#Google translate can help with those two sentences.

[stromuprisahat]

hi, i've seen some ppl saying that TGT isn't good slavic representation. would you mind sharing your thoughts on it?

Ahahahaha!

It's no Slavic representation.

Names are completely butchered.

There is Tsar instead of a King. Ocasionally.

There are serfs, drunks, banya, troika, kaftans keftas, Gregs and muggles in Verb, Простите, я не понимаю по-русски! И я не хочу учиться....

It's more than obvious the author used some attractive set pieces, did zero research and called it a day.

I’m just glad she “used” Russian culture, instead of mine (Czech), because this way I don’t know names of linguists spinning in their graves.

#reply #Grishaverse #Grisha trilogy #Leigh Bardugo #grishanalyticritical #anti Leigh Bardugo #Grishaverse through the eyes of Slavs #Google translate can help with those two sentences.

[ivoovu]

*cough*

Mic Tap

A PSA to all König/Krueger writers:

Hello, I‘m Voov, and I‘m a native German.

And let me just clarify that I do not mean any of this in a offensive matter, and that none of these things are 'annoying' or 'bothersome' to me as a German, which I‘m sure other Germans would agree with me. This isn‘t something that‘s making it impossible for us to read blurbs/fics/etc., however I do know that some writers want to write in foreign languages as accurately and realistically as possible, so this is for those. And for everyone else who‘s just interested, of course

🤍🍪

1 - What I often read is "Exemplary Sentence I can‘t think of something right now but it‘s in English, ja?"

We don’t end our sentences with "[…], ja?". Sometimes, yes, fair, sometimes we do so, but it’s on the rarer side in my opinion. Majority of the time we use this at the end of our sentences:

"[…], nicht?" = "[…], no?" (please don‘t use "[…], nein?" for this one)

or:

"[…], nh?" = honestly this one can be used for a lot of things, it can be used for "[…], no?", "[…], don‘t you think so?" or how the Brits use 'innit', like you‘re trying to prove a point.

(Translation for "[…], don‘t you think so?" = "[…], denkst du nicht auch so?")

I understand that when you type in a "[…], ja?" you‘re translating from the words' English equivalent which is "[…], yeah?", but again, it‘s more common to use "[…], nicht?" instead.

If you use a good mix of "[…], ja?", "[…], nicht?" and "[…], nh?" (and any other word you might want to add to the end of your sentence) instead of sticking to one throughout an entire fic, you‘ll make us Germans a bit happier.

🍙⌛️

2- If you‘re using longer sentences, and the sentences are directed at the Reader, you should clarify beforehand if the Reader is masc or fem. Why? Because a lot of words are gendered in German, so the way they’re conjugated tell us the Gender of the Person:

English: "My perfect Partner."

-> Gender neutral, the reader could be a Man, Woman, in between, on the outside, an Alien race, whatever

If you type this into google translate you get: "Mein perfekter Partner."

-> Masculine. It‘s an instant tell that the reader is a dude.

The female version would be: "Meine perfekte Partnerin."

-> Now we know instantly that this is feminine.

There is no gender neutral, German simply isn’t a language that works that way.

Can you write full sentences without using anything gendered, at all? Yes, absolutely, here‘s an example:

English: "Oh God I love you, I don‘t know what I would do without you. You‘re my everything, I‘ll do anything and everything for you."

German: "Oh Gott ich liebe dich, ich weiß nicht was ich ohne dich machen würde. Du bist mein ein und alles, ich würde alles für dich tun."

This is completely gender neutral because while typing I actively made sure to avoid using anything gendered. But I understand that this is a extremely difficult task to do so for those who don’t speak German, so if you can pull it off, you just earned my highest form of respect, but this isn’t something that us Germans expect of you as a Writer, this is just something I wanted to draw your attention to.

🐰🧳

My point is: If you do any of those two, we Germans aren’t crying about it. We won‘t stop reading the fic, we won‘t bitch about it or send you hate-mail.

We just notice it, correct the sentence in our mind, and some of us will type out the correct sentence as a comment.

I sadly don‘t have any websites that can help with the gendered words, and google translate sucks anyways, so I truly don‘t have any type of direction I could point you writers to, sorry :/

But I have said this before and I‘ll say it again, as many times as I have to: I am absolutely willing to help with the German parts, my dm‘s are always open, no I won’t think you’re annoying or abusing anything by asking me to check the German sentences you might‘ve used in your works, no I‘m not saying any of this out of courtesy, no I‘m not lying, no we don’t have to know each other, no you don’t have to deal with chit chat you can immediately hit me up with 'Hey how is this sentence?', yes I am being serious. In doubt, read this paragraph again and again.

🐚🪵

#; german with voov ; #könig x you #könig x reader #könig cod #könig call of duty #könig mw2 #könig modern warfare #könig x y/n #könig #konig #konig call of duty #konig modern warfare #konig mw2 #konig x you #konig x reader #konig x y/n #sebastian krueger x reader #krueger x reader #sebastian krueger #cod krueger #krueger x you

[dedalvs]

can you make a translator for firish i want to use it in my rps i have with friends

I've actually gotten this question a couple times, which is great! But this type of thing just isn't possible with a conlang. It has nothing to do with the quality of the conlang or the level of completion (i.e. the amount of vocabulary, how much of the grammar has been recorded, etc.), and I'll tell you specifically why.

First, you may have seen "translators" for various languages online like LingoJam. LingoJam not only has translators for a bunch of different languages, but allows you to make your own translators. The way these work, though, is you write down a word in one language and write its translation into another—something like:

English > Spanish

I > yo

am > soy

to > a

the > el

store > tienda

going > yendo

That is, you put in one to one correspondences, and that's what it has to work with. Once you're done, if you ask for a translation, it looks up the words and sees what's available and it spits back what it has, in order. If we had this very minimal English to Spanish dictionary (which is 100% accurate, by the way! That is, all of these English words can be translated as all of these Spanish words), you could ask LingoJam to translate the following into Spanish...

I am going to the store.

...and you would get...

Yo soy yendo a el tienda.

Now, if you speak Spanish, you'll see all the places this went wrong. (Short version: You don't always need subjects pronouns in Spanish; you use a different helping verb for "to be x'ing" in Spanish; you rarely actually use this "to be x'ing" construction in Spanish; the present tense is sufficient; though el means "the", it's the wrong gender for tienda—analogous to saying "an store" as opposed to "a store" in English.) And you can actually avoid this in LingoJam by adding phrases on top of single words:

English > Spanish

the store > la tienda

I am going > voy

But you can imagine how much work that would be...

The reason why things like LingoJam are so popular, though, is because imagine if you knew nothing about Spanish. Typing in "I am going to the store" and having it instantly spit out "Yo soy yendo a el tienda" is pretty darn satisfying! If you don't know it's wrong but you're happy with it, what's the problem?

Now, a language like Spanish is huge, so it's easier to get accurate Spanish translations online than it is to get accurate Korean translations online—and it's easier to get accurate Korean translations online than accurate Tigrinya translations online, etc. The reason for that takes us to Google Translate.

I think most people know that with LingoJam, you get what you pay for. Google Translate, on the other hand, is much more sophisticated, and much more accurate. It's not 100%, but it's pretty darn good—for widely spoken languages. This is why.

Way back when, Syfy facilitated a chat between me and the folks at Google Translate because they wanted to see if Google and I could work together to create a translator for a couple of my Defiance languages at TED in 2013. After all, we had a full two weeks. We could bang something like that out in two weeks, right? (lol no)

I learned then how Google Translate works. Google Translate doesn't actually know anything about the specific grammar of a language—maybe a couple language specific tweaks, but it's not as if you can go under the hood and find a full grammar of Spanish that tells you when to use the subjunctive, what all the conjugations are, etc. Instead, what Google Translate has is a database (i.e. Google, along with Google Books, Google Scholar, etc.) with tons of, presumably, fluent documents written in the various target languages offered on Google Translate. They also have faithful translations of those documents—not all, but a percentage. Google Translate uses that information to predict what a given sentence in one language will turn into in another.

In order to do this successfully, Google Translate needs BILLIONS of documents to troll. And it has that. It has BILLIONS of articles written in Spanish and translated to English. That's why the English to Spanish translation is as good as it is.

Now, having said that, anyone who's bilingual in English and Spanish knows that Google Translate isn't perfect. Sometimes it's pretty good, but sometimes it produces a lot of clunky, unnatural, or even incorrect translations. This is because there isn't a human back there calling the shots.

But that's its best translator. Now imagine translating between English and Samoan (one of the other languages it offers). There are EXPONENTIALLY more online articles in Spanish than Samoan. Consequently, the translations you get between English and Samoan on Google Translate are absolutely no guarantee.

And bear in mind, there's a kind of minimum threshold they work with before adding a language to Google Translate. If Samoan is on there and not Fijian, it's because there's that much more Samoan online than Fijian.

Now let's go back to conlangs. What Google Translate wants is BILLIONS of articles written online in the target language. Forget how complete the grammar of a conlang is, whether you can find that description online, or how many thousands of words the conlang has. How many fluent articles are there written in that conlang that are online? How many can one person to? How about a team of people? And how many conlangs have that?

This is why Google Translate has Esperanto and nothing else. Esperanto has been around for 136 years, and in that time there have been a good number of people who have learned to speak it fluently, and have written things (poems, articles, books) that are now online. It is as much as Spanish? Certainly not, but it is enough to hit Google Translate's minimum threshold, and so it's available.

Assuming you have a conlang with a full grammar and a good amount of vocab, if it were popular, it might have enough available material for Google Translate to work with 125 years from now. But at the moment, it's not possible. That says nothing about the language: It's about how Google Translate works.

And bear in mind, Google Translate is, at the moment, our best non-human translator.

If predictive-AI gets good enough that it can learn the grammar of a language, then it may be possible to produce a translator for a new conlang. That, though, is not the goal of Google Translate. Maybe ChatGPT and things like it will get there one day, but even that isn't a dedicated language learning AI. We need an AI that doesn't work with billions of fluent articles, but works with two books: a complete grammar and a dictionary. If an AI can one day work with those two tiny (by comparison) resources and actually produce translations that are as good as or better than Google Translate, then we'll be at a "translation-on-demand" place that will be good enough to feed a new conlang to. At that point, it will simply be a matter of producing a grammar and lexicon of sufficient size for the AI to do its thing.

So, no, right now we can't do a Ts'íts'àsh translator. :( We can go over things like the sound system and basic grammar and you can create your own words to work with it... A lot more work, but hey, we don't have to churn our own butter or milk our own cows anymore! We've got time!

#conlang #language #linguistics #translation #google #google translate #ai #elemental #pixar elemental #firish #tsitsash #ts'its'ash #ts'íts'àsh #syfy #defiance #spanish #translator

[rosetta-j-stone]

Buckle up guys, gals and non-binary pals, it's BoJere Tour Bus Renuion time <3

"...Bojan was tentatively asking me if I would join him on the tour bus" - Kris arches an eyebrow as he reads this part of the latest interview with Jere on his phone screen.

Tentatively? Seriously? Since when has Bojan done ANYTHING tentatively? Bojan is about as tentative as a- as a puppy. Which is why Kris has to watch him and "Nine Lives" Jure like a hawk.

Not for the first time, Kris is glad he doesn't have pets.

Turtles might be OK, he supposes.

Nace seems to think so.

Anyway, he's clearly going to have to talk to Bojan about this.

****

"Hey, Bojan, remind me: what are the rules of this tour?"

Bojan rolls his eyes. Like Kris doesn't know. Like Kris didn't write them. Like Kris didn't give him two copies (just in case). He shrugs.

"Let's see...what happens on the tour bus stays on the tour bus?"

Kris chucks a pillow at him. He ducks.

"That is the exact opposite of Rule 5 and you know it"

Ugh, he's in one of those moods. Bojan briefly considers throwing the pillow back, but decides against it.

"Rule 5? What were the other 4?" He grins. "Wait, don't tell me. They're all the same rule, just with different names."

Kris refuses to take this bait, unfortunately.

"Rule 5 is - as you very well know - No Sex On The Tour Bus"

How is he capitalising every letter of that stupid rule just saying it, Bojan wonders.

"Right, and why are you bringing up that rule with me? Shouldn't you be reminding...ooh, I don't know...your fellow guitarists of that one?"

Kris folds his arms and Bojan knows he shouldn't push it but he can't help himself.

"Or does it not apply if both parties are band members? Kinda discriminatory Krisko. Does this mean I have to start sleeping with Jure again?" He grins, gives Kris a suggestive look. "Or-"

Kris gives him a don't-even-think-about-it look in response - spoilsport - and thrusts his phone at him.

Ooh, it's an interview with Jere...

Ah.

OK, Jere has obviously said something.

Yep. Kris has highlighted it. Of course he has.

He reads the offending sentence, rereads it, laughs, looks up.

"Oh come on Kris, this is just Jerč-Jere messing around. He probably said it because he knew it would get attention. Although" he feels obliged to point out, because joke or no joke this slander will not stand: "it was actually HIM asking ME if he could-"

Kris sighs the deep sigh of the terminally exasperated.

"Look, I don't care who asked who, your boyfriend-"

"-NOT my boyfriend actually but do carry on"

Kris doesn't even bat an eyelid.

"Whatever he is, he's NOT coming on the bus. In EITHER sense. There's barely enough room for the five of us as it is"

He gestures to the admittedly cramped living quarters they've somehow got used to sharing. Bojan can see his point, even if he is making it in the most insufferable way possible. He sighs.

"FINE. No Sex On The Tour Bus"

Kris looks at him.

"Promise?"

He's such a Boy Scout sometimes. Bojan can't resist saluting as he replies.

"Yes, Mr-If-I-Can't-Get-Laid-Neither-Can-Anyone-Else, I promise"

And he runs off before Kris can find anything else to throw at him.

****

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: Hey

BikBik: Hey

BikBik: What happen?

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: Kris read your interview. I had to promise him I wouldn't smuggle you onto the tour bus.

BikBik: : (

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: I know, it sucks. No reenacting this for us

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: <video file: UKTourChaChaCha">

BikBik: <gif: "SadDavidTennant">

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: <gif: "SadDavidTennant">

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: ...

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: Anyway, I think we're both off Krisko's Christmas card list this year.

BikBik: ...

BikBik: OK but still on Christmas present list, yesyes?

BikBik: Still on track for visit from...Grandfather Walrus?

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: ...Grandfather Walrus?

BikBik: Is not correct? I put "Dedek Mrož" into Google Translate and-

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: OH

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: OMB

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: X D

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: DEDEK MRAZ

CarpeEveryDiemSlideIntoEveryDM: BRB DYING OF LAUGHTER

BikBik: ...

BikBik: ...

BikBik: F**k you Bojan X D

****

Jere is laughing as he puts his phone down, he can't help laughing whenever he interacts with Bojan, but he's soon serious again.

Yes, he ABSOLUTELY said that to that reporter because he knew they'd eat it up.

But...

He was hoping that he and Bojan would-

Well.

You know.

But Bojan has made a promise, and his Bojan doesn't break promises.

So Jere is going to have to...get creative.

He grins.

He's always enjoyed a challenge.

#bojere week 2024 #käärijä #kaarija #bojan cvjetićanin #bojan cvjeticanin #fanfic #bojere

[shrekgogurt]

An ask game for writers to procrastinate working on you WIP(s)

Thanks for the tags @theearlgreymage and @wellbelesbian !!!!

🦈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s)

For the sake of this endeavor I’m gonna focus on I Knew A Boy, I Knew A Man which is also more affectionately referred to as IKABIKAM, eyecab eyecam, 👁️🚕👁️📸, etc.

🍄Describe your wip/one of your wips in the format of “___ + ___ =___”  

Natasha as like a vaguely Margaret Thatcher figure but she was in office in the late 90s not the 80s don’t think about it too hard okay the exact policy/praxis doesn’t matter so much as the ideology/vibes/dynamic + Davy (The Mage) as like a fucked up Welsh caricature (of his own design) because he’s overcompensating and has the media literacy of the worst film bro you’ve ever had the misfortune of talking to = their sons falling in love through football/soccer against all odds as juxtaposed between childhood and adulthood.

🌍What tags or warnings will your / one of your wip(s) need if you intend to share it?

Trauma

🧭An alternative title to your/ one of your WIP(s)?

Solsbury Hill for obvious reasons

⚠️Which wip you’re most likely to finish or update next?

This one :-)

💾What is your document of your wip/ a wip called? (not the stories actual title but what you’ve saved it as)

Okay, I’m usually absolute ass at naming files in any helpful fashion but this project is so organized on Google Docs. My notes app is a different story. Those don’t even have titles. I just launch into my whims as they come.

Most interesting answer I can give is that the folder containing all my fic documents is titled “kill the part that cringes.”

🖍Post Any sentence from your wip

Listen, I warned y’all.

To be in love with Simon Snow—a life sentence, an encyclopedia of grief.

♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP

In the original musings of IKABIKAM—titled Scarborough Fair as the club was gonna be in Scarborough—Simon was Irish rather than Welsh and raised by Ruth. I know. Wild to think about now. But it’s true. And then I did some excavating on canon and the story we have today was born. Lost to time (the original idea of this fic which was actually two fics) is a whole very fun scene. I had planned that after the international break match against other, Simon convinced Baz to go out on the town with him. I wrote this snippet back then. It didn’t make the cut for obvious reasons and honestly I don’t know how much I stand by the characterization. Or the prose. Everything about IKABIKAM is better to me but this sexy little number deserves the people’s attention. I’m slightly concerned it’s offensive.

They’re playing INDUSTRY BABY in this club right now? I’m not dancing with Simon Snow to a Lil Nas X song. That music video…I’m only a man. I’m also not exactly sober. I will not risk a Snow relapse. Besides, Snow himself just downed the rest of his drink.

He leans toward me to say something. With the combination of his drunkenness and his accent I can barely make out his words, “eye gahta gohbakta da barrr.” (Translation: I’ve got to go back to the bar.) He really doesn’t.

I pluck the glass from his hand, “this last one is on me.”

He goofily smiles. His head is drooping to the side and his eyes are half-lidded. It would be adorable if I wasn’t worried about him falling over. I scan the room. One of the other Irish players is nearby. I hook Snow’s arm in mine (both my hands are full!) and drag him towards his teammate. He stumbles behind me looking completely blissed out.

I tap the other player on his shoulder. Clancy I think? The left winger. “Hey, I’m going to force Snow home so he can avoid a stomach pump. Could you make sure he doesn’t wander off while I close out my tab?”

He nods. I throw Snow at him and maneuver through the crowd up to the bar. It’s packed. I finish my own drink before I can push an opening to order. The bartender nods at me. She looks worn out from the night. I don’t blame her.

“Soda water with lime please.”

“Sure. What’s the name on the tab?”

“Grimm-Pitch. Could you close it?”

She nods and turns on her heel. A minute or so later she returns with the drink and my card. I take them.

“Is there any chance I could close out my mate’s tab too. He’s pissed.” I gesture back at the direction of Snow and Clancy. A circle of women have surrounded them. Honestly, fair.

The bartender gives me a wary eye. “What’s the name?”

“Snow.”

“Snow? Like the footballer Simon Snow over there?” She points at Simon.

I nod. The bartender scoffs, “Sure I’ll give Simon Snow’s card to some random Englishman.”

Random Englishman? Am I really going to have to do you know who I am this woman? I go for a subtle approach and just sort of lift an eyebrow and draw attention to the name on my own card: Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch. The realization hits her. I was afraid I would have to tie my hair up.

“Oh shit. Fuck you’re Baz Pitch.” She stares at me. I hold out my hand. “Right, the card!” She hands me Snow’s card.

I nod, “Alright. Thanks.”

She shakes her head at me, “No, sorry for the hassle. Have a good night English…defensive midfielder…Baz Pitch.” She says my name with a laugh like she’s awestruck I’m in this Dublin nightclub (fair), “and thanks for the win today!”

I’m beyond tired of hearing that line.

When I return Snow is having the time of his life: posted up surrounded by ladies singing along to Ayyy Ladies. They’re not being subtle in their flirting. (Again, fair. Good for them.) Snow is incredibly respectful despite being off his face. Good lad. He’s still far too drunk to consent to anything so I don’t feel terribly guilty for pulling him away from the grind fest.

When he sees me approach he lights up, “Baz!” His arms fly open. “Took you long enough.”

I hand him his drink. There is a blonde woman dancing on him. She throws her arms around his neck. He knocks back the drink and chugs it in one go. A little water dribbles down his chin and he wipes it away with his thumb. It catches on his bottom lip. He hasn’t looked away from me once. And this fucking song…

“When I hit it from the back, don't fuss, don't fight

When I put it in ya mouth, don't scratch, don't bite”

I need to get the fuck out of here.

He hands me back the glass, “That drink was awful. What was it?” His speech is a little less slurred than before.

“Water. I’m taking you home.”

He blushes, “What?”

“You’re plastered. So, you should get sick in your own loo rather than on this lovely woman,” I give the blonde a wink. She dances away.

I’m pretty sure tabs aren’t even really that much of a thing in Ireland. And like…I don’t think you can close them out for someone else. So like. I don’t know what the fuck I was on while writing that. Obviously not Google.com, or reality. But most of all I was absolutely jump-scared reading that back and discovering I was gonna make Baz a defensive midfielder? WTF!?

🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet?

A hockey one-shot. Whenever it happens the chirps are gonna be out of this world.

🤡How many Wips are you actively working on?

One in a way that’s meaningful. Maybe two. It’s a fresh thing.

🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now?

The chapter is really expositional in an isolated way and so I have to backtrack for context without being boring.

❤️Not a question, just a second kudos to send.

Blessed beyond belief.

Now tagging @artsyunderstudy @brilla-brilla-estrellita @cutestkilla @facewithoutheart @hushed-chorus @iamamythologicalcreature @ileadacharmedlife @j-nipper-95 @noblecorgi @prettygoododds @thewholelemon @valeffelees @roomwithanopenfire @youarenevertooold @you-remind-me-of-the-babe omg and @emeryhall tell me everything

#ikabikam #bonus content

[missproducergirl]

Summer’s Covenant Date [CN Translation]

word count: 3,103

requested by: @sj224

notes: This translation was done with Google Translate. 9 time out of 10 it spews none sense so I had to take my best guess on a lot. Take everything with a grain of salt!! Special thanks to the best person in the world, @hopelesstotstan for proofreading!

[Part 1]

MC: Uh… So sleepy…

I opened my eyes with difficulty and used the person next to me to straighten up with one hand.

Even when I was on vacation with Victor, the long flight still made me unconsciously fall into a deep sleep.

Victor: Finally got enough sleep?

MC: Hehe, it’s so comfortable to sleep next to you… now what time is it?

I rubbed my eyes and looked at the laptop on Victor’s lap, wanting to glance at the time.

There seemed to be a file full of pictures and text on the screen. But before I could see it clearly, Victor closed the computer and reached out to open the window shutters.

Victor: See for yourself.

MC: What… Wow!

A bright golden streak of sunlight at the end of the cloud breaks into sight, and the quiet sunrise is extremely beautiful.

I woke up completely, picked up my phone to take pictures, and glanced at Victor.

MC: Speaking of which, why did you suddenly take me out on vacation?

MC: Could it be my reward for doing well recently?

Victor: Wasn’t someone talking about the end of summer?

Victor: Just this time, I’ll give you a chance to do it all over again.

I blinked and recalled the “encounter” when I said this sentence before—

While going out on location to film under the hot sun, three colleagues suffered from heatstroke one after another. Two colleagues fell ill at the same time, and a machine fell out of order.

Almost all of the late summer was devoted to work, and it was not until the breath of autumn turned the leaves gold that this busy time finally came to an end.

The leisurely activities and travel plans originally written in the summer plan were all wasted.

One day when I came home disheartened, I saw Victor packing a suitcase that I hadn’t packed for a while and suddenly felt wronged.

I couldn’t help shouting “I don’t like summer anymore”, and just stood there crying…

Now thinking of Victor’s surprised gaze at that time, I scratched my cheek in embarrassment.

MC: All those angry words… how do you remember…

Victor: After all, some people kept whining until winter, and it’s hard not to remember.

Victor: What’s more, with such a clear and feasible demand, there is no reason not to make it come true.

As if sensing my embarrassment, Victor raised his hand and rubbed my hair. I couldn’t help raising my smiling face, pretending to hold his hand solemnly.

MC: CEO Victor!

MC: Don’t worry, I will try my best to cover all the unhappiness from before!

[Part 2]

Sunglasses, skirts, fresh fragrance—

I took one last look in the mirror and patted my cheek with satisfaction.

Enjoying summer, of course, starts with dressing up beautifully. It would be even better if you can also fascinate the calm Mr. Li!

I adjusted my expression, opened the door of my room, and prepared to make my debut.

MC: Victor, I—

Victor: Ready?

The voice that sounded at the same time made me stunned for a moment, and before I had the time to feel sorry for my failed appearance, my attention was attracted by the person next to the sofa.

Victor seemed to have been waiting for a while, the computer at hand was still on, and he closed the screen when he saw me come out.

He rarely wore a fancy resort-style shirt, perhaps because he was used to his usual minimalist style. The colorful patterns looked particularly bright on him.

Although it has been a long time, I still recognized at a glance that it was the shirt I bought him.

I still remember his slightly helpless expression when he first received it, but I didn’t expect that I would really see the day he puts it on!

I hopped to his side, pulled his arm, and looked at him left and right.

MC: This shirt suits you very well!

Victor: I can’t think of another person with this peculiar taste.

MC: Isn’t that because there are people who can pull off these kinds of “outlandish clothes”~

MC: I haven’t seen you wearing it, I thought you didn’t like it.

Victor: I just didn’t find a chance to wear it.

I met his calm gaze and couldn’t help raising my eyebrows at him.

MC: I understand! What Mr. Li means is that we should go to the beach a few more times in the future!

MC: You can rest assured that I am here to ensure that your floral shirts can maximize their value.

Victor: Idiot. Is that the point?

Victor: Let’s have enough sun this time before talking about the future, so as not to leave any regrets.

MC: Mr. Li is right. It shouldn’t be too late, let’s go out now!

I took his arm and was about to go out, but Victor hesitated for a moment, turned around, and took a big backpack.

I watched him put the computer in, and then he took the items from my hand.

Victor: Put your things in here first. Some people will definitely lose them after running around.

MC: Some people don’t forget to complain about others even if they are kind enough to help…

I muttered while helping him organize his backpack, and took a second look at the computer that was inseparable from him.

MC: Victor, do you still have unfinished work?

Victor: Still a little bit. It will be taken care of soon.

It has been a long time since we got off the plane. Judging from his usual efficiency, this must be a lot of work.

Could it be that he decided to accompany me on vacation temporarily before work can be scheduled?

A trace of guilt rose from the bottom of my heart. I hugged him lightly and glanced at the clock beside me.

MC: Don’t worry. Work is important.

MC: It’s still early. How about I go around by myself first, and you can finish your work at ease and then meet up? How does that sound?

Victor hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

Victor: Okay. Don’t go too far, and keep in touch.

MC: No problem!

[Part 3]

I thought Victor would stay in the room to deal with work, but I didn’t expect him to come to the beach with me.

I was collecting shells by the sea, and he continued to work in a hammock not far from the shore.

[Flashback]

MC: Are you going to work here?

Victor: What is the problem?

MC: It doesn’t suit your style to work in such a noisy place.

MC: Could it be…

I paused on purpose, leaned closer to him, and blinked.

MC: Am I so good-looking today that someone can’t take their eyes off me?

Faced with my teasing, Victor just smiled lightly without averting his gaze.

Victor: I’m just afraid that some dummy will get lost and I will have to find someone else.

[Flashback ends]

Recalling the conversation just now, I puffed up my mouth somewhat unconvinced.

There is just a coastline here, where can I get lost?

I turned my head, and I could see the slightly fancy shirt under the tree from a distance.

The person leaning on the hammock didn’t seem to notice me, so I took the opportunity to make a face, only to meet Victor’s gaze in the next second.

MC: !

Victor: ?

Even from a distance, being stared at by him like this made me a little guilty, and I hurriedly gestured to him and mouthed a sentence.

MC: “Concentrate!”

I don’t know if he understood it, but I saw him faintly smile and then turned his eyes back to the computer.

I breathed a sigh of relief and was about to continue my walk when suddenly a group of boys who looked like middle school students ran past me.

They wore uniform jerseys with the words “Youth Training” printed on the back. The leading boy proficiently took the soccer ball under his feet and called out to his friends behind him.

Boy: Come on! There’s no one here!

They ran towards a nearby net, appearing to be playing beach soccer.

Seeing that this place is going to become more lively, working in this environment will be difficult for even Victor, right?

MC: I’ll ask him if he wants to change places.

I put away the shells I picked up along the way, and quietly approached Victor, bypassing the children playing soccer.

However, when I saw the familiar figure clearly, I soon realized that my worry was unnecessary.

Victor was half leaning in the hammock, wearing earphones, as if he was talking to someone.

Not knowing if he encountered a difficult problem, he scratched his hair unconsciously, revealing a trace of entanglement in his serious expression.

Victor: Is there anything else I need to do that day?

Victor: …Okay, let’s adjust it like this.

A low voice faintly floated into my ears. The sea breeze was blowing gently, and the sun fell on him through the shade of the trees, but it didn’t disturb him at all.

Although it was inappropriate, my eyes were still firmly attracted by the person in front of me.

His fluffy hair brushed against his fingers, and the light shirt hugged his waist tightly with the sea breeze.

I unconsciously slowed down, wanting to peek a little longer.

I’ve seen him at work a lot, but it doesn’t seem to be common to see him on vacation.

With the noise around, he leaned on a soft and comfortable hammock, and still stared at the computer so intently…

I couldn’t help but speculate about what kind of work and what kind of clients would be able to disturb Mr. Li who was on vacation.

??: Hey—watch out!

Before I could think about it, there was a call from behind, and I suddenly felt something lightly hit my ankle.

I looked down and there was a soccer ball at my feet. I looked over to the school boys and they were waving at me to kick the ball back.

MC: It’s a little far away…

I was a little embarrassed looking at the shoes on my feet. I subconsciously looked at Victor, and my brain suddenly had an idea.

I don’t know if he still plays soccer now. If the ball is passed to him, how will he react?

I cleared my throat, trying to get his attention.

MC: Victor!

Seeing him looking up, I lightly kicked the ball to him and pointed to the children not far away.

MC: They accidentally kicked the ball away, can you help pass it back?

Victor: I can.

Victor didn’t seem to notice my thoughts. He put down the computer and turned over, naturally aiming in the direction of the goal.

Then he took a step back, raised his leg, and kicked hard—

The ball drew a perfect arc in the air and flew towards the goal.

Seeing this, the boys started running. One of them ran to the goal, jumped high, and kicked the ball. It went straight into the goal!

Boy: Nice shot!

MC: Wow! Goal!!

The schoolboys cheered and hugged each other, and I also cheered and rushed toward Victor.

Victor: Be careful!

MC: That’s amazing! As expected of Older Brother Vic who kicked down my sandcastle!

Victor: …Are you praising someone?

MC: Hey, have you been playing soccer since then? Why haven’t I seen it?

Victor: I don’t…

MC: Oops I should have filmed it! Can you kick it again later?

Victor: …

I wanted to say something more, but Victor swept me off my feet and put me in the hammock.

Victor: Why are you so excited?

MC: I didn’t expect to see you play soccer. I feel very pleasantly surprised.

Victor: Even if it is a surprise, it is too easy for you to be satisfied.

MC: Because it’s all about you. Wearing the clothes I chose and doing things I’ve never seen before is a surprise to me.

MC: How about it? Isn’t this very touching?

I cupped Victor’s cheek and pinched it, but he didn’t hide, just left a chuckle in my palm.

Victor: Is there anything more I can want?

MC: Hmm… not for now.

Victor: Okay, then I will answer you one by one.

Victor: I started playing less soccer after breaking your sandcastle, less after working.

Victor: So that kick just now was pure luck, there is no second time.

MC: But…

Before I could finish speaking, Victor leaned over and turned off the computer. He then flipped through the shells in my hands with his fingers.

Victor: Our reservation for the water sports that you wanted to play is soon. Let’s go there together.

MC: Are you done with your work?

Victor: Yes, it’s taken care of.

Victor: Let’s go. Show me what treasures you picked up along the way.

[Part 4]

The short vacation passed quickly, and it was already our last night in a blink of an eye.

After dinner, Victor and I walked along the beach. Today’s weather is exceptionally nice, the night sky is clear, and the broken stars reflect in the sparkling sea.

A perfect vacation in every sense, even the ending. Looking at the scenery in front of me, I couldn’t help but sigh.

Victor: What’s wrong?

MC: I was thinking, this summer is really coming to an end, and there is no chance for me to regret it.

Victor: It seems that it is nosy to make up for your regrets.

MC: Not at all!

MC: It’s rare that Mr. Li is so proactive in cooperating with my sense of ritual, but I’m not moved yet.

I shook his arm fawningly. Victor chuckled lightly and held my hand.

Victor: Tell me, what kind of ceremony did you originally envision?

MC: Actually, it is almost the same as now. Enjoying the warm sunshine and cold drinks, and stepping into the water with your favorite people.

MC: After a leisurely day, it would be even better if you can watch the fireworks at the beach.

Victor: Fireworks?

Victor showed a thoughtful expression, and I waved my hands hastily.

MC: I just said it casually, just to make a deep impression.

Victor: However, it is indeed a good arrangement.

The person next to me seemed to smile a little, and I was about to ask more when I caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar scene out of the corner of my eye.

It was an area enclosed by a small fence and the small gate was ajar, which looked a bit strange on the flat beach.

MC: What is this? I haven’t seen it before while walking around.

Victor: Go and have a look.

I followed Victor and approached. I looked at Victor from outside the fence, but I stretched out my hand and pushed the door open.

There is nothing special in the enclosed area, except for a few rows of black shadows with small red lights on the ground.

MC: This is…

I felt that these black shadows look familiar, but the sky is too dark, and I can’t see clearly.

Just as I was about to get closer to confirm, the “black shadow” suddenly took off.

A slight hum lingered in my ears, and I instantly recognized it as a drone.

MC: Why are there drones here?

I looked around subconsciously but saw no one nearby. I vaguely had some guesses in my heart. I turned my head and glanced at Victor.

MC: Could it be…

Victor: Look up first.

He didn’t return my gaze, just squeezed my hand. I tried my best to suppress my curiosity and looked up at the sky with him.

The drones slowly arranged a pattern in the air, and I took a closer look. It was a small Shiba Inu.

MC: Hahaha, this looks like the doll I gave you.

Victor: Not too stupid.

MC: The next pattern… is pudding!

MC: Wait, aren’t these patterns all my favorite things?

Victor: You can guess.

MC: Then I guess the next one is Mr. Li’s red wine!

I opened my eyes expectantly and looked at the sky, only to be greeted by a camel.

Victor: Unfortunately, alcohol was not approved.

MC: Watching the drone show without getting drunk…

I muttered softly, subconsciously wrapping my arms around Victor.

The patterns in the sky are all related to me without exception. Kittens, bowknot hairpins, lipstick…

The memories of spending the summer together are brought back again and again, and those bright days spread a happy background in my memory, making the corners of my mouth uncontrollably curl up.

Looking at those colorful patterns, I gently tickled his palm.

MC: When was this prepared? The pattern is quite cute, not like Mr. Li’s style.

Victor: If it is not cute enough, I am worried that dummies will not appreciate it, so I adjusted it many times.

MC: I won’t… huh?

I was about to refute when I realized something.

MC: You have been staring at the computer busy with work before, so you are not talking about this, are you?

Victor smiled and squeezed my hand.

Victor: Let’s watch it first.

After all the patterns were spelled out, the drone flickered like a star for a moment, then moved slowly again.

I carefully watched and read out word by word—

MC: [In English] “See you next year”...

MC: Is this a message from summer?

Victor: It can be understood in this way.

Victor: Unpleasant things will always pass, and the life you look forward to will come again.

Victor: So there is nothing to regret. Instead of struggling for so long, you should just tell me what you want.

MC: But even if I didn’t say anything, you have it all considered.

MC: There are even plenty of surprises!

I pointed to the sky and tugged on his shirt again.

MC: Maybe you have a better understanding of me than I do.

Victor: Fool. Willing to bid farewell to summer this time?

I nodded vigorously, then shook my head again.

MC: It is true that I can let it go willingly now, but I will still look forward to the next summer!

The hovering drones landed back on the ground and parked neatly beside us.

Victor looked down at me, his deep voice overwhelmed the waves and reached the bottom of my heart.

Victor: That’s good. After all next time when summer comes…

Victor: I don’t want to be the only one looking forward to it.

You can find the call that comes after the date here.

#i live for their bantering #they’re so cute #and mc is so silly #SORRY FOR THE LOW QUALITY KARMA AHHHH #mlqc #mr love #mr love queen's choice #mr love victor #恋与制作人 #mlqc translations #mlqc spoilers #mlqc victor #love and producer

[hyperactive-cowboy]

So that's the second chapter of the landoscar christmas series, I have literally no idea of how to make a link between this chapter and the first one, so if you want to read it then you'll have to search it yourself, but it is my last post so no big problem. You have probably realized it, but I got inspired to write this story by "All I want for Christmas", so the titles of the chapters are part of the lyrics. As always if you have suggestions or there are issues with the story don't be shy kidsss. Oh and if someone can tell me how to make the link I'd be grateful for my life. ENJOYYYY

Make my wish come true

Warnings: like one curse word at the start and one at the end (I don't even know if those are considered curse words), the littlest angst and fluff. Some words are translated with google because english is not my first lenguage. It's not beta read because I don't have the energy to do it right now as I had planned on finishing the series in 2023 but here I am.

Ship: F1 involved!Lando Norris × not F1 involved!Oscar Piastri (established relationship)

Wc: 3.3k

Chapter 1, 2, 3

Summary: Max and Logan help Lando in his little gremlin plan to propose to Oscar during their christmas party.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Max's phone rang in the exact moment his dream was at its climax, waking him up without letting him know the finale of it.

Max looked at who was calling at such an hour in the morning.

It was Lando. Then probably it wasn't important.

Max deactivated the sound and left the vibration on, trying to fall asleep again just to see the end of his dream, but the buzzing wouldn't stop.

With a mix of frustration and malcontent for his not-well-started Wednesday morning, Max took the phone and answered his best friend.

"What do you want" he asked abruptly

"'Morning sunshine, I also miss my best friend so much" Lando answered sarcastically and Max could perfectly picture in his head the wide tooth-gaped smile his best friend almost certainly had on his face. 

"It's not a good morning when it starts like this" Max returned. 

Lando, on the other hand, laughed at his friend's distress. Max knew that, sooner or later, he would've killed his best friend.

"Anyways, I'm sorry for your pain, but I've just got an idea" it surely wasn't a good start. Every time Lando said stuff like that, it didn't end well.

"Oh god"

"I want to propose to Oscar"

"OH GOD" 

Suddenly Max was sitting on the bed, totally awake and vigile.

He didn't know what to say. Well actually there were too many things he wanted to say but couldn't choose which one to say first. Between the "when?" The"where?" and the "Why?"s. 

Instead, his mouth (apparently not connected with his brain) deliberately and on its own expressed all his emotions at once.

"What the fuck"

"Yep it was pretty explanatory" 

Neither of them knew how to behave. Obviously some people they both knew have got married before, but neither Lando nor Max have ever experienced a crazy idea like that. 

"So… when?" The moment Max started to metabolize the news, he also began to like it in some weird way. 

He knew the two have been together for some time and (at least for Lando) have also been pining over each other for even longer, so it was logical that one of them would've done the big step in a short time.

"Okay, well, that's my plan…" 

Lando started to explain The Big Plan to his best friend, who was more excited every new sentence he heard. 

Max had known him for so many years and has always thought of him as more immature and childish than other people their age, but he was sure Lando would've made the perfect husband to Oscar.

This train of thoughts continued and extended in every direction that included memories of Lando, the emotions took over him and made his eyes water a bit. But thinking about it, those words were good, he should've taken notes for his best man's speech.

"Let's recap it from the start once again" Max read on his phone. It was at least the 25th time Lando had asked him to repeat The Plan. He was sure he could've acted even other people's parts in the show. 

"Dear god I only have to say yes when he asks me about the party" Max texted back.

"It's not difficult" then he added just to emphasize the pointlessness of Lando's worries.

"Don't you dare make fun of me I'm just anxious, it's normal I guess" Lando's answer arrived in no time

Max smiled to himself shaking his head. Some things never change, he thought while unfolding all the memories with his best friend and rewatching every time Lando acted anxious. There were a few.

"If your calculus are right, he's calling me in ten minutes, so maybe I should get ready to answer him?" Max asked, trying to find an excuse to not leave his friend on seen in this particular situation.

Lando texted just a "yeah you're right" and then left the chat.

Max sighed and closed his phone, just to get his hands on his face and rub his eyes.

"Hey Osc, long time no see" is the sentence Max and Lando have accorded for him to say, and he did it spectacularly. As if he hasn't repeated it for the past twenty minutes without a single stop.

"Yeah it has been a tough period. We were planning a christmas party at our place on wednesday, are you in?" Oscar asked him.

"But isn't Lando away?" He was trying really, really hard not to abruptly laugh and scream at Oscar's ear.

"Yeah, in fact we wanted to do this thing together, but then he was called away and we can't postpone it anymore" Max thought he sounded a little exasperated.

He felt his lungs expand and contract without an order, his cheeks had become red and swollen, in his eyes there were tears for holding it back, but then he couldn't take it anymore. 

Max let out a soft giggle, but that giggle meant to him like the most powerful and exorbitant laughter he had ever had, mostly because he felt (he could literally touch it) the importance of his position in there.

"Yeah I think I'll be there" 

"K, thanks mate" Oscar sounded pretty hesitant with his answer. "And you can come with who you want" he then added.

"Great, thanks. Bye" Max hung up just right before exploding in what he thought was one of the biggest laughs of his life.

He didn't know the cause of this, but that situation was so funny to him. Maybe it was just the stress. Most probably it was just the stress. But why should he be stressed? It wasn't even his proposal. What would have happened when it was HIS time to take the big step? Max didn't even want to think about it for a minute.

He jumped back to reality and immediately opened his and Lando's chat to update him.

Max rang the doorbell of his best friend's house and waited for his best friend's boyfriend (and next-to-be fiance) to open the door.

"Never saw you awake this early" 

Oh right! Oscar's humor was something he could never forget about.

"I'm happy to see you too" Max stated with the biggest smile stamped on his face. He patted the boy's shoulders with both his hands and looked him down, trying to imagine the guy with a different surname (something like Norris) and a different look (a smoking might be ideal, and maybe a golden ring on that finger could be even better).

"Yeah" Oscar mouthed with a raised eyebrow and a confused expression.

 Max entered the house without needing a welcome. He treated it like it was his, he didn't care if the actual owner was okay with it. At least he could say the same happened every time Lando and Oscar were at his place.

"What are you doing here?" 

If there was another person in the room, they could've heard three voices ask the same question at the same time.

"No no no. I asked you first" Logan yelled at Max getting up pretty fast from the couch he was previously lying on.

"Well yes man, but really why are YOU here" he repeated.

"I'm here to help Oscar. And you?"

"I'm too" 

Max and Logan looked at each other with a slightly confused stare, narrowing their gazes and tilting their head to one side or the other.

Oscar cleared his voice behind them and just then he realized he couldn't tell Logan what he was about to. ("Well, actually I'm here to help Lando" would've been his response).

"Max, can I ask you to get away from my home? I already have enough help" The youngest boy looked exhausted. It must be tiring to project an event like this almost alone and with his boyfriend hundred of miles away from him. 

He could not understand, but he surely could pity him.

"I'm very sorry Oscar, but I'm not leaving this house until tonight" 

"Okay then" he looked more exasperated every sentence. 

"Don't worry. This will be the best party you've ever been to" 

"Do I have to remind you this is MY house? Maybe I should be the one preparing it" Oscar pointed out almost ironically.

"We will be better than you, trust me" Logan, who has been silent the entirety of the time, had stepped in the conversation to support him, and Max couldn't be more grateful.

With all due care, Oscar left his house in his friend's hands and headed to work. 

Max and Logan had only six hours and a half to transform that house into a HOUSE.

"So why are you here really?" Logan broke the silence, leaning on the shopping cart as he pushed it.

The two were at the mall searching for cute items and classic christmas stuff to hang here and there in the house to make it look more comfortable.

They have given themselves a specific and perfectly timed list to follow religiously: the times were calculated per second and the both of them had certain works to complete.

"Lando wants to propose Oscar tonight" Max let out.

"LANDO WANTS TO WHAT?'' Logan cried out in the middle of the cheese island, standing up like he was electrocuted and launching three slices of gruyere into the cart.

"SHHH why are you screaming?" Max whisper-yelled at him.

"Oh ya know? It's just my best friend getting married to yours, why aren't YOU screaming?" Logan replied in the same voice tone.

"I've already had my screaming session a week ago" he explained.

Max looked at his clock and calculated there were two minutes of delay in their schedule.

Logan looked around himself in disbelief, pinching his own cheeks to make sure he was not living a dream. 

He looked at Max right in his eyes for the first time in their entire lives. 

"Then we have to make sure we do the best of it" Logan stated resolutely, speeding even more than before, driving his shopping cart like a formula 1 car.

"You go bake the cookies, I'll get the house aesthetically ready" 

Max nodded at his newfound friend and sprinted into the kitchen to prepare all the ingredients he needed.

Right after putting on his freshly-bought apron, his phone started vibrating.

Max boringly looked at the screen and would've even hung up, but noticing Lando's nickname on it, he thought it was preferible answering, after all that work.

He accepted the call and put on the speaker while calling Logan to make him participate at the "meeting".

"Everything's okay?" Lando's altered voice sounded more worried than Max had ever heard him.

He took a moment to appreciate the fact that his best friend was giving this plan all his soul. You could know how much he cared about Oscar (or generally about his loved ones, even if he didn't show it that much) just by hearing his preoccupied voice.

"Yep, we're almost ready" Logan answered, just as joyful as Max.

"Wait, who was that?"

"It's Logan. I know everything and I couldn't agree more with you on this decision" his face was stamped with a smile from ear to ear and his eyes shone brighter than the stars.

"Oh hey Log sorry, didn't know you were there too. Does he suspect anything?"

"There is absolutely no way he could. We were silent as a grave" Max answered, almost kicking his feet like a schoolgirl.

"Well then-" Lando's sentence start was interrupted by a not a little hasty Max, who was sure he was about to scream.

"Now that you have secured yours and our wellbeing, can we finish our work? We have a pretty full agenda to follow" 

"Oh okay then, I'm halfway there anyways" 

"Yeah yeah, you know where I keep my second set of keys" and without another word, he hung up the phone just as fast as they both came back to their respective jobs in the house.

"Hey that chocolate dough looks fantastic" Logan laughed entering the kitchen, looking at a totally covered in chocolate dough Max.

"Where? I thought I cleaned everything" Max responded. 

Logan sighed and continued his laugh, then threw a clean kitchen towel at him, telling him where he was still dirty while taking a seat to taste what they had prepared during the evening.

"It's not that bad" he exclaimed, chewing the biggest bite of cheese and ham toast Max had ever seen.

Logan raised the volume of his phone when he heard the first bits of  "Last Christmas" were playing.

By then, the trust between the two was near to the one in a years-long friendship, after all those hours spent together and a common goal in mind. For this sole reason, Logan felt confident enough to start singing his favorite Christmas song.

Max turned around with a shocked look. Not because Logan's singing skills were terrible, well not only because of this, but because he didn't think Logan was one to start singing around what was a stranger until a few hours before. 

And again his emotions changed, his heart melting a little. Logan singing like this in front of him meant that he trusted him enough to show him his silly side.

Max decided to match his energy and start wiggling his hips and dancing a little around the room.

The two were so lost in the moment they couldn't hear the owner of the house entering firstly the place, and then the kitchen.

"What in the world you two?" Oscar looked totally agape.

 Max and Logan fastly looked at each other and the american jumped between his best friend and his new one to try protecting him from any crazy action the Aussie could have done.

Max and Logan both knew Oscar wasn't one for physical contact, (everybody around him knew it) and because of it they were used to him never touching them. This was why, when they saw him coming this close so fastly, they were scared Oscar was about to stab one or both of them with a random pointy ornament found in the home.

It must've been a particularly shocking period for Max.

First Lando's announcement, then Logan's new friendship, and now a hug from Oscar.

"Thank you for everything" Max and Logan heard Oscar's muffled voice buried in their clothes and both moved a little because of the little gesture.

"That's no problem mate, really" Max assured him.

"C'mon now, there's people arriving here to party" Logan tried to lighten up the mood, receiving the tiniest and cutest laugh from Oscar.

"I don't think it's the worst idea you've had until now" Max whisper-screamed at his phone in his best friend's kitchen while everybody else, including Oscar, in the living room was living their best life.

It was at least the fourth phrase he had heard from Lando about what he thought could be the best starter of his proposal-speech.

"Well, at least not the weirdest" he continued.

"Ehy!" Lando laughed at him, but still his stress wasn't relieved, not even a bit.

Max, for the fiftieth time, didn't know how to act.

Like, what did he have to say? Something funny to let the pressure decrease? Or something meaningful to be That One friend for once?

He decided that saying nothing was the best option. For both, him and his friend. He was, actually, not a hundred percent sure about it, but on the spot he failed to think about anything better.

"I think it's better if I go now" Max admitted after a few moments of silence.

He received a "yeah" as an answer and immediately hung up.

Max was totally sure there were more mature things to do than he, seconds after, did. But, unfortunately, less mature things are usually the more spontaneous ones.

This is why, when his phone turned on again, seeing the new message from Lando and texted him back, the only natural thing to do that came to his mind was to start jumping and giggling, just like a schoolgirl.

He got only one thing not calculated in his mind: the fact that Oscar might be keen on entering his own kitchen for whatever reason. 

So when he turned around to face the exit, he found there on the door an astonished Oscar staring at him.

Max couldn't tell what was open wider: Oscar's eyes or his mouth.

Anyway, he had to think about a not-too-much- suspicious reaction on the spot. And surely he had never been good at thinking on the spot.

That's the reason why the first thing Max did was rebuking him, closing the door on his face.

Just a single moment after he thought that maybe his actions were more suspicious than anything else he could have done. 

With a worried expression folding his eyebrows, Max took his phone from the marble table's surface again and fastly texted to his friend he might have done something wrong.

"I'm here"

This was the message he had been waiting for the entire time, but now that Lando had sent it to him, Max was starting to get agitated again, knowing exactly what it meant.

"Is everything ready?" Was the following text he received, to which he answered with a "gimme 5 mins" 

The only three things he had to do were: inform Logan, inform every other guest and prepare Oscar.

The guests heard the news with surprise and loving eyes, while Logan started to sweat a bit.

Last point on his list was to take Oscar in front of the entrance and then his work would be done perfectly. 

But where the hell was Oscar? He had asked Liam, Max (the other one) and even Niran, but they knew less than him. So he searched in every room of the house, even the bathroom, but when he had knocked on the bathroom door, Logan's voice had answered him.

Max asked his and Lando's long time friend to text the next-to-be fiance and tell him to wait.

He tried to think about what could have happened: Lando would have rang the doorbell and Max would've opened the door instead of Oscar and Lando would've found his best friend instead of the love of his life in front of him (already on one knee and with the ring box open and about to repeat the speech he had been talking about for weeks) and then Lando would've asked him "what the hell?" and then he should have answered him with something like "I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but we have lost your future husband, we apologize for the unease" and what could've been Lando's reaction to it all?

Max's morbius thoughts were taking such a part of his brain, he didn't realize Logan had taken Oscar all the way in the living room, just right before entering the entrance.

When Max turned around and saw him, immediately looked at his friend Niran, winking at him as a way to give him the signal for Lando to ring.

All the guests were ready with their phones in their hands, faking sending and receiving messages or searching for something on google. Actually they were all about to flash the lights of their phones to make the atmosphere, using the devices just like in the 70s they used lighters.

Except for Charles: he was the one in charge of recording the video, in fact he had the best position of sight.

Max got out of the kitchen as the doorbell rang and Oscar (in a new outfit) rushed to open the door.

"My guest must've arrived" he announced looking at the young Aussie.

From his point of view, Max couldn't properly see all the scene, so he moved through the tangle of guests to crouch down one step away from Charles.

From there, Max could see everything perfectly: Oscar's (flabbergasted, he might add) expression, the fabulous ring, and most importantly his kneeling best friend and the biggest smile he had ever seen on his face.

#f1 #formula 1 #charles leclerc #landoscar fic #landoscar #lando norris #oscar piastrixlando norris #oscar piastri #f1 fic #logan sargeant #max fewtrell #max verstappen #f1 fluff #fluff

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

Beginner's Guide to Portraying Wigfrid

In 6k words or less

It's also got a Google Doc version if you don't want it formatted like ass

Dialect and Verbiage

Though appearing rather daunting from the outside looking in, Wigfrid’s dialect isn’t too hard to understand or imitate once you break it down into its basic elements. Though, really, more importantly than mimicking the unique modifiers to her voice and language, one must first understand what her voice even is.

Wigfrid has a very interesting manner of speaking that can be summarized as ‘formal, yet blunt’. She makes great use of verbal prose, and will often complicate the subject matter with the help of her large and outdated vocabulary, but if one were to condense her words down to their bare essentials, she often says exactly what she means. She rarely employs sarcasm, or disguises her feelings or intentions.

It is also important to note that stage terminology may occasionally be interspersed within her dialogue as well. In fact, it only seems that it becomes more and more common as the years go on, as is evident when comparing its frequency post Return of Them with its uses in Don’t Starve solo (DLCs included). However, though WIgfrid has been shown to be able to ‘break character’, and has proved that she remembers her past life to at least some capacity, she has never been canonically established to express these truths with those around her.

Quotes that refer back to her prior life do not address survivors directly, and she will only bring them up in the contexts of speaking to herself (and even then has been shown to occasionally stifle these remarks, despite seemingly no one being able to overhear). With this in mind, it’s highly likely that her stage life is a more personal ordeal, and comments about or referring to such should be used sparingly around others, if at all. 

As is obvious to anyone who has heard her speak, Wigfrid frequently employs a lot of Shakespearean language in her dialogue. For personal reference, below is a chart of her most commonly used words that fit this trend.

As well as these examples, Wigfrid also has a habit of adding the suffix -eth to the end of words for occasional flavor (ex. requireth, taketh, hangeth, climbeth). There seems to be nothing that determines when she chooses to employ this specific rule, but seeing as how it is a semi-rare occurrence for her to choose to do so, I would also advise to use it sparingly.

It should also be noted that Wigfrid will never directly translate everything she says into Shakespearean English. She will frequently leave some words alone, while translating others in the same sentence. It isn’t an exact science. Really, the best course of action is just to write what feels natural, and don’t worry about trying too hard to make it ‘perfectly Shakespearean’. Wigfrid’s dialogue is a lot like poetry, in the sense that the way it sounds ebbing and flowing can oftentimes be more important than the usage of the words themselves. 

Though speaking of words and their uses, Wigfrid will often refer to herself with very specific terms. The three she uses most frequently are ‘warrior’, ‘Viking’, and ‘Valkyrie’. While there’s little to say about the first one that could not be gleaned from its direct meaning alone, the latter two is where the most interest lies.

When referring to Wigfrid directly, all survivors- including Wigfrid herself- will capitalize the V in ‘Viking’. While Viking does not necessarily have to be a proper noun, the use of a non-capitalized ‘viking’ is usually used to refer to something generally pirate-like in nature. By capitalizing Viking, one is directly referring to Norse seafarers, instead of its more generalized and modern definition. Though all survivors default to using its proper noun equivalent, there is little harm in using it as a common noun in writing.

The same, however, can not be said about the term ‘Valkyrie’. To not get too deep into definitions of Nordic culture, Valkyries are spiritual, almost angelic entities who specialize in ferrying worthy souls to Valhalla. Being rather important figures within Norse mythos, and originally being used as a proper noun, it’s important to keep it punctuated when addressing Wigfrid by it, or in instances where she self addresses (which are quite frequent, mind you).

Combat and its Ethics

It isn’t very difficult to garner the fact that Wigfrid is quite fond of combat. Not only does fighting feed directly back into her health and sanity, but the mere concept of a fight promotes excitement out of her. Battle hardly often leaves her mind. Though, since it is such a cornerstone of her lifestyle, it is important to know the sorts of things she prioritizes about it. A quality of Wigfrid that often goes overlooked is that she has a strict set of rules and standards for combat that she seems highly uninclined to break.

Killing Conditions

When it comes to particular conditions about what it is she’ll kill, Wigfrid- much like other survivors- doesn’t seem to have much of an issue attacking the more NPC-like monsters of The Constant. However, she isn’t naturally opposed to being amicable with them, and shares good relations with them even despite her carnivorous nature, as displayed through her standard pig quote (“Will you fight alongside me, pig?”), pig ally quote (“We ride to battle!”), and even her dead pig quote (“He died with honor.”), which will always trigger, whether previously allied or not.

While she proves to be far less amicable with entities such as bunnymen (“I will eat you.” You can’t exactly get much blunter than that), her quote for fishermerms, Shipwreck’s exclusive merm variant, sheds some insight to her thought process in regards to speaking beasts (“I quarrel not with fisherfolk, so long as they do not take up arms.”). The implication here is that Wigfrid is more willing to be amicable with those who are less likely to strike first. Considering bunnymen and their intolerance to carnivores, it can be easily understood why she is so swift to abandon the pleasantries displayed to other, neutral beasts.

In regards to other survivors, Wigfrid will only threaten the life of another after they’ve proven to be dangerous to the group, through either attacking or murder. However, when it comes to such matters, she is far less likely to threaten the life of a child than she would an adult. Compare, for instance, her murderer Wanda quote (“Thou shall answer for this betrayal, [player]! Meet my spear!”) and her murderer Wurt quote (“I will not be defeated so easily, beastie!”). Though ultimately serving a similar purpose, her threats towards children are far less direct, and tends to stray from the implication of murder that she directs towards the rest of the adult cast.

Fighting with Honor

When it comes to combat with anyone- be it man, giant, or beast- Wigfrid puts heavy emphasis on keeping the fight honorable in nature. While this is a relatively ambiguous desire in a vacuum, luckily, she is incredibly vocal on what is considered honorable vs dishonorable in combat. According to her, an honorable fight does NOT include…

Ranged weaponry, as shown by her electric blowdart and eyeshot quotes, among others (“A-face-to-face fight would be more honorable.”, “A coward’s weapon, dropped by a pitiful, sneaking creature.”)

The use of poison, or toxins that function similarly to it, as shown by her quotes for poison mosquitos, firenettles, and the stupefying lure, among others (“Poison! The work of a coward!”, “Accursed plant with your fiery barbs! Fight me properly!”, “It doth feel a bit like cheating…”)

Ambushing, or attacking while your enemy is blinded, as shown by her general flup quote and attacker Charlie quote (“You cowardly mudlurker!”, “Coward!”)

Retreating or hiding away from battle, as shown by her quotes for a retreating Eye of Terror, suspicious moonrock werepigs, and Battlemaster Pugna, among others (“You would flee this fight? Asgard does not honor cowards!”, “Do not cower behind your carapace of rock! Fight!”, “Tis a coward who watches the fight.”)

Striking while the enemy is asleep, as shown through various quotes for sleeping mobs (“It is cowardly to attack a sleeping enemy.”, “I will allow it a fair fight and wait til it awakes.”)

It can be inferred that Wigfrid not only expects these standards to be met by her enemies, but holds herself to the same standards as well. We will go into further confirmation of this later.

One final thing important to note about these rules and standards Wigfrid holds for herself is that the quickest way to gain her ire is by breaking them. This can be very easily identified through Wigfrid’s relations with snakes. Being cunning, sneaking beasts by nature- most of them venomous from birth- they really can’t help but break multiple of her thoroughly upheld rules.

It is very easy to see the effect that has on her perception of them, as shown by her general snake and poison snake quotes, as well as her commentary on their den (“Never trust those who slither.”, “Keep your foul fangs from my hide!”, “You skulking wretch!”). Not even depictions of snakes, such as the toy cobra trinket aren’t safe from her wrath (“Tis no foe worthy of I.”), and her quote for snakeskin flooring (“My enemy’s hide feels good beneath my feet!”) reveals how easily she would consider such a ‘dishonorable’ foe to be an enemy of her, a term previously only used to refer to Maxwell (and even then, only in Don’t Starve solo). 

Religion 

Though Wigfrid frequently will make mentions and references to Norse mythology, this section is meant to focus more on Wigfrid’s own personal connection to religion. Fascinatingly enough, though the nature of her acting might imply otherwise, the connection she holds to her gods seems remarkably genuine.

Being an actress by trade, it may not come as a surprise to hear that Wigfrid seems to highly prioritize other people’s praise and approval. Though what is interesting is that this motivation also seems to extend to the gods she worships. The concept of ‘worthiness’ tends to creep up in a lot of her dialogue that revolves around religion, and it isn’t uncommon for her to consider positive or negative circumstances as proof of her worthiness (or lack thereof) in the eyes of her gods.

Consider her quotes for the ancient chest (known within the code as the “sacred_chest”), and her reaction to answering the puzzle incorrectly vs her reaction to solving it (“Alas! I am unworthy!”, “I have gained the gods’ favor!”). In a similar vein, consider her reaction to receiving an electric attack buff from Warly’s Volt Goat Chaud-Froid, and her subsequent quote for losing it (“I’ve been granted the power of Thor!”, “I… suppose I was unworthy.”). Not only is there a similar verbal motif, but there is also a trend of fault and blame placed upon herself, even in situations devoid of any blame.

It also is quite clear of Wigfrid’s loyalty towards her gods, or what she believes them to manifest as. As a more pertinent example, she has a very interesting relation with the Celestial Altar and their individual components, believing them to be fragments through which she and her god of moon can commune with (“Make thy will known to me, idol!”, “The gods commune to me through thee.”). This bond she has falsely created is only further emphasized through the Celestial Sanctum pieces (“It calls out to me, I must take heed.”, “It has chosen me to safeguard its passage home.”), where again this metric of worth is highlighted through use of the word ‘chosen’.

Of course, the gestalts and all associated with them have been proven to manipulate the desires and loyalties of survivors to convince them to do their will, so it isn’t exactly a surprise that Wigfrid would obey them under such circumstances. As a result, her actions themselves are not as important as her willingness to actually obey them. This seemingly unquestioning desire to conform to the desire of her gods, even to an unscrupulous or dangerous seeming end, says a lot about how far the limits of her loyalties will stretch.

Another interesting thing to note in regards to religion is Wigfrid’s reaction to gods that have nothing to do with her own. Though not a factor of how she perceives her own religion, it is still interesting to study how she behaves around the religions of others. The easiest example of this comes from the Gnaw in the Gorge, which Wigfrid (perhaps aptly) labels as a god of that domain. Despite not belonging to her own religion, she treats the beast with a respect not unlike that which her own gods receive. Offerings to the Gnaw are relevant in nature (“Accept my offering, oh mighty gods.”), and when examining pebble crab meat she will muse about the sacrifice of the creature’s flesh (“T’would be an honor to be fed to the sky god, beast.”). Though she may not extend her loyalties to gods beyond her own, she seems to hold a unanimous respect for deities of all origins, even despite their potential lethality.

Entry to Valhalla

Perhaps one of the most notable parts of Wigfrid’s religious-based commentary is her interest in Valhalla, an afterlife for the greatest warriors, and where Valkyries such as herself must ferry noble souls after being slain in battle. Wigfrid seems quite adamant that this is the location she’ll arrive in after her death, despite the fact that death within the borders of The Constant seems completely impossible. Not only does this instill a brazen lack of death within her- as shown by her war saddle and lifejacket quotes, among many others (“I ride to victory or death!”, “Adventure offers no true safety!”)- but it also gives more insight into how she perceives battles.

A very telling comparison of quotes is the difference between her sharkitten and Tigershark quotes. The former are pacifistic infants, incapable of harming the player even if engaged in combat. When it comes to fighting, Wigfrid holds little interest in causing any harm to them (“It is your momma I want…”). What it is she ‘wants’ could be easily assumed to be nothing more than an enthralling fight. Though, if one were to check her quotes for the Tigershark in question, she couldn’t spell out her true intent any clearer (“Take me to Valhalla, devil of the sea!”).

There is a unique allure that comes with honorable fights, because with them brings the chance (perhaps even the faintest sliver, as far as she’s concerned) of reward. Of heavenly rapture. And this ties back not only to her efforts to appear worthy in the eyes of her deities, but also to the moral standards she maintains in combat. It all intertwines together for exactly one cause: Valhalla, and acceptance beyond its gates. Not only does dishonorable combat ruin the gods’ perceptions of her, but it also drastically affects her chances of acquiring heavenly peace. To the point where upon breaking any of her rules- as explored in her poison blowdart quote (“To weaken from a distance. Oden forgive me…”)- she will feel a shame drastic enough to seek divine forgiveness.

Much like her interaction with the Tigershark, Wigfrid will seek out many of The Constant’s beasts in search of battles worthy of a warrior’s death. In fact, ‘worthy’ is the term she uses to refer to these beasts, as is plainly shown in her Deerclops approach and second phase Celestial Guardian quotes (“A worthy foe approaches.”, “It seems you are a worthy foe indeed…”). Seeing as how she still thinks highly of these creatures despite her willingness to fight them, as confirmed by the description of her Hallowed Nights headpiece (“Wigfrid chose to be one of her favorite foes to battle for Hallowed Nights.”), it can be assumed that ‘worthy’ in this context is a complement. And seemingly, quite a high one. 

Virtues and Vices

Most of Wigfrid’s virtues have already been touched upon throughout this entire guide so far; just to recap, though, her most notable positive traits are her honor and loyalty, both in regards to her social life with her friends, as well as the spiritual life she shares with herself and her religion. However, as all of the best characters are, Wigfrid is not a flawless individual.

Pride is a recurring theme within the grander story of Don’t Starve. Much like many other characters, she too suffers from a surplus of it. Though not as bad or obvious as Maxwell, or even Wilson, Wigfrid’s own conceit is notable enough to be an important element to her character.

One of the main ways this manifests itself is through what some would call Main Character/Protagonist Syndrome. Though, to give her some credit, when she is embodying the mind of a main character- turning her life into a performance, making the world her stage- something such as this was bound to be inevitable.

Though many quotes can help suggest this point, one of the more prominent ones is her quote for Maxwell’s statues back in Don’t Starve solo (“Arrg! Is that the antagonist to my saga?!”). Though this quote has since been replaced in Don’t Starve Together, it says most anything one would need to know about the thought process Wigfrid spent most of her time in The Constant withholding. Maxwell as her antagonist. The Constant being nothing more than a set piece for her adventure, and hers alone. After who knows how many years of such an idea floating around in her head, to claim it wouldn’t have an effect on her perception of the world now- even with new allies at her back- seems a bit of a stretch. 

Even beyond this protagonistic complex, Wigfrid’s pride still frequently gets the better of her. She’ll frequently overstate and overestimate the extent of her abilities in combat, as shown by her reactions to the Antlion’s sand spikes, or the Celestial Guardian’s traps (“The earth itself dares to fight me!”, “You think I’m trapped here with you? Ha! It is you who are trapped with me!”), but such self bolstering will persist even to the most benign of tasks, as shown with her bark for failing any generic action (“If I can’t do it, it can’t be done!”). And, of course, there’s the more harmless example of pride in one's appearance, as seen from a self examination (“Who is that incredible warrior in the mirror?”).

Though pride is the more obvious example of one of Wigfrid’s vices, a lesser obvious- yet still notable one- is her semi-frequent impatience. While there are some matters she can bring herself to wait for, such as rowing her own ship, or waiting for her friends to finish their own tasks (“Patience is a warrior’s friend.”, “True warriors wait their turn.”), there are certain situations she will not display the same grace towards… More specifically, fishing and gardening, activities she does not favor. In her occasional barks she makes this abundantly clear (“I tire of waiting!”, “I’m tempted to simply wade in with my spear…”, “It’s not befitting of a warrior to just stand about waiting!”). It seems as a general rule of thumb, the less Wigfrid enjoys the task (or individual the task revolves around), the less willing she is to display patience to begin with. 

Relationships

When it comes to other survivors, Wigfrid is very vocal about her opinions on them- the majority of said opinions being positive. Wigfrid delights in being a part of the fold, using both ‘allies’ and ‘friends’ interchangeably as terms of endearment. As can be easily seen in her feasting bark and gift wrapping quotes (“My friends, let us celebrate this great bounty!”, “I must show my allies how much they are valued!”), she places heavy emphasis on their bond, and makes an effort to show them as much.

Furthermore, something else Wigfrid places emphasis on is the safety and fighting powesse of her allies. As is easily discoverable through her ball and cup, coat hanger, and notorious backscratcher commentary (“ No time for games! I must train my new allies!”, “This weak, flimsy wire reminds me… I must toughen Maxwell up!”, “Finally, a safe weapon with which to spar with my new allies.”), Wigfrid seems to consider it her personal responsibility to ensure the others know how to battle with the same competence and strength as she. Yet even so, she seems to keep mindful of her interactions with them, and does not wish for them to come to any legitimate harm by her own hands.

Due to the surplus of survivors within The Constant, to go over each one of them in detail would be an arduous feat. Instead, the following chart provides a general overview of Wigfrid’s connections to each of her allies.

It is important to note that a ‘neutral’ relationship doesn’t inherently mean Wigfrid does not find herself friends with that survivor. In this context, it is used to refer to a perfectly acceptable friendship. ‘Positive’ friendships are relationships that go a bit beyond what is typical for Wigfrid’s usual friendships. Beyond the material of this chart, a few examples of notable exchanges between characters are as follows:

Though Wigfrid can not be confirmed to have any ire towards any of the survivors, the closest she gets to such is through her dialogue with Wortox. More specifically, her response to him attacking another survivor (“Back! Back beast!”). Though the use of the word ‘beast’ isn’t as notable as one might think, the most interesting part of this interaction is her lack of a proper threat. As previously discussed, Wigfrid isn’t opposed to attacking survivors should the matter come down to it… But she seems to have little to say to Wortox, other than barking commands that vaguely resemble something close to fear. It can be assumed that this may be due to Wortox’s diet as a soul eater, souls (and the preservation of them) being very important to Valkyries. Seeing as how Valkyries are also oft referred to as ‘spirits’, the imp’s appetite may have a darker meaning to her specifically, depending on whether she perceives herself spiritual in nature. 

Maxwell is the only survivor Wigfrid will actively refer to as an ally, as seen in her generic greeting line (“Greetings, [player], my ally!”). Though never directly confirmed or contextualized, it can be assumed that this is in an effort to either throw him a bone (where other survivors usually wouldn’t), or simply to remind him that he is welcomed among the group. At the very least, welcome among herself.

In multiple quotes- her generic greeting quote, for instance- Wigfrid will refer to Wurt as a ‘beastie’ (“Hail, [player], small beastie of the marshlands!”). While this means nothing in a vacuum, ‘beastie’ is a term Wigfrid uses as endearment to refer to animals she shares a connection with, like a tamed beefalo (“Rise, beastie! We ride!”), or the lovable kitcoons (“A wee beastie that’s particularly excellent at hiding.”). It can thus be concluded that Wigfrid may find Wurt to be loveable or cute.

Acting and The Actress

One of the most interesting parts of Wigfrid’s character is the fact that Wigfrid truly is a character… A persona that she dons, and a mask she wears. And while there are occasional slips out of character, the person underneath (who we will refer to here as The Actress) is a true anomaly, as interesting as they are anonymous. However, there are still a lot of interesting notes we can glean from what little we know of her character… And the ways the past self has affected the present are equally as curious to see.

Wigfrid’s section of the compendium is very notable in comparison to the others’, seeing as how it touches on the person she was before Wigfrid. While the passages use her name, they speak of someone she no longer claims to be, and no longer desires to associate with. The compendium claims that “Wigfrid always knew she was meant for the stage”, and that “her debut performance was an instant sensation”. It’s been canonically established that the persona of the Valkyrie is the role that granted Wigfrid her first tastes of stardom and success. However, as the paragraph continues, the retelling of her past begins to take a darker turn. 

“Fans delighted in her portrayal of a noble and fearsome Valkyrie warrior, and she in turn took great pains to fully embody the role. She was perfect for it… perhaps too perfect. Every part she played afterward seemed to fall flat”. This statement alone has major implications for The Actress and her thought process: 

The use of the phrase ‘in turn’ when used to describe the way The Actress fully threw herself into her role implies that her doing so wasn’t entirely out of self fulfillment. Rather, it was something about the audience- a desire to further capture their approval, or repayment for their generosity, or perhaps something else all together- that encouraged her to continue delving deeper into the persona.

The way the compendium describes this act is ‘great pains’. Though it does not specify what these pains happen to be, it is clear that the road to becoming Wigfrid was not only arduous, but seemingly adverse for her health (though whether more physically or mentally remains canonically unclear).

Perhaps the most important thing to take away from this statement is the fact that The Actress took up other acts- seemingly of her own volition. She did not stay in the body of Wigfrid indefinitely, but rather it seemed she was denied the right by her audience to play any role after ‘Wigfrid’ had been truly perfected.

Where we have no direct confirmation of what roles The Actress attempted, nor how well or poorly she portrayed them on stage, the description of her Victorian headpiece skin is the closest thing we have as a hint for what a potential act may have been (“This actress fought tooth and nail for this prestigious Shakesperean role.”). If we assume this quote to be genuine in the information it presents, it becomes rather obvious that the persona of the Valkyrie wasn’t always The Actress’ only love, but rather just the role she was most practiced in.

The Actress’ behaviors and body language in Wigfrid’s refresh short, The Curtain Calls, make it expressly obvious her own pride gets in the way of properly handling criticism. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, this is a trait that she and Wigfrid share. While it is rather rare for the concept of criticism to become relevant in The Constant, the presence of Charlie’s mockingbirds will sour Wigfrid’s mood even before they’ve said anything hostile (“Begone, critics!”).

However, something unique to note about critics within the refresh short, within The Actress’ fantasy, their printed words mutate, and take the form of a towering beast. A towering snake, a motif we’ve discussed once before, as well as Wigfrid’s detest of them. Whether this is meant to imply that Wigfrid’s hatred of snakes comes from her hatred of critics, or if it’s the other way around (or, perhaps, that both are true) is unknown. However, this pattern seems incredibly intentional, and it's highly likely that Wigfrid’s sour attitude towards serpents gives an equal (or roughly equal) insight into the ire she holds for judgment towards her.

Though not every instance of The Actress slipping out is an inherently negative one. As aforementioned, Wigfrid will occasionally bring up her old stage life, or terminology that revolves around it. While some of them are nothing more than passive slips of the tongue, many of them carry with them a sense of what appears to be nostalgia. This can be seen in a variety of places, including examining a Year of the Beefalo stage, Charlie’s stage, and Winona’s spotlight (“Preparing for the stage is nearly as exhilarating as preparing for battle!”, “The stage beckons!”, “It can’t get enough of me!”). Though perhaps determined to stick with one persona (for presumably forever), it seems clear that Wigfrid still enjoys and misses the act of performing and acting. ‘Playing’ Wigfrid- where it once may have satisfied her- nowadays seems to leave something missing that only a genuine performance could provide. Though, really, that much is spelled out in just the name of her refresh short alone. The curtain calls. 

Assorted Curiosities

Like many other great characters, not all elements of Wigfrid can be neatly sorted into perfectly categorized boxes. Here are a couple more small, but interesting parts of her character that didn’t exactly fit into the categories above. 

Connections with Fauna

Being carnivorous by (what is essentially) choice, many people incorrectly assume that Wigfrid’s relationships with animals are naturally cold or selfish, when in fact that couldn’t be further from the truth. Despite the fact she must live off of animals to survive, Wigfrid tends to hold little ire for the animals around her, whether or not they’re passive in nature. There’s many instances where she can have a tame and ‘casual’ interaction with an animal, her quotes for interacting with Woby, no eyed deer, and sleeping caged birds being only a few examples (“Wouldst thou like a skritch behind thine ears?”, “The beauty of Freya dwells in all creatures!”, “Sweet dreams, raven friend.”).

However, even outside of animals Wigfrid doesn’t consider prey, she keeps a respectful- if not very unusual- connection with them. One of the more pertinent examples of such being catcoons, and a glance at her quote for an inhabited catcoon den can easily show you why (“Cute meat lives there.”). While Wigfrid does not refer to every animal as meat, it is admittedly a habit she’ll do for multiple creatures she comes across. However, she does not say this to display superiority, or even to threaten animals that she comes across. This is made apparent by her examinings of an empty catcoon den, as well as the cat cap, to keep with the catcoon theme (“She fought bravely. Alas, she is gone.”, “A furry cap! Blessings to you, cute meat.”).

She values the presence of the creature, and remarks about its absence with slight sorrow. Even despite considering it a source of food, she blesses and respects the life it gave to provide her with the resources she now has. In fact, respecting the resources of dead creatures is a motif she carries with her throughout multiple animal-based products, from the moggles, to the piggyback, to even the magic seal (“It’s best to use every part of the animal.”, “The pig died with honor, then gave to me this pack.”, “I shall wield this with proper respect for the mighty warrior wizard that left it.”).

Connections with Flora

Ironically enough, though most people do not consider Wigfrid’s relationship with plants, in actuality it is very similar to what others falsely assume her connection to animals is. Though Wigfrid can appreciate the natural beauty of some flora, such as common flowers, roses, or the Forge’s healing flowers (“A flower from Freya.”, “Were that I smelled half as sweet.”, “A blessing from Freya is contained within.”), flowers are just about where her compliments towards plants end. Her barks when talking to budding farms are nothing but aggravated (“Perhaps someone more weak and feeble might talk to the plants, while I hunt.”, “I care naught for these plants or the veggies they produce.”, “Grow, or do not.”), and her reaction to garnering more research about gardening isn’t any better (“My head hath been filled with useless knowledge about non-meat!”).

Though truly, one of the best examples of her blatant displeasure around plants stems from some of her dialogue from the Year of the Rat races. Though she can hold her temper well enough through the entirety of the carrat training process, a poorly trained carrat on the race track will bring out just about the worst of her (“Foolish vegetable, the race is that way!”, “Thou cannot trust a vegetable to do anything right.”, “Quicken thine step, rodent!” “By Oden, wake up!”). While her reactions to typical plants and farms could be explained somewhat by her own pride (not wanting to be seen as ‘weak’ by doing something that would conflict with her persona), there is little that could explain the carrats other than a fury that stems from the concept of vegetables themselves. 

Sense of Style

While The Constant doesn’t truly grant survivors the freedom to explore their own clothing styles and preferences, skinsets allow a slightly deeper look at their preferences than their classic clothing would otherwise allow. While Wigfrid doesn’t seem to mind revealing her arms, only 6 out of her 16 skins are stylized in this way. While many are indecisive on whether or not Wigfrid’s original set of clothing features either shorts or a skirt, factoring that skin out of the equation leaves only 6 out of 15 clothing sets that feature a dress, skirt, or skirt-like features; and even then, half of them include pants, or some sort of pants-equivalent that covers the remainder of her legs.

In regards to material, Wigfrid is canonically fond of fur, and mentions it multiple times, including her announcement to the cold, examination of slurper pelts, and her wardrobe quote (“Brrr! Where are my furs!”, “I do love furs.”, “That’s where I keep my furs and cloaks.”).

Verbal Contradictions

Since Wigfrid is written not by one individual, but (presumably) by rotating members of the Klei team, occasionally some of her quotes will override established parts of her character, leading to contradictory sentences. While most are harmless enough, here are some examples of some quotes that may prove confusing to anyone attempting to grasp a deeper understanding of Wigfrid’s character.

Poop, “If only I could use it as camouflage from predators.”, Torch, “Perfect for a nighttime assault.”

As was already explained in regards to Wigfrid’s morals and combat, hiding from enemies and ambushing in the dark are fighting strategies that Wigfrid has explicitly considered cowardly. It would be unusual for her to stoop to such levels on a whim.

Dripple pipes, “I have no rhythm…”

A completely unfounded statement. Wigfrid was an overnight success, a talented and beloved actress, a ‘spellbinding’ singer (as proclaimed by news articles written about her), and canonically has perfect pitch. Nothing about her career, talents, or hobbies would imply she has no sense of rhythm. In fact, quite the opposite! A good singer can not have bad rhythm!

Cut reeds, “I cleaned all the bugs out! Then I ate them.”

While not in classic Don’t Starve solo or Don’t Starve Together, the Hamlet DLC introduced a unique food group referred to as ‘bugs’. To this day, it only contains four items, two raw bugs, and two cooked bugs. However, Wigfrid will refuse to eat either. While technically she does eat bugs if you consider the fact she’ll eat the meat of spiders, not only are those spiders larger than common bugs- dropping a lot more meat than a regular spider- she also hunts spiders with her own hands, as opposed to turning over a rock and eating what lies underneath. Despite the cut reeds quote coming first, Wigfrid has been shown to canonically refuse eating smaller bugs, thus making this quote contradictory

#dontstarvetogether #dst wigfrid #idk what to tag this as #character analysis #this took me 11 hours so if i messed anything up umm. no i didn't 🔫😊

[pingnova]

I want to know more about the Christian Bible but don't want all of the conservative riff-raff. What should I read?

A friend posed this question to me, so here are my suggestions.

Firstly, my biases: progressive politically, American, white, protestant/ELCA Lutheran, queer/gay/LGBTQ. The stuff I recommend is going to line up with these.

Quick aside on different ways Bibles are translated and interpreted

When translating an ancient language to modern English, there is no "literal" translation; that is, no translation that will be word-for-word the exact same meaning. If you have used Google Translate, you've probably noticed there are nuances that a "literal" word-swap machine translation misses. This is especially true with the Bible.

So be wary of any translation (or person or movement) that claims they follow the One True Literal Translation. That doesn't exist, and you'd be the chump in that situation. (Looking at you Evangelicals.) Conservatives and progressives are guilty of falling into that fallacy.

^ Above: A funny example of how a machine word-for-word translation misses a lot of meaning. "My dog has a hangover" machine translated to German and then back to English becomes "my dog has a cat." x

There are three main buckets of Bible translation. IMHO---and many scholars will agree---the best translation to read will actually be two or three translations. One for each method. The Bible is messages ("facts" meant to be passed down, history) and art (poetry, storytelling, song), which need their own special treatment to be understood in another language.

Some translations focus on the individual words (word-for-word/Formal Equivalence), some focus on the sentences or chunks of meaning (thought-for-thought/Dynamic Equivalence), and some try to balance the two with context a modern reader would understand (paraphrase). I won't detail it all here, but I highly recommend reading this Logos article which goes further in depth. I've included their helpful graphic below which breaks this down into four buckets, but you get what I mean.

Additionally, know which Christian tradition you want to approach this from because they include different books in their Bibles. Catholics also have a set of books called the Apocrypha, but most Protestants exclude those books. Bibles from other parts of the world have different books...

So look up the list of books you want to include too. I think it's great to read them all, but be aware that if you went to talk to someone about this they might not know what the hell you're talking about if you've read the Apocrypha and they haven't.

So tl;dr: No single Bible translation is ever going to give you the best understanding. The Bible is in an ancient language, so you need multiple perspectives to understand what it's saying as a modern reader. Modern translators and politics also influence which versions of the Bible people read, to the point of excluding whole groups of books. At least two different Bible translations that you can compare side by side is the best place to start.

A funny post by @enriquemolina that really cuts to the point.

On to the actual Bible recommendation.

Which Bibles to read

I personally use The Lutheran Study Bible by Fortress Press. It's NRSV, which is a moderate translation (mix of word-for-word translation and meaning-for-meaning) that includes supplementary materials for new learners. It's the official Bible of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (not actually evangelical but that's another long story), which I'm part of, so I'm biased. I felt like it was a solid translation to grow up reading with a focus on helping you understand what it's saying and to think about the meaning for yourself, vs dictating the meaning to you. It is not a poetic translation however, so it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned the bible was also full of songs and poetry, which today I think of as just as valuable.

I don't have a good rec for a more poetic version unfortunately, but many people still enjoy the King James Bible when they want something flowery. I too have taken verses from there for decorative purposes. BUT: it was commissioned to support the reign of King James VI and thus has decent bias written into it. It is conservative by modern terms as well.

@blessedarethebinarybreakers has a post of good recs as well. They explicitly recommend AGAINST the NIV, NIT, and ESV. Look up a conservative church near you and check which versions they recommend. Then don't read those.

Bible Gateway is a good place to read different versions side by side. Look up quotes you like or that bother you in multiple translations. It may help you decide which ones you want to ultimately buy.

I have not actually read these versions but I wanted to include them so you know your options. These were created with specific intent against bigotry, so they have a strong bias. Not that I find that problematic in this case - there's a crap ton of Bibles that were made intentionally to perpetuate bigotry. So I'm just choosing which bias I prefer.

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament by Terry M Wildman <- Native perspective (paraphrase)

The Queen James Bible <- KJV edited to remove or explain core clobber passages, very popular with queer Catholics

The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation by Priests for Equality <- gendered language and other instances of bias edited out, tho I think it's still anti-gay?! (paraphrase)

Resources for inevitable encounters with bigotry

Many people avoid the Bible because the people and movements that claim it really lay the bigotry on thick and justify it with this dusty old book. If you have the interest to learn more about the Bible, very quickly you're going to encounter this bigotry in the translations and supplemental materials.

I'll tell you now on no uncertain terms: Your interpretation of the Bible does not HAVE to include bigotry, despite what many outside entities may try to tell you.

I always say, "The Bible is so big and so varied that you can 'make' it say anything. The true test is what you choose to make it say. Something hateful? Or something loving and affirming?"

It says a lot more about someone when you remove the excuse that the Bible fundamentally is full of bigoted beliefs. If you believe that racism and slavery are good and natural because it's in the Bible, as early American slavers claimed, then you're actually just human garbage. Any modern sane person knows its presence in an ancient text has no weight on today. It's the same for anything else on its pages.

Conservatives "cherry pick" meaning from the Bible that they prefer to believe, but it's just as true that so do progressives. The Bible is huge and contradictory because it's a bunch of very old texts written by a ton of different people playing a game Telephone over a few thousand years. It's full of stories, poetry, and history---with some bigotry baked in, and some applied in modern times. The stories are full of complex characters (heroes, villains, antiheroes) and history is not always pretty. The books of the Bible literally argue with each other.

^ Above: I've always enjoyed this graphic, which maps all of the times the Bible contradicts itself. That's a lot! Good thing the Bible isn't to be taken literally, that would be impossible. (Evangelicals: .....) x

Nobody is meant to replicate what's in the Bible or use it as a guidebook for how to live life to the letter. You're meant to read the arguments and come up with your own answer. (Personally I think the winning hint is how many times the protagonist talked about loving one another.)

tl;dr: If conservatives are cherry picking the Bible and progressives are cherry picking the Bible, who is flying the plane?! You are. So make the choice that doesn't hurt anybody.

Anti-Semitism and the Old Testament

I am an advocate for reading Old Testament translations (and interpretations) very critically. I'm sure all are aware of the anti-Semitism baked into Christianity. A lot of it stems from interpretation of the OT, which includes major portions of the Tanakh, the Jewish core religious text. The OT and the Tanakh are not one and the same, but they are entwined, and cause a lot of grief for everyone involved when not treated with the proper care.

Read the Old Testament separately from the rest of the Bible (the New Testament). I have really enjoyed using the free (!!) website Sefaria, an online library of Jewish texts. You can compare the Tanakh translations and commentary there to the same of the OT in your Bible of choice. (Also please throw them some money when you can, they're truly one of the great joys of the internet and operate as a nonprofit, keep them online forever.)

Beware any (Christian, New Testament) Bible translations that claim to be Jewish. There is a kind of Christian that calls themself a "Messianic Jew" that claims to recognize Jesus as the Jewish messiah. It's all very offensive, so please do not engage. Check the sources of websites and books to make sure you don't see the word Messianic. There are true academic texts by Jewish scholars that engage with Christian thought, but it will be very clear that they are not a Christian themself.

Speaking of... Another resource you must read is Better Parables. This is a website by a Jewish scholar who interprets the famous (and infamous) Christian parables of Jesus through the paradigm of Jewish academic dialogue. Many Christians have never heard non-anti-Semitic readings of a lot of New Testament content so this site offers refreshing perspective to get you out of that mindset. Particularly if you grew up with Christianity, I consider this mandatory reading.

Queer affirmation in the Bible

Personally I have moved beyond the fight against clobber passages (Bible verses interpreted to support homophobia) towards actively affirming readings of the Bible. I have tons of these resources, so I'm just gonna make a list.

Websites

Queer Theology - podcast, classes, and theological resources

Queer Grace Encyclopedia - succinct articles and links on common questions

Blessed Are the Binary Breakers - podcast and long running Tumblr blog @blessedarethebinarybreakers

Supplemental Bible interpretation

The Queer Bible Commentary by Deryn Guest, et. al. - if you can get it used for cheaper, this is a must have while reading the Bible

Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible by Robert E Goss, et. al. - if you can't afford the above commentary, this has only a few chapters from the larger book for a better price

For your inner child

What Is God Like? by Rachel Held Evans - I literally cried reading this children's book, I'm man enough to admit it. This is what we all should have been taught about the Christian god as kids.

#personal #ref #to read #guides #religion #christianity

[sunflowersandcherryblossoms]

As I was playing the new TYBW story on BBS, I really noticed how badly Kubo fumbled his own story to begin with...

Ukitake sent Rukia to the World of the Living after being in the squad for over 40 years!

Now he's sending new kids fresh out of the Academy...

When Shino and Ryonosuke get hurt, Ichigo — The one that was well written up until the Fullbringer Arc. — would have called the Soul Society (at least he would call Rukia.) to warn them about the fact and also to warn against sending kids in a time when (apparently) there's a surplus of really fucking big and super dangerous hollows!

Then we get the warning — before Nel appeared!— that Soul Society was attacked.

Over 200 Squad 1 Shinigami were killed!

No reaction whatsoever beyond a "Oh No! How could that be! That sucks..." half hearted reaction from Ryonosuke.

This part right here? Normally? Would have been enough to get, at least Ichigo, going right the fuck now to Soul Society!

But no...

Nel appears and... everyone decides to go...help Hueco Mundo?!? Why?

Everyone there is an enemy?

I'm very sorry for Dondonchaka, but the wisest course of action would be to have these two protected by Urahara and go right the fuck now to SOUL SOCIETY and WITH YOUR POWERFUL SHINIGAMI FRIENDS find out what's going on and then help Hueco Mundo?!?

Hey, Urahara! What are you doing here? Why the fuck are you more concerned with going to enemy territory and helping the enemy instead of trying to find out what is happening to your own people? How about you open that gate of yours into Soul Society?

How about... I don't know... Contacting Soul Society?

And where's Yoruichi?!?

Nowhere to be seen, just like common sense and logic.

It's easier to pick apart the blatant mistakes in still images when you're not being distracted by neat visuals and a kick ass soundtrack...

And another thing!

FIVE DAYS!

Fucking Yamamoto had five days to gather his Gotei 13 and plan out defence. He fucking knew who they were! Of that I'm sure!

And yet, in the first invasion, NO ONE ELSE KNOWS THESE ARE QUINCY!

And we know the results of absolutely zero preparation for the invasion...

Makes like... Zero sense whatsoever!

I can make mistakes in my stories.

I'm a fanfic writer.

Tite Kubo absolutely cannot! It's his fucking job! He's been doing this since the early 2000s...

On a side note... I'm pretty sure those German sentences are incorrect in the sense that you really do not speak like that in Germany...

I haven't used German in YEARS but I'm pretty fucking sure that you don't use "eh" but "zu"...

I think it's a case of a bad Google translate usage.

#bleach #bleach tybw #bleach brave souls

[kattythingz]

Ok hihi! I was wondering how you did research on Ling speaking Chinese (?) In your fics! I want to add some stuff with my OCS speaking Chinese in my book but I am not entirely too sure on how to properly conduct research, so I was wondering how you do it? /Genq

Also I love your writing it has such a good flow and you write Ed and Ling so well!

Hi there!! First of all: I'm so flattered you came to me for advice? Idk what that says about my handling of the language but damn if the gesture didn't make me smile.

I worked with Mandarin Chinese for my fic specifically, which in Google translate, that would be Simplified Chinese. But keep in mind there are other dialects to work with, like Cantonese Chinese I believe?

Anyway, first and foremost:

Do NOT rely on Google translate for sentence translations. It served me fine for individual words, but honestly? Even for a simple "fuck" or "shit," I looked at forums and Reddit discussions and such for "authentic" answers from actual Chinese-speaking folks. I found that "local" answers listed some wild things that are common day speaking and Google translate simply doesn't include some of those wild things. Which is a damn shame.

Basic phrases I did the same thing, asking Google "how to say such and such in Chinese" and scrolling down to discussions online. It's how I learned it's apparently common to curse people by using "your mom" as "fuck/fuck you." I had a blast with that one.

What also greatly helped me though was researching basic Chinese grammar for myself. Luckily, the language is surprisingly simple with it having no verb conjugations, and question formations and word placements seem fairly straightforward! So looking into the grammar was a lot less work than I expected and genuinely it was kinda fascinating. I know I definitely got way too into it.

This much attention to detail ofc will eat up time from you. I spent hours longer than intended to verify my sentences as Not Butchering The Language. But it was worth it in the end because I wanted to do the language right, and I wanted to respect it. I'm bilingual myself and I've seen the bullshit Google translate spouts back at you in my language. It's. It's not wrong, but it's also not what people say on a day to say basis, you know? And you want your characters to sound real, not like AIs.

So, FOR EXAMPLE. If you wanna make up a phrase that roughly means, say, "fuck on a dragon's spine..."

My process would be to look up, in order:

The individual words in the sentence, each. So "fuck," "dragon," and "spine." (Via Google translate)

The prepositions, "on" and the possessive in "dragon's." (Via Google search)

Basic sentence structure so you can put it all together. (Google search) (try to specify if you mean a statement sentence or a question or an exclamation, etc)

And then, bonus step, look at similar sentences in the language to gauge if yours sounds legit next to them!

All this wonderful research leads to the sentence of: Cāo zài lóng de jí — 操在龙的脊

It's a lot of work for just one sentence, but languages aren't one and done props for our stories either. The best respect we can give these languages is by researching them properly and putting the time and effort into getting them right. Even if it means spending an hour over one sentence or two.

At least, that's been my work ethic so far about it. I can't speak nor decide for you, but I hope my response inspires that kind of gusto from you too! :)

Thank you for the ask! And good luck with that book!! <3

#I got so into answering this but man I was really psyched that you asked me sth likw this #the amount of time and work I've put into the chinese in my fic is. a lot. #and I'm always happy to talk about the process after seeing the end results succeed! #thanks a bunch for asking me about this!! #it kinda made my day #katmail #Solaris

[odinsblog]

It was August 4th. It had been six months since Griner was pulled out of a security line at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Officials found vape cartridges with traces of hashish oil—seven tenths of a gram, roughly the weight of a small raisin—in her bag. Griner told the court she hadn’t known that the cartridges were there; she’d packed in haste, while recovering from covid, rushing to join the other members of U.M.M.C. Ekaterinburg, the Russian team that Griner plays for during the W.N.B.A. offseason. (Top players can make six to seven times their W.N.B.A. salaries overseas.) Doctors in Arizona had prescribed her cannabis to help her deal with pain after more than a decade of sustaining injuries. She hadn’t meant to bring any drugs into Russia, and hadn’t realized what was happening to her as the nightmare unfolded. During her detainment at the airport, the translator had been withholding; Griner had to resort to the Google translate app to understand what people were saying. She’d been forced to sign papers without knowing what was on them, she said. Her phone was seized, and she was taken to prison. The maximum sentence for the charges was ten years.

Griner shared a cell with two other English-speaking women, in a prison that was once an orphanage. Her bed was too short for her to stretch out on. After breakfast, the inmates would go for walks in the courtyard; an old bust of Lenin looked on.

Somehow, she managed to hold onto some of that joyousness even in prison. When her teammate Brianna Turner wrote Griner, and told her that she was being made an honorary All Star, Griner joked that she would have “the worst stat line in the history of the All Star Game”—zero points, zero rebounds, zero assists. Griner’s sense of humor in her letters “did surprise me, but it does speak to the kind of the person she is—the life of the party, the one who always makes people laugh,” Turner said. Still, those who knew Griner best were worried when they saw the pictures and video of her in the courtroom. “My wife is struggling, and we have to help her,” Cherelle Griner told the media, explaining her decision to push more aggressively for Griner’s release after months of remaining quiet. When a planned call between Cherelle and Griner failed to happen because of a mixup at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Griner sent a letter to President Joe Biden. “As I sit here in a Russian prison,” she wrote, “alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, I’m terrified I might be here forever.”

— Getting Brittney Griner Home

#brittney griner #politics #free brittney #free brittney griner #vladimir putin go fuck yourself #vladimir putin #little putler #adolph putin #fuck vladimir putin

[thedunesea]

Hi. How’s your day?

I just want to say I mostly agree with your post about AI writing. I am a student from science background but is enthusiastic about fictions. Also my native tongue is NOT English.

Because of my……rather unique background knowledge, I feel like I have a “weird” stand about AI writing. I feel like 99% people I know use AI writing tools wrong, either they don’t know how to structure their story, how to create conflicts, or how to communicate with AI writing tools.

In summary, they’re either bad at storytelling or bad at using AI tools.

In fact, I use AI writing tools just like your post suggested—I mainly tell them what sentences I would use to describe the scenery, and see if they have better wording than mine. Or I would ask them which adjectives to use here, as google translate is dumb. Or I would ask if a scene which is not from my own culture make sense, as I don’t want to bother any online folks on this matter.

Your post made me feel less guilty about using the tools. I am not sure whether or not it’s a good thing tbh but thank you. I wanted to have some research about this topic, but I got yelled by people’s angry anti-AI writing posts in my face on tumblr most of the time. Like—I get it, but I wonder am I the only one who has the similar idea on this topic? Then I found your post.

I feel like my main concern now is—by using those tools, am I making the “evil” in others’ eyes stronger? As there are news about AI writing tools using online fanfics to train their models, the tools themselves might be unethical.

Thank you again and hope you don’t mistake my message……I’m here to say “thank you” and try to have some conversations over AI writing.

Hello friend, I'm doing fine, thanks, even if quite busy with the end of the school year approaching. I hope you're doing fine too!

I completely understand your fears and your reserves, and I share them. I think that the issue at hand here has two faces we need to tackle. The first is the tool, i.e. artificial intelligence chat bots; the other issue, the really problematic issue, is the way these bots were trained.

My foray into chat gpt was as a teacher, not as a writer: I needed to assess the potentialities and the drawbacks of the tool, since I'm fairly sure I will soon have to account for it when preparing my courses and perhaps even to integrate it into my teaching routine.

I do think that the tool, if used properly, could be really useful for teaching and learning, and also for everyday life. It's like having a very calm, very proper, very family friendly protocol droid. You have to take everything it says with a grain of salt, but it can help you get what you need (i.e. starter bibliography on a topic you aren't familiar with). It can also be invaluable for the uses you described. AI isn't inherently evil, if (and this is a HUGE if) we regulate its uses in order to let it substitute human work only when that work force can be redirected towards more engaging and more useful tasks, and never as a substitute to human knowledge and creativity.

What is evil is the economic system we live in, and this brings us to the second issue. Chatgpt was trained on data provided for free on the web, data that were never meant for this. This in itself is unethical, and a gross misuse of the web. Honestly I don't care that my fics may have been scrapped, but I understand why people do, and anyway my own feelings on the subject are way beyond the point: this is another egregious example of corporations using people's time and engagement to scrap data and profit, and this is one of the evils of our time.

And yet we keep using evil tools all the time. I use whatsapp, and I still have a facebook profile, so I'm feeding data to meta. I am not vegan, and I know all the evils of intensive animal farming. I don't buy a lot of fast fashion, and yet all my clothes are made in developing countries, and I have no idea of the conditions of the workers there. Heck, the fridge I just bought because the old one broke down is produced by a company that used to produce in Italy but then delocalized to a developing country, firing hundreds of employees.

I couldn't have bought an ethical fridge: I don't even know if they exist, and even if they did, I couldn't afford them. I absolutely couldn't afford to only buy clothes made in Italy or Europe. I could go vegan, but honestly I don't really want to. I eat meat very rarely, I only eat local fish (by which I mean fished in Italy, I don't live on the sea) and I buy eggs from certified cage-free hens. I could get rid of whatsapp, but it would complicate my life to an extreme I am not willing to go to. I can't give up google suite because I use it for work.

One thing I don't do, for example, is order delivery food. That is a form of exploitation I choose not to partake in, because it's a choice I can make. Would I want to have pizza delivered to my house sometime? Yes, of course I would. Am I willing to put at risk the life of someone less privileged than me (delivery people here are mostly immigrants, often 40+ years old) to have my pizza delivered to me instead of getting off my ass and going to buy it myself to take away? No, like hell I am!

Why am I saying all this?

Because until I only buy handmade clothes and locally produced foods, only own ethically produced tech (HA!), never use products from meta or google again... Until then, who am I to lecture anyone on their use of chat gpt?

We live in an unethical world. This doesn't make us above reproach, but we have to choose our battles, and very few of us are really in a position to hate on others for the battles they choose - and those they don't.

If chat gpt helps you, get to know its pros and its cons: if using it doesn't bother you, use it! Chances are that the people that would get mad at you are probably using something unethical too - like driking milk, because the disboscation and pollution and soil consumption that are needed to produce our milk are far worse things than a bot scrapping the ao3.

I am sorry for the ramble, and I hope I didn't come across as patronizing: this wasn't really aimed at you, personally, it was more like a written train of thoughts, because honestly I asked myself the same questions you did when I started to think about if and how to incorporate these bots into my teaching routine, and this is the only answer I could find for myself.

[for the record, I won't use it for teaching, not yet: I want to get to know the tool and its training and all these issues way better before I decide to willingly expose my kids to it]

#ai chatbot #artificial intelligence #answered asks

[writebackatya]

❤️👻🏷🦈for fanfic ask

❤️What is your favorite line you’ve written in a fic?

That’s always changing. Currently I’ll say it’s this interaction from I Think We’re Alone Now!:

So what Steelbeak said here is very ignorant. And dumb. It’s one of those stupid sentences that makes you go “Where do I even begin with what’s wrong with that sentence?”

👻What is your wildest headcanon?

I think the one where I think certain characters smoke/have smoked/will smoke weed based on the vibes they’re giving me

🏷️Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read?

I usually just search the tags of my favorite characters and pairings and see what I can find there

🦈Which character is the toughest to write?

I’ve been avoiding (but really want to) writing characters like Bentina Beakley and M’ma Cabrera-Crackshell because I just don’t know how to write for them yet

But as for the ones I’ve already written for, I would say maybe José and Panchito. Those two are a lot of fun to write for, but sometimes I get help but feel this pressure when I do. They’re both bilingual and jump from English to their native language and that’s something I’d like to include in my writings. The only problem, I only speak English and will have to settle for Google Translate

#fanfic writer ask meme #shychick 52 #writebackatya

[xxx-nikki-slaughter-xxx]

But, I'm A Medic

Synopsis: Valeria tells Maria something that makes her super sad and Rodolfo comforts her

I STILL DO NOT SUPPORT THE MILITARY, also I used Google translate for the Spanish parts

Warnings: angst, unrequited love, gay shit

Chapter 2: I love her, but she doesn't love me

Chtr 1

~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~

It's been about two months now and in those months, I've become one of the top ranking medics, also me and Valeria have gotten closer, to the point where she has started calling me little nicknames, I would consider her my friend.

I'm currently fixing up Valeria's arm, after she got shot training today. " I'm starting to think you like getting hurt, Val" I say, cutting the bandage. " What makes you say that, cariño" Valeria says confused. " You could of easily dodged that bullet, but you didn't, it looked like you moved your arm directly in front of that bullet" I say slightly irritated. Valeria that looks to the other side of the room. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't" Valeria's face turning a little red.

We were silent for a second, Valeria then grabbed both my arms, in excitement, looks me in the eyes. She had a big grin on her face and said to me.

"I just remembered, Alejandro asked me out, isn't that amazing, Chica" as she says that, I get this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, like a feeling of wanting to throw up.

" Yeah, that's great, Val" I say, trying to sound happy for her and Ale. Valeria then gave me a super tight hug. I could tell she was happy that I supported her new relationship, considering I've been friends with Alejandro since we were children, and I Val's newer friends.

"Our first date is night, can you help me pick a dress? I only have 4 options but I want the best option is" Valeria says, sounding abnormal happy.

"Yeah, of course, umm, can you excuse me for a minute, I need the restroom really quick" I say standing up, not waiting for her response, speed walking to the restroom. I'm half way to the restroom when tears well up in my eyes, I pick up the pace.

I grab the door handle, walk into the bathroom and lock the door behind me. The tears flows down my face, intensely sobbing, hands covering my face, as i sit on the floor.

I hear a knock on the door

"¡VETE DE AQUÍ!"

"¿Qué pasa, hermana?"

It's Rodolfo

"Nada" I lie

"Está mintiendo, Señora" he says seeing straight threw me

"Pues, Valeria me lo acaba de decir, ella y Alejandro están juntos y creo que estoy enamorado de ella"

"Alejandro told me the same thing last night" Rudy says sounding extremely disappointed, heartbroken even

"Dios, los dos somos idiotas, ¿no?" I say laughing a bit twords the end of the sentence

"¿Puedo pasar, mija?"

"claro, hermano"

I than reach up to unlock the door and move away from the door, Rudy opens the door and sits next too me. I wrap my arms around his waist, resting me head against his chest, more tears running down my face. Rudy was absent-mindedly rubing my back, his head on top of my head.

"What are we gonna do now, Ruru"

"I don't know, Mari"

We stayed like this for at least an hour.

~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~

I was face down on my top bunk, face in my pillow. Valeria than storms into the room and starts to make a bunch of ruffling noises.

"Mari, my date with Ale is in 20 minutes. Does this dress look nice"

I look up at her, only the top half of face showing the rest still in the pillow. She was holding a pink short dress, it looks skin tight.

My heart starts pounding in my chest, while at the same time, it starting to hurt. I want to scream. I wish she was wearing that to a date with me, but of course not, she could never love me. Just my best friend.

" It looks great, Val, he'll love it" I say, looking away for her, not wanting her to see the tears in my eyes

A few minutes pass

And she says to me

"Bye Mari, I'll see you later tonight"

As soon as I hear the door close I start crying my eyes out

I had fallen deeply in love with her

~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~♡~

If you liked this please reblog it. I worked so hard on this and I want people to see my hardwork

#valeria #valeria garza #valeria cod #valeria garza x maria diaz

[icecoffee90]

Tag game - Get to Know You

Thank you for tagging me, @jerzwriter!

Alright, here I go with TMI about me nobody asked for! Sorry in advance! lol

Are you named after someone?

Not that I know of. Apparently my grandma wanted my parents to name me after her (Růžena), but thankfully they didn’t listen, lol. Not that it’s a bad name!

When was the last time you cried?

I don’t even remember. I almost never cry.. Usually only cry when I’m watching something (or listening to a song) where a beloved character or an animal dies.. Though I guess every few years the bottled up emotions overflow and anything can trigger the waterworks.. But I’m pretty sure the last time I cried was because of a TV show, but I really don’t remember which one it was and when (especially since I didn’t have much time to watch anything lately, lol)

Do you have kids?

No. I’m a two time aunt, that’s more than enough, lol.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Probably too much sometimes, lol

What colour are your eyes?

I always said Blue and green, but I think they’re mainly gray.

Scary Movies or happy endings?

I rarely watch scary movies (as in slashers)... I mean, if they’re on TV, I leave them on as a background noise.. But if we count movies like Sleepy Hollow, Interview with the Vampire etc as scary movies, then I would probably pick those.. But I prefer a happy ending in everything I watch!

Any special talents?

None that I know of. Other than maybe annoying people around me, lol.

Where were you born?

In a hospital in the town nearest to my hometown. Funny story about that (at least it’s funny to me, lol): The town I live in doesn’t have a hospital, so everyone from here was born in that nearest hospital, so I never thought ynthing of it.. Only to find out YEARS later that my parents only moved here when I was 6 months old! That my mom just happened to be in this town at her mother-in-law’s at that moment!

What are your hobbies?

Reading, watching TV shows and sports (tennis, snooker, ice hockey), foreign languages..

Do you have any pets?

I have a dog. But he lives at my mom’s so I don’t get to see him as often anymore..

What sports do you/have you played?

Edit: I left Elsa's anwer here by mistake! Sorry! 🤦‍♀️😅 So here's my answer..

I used to play tennis as a kid (because my sister attented a lesson, so I wanted to do it too), according to my mother I sucked.. But in my mother's eyes I suck at everything, so who knows, lol.

How tall are you?

I’m tiny. 157, 5 cm.. I’m not googling in the feet and inches again.. it was under 5 ft 2 in, i believe, lol

Favorite subject in school?

I always liked Czech (just the grammar though) and chemistry later on. Also back in 2007 when I was 16 and obsessed with German bands (yeah, yeah, yeah, mainly Tokio Hotel, I admit it! lol. But also Nevada Tan/Panik!, Cinema Bizzare and Killerpilze), I put extra effort into the German classes, lol. BECAUSE I saw a Tokio Hotel interview (or maybe it was just the twins? doesn’t matter, lol) and I was just thinking “Man, I’ve been learning German since the 3rd grade and I barely understand 3 sentences.. This is fucking embarrassing! I need to do something about that!” and (mainly thanks to German fanfic writers, lol) I was speaking fluently in no time! I really need to brush up on it agin, hopefully it’s still in there somewhere..

Great, now I’ve listened to “Ich bin nicht ich” at least 30 times over the past two days.. And 20 times to “Totgeliebt”.. HELP ME!!

Still love it, though.. And I must still have that DVD (and CD) somewhere, lmfao..

And since I’m off the topic anyway (I’M SORRY, but I did warn you, lol), can I just say that I still find it funny that my teen crush is now married to Heidi Klum? Who would have thought almost 16 years ago, lol? Shit, where did all that time go? 😭

Dream job?

Hmm, if I had unlimited supply of money amd could have done anything I wamted to, I would wanna try translating - combing reading and use of foreign languages.. I think that would be great!

Alright, that was fun! Sorry everyone who read my dumb answers, lol

Who else might wanna do this? I’m gonna tag @she-x-wolf​ (feel free to ignore, of course!)

#tag game #just if you didn't think i was weird already lol #Youtube