#the words 'parental control' - as in on electrical devices - were uttered

[azhamdrety]

Aypierre and Baghera are planning an intervention for Pomme to fix her disastrous sleep schedule (basically she's awake at night and asleep at day)

[kanene-yaaay]

Just like a dream [Or Cuddles - 15º Tickletober]

Kanene’s note: I am sad so I thought  ‘h e y! What if I translated one of my fluff tickle-fanfic to light my day?’, so here are we!! This is a pure gold cute fluff, and a bit of angst in the beginning, but do not worry! The prince is here to save the day!! *dramatic glitter pose* 

Warnings, fun facts, random things and stuff:

* Lee!Patton and Ler!Roman (It can be seen as Romantic or Platonic Royality). 

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

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

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

* I just realize I’m in love with Lee!Patton. And Roman here is an absolutely adorable ler. Someday will make a teasy tickle fanfic, I promisse xDDD.

* E a versão em português brasileiro!  Thankys for reading, my lollipops! Watch a fun video, take a good rest, talk with the one that you love and drink water! Byeioo!~

                                 [~*~]

He took a deep breath and bolted into the room, closed the door, sighed in relief and gave up in controlling his tears, so they fell.

And fell and feel and fell as he let himself collapse in that cold, strangely relaxing, floor.

It was just that. Just fell. Just washed his so hurted soul, just showed the feeling which he so hard tried to not hide anymore, just poured in a flow that wandered through all his face until finally drop.

He tried to sniffle quietly, he really tried since he kept in mind that the bathroom wasn’t soundproof. However, he was the heart, the core of all the emotions, the guardian of feelings, for a reason. He lived them more intensely, felt them more immensely.

Albeit, he also knew the others sides were busy, so he had nothing to worry about. 

That was why he took all the time he needed, wanted. Half hour, one hour, one quarter of hour… It didn’t mattered. 

Patton didn't leave until the last drop fell.

The representation of morality got up, wobbly legs, took off his glasses and cleaned their lenses in his cardigan. He took deep breaths one, two, three times.

And a couple more.

He headed to the sink and washed his face, yet knowing that it didn’t changed in the slightest the swelling and redness which his features assumpted after cryings like that. He stared his reflection, an analysing glare. A few hours of funny cute videos would do. He would get some snacks in the kitchen when only his eyes still red and were easier to not be seen… Not that he wanted to hide it from the others, he just didn’t wanted to… show it.

And after all of this he would try to summon a night movie and sleep cuddling someone.

Yeah, he nodded to himself. This sounded to be ideal. A shadow of a smile appeared in his lips.

Patton turned around and opened the door, founding a Roman about to knock.

Their glares met in the same exact heartbeat, both equally astonished. Patton felt himself to paralyse before his instincts of flight took over, prompting him to quickly run back to the bathroom and lock himself inside.

Breathed in. Breathed out. In. Out. Repeated this movement three times more, seeking to calm his fast heartbeating and the adrenaline in his blood. He knew the other was still out there, knew that he would have questions and that he would have to explain himself, that he would have to let Roman into this complex mess who he was.

But he also would have comfort, would have company and human warmth and… affection.

He reminded the other’s look: scared, alarmed, worried.

Patton pinched the tip of his nose, adjusted his glasses and cardigan, took a deep breath and a part of him wondered if Roman was still out there.

He opened the door.

He was. 

Patton’s heart stopped, melting and the guardian of dreams and passion didn’t uttered a one single word, which was rare for him, only opened his arms in a gentle glare and a silent plead.

The moral aspect hugged him quick and strong, his hands holding the fabric of his shirt as tightly as possible and the tears he didn't even know were still there coming back.

The aspirant of royalty drowned in silence, his arms involving him entirely, a hand gently  stroking his back and the other lightly combing his hair. His chin rested in the other’s head as he hummed lowly a random song and rocked the parental figure with such tenderness too much pure to be described.

As sudden as it started the teary flow stopped, which didn’t meant the end of the hug or the careness, just the song, a few minutes later, which was switched by the velvety low tune from Roman. Patton was even more surprised.

- What happened, padre?

- Just that sudden sadness, you know, Ro-ro?

- I do.

Princey started to massaged his scalp and Patton felt all his muscles automatically relax; He let himself to be transported to some place and when opened his eyes, he was laid in Roman’s extremely soft and gigantic if compared to any other from the Mind Palace, bed.

- Now we shall watch a movie! - A flourish and a big television appeared in the wall at the same time dozens of sweets and snacks surrounded them. - Disney? Comedy? Action? Romance? Pixar? - The said shone in the device for a second before being replaced for another. The representation of creativity turned, a bright and nurturing glare, a smile which seemed to demonstrate all his love. - Today the choice is yours.

Patton felt more and more astonished every more second. Everything sounded too much strange. Everything seemed to much… unreal. He couldn’t help himself but feel as he was taking advantage of the other’s kindness, like he was forcing him to bear with a problem that wasn’t his. Usually things wasn’t like that, usually it was him who… who… took care of the others.

- Anyone you prefer, kiddo. - And a tiny smile opened in his lips. Something in him starting to becoming calm although the hurricane in his core.

- Oh, no, no. - Roman denied, getting a little closer. - Today the honor will be totally yours, my dear Patton. - Each word was punctuated with a kiss in Patton’s cheeks, who began to  giggle uncontrollably, feeling his face burn. - Consider yourself lucky.

How did all of this could be so strange and… No, more than strange, more than only different…

Good.

Patton giggled a little more, lightly bitted the tip of his tongue and thought a bit more.

- Maybe The princess and the frog?

- Your wish is an order!

In a few pieces of time the movie already played in the background.

The creativity’s representation got closer, inch by inch, until finally manage to involve the partner in his arms, rocking and leaning his lips in the other’s head before whispering.

- Thank you for letting me take care of you, padre. I know it’s not easy.

This made Patton wide his eyes and expand his heart further, if that was still possible. He held out his hands, intertwining his finger with Roman’s when he received his act.

- It’s just… normally I am the one who take care of you. - The royal aspect huffed, and Patton stroked his cheek, shiny gently eyes showing how much he loved his little ‘work’. - I am the dad, should be more stronger.

- You are strong!! - Roman immediately shouted, sounding offended. - Patton, you are the heart! The one who don’t matter the situation always try to give your best, even if that hurts you, even if that brings consequences we’re all afraid to accept… you always try to remain fair and right in your decisions! You manage to see the bright side of everything and everyone and always is there, even if your day also wasn’t the best.

His eyes began to tearing, and Patton felt a hand softly direct his chin up so that he could stare the glare full of determination and energy from the other.

- Patton, you deserve this and much more, okay?

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, from letting out a few sheepish giggles. Roman’s tune became a bit more velvety.

- Okay, Patton?

- Okay. - And then embraced the aspect of passion and love, filling his face with thankful, lovely butterfly kisses and happy whispers.

It was almost in the part when Tiana went in search to recover her human form when the touch ended. Patton started to really get involved with the film's plot when a sensation almost made him jump through the ceiling.

Discreetly he looked at his tummy, finding Roman’s hands drumming his fingers on it and leading electric  sensations, something that made a involuntary smile be painted in his features, spread across all his body. The one in cardigan squirmed slightly, which didn’t stopped the motion.

The tickling were bearable, Patton decided, and he didn’t wanted to break this awesome bonding moment shared with the prince. He could endure until the end of the movie, for sure! It was almost in the middle, it was just a matter of time!

- Are you alright, Pat? You look a little agitated.

- I-it’s nothing, Ro-ro!

And practically jumped when the index finger found way to his belly button. Roman stared him with a raised eyebrow, but without really questioning something. The tickles stopped. The cat lover allowed himself to relax a bit more.

‘And what if he started to trace his fingers sloooooooowly through all your tummy?’

‘Not you, again.’

‘Imagine that nails scratching your sides!!! Tickling behind your ears while teasing you about your incredible tickliness…. Wouldn’t that be amazing?!’

‘Ah! Ah! Ah! What if he released small raspberries in each one of your ribs? Quick and small at the point you wouldn’t have the slightest idea where he would attack next! Ah!’

Patton controlled, again, his impulse to squirm and hide his, now very blushed, face in his hands. It only took a little stimulus and then it all went in a downhill!!

Now he desperately wanted some tickles.

His glance landed in the hand that remained resting perfectly calm in his stomach, absolutely unaware about the avalanche it had caused. That small voice continued to create the most random tickly scenarios in his mind, his face getting more and more in flames, his smile more uncontrollable and the movie more and more forgotten.

Maybe it was because of all his self inflicted anticipation that the one who wore glasses almost fell from the bed when a light feeling hit his foot, a inhuman squeak escaping from his mouth.

Roman paused the film, startled, quickly getting ready to face any danger that might threaten the welfare of his Pat-

And then he heard the laughter.

- Nahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!! Rohohohoho-rohohohoho!! Stahahaahahahahahahap!!! 

- But I’m not doing anything, dearest Patton. - The blossomed grin at the precious scene in front of him was easily perceptive in his voice. It didn’t took long to found the source of the ‘attack’.

His entire room was programmed to modificate itself as felt the most infinitesimal creative desire of someone, and, as it seems, this someone’ was the guardian of feelings, that is why now two soft gloves softly danced their fingers in the other’s foot, going from the heels to the tip of his toes again and again and again regardless Patton’s kicks, freeing all the kind of giggles.

- RohohohOHOHOHOHOHohohoho!!! – The moral aspect cutely squirmed in his arms, a gigantic smile adorning his face, wrinkled nose and his voice filled by the snorts and high pinch squeals.    – NHAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahahahaha!! He-he-HEHEHehehehehehehehelp!!! – And again dissolved himself in a mess of quick and adorable giggling.

Roman bitted his lip. - Of course, my dearest hearty partner! - And his hands repositioned themselves in sides of the other, who began to fight more, his head shaking non stop. Evil laughter poured through the prince’s mouth.

Every wriggle, scribble and squeeze generated and increased a new flow of laughter, making him to go from the most high tune to the deep belly laughter. Tears started to accumulate in the corner of his eyes and, while the tickles and laughter took over his body in a lovely, joyful sensation, Patton never felt so grateful for any and everything. Just laying there and receiving all the love and care, without thinking or worrying with absolutely nothing sounded like a dream.

- Ohoho. No, no, Padre. - Roman whispered, his lips touching lightly the other’s neck, making with each word resulted in small vibrations that even made himself giggle with Patton’s bubbling squeaks and laughter. - Now the greatest Tickle Monster got you and there isn’t any way to stop him from attacking his ticklish tickly prey!!! - He continued to poke and wriggle inside the one in cardigan’s belly button since Patton’s hands, which were holding his wrists, didn’t made any real attempt to stop him. - Muahahahaha!

The blush spreaded across his cheeks, his laughter going muffled when he turned around to hug Roman, who changed his techniques to a soft dance of his fingernails on the cat lover’s back, the wobbly laughter becoming more and more low, sleepy giggles.

- Thahahahahahank you, Roman. - Closed his eyes, tightened their hug, let out a happy sigh.

- Your wish is always and order, Patton. You’re welcome.

Just like a dream.

[sondepoch]

IX: Neutral Route (Y/N)

Where Futures Begin

Life used to be simple for you. Peaceful. But the Savior had other plans for you, and in moments, she ruined what you thought was your one shot at happiness. Blinded by anger, you escaped the Mint Eye, but that triggered a series of events that would bring you further into the world of brothers Saeran and Saeyoung. And further into the twisted world of your love for them.

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

MASTERLIST

The only person who knew the whole truth was V.

Saeran, the dense boy too blind to see that he was the cause of your pain, doubtlessly had no idea why you'd chosen to leave the Mint Eye.

The Savior, for once in your whole life, had no way of knowing how you had escaped and why you'd helped Luciel and Vanderwood (though, you assumed she knew precisely why you'd escaped).

Even MC, who probably knew more of your situation than most, seemed confused as to why you were readily helping what V had called the 'RFA.'

Luciel had respected you too much during your questions game to ask anything that you might not have wanted to answer.

And Vanderwood had left as soon as you began telling V your story, utterly uninterested your past.

It was nice to tell everything to someone, to have a secondary input. V consoled you as you told him about your parents, the orphanage, being homeless. And he had sighed helplessly as you expressed the utter bliss you felt during the first years of yours and Saeran's friendship in the Mint Eye. He tried to pat your head awkwardly when you told him about your primary commitment, but even he withdrew as you explained how your secondary commitment had further scarred you.

He was perhaps the only person in the entire world to know just how heartbroken you had felt when Saeran began ignoring you for MC.

The words hurt, as they left your lips, but saying them aloud was like a reminder to yourself, that this was the life you had lived and the fate you'd resigned yourself to.

"I'm sorry, (Y/N)," V murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose. "The Mint Eye has truly scarred you. I can't believe Rika would go this far..."

"You mean the Savior?" You asked, intrigued. "You knew her?"

V nodded his head, leaning back into the chair he was sitting on, "Rika...yes. I loved her. The same way you must have loved Ray."

Oh.

Well, that was one thing V didn't know.

His real name.

You refused to call him Saeran, the name too charged with emotion and pain for you to bring it past your lips anymore; and so you called him what everyone else at the Mint Eye did.

Ray.

The blue-haired man in front of you, though, seemed to raise his eyebrows every time you called your former best friend by that name.

It was almost as if he knew the truth.

Almost.

Before you could ponder the issue further, Vanderwood walked in, his mug of coffee refilled.

You raised your eyebrows. How much coffee does this guy drink?

"Is backstory time over?" He looked from you to V, self-concluding that it was. "Good. I have Luciel working in his room. He's trying to hack into the Mint Eye and access their camera feeds. Can you help him with that, (Y/N)?"

You nodded your head. "If I have a computer."

"Use one of Luciel's laptops. He always carries extra. And," Vanderwood grabbed your wrist before you were quite able to exit the room. "Be careful. I mean it."

You stared at Vanderwood, not quite sure what he meant, but the man was ushering you out of the room before you could ask any further questions.

You sighed, heading into what you hoped was Luciel's room, knocking softly at the door. "Can I come in?"

You heard a lock click, and the door opened, Luciel's confused form appearing instantly. "What are you doing here?"

"Vanderwood told me to see if I could help you. He said that you were trying to hack into the Mint Eye?" You glanced around the room, noting three different laptops open. "I worked with their software every day. My user might still be active."

Luciel laughed. "You really think they wouldn't have disabled your privileges?"

"There's only one other person who worked with me in that room and..." You let your voice trail off. "He might not have."

Luciel shot you a questioning look, curious to know more details but not pressing. "Ray," You murmured breathlessly, the single syllable answering all his questions.

You got to work quickly, managing to engross yourself in the world of code despite the uncomfortableness of your surroundings, the overly soft bed providing no support whatsoever for your back.

You glanced up at Luciel, momentarily shook as you saw not his features, but Saeran's. They really do look similar, you thought, disturbed by the uncanny resemblance. Objectively speaking, they were quite different. Luciel's hair was red whilst Saeran's was white; Luciel's eyes flecked with gold, whereas Saeran projected a mint green glare.

But, you mused, you had only met Saeran after his secondary commitment, when his hair had been bleached white and his eye color altered. Who knows how similar he and Luciel may have looked before Saeran was changed? You remembered, with surprise, that a long time ago, the edges of Saeran's hair were reddish, a physical memory of what he had told you was a happier time for him.

Maybe that was his natural hair color?

You shook your head, pushing the thoughts from your mind and got back to work. No good would come from forming conspiracy theories in your mind.

Alright, Saeran hasn't deleted my user yet, You thought to yourself, smiling. Had the boy consciously left this end open for you? No...he made it clear that he doesn't care about me anymore. So why....?

You hesitated, before inputting your password. This is too easy.

Your finger hovered over the 'Enter' key before you powered through and pressed it.

Loading...

Loading...

Loading...

You bit your lip, noting how the system was taking longer than usual to process your ID. "Luciel, I think I'm in," You whispered to the redhead, who immediately ceased his typing and came over to you, observing the 'Loading' screen with calculating eyes.

Those seconds where you didn't know what would follow were blissful ignorance, you realized later.

Gradually, you felt the laptop you were using become hot in your lap. Before long, the internal fans were whirring at what you could only assume was their maximum speed, the laptop making ungodly sounds.

You glanced at Luciel and then back at the laptop. It looked new enough; what kind of program was running in the background to cause this kind of response?

Saeran!

You realized with a start that, of course, it was his doing.

"Shit, shit, shit!" You mumbled, frantically trying to close the program, stop Saeran from hacking into your laptop. Your former friend must have been on standby, waiting for what he knew would be your first attempt in.

You slammed your finger on the power button, but the keyboard controls were locked—no matter how hard you pressed, it was rendered useless. The screen blanked, temporarily, then glitched into an audio file. No...this isn't a prerecorded audio clip. It's a live connection!

"Ah~" A voice cooed from inside your laptop, the sound distorted with a voice changer placed over it. Even with the filter, though, you'd recognize that inflection anywhere. "There you are, my sweet princess."

You winced at the nickname.

Saeran had only ever used it lovingly, as he'd gaze down at you with a soft smile on his lips while preparing to kiss your cheek.

The mocking tone in his voice made you cringe, a piece of your already broken heart further shattering.

"Sae-" You began, trying to reason with the person you once knew so well.

"Don't call me that!" The voice shrieked, stopping you. "I've...I've come to give you a warning, (Y/N). I know you're working with that...that liar."

"Who?" You asked, fingers no longer flying across the keyboard as you halted all motion to talk to Saeran for the first time in weeks.

"Don't interrupt me!" Saeran shrieked, evidently unstable. "I know how you stole MC from me, how that liar is sitting with you right now."

Only then did you notice the red blinking light beside the camera on the laptop, but Luciel responded before you did, his arm darting around your body to cover the laptop camera with his thumb. "Who are you?" He demanded, voice hard.

"You should know that, shouldn't you?"

You bit your lip. Saeran wasn't acting normal. Hell, he hadn't been normal for almost a month, but this was too much. He was acting psychotic. Crazy, even.

He wasn't him anymore.

"Anyway," Saeran began again, "I've come to give you a warning, (Y/N). If you ever set foot in the Mint Eye again, we will ruin you. Did you think taking the Elixirs was bad? That what happened to your eyes could even begin to compare to true pain? Don't return, (Y/N)." Saeran threatened, "But if you keep working with that traitor, we'll have no choice but to hunt you down and bring the Mint Eye to you."

For a moment, the room was quiet, the only audible sound being your shaky breath.

"May we never see each other again, princess," Saeran cooed, before the laptop let out a burst of electricity and shut down. You shrieked at the pulsation of heat, pushing the device from your lap and onto the bed where you cradled your stinging things.

"Who...was that?" Luciel whispered, his arm no longer around you as he turned to meet your eyes.

"Ray," You whispered, trying not to cry.

But the tears had already begun flowing.

MASTERLIST

Neutral Route: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | ✔

Saeyoung’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | ✔

Saeran’s Route: 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | ✔

Word count: 1.7k

Notes: This story takes a couple turns over the next few chapters (I'm excited to see what you guys think of the developments in chapter 10! :D) and I'll be honest - things may get dark here and there. I want to know what you guys think of that, since I, personally, love the deranged interpretations of Saeyoung and Saeran. I feel like both characters are so multi-dimensional, and that Cheritz really only showed us the insane side of Saeran, rather than Saeyoung - but what if the circumstances were even more fucked up? I'm currently drafting out another Saeran x reader x Saeyoung and it's 10x darker than what's in here...but the plot moves faster, and reader-chan will be with both brothers, at the same time, from the very beginning. (But it will be have mature/explicit themes) Are you interested in reading something like that? Drop me a message and tell me what you think :)

Comment & Like

Next Update: 1/30/20

I do not own the rights to Mystic Messenger or any of the characters within it.

[anthonynieto]

Irrational Pessimism, Rational Exuberance

Happy Thanksgiving!

The holidays provide quality time with family and friends. While political opinions about the President’s latest Tweets will vary, several generations will inevitably all have one thing in common: unwillingness (or inability) to detach from technology. Siblings, parents, grandparents, and beyond will be glued to hardware (phone, tablet, game console, smart TV, etc.) to engage with their favorite software to play games, browse the internet, and/or interact on social media; sitting silently with or talking to their devices or sharing their favorite YouTube videos. The scene is a microcosm of modern life. The collective modern society (“We”) now embrace being connected to technology. But how did we get here?

Public opinion regarding dominant technology adapts over time…from irrational pessimism to rational exuberance. By dominant technology, I simply mean a type of software and/or hardware which the average (American) human will interact with, either directly or indirectly, on a daily basis. Examples include video games, personal computers, the World Wide Web, smart phones, and social networking. These new technologies were initially greeted with irrational pessimism. By irrational pessimism, I simply mean a pessimism (palpable via visible apathy, disinterest, indifference, discouragement, cautionary tales and horror stories, etc.) about some new technology which is irrational because the technology always presented a fundamentally significant improvement over our existing method(s) of business and/or leisure. The collective society’s pessimism was the result of our acting irrational; humans are creatures of habit which further delayed our adoption rate.

Inevitably, the public’s irrational pessimism toward a new dominant technology transitions over time; from decreasing levels of irrational pessimism toward increased levels of rational exuberance. Each new dominant technology experiences a gradual transition toward widespread adoption. New technology requires time to gain popularity. The transition from niche to omnipresent occurs at the slow pace dictated by humans until, eventually, even the loudest critics are forced to adapt their own views and habits. Humanitarian groups now believe some dominant technologies are now fundamental human rights.

Step back to observe human behavior toward new technologies and it seems natural to ask:

How could so many people be so wrong about new dominant technology?

Why does it take us so long to adopt new technology?

What clues do prior dominant technologies provide about the future dominant technology of tomorrow?

Some examples of how major technological introductions make the transition from irrational pessimism to rational exuberance are as follows:

In the mid 1970’s, the personal computer was introduced. The rise of software and developments in hardware combined for a sophisticated new technology that would set the stage for the next quarter century. Yet, the personal computer was initially greeted with irrational pessimism. In a world of typewriters, the word processor seemed rather useless; where do you put the paper? In a world of physical ledgers, the digital spreadsheet brought the same issues. Beyond just the conceptual framework for how a computer functions (processing, hard drive storage, visual display, etc.), a generation of early adopters had to help explain the utility value of a computer to the public. The high cost of the machines and components didn’t help, neither did the cheesy marketing advertisements.

In the late 70’s, 1980’s, and early 1990′s, electronic video games, including arcade machines and consoles from Magnavox, Telstar, and Nintendo combined computer code and related hardware for mass consumption. Electronic video games were initially greeted with irrational pessimism. Proponents of the growing technology had to explain the concept of electronic video games to a weary public. Beyond the simple conceptual framework for how the game works, early adopters also had to justify the utility to a skeptical public, most notably parents and government. At the time, video games were viewed as detrimental to one’s development, too violent, mind-numbing, nuisance, and so forth. Kids or academic researchers had to explain how playing pong or baseball or driving a race car on the screen was harmless, fun, or perhaps useful. It can be argued that the ignorance perpetuated by news broadcasts, city governments, and parents persisted to slow down the adoption of the inevitable rise of electronic video game technology.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990s, the idea of the world wide web was introduced to the masses. Once again, the early adopters, now comprised of kids, adolescents, and programmers, were left to explain the concept of the World Wide Web, or internet, was greeted with irrational pessimism. It was said to be a waste of time with no utility value. Over time, the growing use of email, search engines, and online retail crystalized the value of the internet.

In the 2000’s, the idea of social networking was introduced. For the college students whom it was originally intended for, it was exciting. The public had no idea what it even was. It would not be introduced for general consumption until years later. Social networking was greeted with irrational pessimism: Share what I like? People will know who I am? No anonymity? This was indeed a scary proposition. After all, not even the newsgroups forums in the early days of the internet were this integrated, personal, and potentially dangerous. Over time, the concept of social networking was explained and consumed. The utility value became palpable. Today, over 2 Billion people are connected through Facebook.

In the 2000’s, the introduction of the smart phone allowed anybody the convenience of carrying around a personal computer in their pocket. The smartphone was initially greeted with irrational pessimism. The public had just barely begun to comprehend the flip phone. The need to browse the internet outside the comforts of home, on the family computer, seemed illogical. Today, nearly every person over the age of 10 (often younger) has access to a smartphone.

What technology today faces irrational pessimism? What technology, when merely uttering the name alone, conjures eye rolls, exasperated sighs, raised voice and criticism?

A couple technologies might come to mind: Eco-friendly technologies likeTesla’s electric cars and solar roof, fashion-tech like Snapchat Spectacles, robotics like Hanson Robotics’ Sofia or Boston Robotics’ Atlas, fin-tech like a blockchain-based cryptocurrency (BitCoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.) or perhaps technology which leads us closer to transhumanism (Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality) thereby allowing humans to reach a friendly, controlled version of Singularity.

Do any of the aforementioned technologies contain enormous utility value under the surface? Is it a technology will can complement and improve our existing ability to engage in business and leisure? If so, does the technology function today yet possess bugs and flaws with room for improvement before finally reaching mass adoption? If so, then we might guess the technology prevalent at Thanksgiving dinner in 2018 and 2020 and 2030.

Let’s keep our minds open. Happy Thanksgiving!

[ysawesomenotes]

The sound of 2066 (The Sound of Britain in 2066)

A report commissioned by HSBC

Written by Dominic Watt and Brendan Gunn

-

An Introduction

HSBC is launching voice biometrics as an element of its digital banking services.

The system verifes a caller’s identity using leading-edge voiceprint technology, allowing customers access to their accounts using a simple universal ‘pass phrase’.

As time goes on, voice-activated systems of this kind will be an ever more central part of our lives. 50 years from now, in 2066, we will only rarely interact with machines by pressing buttons, and the keyboard will have become obsolete.

Almost everyone can talk faster than they can type, and talking is the most natural communication system we possess. Speech recognition tools like Siri and Cortana are already part of our everyday lives, but these are only the beginning. Over the next decades the successors to these systems will become ever more reliable and ‘smarter’, as they take advantage of the boundless potential of the internet to train themselves to anticipate users’ needs and to respond effciently to our commands.

Our current speech technologies perform well under diffcult conditions. They can cope with high levels of background noise, or when the speaker has a head cold or a sore throat. Strong regional or foreign accents don’t affect their performance because the systems are trained to compensate for the numerous ways in which our speech varies. And impressive as these tools already are, they are improving all the time. In the future, our devices will understand everything we tell them. The way we interact with machines will converge on how we talk to other people, to the point where there will be no obvious differences between the two.

Balthazar Cohen, author of the ‘Totes Ridic-tionary’, described the internet as the place ‘where language goes to die’. In reality it’s just the opposite. The web is an inexhaustible wellspring of new words and phrases. Already we see how easily internet-inspired abbreviations like ‘LOL’ (laugh(ing) out loud), ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out), ‘FOLO’ (fear of living of?ine), and ‘brb’ (be right back) have been turned into words (LOL to rhyme with ‘doll’, ‘brb’ with ‘curb’). These aren’t just confned to the speech of the young, either, as shown recently by the jokingly vengeful use of ‘LOL’ by a Scottish judge as he passed down a prison sentence. Emojis have been embraced as part of written English, to the extent that the Oxford Dictionaries UK Word of the Year in 2015 was the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ symbol. We will fnd ways of integrating them into our speech too. There is even the possibility that in the near future, our computers will themselves invent new words and phrases, ones which we’ll start to use ourselves because they seem especially useful or pithy.

We tend to think of computers as things that sit on our desks or that we carry around in our pockets, but they are of course already all around us: in car engines, inside our washing machines, or controlling the heating in our homes. Very soon all these systems will be connected together. The era of the ‘internet of things’ is all but upon us. Our homes, workplaces and means of transport will be ever more interconnected, with each appliance communicating with the other devices in its local network, and with the wider world via the web. In a sense, we ourselves will become elements of that network, while keeping executive control over the important decisions. Smart technologies will learn and adapt by tracking how we humans change in our preferences and our habits, and because we will give instructions using our voices they must of course keep pace with changes in our speech and language.

Languages change constantly, and they do so whether or not we want them to. New words replace old ones, grammatical rules arise and fade away, and the ways we pronounce vowels and consonants are always shifting and mutating. English has changed enormously over its 1,500-year history. Even in the last 50 years we have seen big changes in the accents and dialects of the language, including Standard English. This leads us to ask: what will English be like 50 years from now?

In this report, we make a number of predictions about how some key accents of British English might sound in half a century’s time. Some of the changes we identify have in fact already started. In other cases we’re being more speculative, but by looking at how English has changed over the last 50 years, we can identify patterns that seem to repeat. For one thing, people tend to like to make talking as easy for themselves as they can, but without making life too hard for the hearer. So they knock off sounds at the ends of words (‘tex’ for ‘text’, ‘vex’ for ‘vexed’), they simplify complicated sequences of consonants (hardly anyone says ‘syoot’ for ‘suit’ any more), and they rub the sharp corners off sounds by making them ‘softer’. For example, although we say electric with a hard /k/ on the end, we say electricity with an /s/, and electrician with a ‘sh’ sound.

Languages also change when they come into contact with one another. English has borrowed thousands of words from other languages: mainly French, Latin and Greek, but there are ‘loan words’ from dozens of other languages in the mix. For instance, we wouldn’t say we’d spilled chutney and shampoo on the veranda of the bungalow without frst having borrowed these words from Hindi.

Our speech and language patterns are absolutely central to our individual identities, and we exercise ‘consumer choice’ over which new linguistic trends we buy into, much as we do when choosing music or clothing. We adopt new ways of saying things because they’re fashionable or cool, or because we want to sound like we’re a member of a particular group of people. We use language to tell others something about ourselves in a way that costs nothing and is very immediate: uttering just a few syllables can be enough to signal where you come from, and what kind of social groups you identify with or admire. Young people often try very hard to sound different from people of their parents’ generation. Using the right sort of words and pronunciations can be an enormously powerful symbol of belonging, of being cool, of having the right sort of knowledge, of being ‘now’. However, in time what was once the height of linguistic fashion comes to seem stale, staid, and conventional, and so new trends must be followed by those who want to seem the most up-to-date and street-smart.

We must always allow for the unexpected, too: by 2066 English may have altered in ways we hadn’t seen coming. This endless cycle of innovation and renewal is what makes the study of language change so fascinating.

The Homogenisation of English?

We can think of the dialect map of the UK as a jigsaw in which the pieces were once very small. Individual districts, towns and villages had their own dialects. Over the last century or so, the jigsaw pieces have grown larger, as dialects have become more focussed on the bigger urban centres such as Newcastle or Manchester. These days it can be harder to tell where someone is from on the basis of his or her speech than it was a couple of generations ago: the dialect distinctions between Yorkshire and Lancashire, or between Merseyside and north Wales, are becoming more blurred. This is usually put down to greater mobility, with people moving sometimes quite large distances to other towns and cities to study or fnd work, or relocating from the cities into the countryside in search of a better quality of life or more affordable housing. But it isn’t the case that we’re all starting to sound alike. As we’ll see below, new varieties are taking root in different parts of the country. It’s mainly the traditional rural dialects that are becoming less distinct from one another.

We’re not all becoming more standard in our speech, either. Over the last 50 years we have also seen Standard English and Received Pronunciation (‘Queen’s English’) lose some of their status. Where once it was more or less obligatory to speak these for anyone wishing to enter the professions, the clergy, the upper ranks of the military, acting, or broadcasting, these days, non-standard accents and dialects are much more widely accepted. We’ve come to realise that speaking in such-and-such a way isn’t necessarily a sure sign of someone’s intelligence or competence. This improves opportunities for people from a wider variety of social and educational backgrounds. It’s sometimes forgotten that even the standard forms of English are always changing. Today we laugh at the way announcers spoke in TV news programmes from the 1960s because it seems so stiff and old-fashioned. It would sound odd if someone born in 1966 ? say, David Cameron ? were to speak like someone of his grandfather’s generation. We don’t expect young members of the Royal Family to speak in the same way as old ones do. The Queen’s English spoken by Prince George as he grows up is not going to be the same as the Queen’s English spoken by the Queen.

Looking more globally, Chinese and Spanish seem set to become yet more in?uential worldwide, leading to large numbers of words and phrases from these languages coming into mainstream use in English. Other major languages, such as Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic or Russian, may boost English vocabulary by donating names for new concepts.

‘Informalisation’ of English: talking to machines and listening to Americans

As we’ve seen, high technology is a very rich source of new words in English. In turn, English provides other languages with new terms they need in this area. Young people everywhere now use the English words app, troll, or hashtag rather than the equivalents in their own languages. English is the language of the latest trends in social media, and computer users know that being in command of the latest terms will allow them to participate in a globally connected world. Though the science that underlies systems such as Twitter and Facebook is advanced and hugely complex, the innovators and designers behind these brands want to keep the image of social media as relaxed and informal as possible. The terms that are used for common functions and ways users can interact (like, friend, follow, retweet, block) are therefore short, simple and memorable ones. The fact that so many innovations in computing come from California is undoubtedly linked to this relaxed and unpretentious approach.

A preference for informal, chatty and jokey language in the technological and scientifc domains is a recent phenomenon, but it’s one which makes these areas seem more accessible and less po-faced, and we are likely to see more and more of it. After all, there’s really no good reason we shouldn’t name features on the surface of Pluto and its moon Charon after characters from Star Wars, Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings, or call underground bacteria snottites because they look like nasal mucus dangling from cave roofs, or name an Antarctic research vessel Boaty McBoatface, just for the fun of it. A glance at the online Urbandictionary testifes to the endless creativity and humour of English speakers. Freeing ordinary language users up to invent and share new words and phrases like this is a mark of how much more democratic and liberated our linguistic lives have become.

With all of these factors in mind, we turn now to ask what the English of 2066 might sound like in different cities around the country.

London

It’s often said that traditional working-class London speech ? Cockney ? has more or less died out. We can now hear a hybrid accent known as ‘Estuary English’ (EE), which combines older London features with more standard-like speech forms. EE is recognisably south-eastern, but it can be very hard to locate a speaker within that region. It also seems to blur the class divide, leading to accusations that some middle-class speakers ? politicians such as Nigel Farage and celebrities like Jamie Oliver ? ‘dumb down’ their speech so as to conceal a privileged upbringing or to sound more like they are ‘one of the people’. EE has similarities to another newcomer on the UK dialect scene, ‘Multicultural London English’ (MLE). MLE incorporates pronunciations from Englishes spoken by people from ethnic minority groups, particularly from the Caribbean, West African and Asian communities. Given this mix, and the status of London as the linguistically most in?uential city in the English-speaking world, we can expect to see signifcant changes between now and the middle of the century.

For example, there are signs that /h/ is being restored. Generations of Londoners have dropped /h/ from the beginnings of words like hat, Highgate, Harrods, Hampstead Heath, or Henry Higgins. Another feature of London speech is the treatment of the two ‘th’ dental consonants, as in words like thin and this. We see either ‘TH-stopping’ (dis and dat) or ‘TH-fronting’ (fnk for ‘think’, muvver for ‘mother’). In future we’re likely to see the standard ‘th’ sounds being lost altogether. Fin and thin will no longer be distinguished even in careful speech, and bother will always rhyme with hover. This may come as a relief to foreign learners of English, who struggle with the dentals more than any other pair of sounds.

Saying dook for ‘duke’ or nooze for ‘news’ is already pretty frmly established in London, but this habit, known as ‘yod-dropping’, may continue so that even words like cute or beauty are affected, as they are in East Anglia, where they’re pronounced the same as coot and booty. Simplifying clusters of consonants like this is one way English has changed over its history. We don’t say the /k/ at the beginning of ‘knee’ or ‘knight’ any more, or the /w/ that used to occur at the beginning of ‘wrong’ (these letters are now silent, but we haven’t ever bothered to change the spelling). We’ve lost some other great consonant clusters since the earliest days of English: the word for ‘to sneeze’ in Old English, for example, had a very sneezy-sounding /fn/ sequence at the beginning.

/w/ and /r/ are already very similar for many southern English talkers (e.g. Roy Hodgson, Chris Packham, Jonathan Ross), so the two may collapse together completely, so that wed and red are no longer distinct. We may also see consonant+/r/ clusters smushing together into sounds more like ‘ch’ and ‘j’, so trees and cheese, or dress and Jess, sound more alike.

At the ends of words, /r/ was dropped centuries ago, and /l/ is likely to follow suit by turning into a vowel. So words like Paul, paw and pool could be indistinguishable, as they already are in Cockney. Lastly, the glottal stop pronunciation of /t/ ? a brief catch in the throat rather than a sound which involves the tongue tip closing against the roof of the mouth ? will be the default pronunciation. People in 2066 will be mystifed as to why Tony Blair, Ed Miliband and George Osborne were slammed so mercilessly by the press for having been caught saying voters without using a ‘proper’ /t/ in the middle.

Liverpool

The Liverpool accent is highly distinctive but it’s not an especially old one. It mixes local Lancashire features with ones imported from Ireland during the 19th century. The in?uence of Liverpool speech is wide: there are towns on the coast of north Wales in which people speak with accents which are strongly coloured by Scouse. All the same, Liverpool speech will probably start to fall into line more closely with the accents of other major northern cities. The ‘tapped’ /r/ sound in words like green and brown, or four and five, is likely to go the way of this consonant in Scottish or Yorkshire English.

One of the very distinctive things about Scouse is the way that /k/ and the other ‘stopped’ consonants /p/ and /t/ are produced. At the end of back you’ll hear a ‘ch’ sound like the one in Scottish loch or German Bach. A lot of people say they dislike this habit, but it’s actually a very natural sound change, and quite common across other languages. It’s quite possible that we’ll see more of this softening of the stop consonants not just in Liverpool but in other accents around the country.

Liverpool, like all the other northern cities, has an accent in which pairs of words like put and putt are pronounced alike. A great number of the changes we see in current English involve a levelling out of local differences, however, and it’s possible that by 2066 the northern accents will have come into line with the global norm for these vowels. At present there are many northerners who would wince at the thought of saying cup or bus anything like southerners or Americans do, so as a compromise they may start to use some intermediate ‘fudged’ vowel in these and other putt-class words instead. The very suggestion that the north and the south could converge linguistically always meets with heated argument, but it’s not so outlandish an idea ? in fact, the process has already been happening for many centuries.

Glasgow

In Glasgow, and lowland Scotland generally, English sits at one end of a language spectrum. At the far end is the Scots dialect, which is so different from most sorts of English that some call Scots a full-blown language in its own right. It seems clear, though, that the urban Scots spoken in Glasgow is on the wane. Surveys of Scottish schoolchildren show that they aren’t familiar with many of the Scots words and phrases that their parents and grandparents would use (bampot, clarty, glaikit, stooshie, and thousands of others). Some of the dialect words will remain, though it’s impossible to say which will survive. Pronunciations like gless ‘glass’, hame ‘home’, bane ‘bone’, or ft ‘foot’ may soon come to seem too old-fashioned for young people to use.

Dropping of /r/ after a vowel is already well underway among working-class Glaswegians, meaning that pairs of words like hut and hurt can now be hard to tell apart. As in London, wordfnal /l/ is also disappearing (so Paul and paw are more alike), and the ‘th’ consonants are turning into /f/ and /v/.

On the other hand, if a second independence referendum were to go in favour of Scotland’s separation from the UK, the picture could be very different in the Glasgow of 2066. Because language and identity are so closely tied together, it might be that the Scots language lobby would step their efforts up a few gears, as a way of highlighting the separateness of Scotland’s culture and heritage. Making the language of the new state seem as distinctive as possible is exactly what the Norwegians did when they split from Denmark a hundred or so years ago. One of the big unknowns when trying to map out how languages will develop in the future is the effect of political upheavals. The history of English is full of these: think of the arrival of the Vikings, or the Norman Conquest.

Newcastle

British people tend to nominate one of two accents when they’re asked which is the hardest to understand. Glaswegian is one, and Geordie is the other. There are some in the north-east of England who claim that Geordie and the dialect of Northumbria are the closest forms of English to Anglo-Saxon. Though this is an exaggeration, there are features of Geordie which hark back to when Middle English was spoken (hoose for ‘house’, neet for ‘night’, and so on).

These are becoming scarcer, though. The general pattern is for Geordie to sound more like other northern dialects. The characteristic pronunciations of ‘face’ and ‘coat’ (‘fee-uss’, ‘coo-ut’) are much less common than they were two or three generations back. These days, more generic northern-sounding vowels are preferred. Over the next 50 years we predict that they will sound close to what is found in southern England. The characteristic ‘hiccuping’ Geordie pronunciation of /p/, /t/ and /k/ in words like caper, waiter, and baker may go the same way.

Geordies used to pronounce the vowel in words like ‘nurse’ as an ‘aw’ sound, so that shirt sounded the same as short. Words like ‘talk’ were pronounced ‘taak’. These differences are the basis of the story in which a Geordie with an injured leg goes to see the doctor. The doctor bandages the Geordie’s leg and says, “Now then, do you think you can walk?” The Geordie replies, in disbelief, “Walk? Ah can hordly waak!” (= “Work? I can hardly walk!”). These pronunciations can still be heard when you’re oot and aboot in the Toon, but they now have an old-fashioned ?avour. ‘Walk’ now tends to rhyme with ‘fork’, and ‘work’ with ‘jerk’. However, there’s a change going on in which the ‘jerk’ vowel is moving forward in the mouth. It seems to be linked to the habit of pronouncing the ‘coat’ vowel as something like ‘er’. So we fnd jokey spellings like ‘turtle’ for ‘total’, ‘terst’ for ‘toast’, ‘jerk’ for ‘joke’, ‘serp on a rerp’, and ‘The Perp’ (that’s the head of the Catholic church).

Manchester

Some of the same changes that we’ll see in Newcastle are also liable to take place in Manchester. ‘Turtle’ for ‘total’ has spread westward through urban Yorkshire and already seems to have crossed the Pennines into Manchester. The iconic vowel pronunciation at the end of Manchester (something like ‘Manchest-or’) seems fairly new, but whether it will last is an open question. Not all sound changes stick. Another feature of Manchester and other parts of the north-west (though not Liverpool) is the vowel at the ends of words like happy and city. At the moment, in Manchester it’s more ‘eh’-like than ‘ee’-like. The vowel in many British accents is now frmly an ‘ee’ sound ? happ-ee, rather than happ-ih. Mancunians may in time start to use the ‘happ-ee’ option, making them sound more like Scousers in this respect.

As mentioned earlier, the Liverpudlian habit of producing /k/ as the Scottish-like ‘ch’ is a very natural thing to do, phonetically speaking. So is saying /t/ as an ‘s’-like sound, so that ‘mat’ and ‘mass’ sound very alike. It’s conceivable that Mancunians could start producing these sounds the same way. This convergence might seem improbable, what with Mancs claiming to despise Scousers and vice versa, but in reality the rivalry between the two cities isn’t necessarily a barrier to their dialects becoming more similar. There are pairs of cities around the country in which people say they loathe one another (e.g. Derby and Nottingham), but the dialects spoken in them may become so alike that they’re hard to tell apart.

Birmingham

By virtue of being the closest to London of the cities listed above, Birmingham is likely to adopt the new trends in London speech before the others do. Examples might include the following.

If we are right about the restoration of /h/ in London, we might expect this to trickle down to Birmingham, so that by 2066 it’s being used in Brum with at least some consistency. Glottal stop for /t/ will be the default pronunciation (except at the beginnings of words; tea will still need a /t/, but won’t won’t!). TH-fronting (fng for ‘thing’, bovver for ‘bother’) has a frm foothold in the Midlands already, and a /w/-like pronunciation of /r/ is also common. These forms will increase in frequency, and the other features listed for London may also come to dominate Brummie speech.

We could see the phasing out of localised features like the ‘velar nasal plus’, where an audible /?/ is produced at the end of sing and wrong, and where singer (‘sing-guh’) and fnger rhyme. This habit is common in the West Midlands and in north-western cities including Manchester and Liverpool. People in these areas often say that they think they’re using the correct, standard way of saying ‘ng’ at the ends of words and syllables. In fact, it isn’t the way Standard English speakers pronounce these words. Brummies are probably being in?uenced by the spelling here, and so believe that the ‘proper’ pronunciation involves a sequence of two sounds at the end of sing instead of just one.

As with the northern varieties described above, we may see a split between the words of the put and putt sets, bringing the vowel system more closely into alignment with southern accents.

Conclusions

Over the course of the next ffty years, our lives will be transformed by technology at least as much as they were over the past ffty years.

We may see the rate of change accelerate, with each decade bringing an ever wider range of technologies to make our social and working lives easier, safer, and more effcient. The impact of these developments on society will result in new ways of using language. We will need to coin new terms for new inventions and concepts at a rapid pace, of course, but we will also interact with one another, and with the machines that will surround us in all areas of our lives, in ways that may at frst feel unfamiliar. The era of voice-activated computer systems, which are faster, smarter and more secure than ever before, is already upon us. These will not force us into particular ways of speaking, because they are designed to be responsive to our vocal patterns. They are not judgemental about how we speak and make no distinctions between accents or dialects: to them, all languages and their subvarieties are equal, and there is no ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ way of speaking. We can talk to them however we please. In short, the latest generation of secure voice biometrics systems will let you be you.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for their input: Maciej Baranowski, David Britain, Georgina Brown, Urszula Clark, John Coleman, Karen Corrigan, Volker Dellwo, Holly Dunnett, Shivonne Gates, Philip Harrison, James Hoyle, Paul Kerswill, Adrian Leemann, Kirsty Malcolm, Alan Reading, Richard Rhodes, Devyani Sharma, Jane Stuart-Smith, Kim Witten, and Jessica Wormald.

Dominic Watt, Author of the report

Senior Lecturer

Department of Language and Linguistic Science

Dominic Watt was appointed Lecturer in Forensic Speech Science in 2007, and teaches mainly on its new MSc programme in that subject.

Watt has an MA (Hons) from Edinburgh and a PhD from Newcastle, and has held teaching and research positions in phonetics, speech acoustics and audiology, phonology and sociolinguistics at universities in Germany and around the UK, including York (2000-2002) and Aberdeen, where I was Director of the Phonetics Laboratory for five years.

Brendan Gunn, Co-author of the report

Brendan Gunn holds an MA and a PhD in linguistics. He began working as a Dialogue and Dialect Coach in 1986 after leaving the University of Ulster where he was a Lecturer in Linguistics.

Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Aidan Quinn, Cate Blanchett, Jim Sturgess, Heather Graham, Rupert Grint, Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Natalie Portman,Daniel Day Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Saoirse Ronan, Colin Farrell and Stephen Rea are just some of the actors who have worked with world renowned dialect and dialogue coach, over the last 25 years.

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