archives.”

Jon hummed.  “We can inquire if they originally lent it to the Institute; I don’t know if they translate to other languages in their collection, but perhaps they could put us in touch with someone who can…?”

“Either that or run it through the ol’ google translate.  My Mandarin is a bit rusty.”  At that Jon laughed, a tight-lipped huff of a thing.  He used to laugh a lot more before his promotion, and she found she missed it.  Sasha grinned before she continued.  “I did try learning some once!  When I was sixteen.  I thought the writing was so nice, and wanted to impress my Gran.  Didn’t last long, though.”  

“I’ve heard it’s remarkably difficult to learn,” he said.  

“Oh, for sure.  Switching to French was easier, though I wasn’t a fan of memorizing word genders for everything.”  Her thoughts skipped ahead a step or two, and she found herself adding, “Did you know that Mandarin only has a single pronoun for all genders?”

Predictably, Jon brightened and sat up in his chair, suddenly looking like someone who’d slept sometime in the past few days.  Despite the unwelcome shift his promotion brought to their interactions, rambling about linguistics with Jon was an easy pastime to fall back on.  “Is that so?”  

“Yup!  I won’t pretend that the rest of the grammar wasn’t brutal, but that almost made me jealous, you know?” Sasha answered, toying with the edge of the cardboard folder.

Jon’s attention was like a physical weight.  “Jealous how?”

“Dunno, I kind of wish English had something similar, you know?  Instead of needing words that say right out ‘I’m a woman’ or ‘I’m a man!’”  She kept her voice light, but shifted in the stiff-backed chair.  Sasha hadn’t expected the sudden discomfort, but saying the words aloud felt suddenly vulnerable, like pressing a finger just beside an old bruise—just enough to ache.

The Encyclopedia Look immediately fell over Jon’s face (apparently, according to Tim, Sasha had one too; she wondered if it was as obvious as his).  “You know, even in English some people use singular ‘they’ for their pronouns.  It’s been used as a singular gender-neutral pronoun for hundreds of years; examples easily date back to the fourteenth century.  Did you know that ‘you’ used to be plural as well?”

“I did know that!  And formal, too—it’s funny to think how ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ were the informal means of address.”  Sasha forced down the urge to continue the thought; English shedding the formality divisions in its grammar was a subject she could talk about for hours, but she was curious where this was going.  “Still, I had my papers marked up with enough use ‘he or she,’ not ‘they’! back in secondary to know I can’t get away with it now.”

“That’s changing,” said Jon with a sudden fervor.  “And besides, people aren’t research papers.”

Sasha hesitated, that off-balance feeling suddenly returning.  It wasn’t discomfort this time, but why did it suddenly feel so personal?

Jon seemed to notice her faltering.  “O-of course, it’s not the only way to depart from the binary,” he rushed on.  “I mean, I still use 'he/him' because those are comfortable for me, and—“  He froze, eyes flicking towards the wall before he picked up the statement and held it in front of him like a shield.  “A-anyway, ah...yes.  If someone asked me, I’d have no issue using ‘they’ for someone who asked me.  Regardless of what the Chicago Manual of Style has to say about it.”

It didn’t seem to be a pointed comment (except a grudge against the style guide), but Sasha felt the sudden conviction it was meant for her, even if Jon didn’t mean it for her.  Sasha felt the familiar bite of curiosity that she knew wouldn’t let go, but for once she wasn’t sure if it was directed outwards or inwards.  But Jon looked a bit flustered, still feigning interest in the unreadable document in his hands, and it was getting near the time that she agreed to meet Tim for lunch.  “Good to know,” she answered easily, then tapped the top of the statement. “I’d best get back to work—let me know if you hear back from the Research Centre.”

She had some thinking to do.

------

Thank you to the Magnus Writers discord for answering the absurd amount of questions and fact-checking I somehow needed for a 1k word fic, to evanescentjasmine and Ixempt for the beta reads, and to TheDeafProphet for inspiring the concept! Also an extra shout-out to the Magnus Writers mod team for being my own Linguistics Mutual Infodumping Squad. 

[colony22graphics]

DRUNK MAN’S CHEST ⚔️ ORSON HURST

Orson wasn’t really planning on dressing up too much. He didn’t have the energy to try to find an actual costume, so he went to the Hub and just picked up a piece of mostly scrap linen in a lavender colour that happened to pop out at him. He figured it would make for a good sash, and he’d just... figure out the rest later. 

But when he was getting dressed, everything sort of... fell into place? Nothing about his final look was especially  ‘text book’ pirate, but he supposed that didn’t matter. He used the black blazer he wore for the Awards ceremony and rolled up the sleeves to make it feel more casual. He put on most of the jewelry he owned: an assortment of silver necklaces, and then a small silver feather earring on one side, and a tiny silver hoop on the other. (These, he’d fished out from deep in some of his things that he never wore and hardly ever looked at, anymore—the things from his more confident days, the things that invited conversation, that made him look like the kind of person you could come up and talk to—after the onset of his delusion, he’d put them all away and, for the most part, totally forgotten about them. He’d actually had to re-pierce his ears tonight with a pin he heated up over a candle flame. There’s a small dot of blood on the sheets by his bedside table serving as proof.) 

He threw on some regular black trousers and a pair of beat up black boots, then tied his favourite purple scarf around the back of his head. Lastly, he’d pulled on some of his nicer, black leather gloves and had been almost out the door when Marcel (’Hamlet’, at the time) had stopped him to lend him a simple silver bracelet and one of his belts. ‘There. Perfect,’ he’d said with a wistful smile. ‘Now, off with thee! Beest merry!’

[deviiancetv]

Mine and Everyone’s Problems with Tik Tok

This is kind of a LONG overdue rant on my personal view of the sudden surge in Tik Tok’s popularity. I’ve always had my own problems with Tik Tok and it all stems from the type of platform it has become for a lot of people. Tik Tok to some maybe fun and expressive to create whatever you want, but there are issues that’d need to be talked about. In this argument I will express my true feelings about Tik Tok and why I hate this app so much, but still continue to use it. There’s multiple different apps you can use if you do not want to have your data tracked, put up with the drama and controversy from this app, I will list ALL of them down below.

The Chinese Government:

So, I’m sure we’ve all seen or heard people from the news and news articles talk about the Chinese government tracking and collecting our data when we use that app. And I’m sure this is a very true thing since China is very good at tracking what their citizens use and since we use this app so much (which is an app they created) then we might as well fall in-line with them. But honestly, America does the same thing, so it’s like the pot calling the kettle black in my opinion.

The “Pretty” Algorithm:

If you’ve witnessed your “For You Page” then you’ve probably seen that almost every last person you’ve seen is blessed to have a physically good looking face/body. “Abnormal body shapes, chubby, obese, or too thin.” They also axed people with “Ugly facial looks,” “disformatted” faces, missing teeth, and old people with “too many wrinkles.” This is all mostly due to Tik Tok wanting to reduce the stress of bullying and cyber-harassment for people who might be less fortunate in the looks department. Along with this, is the ideal standards of putting white people as the mascots for this app and only very rarely giving credit and love to those whom are POC. This brings me to my next point... The unoriginality.

The Unoriginality/Stealing POC Content:

Tik Tok is a breeding ground for many young teens and 21 year olds who love comedy, dancing, art, lip syncing and DIY projects. But all of these categories have been stolen from previously existing apps such as Vine, Triller/Dubsmash, Musical.ly (the predecessor) and YouTube. This plus the unoriginal copying of others videos such as the same sound effects, editing effects, etc. it’s more so staplized a culture of people who copy others ideas and use it as their own content without giving credit to the original creator. One huge issue within Tik Tok’s dance community is the original creator of the “Renegade” dance. The creator of the dance is a young black girl from Atlanta by the name of Jalaiah Harmon. For a long while when the dance was in its prime she had never been credited for creating this dance. Another black content creator on the app Keara Wilson, she is the creator of the Savage dance, the dance that was inspired by Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion. As of now she only has 431.4K likes on her page, all the while the white influencers on the app have amassed millions upon millions of views and likes for recreating the dance and some of these influencers lack crediting her for her dance.

The Offensive Culture:

Like stated above, Tik Tok has really began to profit off of the more stereotypical side of black and latinx culture with the “Hot Cheeto Girl” POV videos. These videos will include young people of any racial ethnicity or any sex/gender wearing long eyelashes, hoop earrings, slicked edges, big lips with lip gloss, exaggerated nails, and head scarfs. They try to enhance the wrong stereotypes of black women and chula latina women by being “loud, ratchet, ghetto, and using improper language”. If that doesn’t scream racist, shall I introduce you to a white influencer on the app known as Lil Huddy who uses the N-word.

IG: @fuxkma.tt

My Closing Thoughts:

In some ways, Tik Tok can be a great app to come up on and make a name for yourself. Every new social media app always runs into problems like these. I’ve always hated Instagram for how much it loves to promote unrealistic standards of beauty and the likes competition. And now the app has went back to solely being creatively driven by hiding likes (which was amazing for my own mental health). Every app, even Tumblr has its struggles. I know mostly people from my generation Gen-Z and Millennials love using Tik Tok because it’s what’s trendy, but trends do not last long and whatever offensive, inappropriate statement or video you’ve made will be on the internet forever. I think it’s more so important that we show what types of people shouldn’t be broadcasted on the app and leave room for more likability.

Alternative TikTok Apps:

YouTube Shorts- This isn’t a released app yet, but YouTube is making a competitor app against Tik Tok coming later this year.

byte- This is the actual successor of Vine created by Dom, the creator of Vine. It’s still a new app, but it’s a alright.

Dubsmash- A dancing app similar to Tik Tok, but less controversial lol.

Triller- A dancing app like Dubsmash that’s pretty popular to use.

Instagram Reels- Instagram’s TikTok imitator

Oevo- An imitator app of Vine

Vigo Video- It’s the international app used by people in other countries for short videos.

Sources:

National Security

Renegade Dance

Savage Dance

Hot Cheeto Girl

Chase “LilHuddy” Hudson

Pretty Privilege on TikTok