#the audio is a bit clipped I think so for context

[slythereen]

if checo had a nickel for every time a fellow driver gripped his collar and awakened something in him, he’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice | via mclaren

[lurkingteapot]

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

[midnightbears]

✿ tell 'em how the crowds went wild! tell 'em how i hope they shine!

⎯ in which you look back on how grateful you are for the opportunity bestowed upon you. aka: you joined the opla's cast!

#STARRING. iñaki godoy, mackenyu, jacob romero, taz skylar, emily rudd ft. fem!reader [elle fanning 4 faceclaim but u can imagine y/n anyway u wish!].

#TAGS. sfw, kind of context, a bit of smau but its tiny. mentions of covid just in case it's triggering?

#NOTE. pardon my rusty writing but i really wanted to get this out!!! i added an oc from one piece for the sake of the story but she's barely mentioned so uuuh yuh! timeline may be wrong but i work with what i'm given please bear with me. let me know if you would like more fics of this y/n??? ALSO IGNORE THE WATERMARKS ON THE PHOTOS I NEEDED TO MAKE THEM NEATER

© midnightbears on tumblr, apr 2024. please do not repost to another platform, plagiarize, translate, use for AI-related purposes or claim as your own.

In the past, if someone were to come up to you and tell you that you’d be a part of the One Piece Live Action main cast in the future, you would’ve probably laughed in their faces despite your wishful thinking.

At that time, you were content with your work, doing short theatre plays with companies or gaining minor roles in musicals. Everything changed when you landed the role for the one-woman show Fleabag for a limited time on London’s West End after the leading actress underwent emergency surgery for an appendectomy. You only acted as the sex-obsessed mess of a woman for about three weeks, but it was enough time for people to notice you, to really see you.

You believed your career had reached its pinnacle when you were cast as Katherine Howard in Six: The Musical in London. Your name had become somehow well-known in the musical theatre world, and you had a small but dedicated fan base who liked uploading edits of you being a dork during the Megasix on YouTube and TikTok. 

Months later, you were bound to play as Fantine for Les Miserables when COVID abruptly struck, and you were dismayed that your job was ripped from you so abruptly. Your best friend, the sweetest person on earth, insisted on you moving in with her in fear that you’d be evicted from your apartment.

Months passed, and you eventually found a small way to help your friend pay rent by offering singing and acting lessons online to musical-aspiring teenagers. Since you had gained many followers from your earlier work on social media, it didn’t surprise you when the classes became sold out.

Your friend also convinced you to create a YouTube channel for you to upload videos of yourself (sometimes joined by her) where you watched and commented shitty movies, followed DIY tutorials just for the fun of it, performed covers of your favorite songs, and just generally vlogged your life (along with reactions to Taylor Swift’s (From The Vault) songs).

At first, you thought it was pretty stupid, but you were delightfully proved wrong when your videos harbored over 200k-300k views on a bad day, so you found no reason to stop as COVID-19 continued, growing to gain a little over five hundred thousand followers. Your reactions were often used for TikTok audios or clips, so you found your popularity growing and evolving during that year.

You believed yourself to be a general, simple woman. People liked you because you were elegant and levelheaded, although you could sometimes be chaotic. You also had a subtle sense of humor that many found charming. But mostly, you grew a steady fan base because your videos and presence comforted countless young adults and teenagers.

You were an optimist and a reassuring one, so during the times when COVID was so prominent, people sought refuge from the monstrosities of the world in your videos, where you seemed to connect with them even though you were on the other side of the screen.

However, everything changed somewhere in 2020-2021. That evening, your best friend got home from work with excitement practically oozing out of her every pore. You and your best friend were avid anime watchers and manga readers, so you couldn’t help the face you made when she told you that One Piece was getting a live-action.

Although you were skeptical, your friend practically insisted you send an audition tape. You grimaced at that. It was well-known that live anime actions were almost always corny and cringeworthy compared to the original work, and people never liked them. You had learned that much from Death Note and a couple of others. However, your best friend convinced you with this argument:

“If it’s that bad, then at least you’ll gain more followers out of the memes that people will make, and if it’s good, you’ll still get famous anyway!”

Eventually, you sent a video of you performing one of the lengthy monologues from Fleabag to your agency and simply hoped for the best. Your friend was practically rooting for you to get the role of Anastasia, one of the first integrants of the Straw Hat crew, joining before Sanji and after Usopp. You adored her as she greatly reminded you of your late mother, although you would be happy with any role.

Somewhere in November 2021, you remember a lot of screaming and crying. When you try to look back on it, all you remember is the happiness you felt when you received confirmation of the role of Anastasia. You were practically over the moon, and you and your friend celebrated inside your small apartment. You were entirely alone, just two drunk girls dancing and cheering, until one of the neighbors knocked on the ceiling with a broom.

liked by inakigo, emilyrudd and 574,949 others

yourusername actually lost for words and filled to the brim with gratitude...... i cannot express how excited i am to play my girl anastasia and bring her to life. from the bottom of my heart, thank you to everyone who has supported me. your faith in me means everything. congrats to iñaki, emily, jacob, mackenyu and taz, thank you to onepiecenetflix, thank you to my best friend for convincing me to audition for the role, and thank you, oda sensei, for putting anastasia's heart in my hands. love u all <3

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November 10, 2021

y/nsfanclub.02, AAAAAAAA SO EXCITED FOR THIS I ACTUALLY CANT BELIEVE IT

⤷ starl6ighwnb, LIKE FR IM GNAWING AT THE BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE THIS IS INSANE

user8392y3r927y, HELLO YOUR GRACE ANASTASIA

inakigo, Congrats!!!!!!!!

taz_skylar, 🔥🔥🔥

The One Piece fan base dearly loved the character of Anastasia, a well-mannered, bubbly, upbeat, fashion-loving duchess who always spoke in a Transatlantic accent but also had a quick wit and a bit of a sweet tooth. Anastasia’s dream was to become the most dangerous pirate to ever grace the seas and prove everyone who doubted her wrong.

Of course, with a big character came a big responsibility.

Sometimes, insecurity nearly got the better of you. You had to fill huge shoes, and there were many people to convince and impress. However, your love for this project was bigger than the gnawing uncertainty on the back of your neck, so you continued strongly until the end of Season One, finding comfort in your cast mates and the countless people who counted on you and, most importantly, believed in you.

Oda handpicked you, and that argument alone was enough to shoot any insecurities away.

Well, needless to say, people loved you!

Critics acclaimed your portrayal of the character, as well as the commendable chemistry you shared with the rest of the cast. The fans found it incredibly funny that your character was the complete opposite of how you actually acted in real life, and you often found yourself blissfully immersed in the fan base's love and praise.

Your channel and social media suddenly grew tenfold. Although you had stopped uploading videos every week due to the recording of season one, your followers were more than happy to wait for your return, and as one would expect, they were thrilled to have you back once you did upload a vlog explaining everything.

Over the course of the six months, you had been recording from time to time for a YouTube video in the set. Previously, you had asked the producers for permission to record some behind-the-scenes for your channel and your usual interactions with the rest of the cast with your personal Sony camera, as you felt it would be a nice way to bring the fans and the cast closer.

The producers gave the okay on the condition that you would wait until the first season aired on Netflix. You happily agreed and carefully began recording some scenes of your dressers and hairdressers as they prepared you, a few shots of your instructor showing you how you were supposed to use the guns that Anastasia employed... simple things.

Back in the day, you were still getting acquainted with the other cast members, and you didn't want to seem rude by forcibly making them appear on your videos, so you waited for a few weeks until you could properly call yourself companions. Then, you invited them to appear in the videos.

Iñaki, Taz, and Jacob liked to take advantage of the little free time they had between scenes they didn't appear in to innocently steal your camera and use it to their heart's content. One day, you got home only to find the memory card was completely full. It was an extensive video of them walking around the set, with Taz recording while Kiki and Jacob pointed out random stuff to the people who lived inside your camera, as Jacob liked to call them.

Mackenyu, being more reserved and introverted, mostly liked to act as a cameraman for you as you showed the props you used and other things, often making comments or turning the camera around whenever you referred to something.

Meanwhile, Emily had a natural knack for being in front of the camera. Whenever you asked her to join in, she effortlessly slipped into the co-host role, bantering with you and adding her own insights into the behind-the-scenes world of the show.

With the first season out of the way, you took the time to carefully pick what videos you wanted to use in the final tape, and it took you a little over a month and a half to properly edit it and turn it into a wonderful thirty-minute-long behind-the-scenes. You even sent it to the producers and your co-stars in case there was a scene they wanted deleted. Fortunately, they all gave you the okay.

You teased the video a bit on your Instagram before uploading it a few days later, and the support it received was out of this world. It gained over two million views and hundreds of thousands of likes.

You were kind of expecting this. While some BTS had already been uploaded on YouTube, yours was different because you were showing it from your perspective. The fans loved every second of it, and even started asking for a second or third part. You even saw new videos on YouTube of recompilations from your video with the titles being silly things like The One Piece Cast Being Chaotic for Seven Minutes.

At that moment, your life felt so full. You were getting contacted by industries who wanted you to appear on their videos and their stages, thousands of fans who loved you, and a feeling so peculiar that this would be eternal.

liked by taz_skylar, morganlogoff and 1,523,199 others

yourusername missing my wig and my gang hours ☹️

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November 10, 2023

morganlogoff, love love love you💗💗💗

curlikaqy, NO ONE KNOWS I'M YOUR BIGGEST FAN

emilyrudd, GIRL I WANT TO SEE YOU COME BACK TO AMERICA

bookofjacob, missing your camera hours💔

[meraki-yao]

RWRB: A list of thoughts on the Campfire Scene

Ok I went to sleep for another hour to calm myself down and now I can form coherent thoughts about the scene and not just scream and squeal

It's a three-minute scene with two shots. The first shot is a little over two minutes

When Alex asks his question, Henry, who was looking into the fire, tilts his head towards Alex as if to listen better. After Alex finishes, Henry looks up towards the sky, like he's wondering how to answer

Alex doesn't really react to Henry's "Once upon a time" even though he's not directly answering Alex's question. He just listens, and that's such a beautiful thing

Nick deserves a round of applause for this scene, his monologue was two minutes long, and monologues are really hard to perform because it's just you who keeps talking, you don't really get to react to other things or people, it's just you, so Nick is a fantastic job

Nick's delivery and tone, and the way he sometimes ends a sentence a bit like a question (ex: "acutely") makes it sound like Henry's been thinking about this story/ metaphor for a while but this is the first time he ever verbalizes it, so while he knows what he wants to talk about thus he doesn't need to pause a lot to think of the story, he does occasionally need to think of the next word or line because again, he never actually said any of this out loud before, and Nick does that so well

@pippin-katz pointed out that Nick misspoke and said "sent the suit a prince of armour" which is hilarious, and while because movie, this shouldn't happen, realistically we all have moments where we mix words up so it almost feels more... authentic? Also, I didn't pick it up but now that Pippin mentioned it I'm really aware of it lmao

Also Henry/Nick's voice here is so soothing? I can almost imagine him telling bedtime stories to his and Alex's kids like this in the future. I wonder if Henry would write children's books because it feels like it'd be something he do and something he could write really well, if this clip is anything to go by. Plus I stumbled across an audio of Nick reading "The Emperor's New Clothes" before (I literally have no context of why he was reading that and it was literally just audio, not sure if I can find it anymore) and it was so soothing and calming that I fell asleep to it one night. Besides the full-cast RWRB audiobook that I'm practically demanding at this point, I wonder if he would be interested in doing more audiobook/narration stuff. He's really got the voice for it

The King sending a suit of armour to protect the prince's heart kind of further proves my point of the King being a much more loving grandparent to Henry than the queen in the book, and him worrying more about Henry himself than the image of the crown. He noticed that 1, Henry is an emotionally sensitive person, 2, Henry is gay, and both of those things could be turned against him easily, and he will get hurt. He does love Henry, just not in a way that's good for Henry. If we get a sequel I do hope we can see them reconcile in one way or another. It'd be a nice example for people in the same positions.

The "Nothing will ever happen to him" line!!!! I wrote a whole essay about Kensington and this line because somehow this line was one of the most powerful ones to me, but to know that it was originally Henry's word just adds another level of pain to the Kensington scene

You can see Henry's face light up when he starts talking about the peasant boy. And Alex's quick eyebrow raise and deep chuckle. It's so beautiful, I wanna cry

We talk about Alex's heart eyes, which, yes, but Henry's look of pure adoration and love at Alex when he says "Truly Alive" makes me want to melt

I yelled a little at Alex when he started to lay back down (as in I verbally shouted "DAMMIT ALEX LOOK AT YOUR MAN") because I felt like if Alex saw Henry's face in the following lines he'd figure out Henry has issues earlier? But then I saw a take saying the shot was framed like theatre where Henry's both centre stage and in the spotlight so the focus is on him, so Alex was designed to lay back down on the timber bench to make the entire space for Henry

Henry's look of sad longing when he talks about the peasant boy pulling apart his armor is heartbreaking

I wonder if this was originally planned to be the changing point from Alex's POV to Henry's POV? Because in that case I do think the lake scene worked better as a changing point

I also wonder how did Henry end the story in his head up to this point? Because as hopefully as the last line is, at this point in the story, Henry still doesn't believe he can keep this

I get why scenes are cut because when you're putting together a movie, there are a lot of things you don't see for individual scenes until you put them together. This is why as much as I want the cast and crew to get the premiere they deserve to have, I don't really want an extended cut of the movie, because things were cut for a good reason

That being said, if the cornetto scene and this scene proved anything, is that the scenes themselves are fascinating, and I WANT THEM ALL

[dostoyevsky-official]

You know Mandarin??

sometime in the spring of this year i kept encountering the idea on other social media that chinese is impossible to learn for europeans, that it's too difficult, that no westerner can learn or truly understand it, and in combination with a mainland friend visiting and telling me the ancient chinese etymology of some basic characters (and the 白人饭 Lunch of Suffering meme) i got fed up/enchanted and did the extremely mentally healthy thing of teaching myself basic mandarin, through about ~april to july. at some points in may i remember coming home from work, scribbling characters in my mandarin notebook over and over, doing chores, going to sleep, and repeating the cycle. a taiwanese friend on here helped out with a lot (it's much, much easier if you have chinese friends to help you, however, i am really not about traditional, although i admit it's more beautiful) and baptized me with a chinese name.

i don't know mandarin, and at this point a lot of the characters i'd learned have faded from memory, but i insist that it's not actually difficult to learn chinese (up to a point— maybe HSK 3 or 4 is where it gets really difficult). in fact, learning chinese is really, really fun.

the difficulty lies in the fact that you have to do it every single day for at least an hour, probably for more (i spent pretty much all my free time on it, but there was something not normal going on with me then). you'd think, isn't that the case for every language? yet i don't remember doing daily french like that, and i consider some aspects of french conjugation/russian grammar much more difficult than what chinese throws at you at similar difficulty levels (good luck with motion verbs, non-slavic speakers). i found learning characters to be very, very easy. they're all distinct. if you learn them together with their etymology, looking at ancient chinese and how they developed along with associated idioms, it's endlessly rewarding. at least in the early levels, there's a bit of a system to how characters and words come together and increase in complexity—sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's cute. it's a breath of fresh air to start reading even basic sentences and idioms in a language so entirely different from anything you've experienced before. many people say speaking chinese is easier than reading/writing: in my experience, that's false. i barely started getting a grasp on the tonal system (my goal was to get to HSK 1 solely through written chinese); i remember listening to the same 2 minute audio clip of two people exchanging phone numbers for half an hour or something once before getting everything right. people say "chinese doesn't have grammar" but that's not true, because otherwise it won't be a language at all, though you don't have to learn any conjugations, declensions, etc. at HSK 1-2 you just throw a modifier/particle into a sentence and you're good to go.

the other main difficulty besides tones is that imo chinese culture is borderline impenetrable if you want to have a genuine stab at it (but for this you don't, necessarily, need to learn mandarin). you can learn HSK 1-2 in a few months or a semester, but it will take you years to genuinely understand the cultural context—there truly is no context clue or familiar idea you can latch on to, as opposed to when learning a european language/history, or even turkish, arabic, persian; there is nothing in common here, and if you guess, you'll probably wind up wrong. it all makes me think of how many journalists/experts get russia wrong: i now firmly do not believe a word of what people write about asia unless i find the author knows the language

anyway

[gnomeniche]

SO. OKAY. "SILLY SAD DUCK" TALK BECAUSE IT HAS ME IN THE BIRDMANGELION MINES. welcome back to the corner where i spin conspiracy theories about duck.

so, "silly sad duck" was a bonus track from a dhmis album that was sent out to backers of the kickstarter in 2017. so it's pre-pilot and pre-tv show, which is important because i'm interested in this song in the context of the creators' ideas for where they could take dhmis and duck in particular.

this motherfucker's gonna get real fuckin speculative. and rambly. i'm very sorry i need to get all my thoughts out and it's the middle of the night so the structure's loose.

let's start out with some analysis of the song itself and the rest of dhmis surrounding it. the thing that immediately stands out is that this song, which is placed after every other song on the album, is about duck being "sad because he can't find his friends".

first of all. this was the last mental state we saw him in, and his fear of losing his friends keeps coming up in later dhmis media.

second of all. this kind of highlights how different his end was from his friends'?

like red and yellow were alive but isolated in relatively coherent false worlds, but as far as we know, duck just fucking died. and if he didn't, we don't know where he could have been. even the world he woke up in when he was being eaten was ambiguous.

a lot about his final moments were ambiguous. the metaphor is clear but the literal meaning of it is hazy. and he only appeared in the finale due to the machine glitching and bringing him out of... whatever limbo he went to after his consumption. this song's context, too, is ambiguous, and it makes significant use of audio glitches and distortion.

and like. this isn't the only time in post-original-series-dhmis that they've highlighted duck's existence relating oddly to the world's resets and the enforced narrative.

in the pilot he keeps repeating "i've lived in this town my whole life!" for seemingly no reason. this running gag is one of many reminders in the pilot that the three of them were somewhere BEFORE clayhill and they just can't remember. him insistently, dreamily saying it at odd occasions gives off the feeling that something about him has been thrown off. pilot!red gets flashes of awareness, but pilot!duck is strangely and pointedly unaware, as if he had been overwritten a little too forcibly. maybe due to both the shock of his death and how he disrupted the show so badly?

besides that, there's the connection between how he's pulled along by the antagonist of the pilot and how in the tv series he seems the least comfortable with throwing off the narrative. something about resets and death and punishments and replacements (though he's still the same even though he was replaced).

and SPEAKING of the whole replacement-but-does-it-really-matter thing, that's one of the weird interactions between duck's existence and the narrative in the tv show! along with that bit in the "electricity" blackout where there's his headless corpse next to a tv with a clip of him waving out at the screen that we've never seen before. which is another instance of duck in an ambiguous space. hm.

speaking of narrative, what's with the singer? who are they?

the singer acts like a narrator for the audience's benefit and maintains a warm, teacherly tone toward the student. the way they reads their lines gives the impression that they are doing the voice for duck; they inhale before the duck voice speaks its first line of gibberish. the dynamic of being a puppet on a show is extremely visible in this song.

to me, this gives off shades of lesley, our amiable narrator/puppeteer. i feel like this singer might have been some kind of precursor to her character. it could have been an early draft of an in-universe "show host" or "writer" presence, or it could have been a device that they used for this one song that later sparked the idea for the lesley character. but either way i think there's some kind of inspirational connection.

and the phrase "silly sad duck" itself... "silly" and "sad" are both fundamental to duck's character the way i interpret him. silly to deflect fears that may make him sad. however: how does the singer mean it? given how every other teacher in dhmis acts, they could very well be chiding him for being sad. saying that he's silly for grieving his loss? his sadness is silly?

and the singer's way of treating his loss as a cute little children's show (bc there’s a lot of these sweet-style little kids shows where a narrator speaks to an animated character as they do stuff! examples escape me rn though) might also serve to minimize legitimate pain in the characters as insigificant. which is a recurring theme with the authority figures in dhmis but i just wanna note its appearance here.

and the most important question: who IS that over there?

option 1: it's the other two! bc they came back once red pulled the plug and reset the show. he found his friends! the sweetness of this option IS undermined by the ominous deepening distortion of the narrator's voice at the end, but is the ending of dhmis not ALSO ambiguously sweet vs ominous. this does beg the question: is this song an in-universe thing. in the time between between his death and the plug pulling, was duck in some kind of puppet limbo where the meta of the show (where he's a puppet guided by a narrator) was a little thinner? if that's true, it would make sense with the increased meta associations of duck in later dhmis media.

option 2: it's NOT the other two. "who is it then" i don't know. but whatever it is, it can't be good. here's some sub-options:

2a: the audience? duck alludes to an audience a couple of times in a new series, and the clip of him on the tv in the blackout is waving at the screen and thus the watchers.

2b: a replacement? the first time his consciousness got transferred to another one of himself?

2c: another meta "puppeteer" figure like roy or lesley? maybe the featureless figures who are behind the cameras in "computers" and moving the puppets in "electricity"?

2d: a metaphorical thing of him realizing that the singer of the song is a separate person whose existence is weirdly enmeshed with his own? this one's probably too abstract but

so now we get to what i think it might mean regarding how the creators developed their ideas for the dhmis series. obvious disclaimer that i am not the creators and i cannot read their minds. this is just speculation.

this and the pilot are both two of the first pieces of post-original-series dhmis content, and they both show a strong focus on duck. which is very interesting to me. it couldn't have escaped the creators' notice that duck had a strange ending in the original series; both the pilot and the tv show constantly reference it.

this song focuses on duck's fear of being left alone. which is obv drawn from "health" (i've given up on calling it “food” bc the tracklist for the album calls the webseries 5 song "the healthy song"). but this trait keeps coming up in media released after this song was made? in the pilot, it's not explicit, but the way he's so easily able to be lured with the idea of keeping everything in the town secure could relate to this fear. and in the tv series, many of his negative reactions are spurred by his fears for his friends). and though we saw these traits in "health," what's interesting is that this song indicates a decision to keep and commit to this as a part of his character.

given this song's... everything... and how threads of its ideas keep running through the rest of dhmis, i really do feel like the creators have had the vague idea of something they want to do with duck's character development and and the narrative for a long time. in general, i think they've had many fairly consistent ideas for the direction of dhmis that they've been trying to shape across different iterations. like the whole "narrative is manipulating the protagonists and they will have to shatter it" thing

so, it's very interesting to me that duck's consequences of his own death, ambiguous existence within the world, and certain core character traits have seemingly been around for so long that they all come up in this bonus song from 2017.

just to be clear: i am not saying that the creators have had everything about dhmis planned out since the beginning. i truly do not think so. i just think it’s interesting to track the development of their ideas as they figured it out over time n what they decided to keep vs throw out. and i think it’s cool that you can kind of see it in these different stages of the show

anyway (pins all this up on a conspiracy board labeled with the words "get hype for birdmangelion" in huge block letters)

[eldrai]

I’ve been reading lots of stuff about autistic Hotch. How do you think Hotch stims? Are there any gifs/examples from episodes?

OKAY so this is going to be a long list because I just went back through the episodes I've seen up to specifically looking for examples! But thank you for asking. I've been meaning to collect examples somewhere.

(I'll preface this with saying that everyone stims and just because I mention something here doesn't mean anyone is automatically autistic because they do that too.)

The main thing I can think of is what I very descriptively call "the hand thing" he does.

This is probably the clearest example of it in a gif I could find. What I mean is the way he rubs his thumb over the ends of his fingers. I see it as a fairly subtle way to stim and it tends to come up mostly when he's either thinking or stressed. That's the main thing I've picked up on because he does it quite a lot; I haven't gone over the earlier episodes specifically yet - only skimmed certain parts based on the incidences of it I found going through screencaps from @masterwords - it seems most prevalent in the earlier seasons.

A few more examples - they don't all have the actual motion in them but you can see his fingers curled up like that. He also brings his hand up near his face somewhat often, again usually when he's thinking.

He also does it a ton while walking and standing in general. Some more screenshots (thanks again @masterwords)

Two occasions stick out to me, both when he was distressed or highly worried at least. First is in Omnivore (4x18). It isn't strictly the thumb-over-the-fingers but it is similar, with his hand balled up and almost hiding his face at first.

And the second I really like because we get the hand stim very clearly but also rocking! It's in 2x08, when Derek refuses to step away from the lady with a bomb under her car. Please ignore the choppy editing and audio lol I just needed to show this:

Here we also see the same thing he does in the above gif of 4x18 - the teeth grinding. I think that's only when he's under a fair bit of distress though.

I've been keeping track of it from now on partly because one day I'm going to compile everything into one absurdly long meta. So I've undoubtedly missed many times and my timings might be a little off but here's some if you want to see examples:

LDSK - 11:23

3x15 - 3:00

1x08 - bomb + rocking

2x15 -

5x03 - start + middle

7x07 - tapping

3x12 - 6min

3x11 - 22min

2x23 - 6min + 30min

2x19 - 39min

2x08 - 31min + earlier

2x05 - 29min

2x02 - 37min

1x21 - 30min

1x16 - 17min

4x18 - after bus

9x06 - 24min with pen

9x08 - 8min 10s

9x09 -5min 30s, 7:57, 22:40

9x11 - 29:46

9x13 - 6:55

9x14 - 4:40, 29:50

As you can see, it's the most noticeable for me in the early seasons. 9x06 was around when I started keeping track as I watch, not retrospectively, for context.

Not all of these are the hand thing! Some are things like when he picks up a pen he tends to keep it in hand even when he's not actually writing anything, just slightly fiddling with it constantly. And again that's nowhere near JUST an autistic thing but I notice it in addition to the main hand thing.

Another thing is, mostly when he's anxious and holding something like a phone, he'll tap his fingers lightly against it. I have a clip of him somewhere on my blog doing it in 7x07.

There's also what he does with his hands when he isn't stimming that's interesting to me.

Hotch spends a lot of time with his arms either crossed or his hands in his pockets. Often the hand thing and the crossed arms happen at the same, where he'll have his right arm across his chest and with his left running his thumb over his fingers.

I find it really interesting because I read that as trying not to stim. Because if his hands are in his pocket, he can't. If he's got his arms folded, he can't. I'd imagine it fits well with him and his backstory. He's quite reserved in general so it makes sense he wouldn't want to stim very openly even if it's a subtle thing, and then you add in the implications from 1x08 and it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine he was discouraged, whether consciously or not, not to.

Then again, it could also simply be a comfort thing to do something with his hands rather than not stimming. Could be counted as stimming itself - something like pressure.

But in order of most to least frequent, the canon stimming I see from him is

The hand thing

Fidgeting with pens, etc.

Teeth grinding

Rocking

[wingsoverlagos]

Lewisohn vs. Sheff, revisited

David Sheff's 1980 interview of John and Yoko was the first source I thoroughly plumbed for comparison to Mark Lewisohn's Tune In. It was interesting, engaging, and, most importantly, available at my library, so I picked it as my not-quite-arbitrary starting point.

My source was All We Are Saying (2000), the book made of this interview transcript. At the time, I was asked if there was a chance the discrepencies I'd found were actually errors or changes on the part of Sheff. I didn't think it was likely. In two of his citations to this source, Lewisohn notes transcription errors in All We Are Saying, so surely he would've done that with any other errors he encountered.

Wrong! I came across a YouTube video with 3+ hours of audio from this interview, which allowed me to properly check several of these citations against the source. This is not the full interview audio--I believe it's a supercut of the clips from the Sheff interview that were used in Elliot Mintz's Lost Lennon Tapes radio series--but roughly half of the quotes Lewisohn used are included.

Most of the differences I found between the audio/All We Are Saying were minor, with one exception. I've taken down my original posts and compiled all my updated comparisons here. I've retained some of the images from All We Are Saying where I feel they are still useful in addition to my own transcripts/links to the available audio.

I'll lead with that "one exception", and put the other updates under a cut. This is the notorious "Hitting females" quote, and the audio has introduced quite the puzzle

Tune In 10-9 vs. Sheff (1980) 2:12:10

Lewisohn's version above, Sheff's (2000) version below. I initially assumed Lewisohn had made up the first line of his version of the quote (highlighted in pink), and stuck it onto an actual quote from the interview (yellow). Rather than bringing any clarity, the audio muddies the water further. Take a listen. Audio transcript [emphasis mine]:

JL: That’s Paul and me. His main lick, but lots of the words and parts and bits from me and possibly the others in the studio. All that [sings] “I used to be cruel to my woman and beat her…” That’s me because I used to be cruel to my woman physically. Any woman, y’know. I was a hitter. I couldn’t express myself, and I hit. I fought men, I hit women. I was violent. That’s why I’m always on about peace, you see, it’s the most violent people who go for love and peace, and I sincerely believe in love and peace, but I am absolutely a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. [Sheff interrupts] DS: …the chorus or just the idea for it? JL: Is this Getting Better? Getting Better is his chorus and then both together writing the sort of Chuck Berry-ish sounding, but I know that input about beating was from me and references to school and things like that.

This is the discussion of "Getting Better"--in All We Are Saying, this is where John says the line quoted by Lewisohn. But John Lennon does not say, "I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster." Not in this context, at least. There are condensed/other edits to some of the Lost Lennon Tape clips (see the discussion of Tune In 16-8, below), but there's no cut here. Sheff spends most of the clip trying to interrupt John, and at the place in the audio where we should hear the "youngsters" quote, John and Sheff have a brief exchange--if there was a cut here, I don't see how it wouldn't be obvious.

So wtf is happening here? I can see two possible scenarios: (a) John does say the "youngsters" line, possibly with Lewisohn's "Hitting females" line, elsewhere in the interview, and Sheff decided to wedge it into this part of the transcript; (b) John never said that, and Sheff, perhaps feeling a tinge of guilt for persistently trying to derail John's train of thought, made up a line that he thought nicely summed up John's remorse.

If scenario b is true, it's farcical--Lewisohn would be quoting a fabricated John Lennon quote, and then further fabricating his own addition. But who can say? If you have audio of this quote--or if you're David Sheff and would like to explain things to me--I would be indebted if you sent it my way.

The rest of the less-interesting audio comparisons are below the cut.

Tune In 3-6 was originally noted as having minor errors; Lewisohn's transcript was actually correct, so it's been removed from the original post.

Tune In 9-13 vs. Sheff 1980 (1:44:28)

The changes I originally noted are actually faithful to the audio source. There's one minor change made in Tune In vs. the audio: the sentence ending in "bitter" doesn't end, but continues, "and the underlying..." The audio segment cuts off before the final sentence/fragment, "It was very traumatic for me."

Tune In 16-8 vs. Sheff 1980 (1:47:26)

As it appears in Tune In:

This one took some puzzling. In the audio on YouTube, there are four different versions derived from two separate retellings of this story. Numbered in order of appearance, there's Version 1, Version 2, Version 3, and Version 4. Version 3 and 4 are two separate retellings of the same story. Version 1 is the same as Version 4, with a small omission early in the clip. Version 2 is cut together from parts of Versions 3 and 4. The quote that appears in Tune In is closest to Version 4, which I've transcribed here:

I would say to the others, when they were depressed, or we were all depressed, y’know, thinking the group was going nowhere and this is a shitty deal, and we’re in a shitty dressing room. I’d say, “Where are we going, fellas?” and they’d go, “ To the top, Johnny” in pseudo-American voices, and I’d say “Where’s that, fellas?” and they’d say, “To the toppermost of the poppermost,” and I’d say “Riiiight.” And then we’d all sort of cheer up.

There’s an unmarked omission after the first “When,” “are” is dropped between “Where” and “we,” “Johnny” is added at the end of the “poppermost” bit, and there are a few small omissions in the second to last sentence. I’ve underlined the last sentence in yellow because it’s still up in the air. It isn’t in any of the above clips, but that doesn’t mean much, since they all cut off where it would otherwise appear. It also isn’t in All We Are Saying, so I’m somewhat inclined to believe it’s a Lewisohn Original, but that's only a hunch.

Tune In 16-15 vs. Sheff 1980 (25:51)

Tune In above, All We Are Saying (p.23) below. My transcription [parts quoted in Tune In emphasized]:

There was a lot of drinking and carousing when we were in Germany, but the stories built out of all proportion. Over the years, they became like legends, you know. If you go to Hamburg now, you’ll hear stories you won’t believe, about me and the other guys and the other rock ‘n’ rollers from Liverpool that were ther

I've retained the original screenshot from All We Are Saying; as you can see, both Sheff and Lewisohn took some liberties there. In Tune In, much of this quote is omitted without indication; what Lewisohn does use is chopped and moved around. I really don't hear the emphasis he puts on "boy's fun," either.

Tune In 21-3 vs. Sheff 1980 (1:19:24)

I originally speculated that this quote was invented by Lewisohn, or at least very loosely based on a kinda similar section about New York. But John does actually wax poetic about France, though Lewisohn’s version still has some problems.

My transcription [parts quoted in Tune In emphasized]:

When I first went to Paris, I was about 21-or actually, I was 21 in Paris, but- The thing was all the kissing and the holding that was going on in Paris. It was so romantic just to be there and see them even though I was 21 and sort of not romantic. I really loved it, the way people would just stand under the tree kissing, and they weren’t mauling each other, they were just kissing.

There’s an unmarked omission after “was so romantic.” The audio clip cuts off after “they were just kissing,” so it’s possible John said the “I really loved it” line again, but it may just be cut-and-pasted from the middle of the quote.

Tune In 28-41 vs. Sheff 1980 (1:51:13)

My transcription:

That’s Paul’s song. He was trying to write a ‘Soldier Boy’ like the Shirelles track. He wrote that in Germany or when we were going to or from Hamburg and back. I don’t think-- I might have contributed something. I can’t remember anything in particular, it was mainly his song.

Sheff's transcript is mostly correct here.

The final sentence in Lewisohn’s quote is fine, but his “I think we helped him a bit” is of his own invention. John says “I don’t think—I might have contributed something,” which is substantially different in certainty, along with who might have helped Paul--"I" meaning John, or "we", meaning the rest of the Beatles.

Tune In 30-2 vs. Sheff 1980 (1:51:32)

Tune In above, All We Are Saying (p.168) below

My transcription:

in the other bedroom in my house at Menlove Avenue in Woolton which was my auntie’s place, the suburbs. I remember the day and the pink eiderdown on the bed…

Both Sheff and Lewisohn omit "in Woolton" as well as "the suburbs"--can't have John Lennon living in the 'burbs! Lewisohn also omits "my house", and brings "auntie's place" forward in the quote.

Tune In 33-18 vs. Sheff 1980 (1:48:15)

This quote appears in the endnote text itself:

My transcription [parts quoted in Tune In emphasized]:

Well, I can’t say I wrote it for George in that way. I was in the first apartment I’d ever had that wasn’t shared by fourteen other students, gals and guys at art school. I’d just married Cyn, and Brian Epstein gave us his secret little apartment that he kept in Liverpool for his sexual liaisons separately from his home life. And he let us- Cyn and I have that apartment. And my mother had always—she was a comedienne. And a singer, but not professional, but y’know, she used to get up in pubs and things like that. And she had a good voice, she could do Kay Starr and all the rest. She used to do this little gag called—that apparently she’d done to me when I was one year old and two year old, when she was still living with me, which was from a Disney movie, [singing] ‘Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell. You’re standing by a wishing well’ Okay? That’s from a Disney movie. So, I had this sort of thing in my head and I wrote it, and just gave it to George to sing. I thought it would be a good vehicle for him cause it only had three notes, and he wasn’t the best singer in the world, he’s improved a lot since then, but in those days, his singing ability was very poor because (a) he hadn’t had the opportunity and (b) he concentrated more on guitar playing than writing songs and singing. So I wrote that sort of--not for him as I was writing it, but as soon as I’d written it, I thought, “He could do this.”

This may seem like a whole lotta transcript for a one sentence quote at the very end, but it will be relevant soon. For now, the sentence itself--I don't consider it erroneous to omit false starts, so that in itself isn't a problem, but Lewisohn corrects John's false start by introducing phrasing he didn't use. He also omits "as I was writing it."

Standard Lewisohn Probs, nothing to write home about, but I paid closer attention to the body text that goes with this citation, and I noticed another issue. Here's the passage from Tune In:

Check out the highlighted passages. "Do You Want to Know a Secret" is "first-born" in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership as codified by Brian Epstein. This is odd. How, exactly, does Lewisohn know this was the first song to come out of this period? John doesn't give a date in the Sheff interview--he places the creation of this song at some point while he lived in Brian Epstien's Falker Street flat, where (cmiiw) he and Cyn lived for a few months. Lewisohn says, "Rarely lacking motivation anyway, the agreement was spurring Lennon and McCartney to step it up as composers, to generate songs the Beatles could use in the studio." To me, "step[ping] it up as composers" implies the creation of multiple songs in this time period, and if that's the case, how can we say "Do You Want to Know a Secret" came first?

It seems a strange thing to say conclusively, another trumped-up tally in the "John" column of Lewisohn's pointless Lennon vs. McCartney dick-measuring contest.

Sources:

Lewisohn M. 2013. The Beatles: All These Years Vol. 1: Tune In. New York (NY): Crown Archetype. [ebook]

Sheff D. 1980. Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Partial audio available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRDfBGagFkU&t=1582s

Sheff D. 2000. All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York (NY): St. Martin’s Griffin. 229p.

[papa-evershed]

Do you have any tips on getting the audio files to load? I’m trying to load them but they won’t load and I don’t know if it’s just me doing something wrong or not 😂😭

I’m just trynna here Rob sing 😭

Hmmm, I've had other people test the files for me and I've also tried them on all my different devices with no issue so unfortunately, I think it may be a problem with your device. 🙃 They automatically play for me once I open them so I'm not sure what's going on for ya. BUT! I went ahead and just made an audio clip of the singing with a bit of the scene added on for context. Hopefully this helps a little. 😬

[hunter-sylvester]

Hi! I’m the anon who wrote the ask about Hunter’s parental issues and about his attachment to Kevin. Thank you for answering my asks, I absolutely love the way you write and how you explain everything! You’re extremely talented!🫶

I honestly didn’t notice how in love Hunter was with Kevin until I watched the movie a second time. It’s crazy how you can literally see all feeling in Hunter’s eyes when he looks at Kevin. I also loved how you said that their relationship fits a BDSM bratting dynamic, because I totally see it.

[and as someone who has ADHD and deals with RSD on a regular, I completely understand him. It sucks.]

Hey 🤘 [prev ask for context] Yeah I obviously couldn’t be 100% sure they were from the same person but it definitely makes the most sense lol

Thank you so much! I’m really glad you enjoy my rambling thoughts about Hunter as a character <3

If you do like my writing, I’m tempted to sheepishly gesture over to my actual Metal Lords fics over on Ao3 if you haven’t checked them out, even tho it makes me feel like a bit of a dick to do so 😅 (They are mostly locked to registered users, blame AI data scraping. The only Metal Lords fic not locked rn is a tiny ficlet. An Ao3 account is free tho 👀)

In any case, I really appreciate that you pushed me to do a bit of analysis again. Because sometimes I tend to forget that all the stuff that lives in my head as “obvious” isn’t always stuff I’ve said out loud on here lmao

There’s a lot to pull from the film if you’re willing to be a bit mentally ill about it.

And you’re absolutely right about the way he looks at Kevin, I mean, it happened enough for me to make a whole ass gifset of it lmao

Look at him. The boy is smitten. Clueless, of course. But smitten.

Which I credit basically entirely to Adrian Greensmith, as it was a vision he had for the character. I really can’t imagine Hunter having been played by anyone else as he brought so much to the role. (Fun fact, if I remember correctly: Noah Urrea, who plays Clay, originally auditioned for Hunter. No harm but I'm very glad he didn't get that. He makes a good Clay and Hunter just needed to be played by Adrian.)

One of the key things Adrian brought to the role also being, probably accidentally, his anxiety.

"I spent a lot of Metal Lords feeling a bit anxious [...] and in hindsight I wonder if some of that was just a sign that Hunter was quite an anxious character [...] I mean his body's so tense all the time." - Adrian Greensmith.

I shortened that quite a bit so I'm including a slightly longer clip of the interview audio for more context. (I can upload a subtitled video clip if anyone wants that as well as link the video on yt but I'd have to do a bit of a search for that)

Aside: If I had to guess I'd say he's probably referring to Peter Sollett who directed Metal Lords when he mentions a 'Pete'.

And yeah the bratting thing was a little bit of a joke but mostly not a joke. Without going absolutely off the deep end, the mentality behind bratting is something I really see in Hunter.

Evie Lupine has a wonderful video about bratting and why people would be interested in it (and why some people hate it) but a short snippet that always spoke to me from that is the following:

"The motivations behind bratting are pretty varied. I think one of the main ones would be a sense of security and comfort. This is when the acting out is sort of a way to be reassured that even when you, break rules, even when you push at things, the partner that you're with is not going to abandon you." - Evie Lupine

Obviously, with Hunter's fear of abandonment, it's easy to see why this would appeal to him.

He also just...idk he has brat energy - sincerely, a brat.

And Kevin does just play out the counterpart to that. He doesn't always have Hunter under control but he tries to.

And he does mostly act as that safe person to brat against, which again amplifies the impact it has when Hunter starts to think he's actually losing Kevin, destroying that feeling of safety.

Aside: I obviously don't think that these characters, in universe, negotiated for a bratting dynamic. In universe it'd be something that just sort of organically developed within their friendship/relationship. But even more than that it's an archetype of a dynamic that we as the audience can easily read into their interactions if that makes sense.

Can you believe the shit they will accidentally put in movies? lmao

And yeah, I have ADHD as well. And RSD is something that affects me pretty fucking severely. I've only really become more aware of it in the past year or so as my partner has pointed it out more and more.

So it's definitely something that I then noticed more and more in Hunter too.

Obviously this is all just my take on the character, and other people might have totally different interpretations. That's the beauty of art, we all get to find what we need in it and read it in our own ways, influenced by our own life experiences.

Thank you again for asking, Anon 🤘 (if you want to use a nickname or smth to identify that you're the same Anon, let me know. If not, that's totally okay too, but I might not always know it's you)

[spanishskulduggery]

Does this type of "a" have a name? And, is it a memorizing thing or is there a way tell when to use it?

- Estoy aprendiendo a nadar porque quiero nadar en la playa de Lima.

- A veces te ayudo a estudiar español

- Los chicos quieren salir a bailar.

- Ella me enseña a manejar el carro.

- En México empezamos a cenar a las siete. ¿A qué hora quieres cenar?

For the most part, these are prepositional verbs, or verbs followed by a preposition

This link does a pretty good job outlining most of the major examples of verbs that require prepositions: Spanish Verbs with Prepositions - Lawless Spanish Grammar

-

Now for the grammar behind it...

Some verbs simply take prepositions - normally they're a, de, en, con, and sometimes por or para but less commonly those last two

This is different from the regular uses of prepositions like "to", "of/from", "in/at/on", and "with" in that they're required for some verbs and don't always translate the same if you exclude them

Some quick common examples:

ayudar a (hacer algo) = to help to (do something)

aprender a (hacer algo) = to learn to (do something)

acordarse de (algo/alguien) = to remember (something/someone)

enamorarse de (alguien) = to fall in love with (someone)

pensar en (algo/alguien) = to think of (something/someone)

convertirse en (algo/alguien) = to turn into (something/someone)

contar con (algo/alguien) = to rely on or to trust in (something/someone)

soñar con (algo/alguien) = to dream of/about (something/someone)

And:

ir + a + infinitive = "going to do (something)"

volver a (hacer algo) = to (do something) again

Which are a bit uniquely weird; especially volver which is "to return", so it's sometimes translated as "again" instead of a conjugation... like volver a decir algo is "to say something again"

-

There's been a meme audio clip going around in Spanish social media recently that's from a telenovela that goes: a lo que yo vine... ¡fue a esto! followed by a slap

Literally it means "what I came here for... was (to do) this!" or "what I came here to do... was this!"

But venir (a hacer algo) is "to come (for the purpose of)"... often seen in something like ¿a qué ha venido? "what is he/she here for?" in that sort of context

-

Your particular examples are a + infinitive for the most part:

ayudar a + infinitive = to help to

aprender a + infinitive = to learn to

enseñar a + infinitive = to teach to / to show how to

empezar a + infinitive = to start to comenzar a + infinitive = to begin to

It's important to note that these don't usually show up with a unless there's an infinitive... vamos a aprender "we're going to learn"... then vamos a aprender a nadar "we're going to learn to swim"

Or empiezo a leer "I start to read" vs. empiezo "I start" by itself which requires no a

The one that stands out as a bit different is salir a... in general salir is "to go out" or "to exit", so salir a hacer algo feels more like "to go out (to do something)" which is maybe more directional in my mind. Here the a feels like it indicates "to/towards" but maybe I'm splitting hairs. Basically a salir doesn't often carry a unless you're physically going out to do something

Please also note: The preposition a has many uses grammatically and this is just one use. You may also see it as "the personal a" which is when your object is a person/animate object and the a shows personhood or "life"... like ayudar a la gente "to help people", or dar de comer al perro "to feed the dog" [lit. "to give of food to the dog"]; typically the a shows up with direct objects for people/animate objects, or it shows the recipient of indirect objects like mandar una carta (a alguien) is "to send a letter (to someone)"

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Well, this is the best bit of gossip to ever appear on the Elis James and John Robins radio show:

This, of course, goes along with the story that Nish Kumar told on The Bugle of the same football game:

A game that took place when John Oliver was back in Britain briefly at the end of 2017, during which time he appeared on The Russell Howard Hour and apparently played football, but did not stop to do any Bugle episodes, which is fine, I mean it's absolutely fine, we can't all be Hollywood.

Hollywood. Despite the fact that I once made an image listing some coincidental superficial similarities,

I find it quite difficult to picture John Robins and John Oliver existing in the same place. They're wildly different. But if you asked me what I thought would happen if they ever were in the same place, I'd probably guess it would involve a lot of John Robins repeatedly calling him Hollywood.

I can't post that audio clip of Nish Kumar discussing that game on The Bugle without also posting the compilation I made of the evolution of Nish Kumar becoming the British John Oliver, because it's quite adorable:

Anyway, going back to that original clip from the radio show, I also enjoyed Producer Vin hearing comedian football mentioned and immediately asking about Andy Zaltzman. There wasn't any context from before or explanation from after that clip to explain why he'd asked, it sounds like Vin just likes Andy was impressed that they play football with him sometimes. Which is pretty cool. I think Vin's mentioned before that he's a cricket fan, and I am aware that Andy Zaltzman is weirdly, legitimately big among cricket fans, since he does so much cricket commentary and collation of stats. I'm hoping I'm right in remembering that I've heard Vin mention being into cricket, as otherwise that's just an assumption I'm making based on his race. But I think he's mentioned it.

I quite like Producer Vin at this point. Earlier in the radio show, I was a bit disappointed by how their back-and-forth with the producers seemed a lot less fun than what I'm used to, on The Bugle where Producer Chris (and Tom before him) is a beloved figure on the show. At some point I worked out that it's a bit of a different relationship, an independent podcast vs a live radio show. The radio producers are actually accountable to the station to make sure the comedians are saying things that will be good for listenership, so there were more interruptions that were genuine rebukes for going too far off on rants that would be inaccessible to a casual listener, whereas on a show that's a podcast first, you know that everyone has tuned in because they like Andy Zaltzman's inaccessible rants. I've never heard Chris Skinner try to curtail any of Andy's pun runs, for any reason besides to preserve his own psychological stability.

Having said that, after the first 100 episodes or so they settle into a rhythm, interactions with producers got a lot more natural and more fun. I'm at episode 200 now and Producer Vin has only recently started speaking up at times during the chat to hold them to account, not for boring radio standards but for contradicting stuff they've said before, which can be pretty funny at times. I like him. I think he's more naturally funny than the previous producer. Knowing he apparently approves of Andy Zaltzman, for whatever reason, makes me like him more.

Oh, and I also recently heard an episode in which Harry Potter came up, and John Robins said he's a Gryffindor, and I have not identified anyone's Hogwarts House for about fifteen years, but the years I spent doing so instantly came back to me and I looked at my phone and said "absolutely the fuck not, 100% Ravenclaw, few cases are this clear cut." And then a few weeks later they were on with Producer Vin and John referenced the recent episode in which he'd called himself a Gryffindor, and Vin immediately said that was one of the episodes when he was absent, which he knows because if he'd been there he would never have let him get away with that claim, he'd have interrupted to say no, 100% Ravenclaw. And I looked at my phone and said thank you. I like this guy.

This post has covered a fair bit of ground. The original point was supposed to be that I would pay good money to see Old John Oliver and New John Oliver tackle each other over a football. Sorry that I got onto Harry Potter. Fuck JK Rowling but I like Producer Vin.

[hajimedics]

Just made the ask responding to you and what butterflies frank likes, but quick suggestion- this was with franks and eddies relationship them getting married was meant to be revealed later on, i think everyone found out because one of clown's art had them both wearing rings or something, the voice clips where probably recorded before people found out, either that or they're just acting for the show, although I'm not sure it the cameras are around since wally would usually be the star of the show and always be talking, but he wasn't.. Huh weird-

either acting as mere acquaintances for the show (whether they're aware of their lack of agency or are fully controlled by the scripts) or haven't gotten to know each other properly. I'm divided between these two ideas but is mostly tipping towards the former. the dissonance of their relationship in-show and their relationship as clown posted on tumblr caught me off guard, but I just know that things will not be pretty for them as we delve further into the project

I believe the recording cameras aren't around in the "answer" segments as we are seeing things from wally's pov (why is he always looking down?), but his appearance is like... he's trying to insert himself in any camera-less situation. yet he doesn't talk during any of them. he's a watcher, an observer, not trying to reinforce the fact that he's technically "the protagonist". I have a theory that the "answer" pages are supposed to portray the puppets' lives outside of the script and show them in a more nuanced light.

not to mention wally is so adamant on making us "remember". I'd reckon most of us who are confused would say, "what do I have to remember?". the answer is, well, the "answer" pages. remember the puppets who have been long forgotten by both the public and the target audience. could wally have wrongly assumed that we were watchers of his old show? or are we playing as another character? stretching a bit but hey I'm just thinking!

and y'know, funny thing you mentioned wally being the star of the show. out of all the content and audio clips I've seen from the website, he seems to have the least verbal appearance. he has the most presence when communicating on the spinning vinyl recorder pages. welcome home has so many merch featuring him (the cereal box) and things related to him (the phone). whenever wally is about to be mentioned at the end of the "answer" pages, audio recordings and videos glitch out. his status as a beloved children's show mascot is reduced to a mysterious entity writhing in pain and calling out for help in the least direct, least helpful way possible. he is still the main character but the context behind the "main character" sentiment has now horrifically changed.

[larryatendoftheday]

So I’m super new to the fandom and I have questions. I keep getting convinced then unsure. I’m wondering why if H&L have been together so long that they write songs about other people? Like references to uni (E) or Olivia or Taylor or Kendall or Camille songs? Do you think they’ve broken up a few times? Also, I listened to this phone recording with two fans I think where Louis seems so angry about shippers (so funny that both fans admit to being shippers too). One other thing, there are all these clips of H being literally so sick while performing and it’s usually Liam who cares or seems worried. From what I saw, Louis doesn’t and that’s when their relationship seemed the most obvious. What do you think? Then I see things like the Louis the Fish book and it’s like undeniable.

I'm sorry I've been slow to respond to this. There's just so much to say, and I know someone else will approach it differently. But you came to me, so here's my take.

I don't actually think Harry and Louis have always been together and never broken up. None of their music points to that.

In fact I'm not really convinced they are currently together or even have been recently.

I try to keep an open mind. Maybe they did date other people and write about it and come back to each other. Maybe they are writing about each other through the lens of what their public narrative says. Maybe they are just not romantically involved anymore at all. What do we know?

A lot of what we "know" are assumptions or stretches. They're fun and heck maybe they're right, but we don't know that to be true. Many things could be fun coincidences or just nods to this part of the fandom from queer and queer supporting celebrities that don't actually mean "Larry is real."

That audio clip of Louis is interesting. I don't know much about the context other than that Louis has a history of speaking his mind. What motivates those moments probably varies and might not always be that fans are wrong-- again keeping an open mind--maybe he just hates his personal life being so scrutinized or something along those lines.

Interactions during concerts are always complicated because we have such video spotty coverage of live shows usually. So I am generally a bit skeptical of that evidence unless I think I can really see everything that did and didn't happen.

Big picture: I kinda gave up trying to figure out what is real because we have so little information. We know so little of their lives. Instead I just enjoy the music and fanworks about fictionalized versions of their relationship.

I don't usually say this stuff online because it can be upsetting to some fans, but I made an exception. (To anyone who hates this: please keep scrolling. I'll go back to being quiet.)

Take care anon 💗

[theangryjikooker]

God knows that as a Jikooker I want the picked-up sounds from JK's latest live to translate to 'Jimin hyungie' but I have to agree with a translation by a non-shipper (who is apparently a homophobic Korean JK solo, but if they're right with the translations, they're right 🤷‍♀️). I for one still lean towards the belief that Jikook spent some time together before Jimin left for England, and also believe it was likely Bam who gave Jimin the arm scratch. But I'm convinced JK did not namedrop Jimin in the picked-up audio. He said a phrase that sounded like 'Jimin hyungie'. It's in line with the context of the rest of the possible translation. I'm no one to be saying this, but I still give the benefit of the doubt to Jikookers who think otherwise since the audio is not clear (though I'm skeptical about the many k-armys who allegedly confirmed the 'Jimin hyungie' translations many of which appear to be k-jikookers at least on my twitter timeline, and also, they can still be wrong because audio is not clear so acting like these k-jikookers could not be wrong just because they're Korean is not it). I'm just really starting to get frustrated that it seems Jikook spaces are becoming an echo chamber too, and we cannot question things anymore, you're more delulu or blind or stupid if you do not believe what the majority is saying which is almost always that anything that could possibly be about Jikook's relationship is definitely about that, period. Sigh. I feel like it's getting harder to find Jikookers who you can still be open to discuss with instead of just agreeing with everything.

I said this earlier, and I said this to someone else, but Jikook spaces have become more and more insufferable. I'm not even sure what's prompting this kind of mania. Maybe things really have gotten worse, or maybe it was always there, and I was becoming desensitized to it before I took a break. Either way, you'd have to have a lack of awareness not to point out that more Jkkrs are starting to sound more and more fanatical, and I do think there's a bit of a correlation to Taennie being more visible.

Obviously, I agree with everything you've said, but the following are some specific points I wanted to address:

• I also wanted to believe it, but after listening to it, I can't be confident in it. If I can't be confident, I'd rather take the L than push a narrative that isn't there. It brings a happier conclusion if I'm wrong, but if I overstepped and am proven to have overstepped, then I'm just insane.

• In regards to translations, I would much prefer reading translations from non-shippers. Even the best K-Kms, who have Jikook's best interests at heart and are trying to be neutral, can also be susceptible to the narratives they're constantly exposed to.

• Suggestibility is really powerful. If you say a vague sounding phrase sounds like x, a lot of people will start to confirm it. There are tons of videos out there that'll give you an audio clip, give you a list of words of what it could sound like, and the audio fits those exact words but are also none of those words. This is what I think is happening (but if I'm wrong and there's a clearer audio available that can confirm what Jungkook said, then I'm wrong, but that doesn't exist as far as I know).

[various-things]

This is a little retrospective on things I made in 2023

Fic and video edits (mostly the latter, not counting clip compilations). Because slow progress is progress and it's nice to look at it all together. Putting this under a readmore since it's going to be long.

Video edits:

January: Julian x Garak: I Wanna Be Yours (Star Trek: DS9) This was a very simple edit I made in like a day (most complex edits take me a very long time; I'm a slow editor). The song doesn't fit my headcanon for them very strongly but it was fun, I'm just gonna quote part of what what I said in the description on YT "I really enjoy moments in my edits/making edits that focus on where characters get to kind of exist in contexts/settings/we can spend some time as a viewer in the moment with them." March: A lot of these I was working on wellll before March, the two succession vids are based on S3 stuff. Kendall Roy: Elijah (Succession) (mind the content warnings on this one) I actually think this is one of the best edits I've ever made and I'm quite proud of it overall. I would have liked to have done a better job of balancing the audio of Kendall's dialogue but otherwise I'm really pleased with it. Julian x Garak: Stay Soft (Star Trek: DS9) First finished more-complex garashir edit! I'm overall pretty happy with it. ✨🪩 pain 🪩 ✨ Roman Roy: The Metronome (Succession) (mind the content warnings) Quite happy with this one as well. I think a big reason that I tend to like my Succession edits so much (I think they're probably my best work) is just how good the cinematography of the show is and how much I vibe with it. April: Julian x Garak: Plans (Star Trek: DS9) (mind the cws) Bloc Party <3 Quoting how I described it in the tumblr post "I’ve got like a lot of thoughts about it but it’s broadly about like… violence and sacrifice and what people are capable of, ways people misunderstand Julian, and Garak and Julian’s friendship." I missed a frame of a following shot at one point, alas, but this was a fun very-dense with dialogue and lyrics one. June:

Tom x Shiv: Heat Lightning (Succession) More Mitski! (I have two other DS9 Mitski WIPs also) Like the quote above where I mention characters existing in contexts and settings, this really feels like a peak of me doing that for me, it's mostly them sitting/lying down/standing quietly and not being happy. Also did some juxtaposition against shots without people in it. Quite pleased with it.

August: Shax fancam (Good Omens) I did this in Final cut and Oh the effort into making those transitions happen. Here's the version on tiktok but I uh... the captions did not turn out well but they are synced to the audio. Aziraphale x Crowley: De Selby (1) (Good Omens) I made this one quite quickly as well, in under 2 days I think. Overall pretty happy with it except for the fact that I had a lot of trouble with the audio levels and I think re: overall structure of the edit that it lost some of its oomph towards the end, but I don't really know what I would have done differently with the latter. Some of the transitions in this were fairly complex and I'm mostly happy with them. The YouTube version unfortunately is pretty... artifact-y? November: I got Capcut sometime in the fall. Everything from here on out that I've posted this year has been made in that. Still vastly prefer Final Cut if I don't need fancy transitions, but harddrives and needing to update things etc. I'm also not putting anything else on YouTube until I finish my brightness edits. These two juxtaposition-y popular tiktok sound edits. (1) (2) (Star Trek: DS9) Quark bottom edit (18+) (Star Trek: DS9) - Very pleased with this. December: All of these were made pretty quickly (by my standards). a garashir edit to "Atlantis" by Seafret (Star Trek: DS9) Mostly made this out of wanting to finish something and the cuts feel a bit too fast for me but hey the act of creation! a short murder-y Garak phonk edit to BRODYAGA FUNK by Eternxlkz Mostly pleased with this. Still getting the hang of various transition things. a garashir edit to Placebo's "Running up that Hill" the text animation is kind of a mess (even on the version without the lyrics the captions are too big—I'm still figuring out caption size stuff re: what to choose) which is a shame, but I do like some of the clip timings (though some others don't quite work for me and I would have liked the cuts to have been a bit smoother in some places) and also hey made and finished something

Fic

Tuscany and New York (Succession) - [fic abandoned/not to be completed] Started this one and then chose not to finish it. However, one thing I was really enthused by was seeing part of an argument I wrote have a big parallel with what ended up in a scene on the actual show in S4. Felt very affirming re: my understanding of the characters.

with hope in your hands (Star Trek: DS9 [WIP] This is a fic I started as part of ectogeo's Garashir Wedding Registry. It's kind of a (mostly) Julian POV of the events in the continuity where ASIT/The Nexus/The Calling happened but it's also a reflection on some of Julian's closer relationships and where things related to marriage/possibilities of marriage came up within some of that. I'm currently almost done with chapter 4. 1: (Star Trek: DS9)

I think my lack of titles here and this standalone fic's place within a series probably has affected how likely folks are to read it but it's a short fic that is mostly Garak on the Defiant after it leaves Cardassia in Second Skin. Initially put most of this on tumblr but then properly put it on ao3.

2/3 ficlets for the rare pare ficlet game hellostuffedtiger made: Garak/Sloan, Julian/Picard