#as if the context of the first two sentences aren’t even needed

[provider-of-guardians]

It’s weird to have been on tumblr for almost 10 years cause every now and then I’ll see a casual reference to something that I’m sure I saw the origin of, and at the time I didn’t think it’d grow to be more than something I read on tumblr once but here it is like everyone knows it, you know?

#Most notably #’not to me not if it’s you’ #I feel like I remember seeing the origin of that #and it was earth shatteringly beautiful #and then it became cringely cheesy #and now I saw it casually referenced in another post #as if the context of the first two sentences aren’t even needed #cause everyone knows it #just by feeling #Idk just random thoughts lol #provider of ramblings

[bettsfic]

writing cheats

i know i’ve probably written about these all individually but i’m putting them together in one post. these are writing tricks that are extremely cheap and dirty; when you use them it feels like cheating and honestly by posting them i’m probably exposing all the easy moves in my own work, but more than a writer i am a teacher, so here you go, some writing cheats that have never steered me wrong.

quick character creation

what’s really annoying is when you have two characters sitting at a restaurant or something and the server has to come by. to what degree do you describe the server so that it’s clear they’re just a background character but that they’re not just a faceless form, so that the world has texture without taking up too much space on the page? rule of three, babeyyy: two normal things and a weird one.

she had pale skin and blue eyes but her hair was dyed black like a 2010 emo kid.

he was tall and broad, and he wore a sweatshirt with an embroidered teddy bear on it.

the woman stood there comparing the prices of toilet paper. she had a short angled bob and carried a keychain the length of a trout.

why does it work? it gives the reader something to hang onto, a brief observation that shows the world exists around your narrator. it also works when introducing main characters, but there’s so much action going on that you can’t take time to write a rich long paragraph about them. all you need is a little hook.

quick setting creation

i used to TOIL over descriptive paragraphs. for years i was like, description is my weakness, i must become better at developing imagery. i believed this because a famous writer once projected a paragraph i had written onto a screen and asked my cohort, “count how many images are crafted in this paragraph.” there were none. none! my friends were sitting there like, “we are TRYING” but they couldn’t find any.

i would say that after years of studying imagery development at the sentence level, i am, perhaps, competent at it, but what was more helpful was for me to shrug and tell myself, “i’m just not a writer who does that.”

anyway. my cheat is thus: 

there’s not much you can assume about your audience. the audience is not a homogenous whole. but your ideal audience is something you can guess at, and that means you can play around with their existing knowledge and expectations. 

if you say your characters are in a tacky shit-on-the-walls restaurant, if your ideal reader is an american who went to restaurants during the maximalist era of franchise design, they will conjure their nearest memory of one of those places. and for those readers who aren’t familiar with it, they’ll use other context clues to conjure that space. the point is, you don’t have to list every single stupid license plate nailed to the wall. you can leave it as one detail of one sentence and let your reader extrapolate from there.

if i say the dentist’s office looked like a gutted 90s taco bell, maybe no ideal audience would have ever seen a place like that, but a lot of people can mentally conjure a dentist’s office and a 90s taco bell and overlay them together to create a weird and fun image.

you can go even simpler than that: a bathroom the size of an airplane lavatory. a tiny studio apartment with a hotplate instead of a stove. a mansion with a winding stairwell. the point is that you want to define the size of the space and its general vibes.

in some ways detailed description can be overrated, because your reader conjures images even in absence of them on the page. and for those readers who can’t mentally conjure images, it doesn’t matter anyway; they take you at your word. the trick is to figure out what details are unexpected, relevant to understanding the story and its characters, and those are the things that you add in.

one other note: after working with hundreds of writers on drafting, for *most* of us it’s difficult to develop images and establish setting in a first draft. it’s nearly always something to be saved for a second or later draft. i think it’s because while we’re writing we tend to put character and action first.

nail the landing

there’s a joke i heard once from a writer i really admire: “you know it’s literary fiction if the story ends with a character looking at a body of water.”

and god it’s so painfully sad and true how easy it is to nail the landing of a given story by ending on a totally irrelevant piece of imagery. the final beat of a story followed by your character looking up at the sky and seeing a flock of birds in the shape of a V flying past. or maybe they’re sitting in their car and they count the rings of a nearby church bell. or maybe they watch an elderly couple walk down the sidewalk hand-in-hand. i don’t know!! when in doubt shove an observation, an image, whatever, something neutral at the end and it’ll sound profound. 

(this cheat is the only one that can really bite you in the ass because if the image is too irrelevant you risk tonal incongruity. for use only in the most desperate of times.)

sentence fragments

when writers ask me how to punch up their writing or start developing their own style, my go-to advice is to give up the idea of a complete sentence. fuck noun-verb-object. if you have a series of character actions, knock off the sentence subjects like in script action. if the clause at the end of your sentence is particularly meaningful, don’t separate it with a comma but a period and make it its own thing. if your character is going through something particularly stressful or heinous, that bitch is not thinking in complete thoughts so you don’t have to convey them that way. make punctuation bend to your will!!

rhetorical moves

this one opened a lot of doors for me stylistically. remember that famous writer who called me out on my lack of imagery? i always thought his prose was beautiful, that he’s one of the best living prose writers, etc. once i learned more about rhetoric though, i realized he just employed it a lot. 

usually when we talk about beautiful sentences it means a sentence that uses rhetorical devices. the greeks were like, you know what, when we give speeches there are certain ways to phrase things that make the audience go nuts. let’s identify what those things are and give them names so we can use them intentionally and convince people of our opinions.

i love shakespeare, i really do, but one of the big reasons he’s still a household name today and his plays are still performed is because every sentence of every goddamn play utilizes a rhetorical device. the audience is hard-wired to vibrate at the sound and cadence of his writing, like finding the spot on a dog that makes their foot thump. for five hundred years, william shakespeare has been scritching that spot for us.

i have no idea why, cognitively, rhetorical devices are so effective. i’m no rhetorician. all i know is that well-deployed anaphora makes a reader want to throw their panties on stage. my intro to rhetorical devices was the wonderful book the elements of eloquence by mark forsyth, a surprisingly fun read! hopefully that will open some doors for you the way it did for me. 

the downside to this is that once you know rhetorical devices, it’s like learning how the sausage is made. on one hand, as a writer, you’ll have a lot stronger grasp of style, but as a reader good prose loses some of its magic.  

pacing it out

many writers, myself included, rely on the tried and true “he bit the inside of his cheek” or other some such random action to help pace out dialogue. one time my thesis advisor sat me down and said “you’ve got to take all of those out.”

“all of them?” i said.

“all of them,” she said.

i thought, but that will weaken the text! it didn’t. once i cut what i came to call cheek-biter sentences i never went back. and now when i edit for other people i’m like, look i know where you’re coming from but just cut all these out and see how the scene stands. if it doesn’t feel right you can put some back in. a lot of times when you’re drafting you put those in the way some people say “um.” they’re just sentences you jot while you’re thinking of what the other character says, so from a writing perspective it seems like you’re pacing, but readers don’t read it that way. they just want to get to the next line of dialogue.

but sometimes you really do need to pace out a scene and i think there are other ways to do that that don’t rely on banal physical movements, such as:

interiority: a sentence or paragraph of relevant cognition, bonus points if you weave in background context. good interiority defines the voice of your writing.

observations: i know i just said description is overrated but idk sometimes you just need a character to note the back and forth clacking of one of those desk ball toy things.

character texture: maybe your character notes something about the person they’re talking to. a wilted pocket square. a mole that looks like it needs looked at by a dermatologist. a scar on their forehead. some detail that deepens or complicates our understanding of a character.

narratorial consciousness and access

this one is less a cheat and more a problematic opinion i have that doesn’t win me any popularity in writing circles.

i believe that if you’re writing in first person or close third or any narration which is dedicated to the mind of one character, you are only ever obligated to convey the experience of that character’s consciousness. and nothing else.

by that i mean, if your point of view character is unobservant? then they’re not going to even notice the flight attendant is missing one of their canine teeth. if your pov character is focused and obsessive, they’re going to think lavish, detailed paragraphs about that which they’re obsessed with and have no acknowledgement of the rest of the world. if your pov character has no understanding of time, does your story even need to be linear?

defining the scope of a narrator’s cognition early on can give you parameters in which to work. even if you don’t consciously do this, you still do it. if you write in third person limited present tense without really thinking about it, that’s your scope. i’m just pointing out you can choose to do it differently. you get to define your narrator. 

whenever we talk about narration we also talk about information access and the order of information being revealed/conveyed. writing must always be in order; even if you’re writing multiple concurring things, it still has to be rendered on the page in order one after the next, because the human mind can’t read two sentences over top of one another. 

if we’re restricted to the mind of a character, that means we’re also restricted by their knowledge and experiences, and this can be used to your benefit. i don’t want to take too much space for this but i do talk more about the relationship between narration and reality here.

in short, you the writer get to choose 

what the reader knows,

in what order they know it, and

its relationship to the presumed real events of the story, which develops the (un)reliability of your narrator

okay going to cut this off now before i go on more rants about narrative scope. i hope you found this helpful and go on to put some of these nasty lifehacks in your own writing!!

#writing advice

[hedgehog-moss]

what are your favorite books in terms of prose? curious after you wrote about how many modern writers lack a sense for good writing, which i’ve also felt for years. so who do you think writes especially beautifully :-)

(Warning: long post ahead pondering what is perceived as beautiful prose in English vs French!)

The first books that came to my mind are the ones listed below, and it got me wondering why they were all by French authors, when I read a lot in other languages. I think even if you can read foreign literature fluently, it’s easier to detect & appreciate beautiful prose in your mother tongue, not just because you know it so intimately (so you know how many different ways there are to convey an idea and why this particular way was a great choice in this context), but also because languages develop their own criteria of what constitutes good writing, and we aren’t really taught about this—we're taught about our own language's criteria for good prose as if they were universal and objective, and it can be hard to move beyond that, especially when you're happily lost in a book and not actively trying to analyse the subtleties of the writing.

At the risk of giving the least hipster answer ever I really like Victor Hugo's writing because there are whole passages that sound so good I need to go back and re-read them to figure out what's happening in terms of plot (usually nothing, so it's ok), because I was too busy enjoying the flow of language the first time around (my favourite of his is The Man Who Laughs)

I read Pierre Assouline's 500-page book about the Book of Job even though I have little interest in biblical analysis or religious history, because there were sentences that were so pleasantly paced and balanced I just got carried by the momentum...

I love Annie Ernaux's writing in Les Années even though I'm not a fan of her other books, because the sentence construction and rhythm are so perfectly suited to the theme of the book.

I find Anatole France's books rather dull but the language is hypnotising (I talked a bit in this post about how his grammar is graceful as a dance...)

^ looking at this I realise I always come back to movement—grace, balance, flow, rhythm (not the pace of the story but of each sentence), and I know these are the criteria that French deems Terribly Important. I mentioned at the end of this post how (and why) English tends to be less interested in the motion of language and more in the imagery; in Goodreads reviews by native English speakers, beautiful writing is more likely to be described as ‘vivid’ than melodious. That's not to say English speakers can't appreciate (or prefer!) other kinds of prose, obviously, it's just, in broad strokes, what each language likes to focus on (at the present time.) There's a lot of appreciation in English for the kind of prose that you could easily make a moodboard out of—evoking sensations, colours, atmosphere—while French highly values the kind of prose that you can easily trace out in the air, with your hand rising and falling, tapping the beat, following grammatical twists and turns.

That's just my understanding, but it's something I notice a lot because I like to read French books along with their English translation (and conversely), to see how translators handle a tricky turn of phrase, or what I would have done differently. And it happens time and time again that the English translation lovingly preserves the imagery of a French sentence (even when a metaphor is difficult to translate) while coldly abandoning the rhythm and sound (even when there are easy English equivalents). Meanwhile French translators often completely ignore (or miss out on) subtle sources of mood and imagery because they are too busy picking the words and sentence structure that sound or flow best. It's really quite funny when you start to notice it.

I would have dozens of examples if I actually took the time to note them as I read, but just two recent ones off the top of my head—

French -> English

I'm currently reading Sylvain Tesson's La Panthère des neiges (The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet in English) (I needed a 'cold’ book during the heatwave...) At one point the author draws a comparison between religious worship and observing wild animals. For an example of what I was saying re: "tracing out sentences in the air", there's the sentence "La prière s'élève, adressée à Dieu." The two halves are 5 syllables - 5 syllables (6-6 if you read it formally.) The last word of the first half is "s'élève" — "rises". The last word of the second half goes down, since it's the end of the sentence. There's a clear rising and falling motion to it, which is also perfectly balanced in terms of syllables / rhythm; it makes a nice symmetric pattern in the air.

Now, the translation aspect—you've got the sentence "A genoux, on espère sans preuve." Then, shortly afterwards: "A l'affût, on connaît ce que l'on attend." The author is comparing the acts of kneeling (to pray) and lying in wait (to watch animals); so he chose phrasings and sentence structures that create a clear symmetry ("A genoux" / "A l'affût", 3 syllables, starting with the same sound, followed by a comma, then “on” + verb + clause.) The English translation? "To kneel is to wait in expectation without proof" [...] "Lying in a hide, the object of the wait is known."

This is bad!

Now the two sentences have different grammatical structures, they don't contain the same pronoun and don’t start with the same sound or phrasing even though the translator could have chosen to write "Kneeling" and "Lying" to preserve a tiny bit of the original intent. The translation obliterates the similarities of sound & rhythm in the grammar and word choice, which were here for a literary purpose—to link and compare two concepts.

On the other hand, every sentence in the book that's ripe with vivid imagery of wild animals is very conscientiously translated. In the next page, Tesson describes yaks as "taches de jais saupoudrant—", the English translator: "[the yaks] appeared as jade smudges scattered—" It's word for word ! The translator clearly thought visually striking phrases are essential and must be preserved as faithfully as possible, but phrases that are striking on an auditory / rhythmical level are less important (or less likely to be appreciated by an English-speaking reader.)

English -> French

I was reading The Bear and the Nightingale last year and I remember a contrast so blatant it made me laugh—the sentence "The ground was thick with snowdrops" in the original, was translated in French as "Le sol était parsemé d'une nuée de perce-neige." (The ground was scattered with a mist of snowdrops.)

In terms of French prose, this is good! In terms of faithful translation of English prose, this is bad! The translator went for the complete opposite when it comes to imagery—"thick" which evokes weight, vs. the weightlessness of "scattered" and “mist.”

But you know what? "Parsemé" and "perce-neige" have the same syllable count and nearly identical consonant sounds— [p]-[sə]-[m] / [p]-[sə]-[n]. It's pleasing to the ear and symmetrical. The “mist” bit might seem unnecessary (you could say “scattered with snowdrops”) but it was added because it contributes to this—rather than having two similar words right next to one another, they are now the last word in the first and second half of the sentence, making each half end on a similar sound, like poetry. The two halves "le sol était parsemé" and "d'une nuée de perce-neige" have 7 syllables each (with a mute e, the way most people would read it.) So the sentence sounds nice and is well-balanced, and what could be more important than musicality and balance?? Surely not imagery.

It's good writing in terms of what French deems important. It's terrible at preserving what the original English deemed important—"thick" associated with snowdrops as if the flowers were an actual blanket of snow—this evokes weight and quiet—the next sentence then opens with the trill of a bird, and the light, airy sound feels all the more vivid thanks to this clear contrast.

Which is obliterated by the French translation. But the French sentence flows nicely, and it really highlights what each language finds beautiful and essential, in terms of prose. I mentioned in this post that one of the reasons French takes up more room as a language is that it loves grammatical redundancy while English hates it—and I think it's because expanding or repeating a grammatical structure can add symmetry and balance, while it dilutes / drowns out the imagery. I don't think translators make an active choice all the time to overlook one aspect of the prose and pay more attention to another—I think as they mentally chew on the original text and try to come up with the best equivalent, they instinctively tend to fall into this pattern of favouring their language’s Good Writing criteria (probably because it’s assumed readers favour them as well.)

I should write these kinds of examples down in some Word doc, because they’re everywhere, and while there are so many writing styles and translation styles in both languages, there really is a pattern here—French being obsessed with balance and assonance, i.e. the beauty of motion & sound (which are twin concepts when it comes to language), how to make the flow of a sentence linger in your mind; English being obsessed with the beauty of imagery, the ways to make it 'pop', how to make an atmosphere linger in your mind.

Sorry for this very long answer that only briefly touched on your question, but I really love to observe the ways people use their languages so similarly yet differently!

#ask #language tag #i already made this disclaimer in one of the posts linked here but obviously there is good imagery in french writing and #musicality and rhythm in english prose #this is just a general pattern / preference that's noticeable

[eroticwound]

Maybe part of my resistance to boxing Carmy and Sydney strictly into the “platonic” category is that I’m not even sure, based on what we’ve seen over the two seasons, if they are even friends. Sydney has been at the Beef/The Bear for a little over a year now (?), so maybe the window has been small to get super close, but you look at her relationships with the other characters and there’s imo much more clarity as to those friendships: she and Marcus of course are very good friends, he was probably her first friend at The Beef; she and Tina, it took some time to build that trust but once it was there Tina became her work mom and Syd values her companionship; although not shown explicitly, I also want to argue that Sydney and Nat have built a friendship of sorts since the end of s1 - they came up with CP at some point, meaning Syd felt comfortable enough (and Nat encouraged) talking shit about Carmy with her when he’s being Carmy. And the omelette was such a lovely act of kindness and care. Syd and Richie’s dynamic is significantly better than in s1, but it’s a bit awkward and kinda in the category of work friend that was once your nemesis but now you happily tolerate, if that makes sense? I do think it’s less intense between them by E10, and I’m curious how them working together like that on expo will make Syd more inclined to trust Richie more. The rest of the crew id say are amicable work friends to just associates?

That leaves her and Carmy. They’ve got crazy chemistry off the bat, their minds operate on almost the same level, completing each others sentences, etc etc. But while that’s great evidence of their strong work relationship, I can see Sydney if asked saying that Carmy is more so just a guy she works (and now is a business partner) with, whereas she’d definitely say Marcus is a good friend, yknow? Syd has huge emotional walls built up, doesn’t like to be vulnerable, though she’s done so when either one of the guys urge her to share more. From Carmy’s end, he actually might (subconsciously) view Sydney as his friend thanks to their easy connection. He also picked Sydney, whereas all of his current “friends” were just inherited from Mikey (sorry Fak). Doesn’t mean he loves them any less or that they aren’t his actual friends — just that with Syd, he’s starting fresh in making a friend. He really wants to get to know Sydney — how she’s feeling, what her former bosses think of her, what Sheridan was like, what her relationship with her parents is like (and he feels guilty for not knowing about her mom) — but his probing always happens in the context of cooking or the kitchen, and so Syd’s default is to be guarded or resort to humor. And I think that there were indications that they were growing closer through the chaos menu, but then he starts to date Claire and that project (and building a friendship) was put on hold for a long time and instead there was big a disconnect cause they weren’t communicating. So like yeah, there are platonic elements, but I say these two are operating as a more ambiguous, “secret third thing”. And especially after E10, I don’t know where their pre-friendship progress stands going forward cause I see their relationship as the one that may need the most repairing post Friends & Family 😔

hey anon! sorry for the delay answering this. i appreciate you dropping these bear thoughts in my inbox :)

i’m not sure what made you think i believe syd and carm are platonic? unless maybe you saw me tag something with “i’m a sydcarmy queer platonic truther.” if that’s the case, let me assure you that puts me firmly in the “secret third thing” camp with you. basically, i think it’s likely carmy is on the asexual spectrum, and what’s more “secret third thing” than a queer platonic relationship?

i agree with your reads on the other, clearer relationships between syd and the bear employees (tho i think there’s also a mentor (syd)/mentee (tina) quality between syd and tina. and marcus obvi feels less platonic/more romantic towards syd)

as for syd and carmy… idk, it’s the most complicated dynamic on the show. i disagree that syd views carmy as “just a guy she works with”—this is a guy she can be *creatively vulnerable* with, a colleague who has serious accolades who is telling her they’re working at the same level. who is telling her out of all the high end chefs he knows, he wants to collaborate with her. like, he believes in her and her food so much that he’s made her his partner in all of this. and that’s in addition to the crazy chemistry you reference! being a chef isn’t just a job for them, it’s an artistic calling. collaborating like they do is more on par with a directing duo than people who just work together in the same department. they make each other better at their chosen art (like that’s straight from under the table scene)

but i agree their friendship is.. in its infancy at the least lmao. and i think your reads for why syd is hesitant are correct. carmy’s only tryna get close and ask personal questions when they’re cooking (because he doesn’t know any other way to bond). that being said, besides her dad, she’s never shown chilling with anyone outside of former or current coworkers. syd clearly forms great relationships with her coworkers, like you point out and as further evidenced by her food crawl in sundae. but it’s heavily implied that syd is just as addicted to work as carm, and might not have a huge circle she hangs out with regularly (yet another syd/carm parallel). she’s got walls, like you say, and is shown to be uncomfortable with a lot of emotion (and can sometimes be a dick about it, like with mikey’s hat <3 ). so there’s allll that at play from syd’s end.

and i do agree that carmy views her as a close friend. i like that you point out everyone in carmy’s life except syd is an inherited relationship. that’s SO TRUE. in general, carmy is really delayed and unaware when it comes to relationships—ALL relationships, not just romantic. fak claims carmy and him are best friends but carm doesn’t think so, or rather he’s not really sure. he hasn’t had enough close friends to say. he thought mikey was his best friend, but then was frozen out and realized he knew nothing about him. he wants to be closer with syd, suggested the palate cleanser, which would have been a great way for syd and him to build their friendship, but then claire came along :\

i *am* super stoked to see where syd and carm’s relationship shakes out next season. like carm’s in suuuuch a bad place, and then syd is SOOO anxious about failing. i fear it’s going to get worse before it gets better… but i do think they’re meant to be together in the best (secret third thing) way :)

#anon #the bear #carmy berzatto #carmen berzatto #sydney adamu #bear meta #meta #sydcarmy #but qpr sydcarmy >:)

[nostalgia-tblr]

20 Questions For Writers

I got tagged by @thot-son-of-odin for this!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

412 (plus some Anonymous works that aren’t counted in that number)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

777,634

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Doctor Who (old and new), various Star Treks, the MCU, and a few others including Elementary and M*A*S*H.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Trust the Devil

2. Four Times the Doctor and Clara Shared a Bed and One Time They Didn't

3. Locks And Revelations

4. Responsibility

5. How To Walk On Eggshells

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I didn’t used to but I try to now. It took me a while to get past “if I thank them for the kind words that means I agree and they can call me big-headed!” but now I think perhaps the commenter and I will become friends, as though this was still the LJ days or whatever.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I am answering these together to say that with 412 works it’s rly hard to come up with an answer because I’m bound to forget something that’s either angstier or happier than the one I pick D:

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

No, despite writing occasionally Problematic stuff. Maybe I’m just lucky with that? I think on AO3 the worst I’ve ever got is a comment or two on Ten/Reinette fic about how it is a TERRIBLE pairing and how dare anyone write it. I think I deleted those, or if I haven’t then I meant to, because fuck it they’re properly tagged so the enraged anons must have deliberately chosen something that would offend them.

This sort of thing is why I still have an automatic flinch reaction when people tell me they like Rose Tyler.

9. Do you write smut?

Of course not! I write very thoughtful and insightful character studies in which the characters being studied fuck, that’s COMPLETELY different!

10. Do you write crossovers?

Not often, I’m more into the idea of crossovers than actually writing (or reading) them.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah, a few times.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yes but not for years.

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

I’m going to say Doctor/TARDIS because that’s a safe answer to such questions.

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Never say never – I’ve had ideas that did finally get written a decade later.

16. What’s your writing strengths?

I think it’s dialogue, which is also usually the easiest part to write. (I am a bit of a Fic Snob about how characters should sound like themselves in fic, including in AU fics where is even more important and also if they go OOC in those then that should be the point that’s being made.)

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

The bits that aren’t dialogue. Urgh, why must things need to be described! Why must I tell the reader who is speaking!

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Well I usually see it in the context of “a phrase or word in the language we assume the characters are actually speaking” (mostly pet-names, for some reason) and that just makes me go “So what language are they speaking in the rest of this story? In the rest of this sentence, even?” Not a fan of this, nah.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Star Wars! :O

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

I dunno, there’s too many of them (same problem as before).

I tag anyone what wants to do this meme!

#fic related #20 questions for fic writers

[nosuchthingasaburdenonsociety]

This was originally a Facebook comment in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting that I’ve taken to reprinting here in reponse to the mass shootings I hear about, such as in Louisville last Monday and, since I sometimes take a week to get it done, in Dadeville yesterday. (And, please bear in mind, these are only the ones I hear about, meaning the ones with mass media coverage which hardly happens in every case.) When I reprinted it at the time of the Annapolis Capital Gazette shooting, for the first time I got a substantial amount of pushback, so now rebuttals to the counterarguments I have received then and since are in a lengthy appendix to the reprint text.

My usual procedure for responding to any substantive new comment to a reposting of this is to edit my response into the next posting, or sometimes of the current posting, rather than to reply directly. This is because, when I allow myself to get sucked into engaging with counterarguments directly, almost always I end up wearied again by new, merely paraphrased instances of the same old arguments already rebutted here.

I keep saying "it’s proven that the killing can be stopped" and you keep saying, "but we have rights" as if having rights was an end in itself. No, rights are intended to serve a purpose.

They’re for preventing people getting killed! You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload [EDIT: supposed factual inaccuracy of this statement is addressed in the appendix]. That document also contains the built-in capacity for itself to be updated when its provisions are no longer effective. It is not Holy Writ. It even presented itself as updateable before it was completed: the sentence you’re so fond of is itself an amendment. Do you believe the sentence in question was written ultimately for the protection of guns or for the protection of lives? Because it’s used for protecting only one of the two, these days, and that’s not lives. Therefore it needs updating.

I will not accept any citation of theoretical future insurrection against a government turned hostile (which government, by the way, in that event would use planes or drones to drop bombs, against which your home weaponry is no protection - it’s doing so right now to civilian populations overseas, and it did so during the 20th century in Tulsa and Philadelphia - so good luck storming the capital) because firstly, actual civilian innocent lives being lost in the present are more important than any merely theoretical future; and secondly, that’s not what the Second Amendment was truly about anyhow. The militia it refers to were the nation’s first police forces whose original formation was for the purpose of hunting and killing black people. The only valid (using the term loosely) reason for denying that the Second Amendment now requires amendment itself is that you’re okay with police shootings of people of color. Those US government bombings on US soil I mentioned parenthetically above? Black neighborhoods, residences and businesses, rich and poor. That’s what you’re defending whether or not you know it.

You think your postion is "rights are important" but you aren’t seeing the context, the difference between what you think the rights are for, and how they are instead now actually being utilized. You aren’t seeing the logical fallacy in what you’re saying which is "this right whose purpose is the protection of innocent lives is more important than all the innocent lives that are being destroyed by people exercising this right". You aren’t seeing that your position ultimately reduces to "lives are less important than guns" but I do and it outrages me wherever I see it.

Even if you were correct that Americans’ minds somehow work differently than the minds of all the people in all the nations where gun law successfully prevents mass shootings (which, by the way, seems disproven by the majority popular support of the gun control legislation that Congress brought after Sandy Hook then voted down), it would only mean that disregard for human life has become the American way. It’s not in me to quietly allow that to stand. While that’s your position there can be no meeting of minds between us, no agreement to disagree. I may give up arguing with you in particular as a bad job, but never mistake that for concession.

The question before us is, "Lives or guns?", and you keep answering, "Guns."

[end of reprint]

Popular counterarguments I’ve received:

1. Inquiries as to what form I would give the gun control law I advocate and what type of guns I would see banned. I would model such laws on the laws that have drastically reduced or have eliminated mass shootings in all nations that have implemented them including, at one time, the United States. I would use those laws’ definition of what was banned. (I anticipate receiving complaints that this statement is not specific enough to sealion but, because such a law were better drafted by someone with legislative expertise and experience and a research staff than by an unpaid webcartoonist, I consider that a feature not a bug.) (I anticipate rebuttals that the previous parenthetical statement constitutes effective admission on my part that I’m too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion at all, but you don’t need to be a plumber to know when you need your toilet rooted out.)

2. Rebuttals seeming to assume that I’m calling for the banning of all guns. Nowhere in the reprint did I call for that. What I called for were two things: the reexamination of the Second Amendment just like any other legislation that’s two and a half centuries old and therefore in need of review, and the implementation in the United States of the solution proven by other nations (and by, at one time, the United States) for the problem of mass shootings which is some manner of national gun control. Now, it may be that the U.S. needs to ban all handguns like some nations, or only some guns like other nations, or ban guns from only certain demographics such as those with known domestic abuse history (which would rule out a percentage of police which might astound you) and as known violent crime offenders, and may need even to experiment at first to find out what’s best, I can’t say. And I didn’t say here (for the reason noted parenthetically in the above paragraph). It remains that the loss of life under the status quo is unacceptable to me and to the majority of the nation (the majority who supported the national gun control bill in Congress after Sandy Hook which bill failed due to special interest lobbying) and requires action be taken; that’s what I say when I say, “The question is, ‘Lives or guns?’”.

3. Rebuttals that gun control won’t stop criminals from killing people. That’s off the topic. The topic is not stopping all murders or violence, the topic is stopping mass shootings, for which national gun control is drastically or wholly effective in every nation that has implemented it, including at one time the United States. (My impression that some comments assume I’m calling for total gun ban may only be an artifact of this consistent failure of counterarguments to focus on the topic.) Refusal to implement the known solution to a given problem on the grounds that it’s not a solution for all problems is not rational.

(Also: The presumption that a given argument’s focus on one topic demonstrates indifference in the speaker/writer on any or all other topics is one of the classic logical fallacies. That means, declining to be deflected off topic by the subject of other violent crime in a discussion of mass shootings in comments on my own post about mass shootings does not demonstrate that I don’t care about the victims of other violent crime; that’s the tu quoque logical fallacy, known in these online days as “whataboutism”. Declining to be deflected to other topics than mass shootings demonstrates, and demonstrates only, that my post’s topic is mass shootings.)

4. Rebuttals to my discussions of the unexamined racism in the second amendment pointing out, correctly, that gun control since emancipation has often been purposefully biased against black people … as if that were a reason to oppose gun law reform instead of a reason to support it. …or as if I were arguing in favor of racially biased gun law, when unexamined racial bias is the only actual specific complaint the reprint brings against the second amendment.

5. Rebuttals (but not genuine rebuttals, deflection attempts, obviously) that the first amendment also has not been updated since it was enacted, which means I must want that one reexamined too. It can be difficult to judge tone in writing but I’m reasonably certain comments to this effect are in bad faith and are pursuing an anticipated gotcha moment, when I’m expected to bluster, “Well, that’s different,” and be caught in a contradiction somehow. But this is, in fact, different. However the reason it’s different is not that I oppose reexamination of free speech rights (as such an attempted gotcha would be predicated on) because I don’t oppose it. The reason it’s different is that reexamination of free speech rights happens, in exactly the manner I’m advocating for gun rights.

Over the last two-plus centuries there’s been plenty of Supreme Court case law on free speech (and obviously these are only cases that weren’t resolved in lower courts). Most SCOTUS free speech case law consists of the striking down of laws that were ruled to violate the first amendment but there have also been innovations in SCOTUS free speech case law. For example, a case from 1969 gave rise to the “imminent danger test” used, to this day, for determining whether a given sample of hate speech is protected speech or not. Constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.

I’m going to say that twice because it’s important: In 1969 constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.

Of course I support periodic reexamination of the first amendment. I support it as an existing model for what the second amendment stands badly in need of. (More of the Constitution too, possibly, but the topic on the floor is mass shootings.)

It’s the same with the obvious, bad faith, unabashedly transparent gotcha attempt I also get, “There wasn’t internet technology when the Constitution was written so you must want to get rid of the internet like you want to get rid of modern weapons.” As above, this objection fails because it inadvertently supports my point: internet regulations are being created and struck down all the time. It’s another example of how our laws are meant to be treated. And of how they generally have been treated. But gun law hasn’t.

Same with the counterargument that maintains allowing any restriction at all to our rights is a slippery slope. If it is a slippery slope, we live on that slope already because - as noted in my reprinted post - the Constitution was purposefully built by its writers smack in the middle of that slope. Again: feature, not bug. (“Slippery slope”, by the way, is also on all lists I see of common logical fallacies.)

One of the quotations of Jefferson engraved on the Jefferson Monument in Washington D.C. is: “I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” - Jefferson to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval), July 12, 1816.

6. A rebuttal to the factual accuracy of my statement in the reprinted post, “You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload;” the rebuttal sourced by, e.g., the article linked below detailing the history of several more efficient firearm designs dated to or predating 1787. I stand corrected. It is within the realm of possibility that the writers of the Constitution were familiar with these designs. However the only claim made in the article of actual use of such a weapon, the Ferguson breech-loading flintlock which fired “up to seven rounds per minute, two to three times faster that the muzzle-loading weapons of the day“, on American soil before the writing of the Constitution was “by the British against the Americans in 1777”. The Wikipedia article on the Puckle gun, a mounted gun documented to fire nine rounds per minute, makes a point of asserting no more than two may ever have been manufactured (apparently on the basis that only two survive to the present). These guns existed in the late 18th century but they were few and would have been prohibitively expensive to the private citizen or to the military- or law- officer; if not, the Colt revolver wouldn’t have been such an innovation when it came along some fifty years later.

Thank you for the correction on historical detail. However the contemporary existence of these designs, somewhere on the planet or somewhere on the same contintent and not all of them historically documented to have been actually manufactured anywhere let alone mass-produced at reasonable cost, hardly demonstrates that the writers of the Constitution anticipated the proliferation we have today of the automatic rifles which fire a thousand bullets a minute or the mounted guns which fire six thousand bullets a minute.

Come to that, bullets were not invented until about sixty years after the drafting of the Constitution. However quickly the founding fathers imagined it was possible for guns to shoot projectiles, the projectiles they would’ve been imagining were small metal balls, not constructions designed to mutilate bodies beyond recognition. The Uvalde, Texas shooting victims’ families were required to submit to DNA swabbing for the coroners to determine which corpses were whose children, and all reports suggest the same will have been necessary in Nashville.

It’s pure speculation whether the founding fathers had any concept of the possibility of the degree of destructive power of today’s firearms, unless someone reading this can produce further historical documentation. And even with such confirmation it’s beside my actual point, which is:

The writers of the Constitution did foresee, and designed the Constitution to accomodate, that it would at times need to be updated with the will of the majority. In regard to the second amendment and to gun control law generally that hasn’t happened and needs to start happening because the lack is costing lives. In regard to the intent of the founding fathers: Jefferson said the Constitution ought to be rewritten from scratch every twenty years.

7. Rebuttals suggesting or stating that contriving somehow to place the proverbial “good guy with a gun” on the scene of a mass shooting shall prevent/should have prevented it. Usually it’s a variation on a statement of willingness and eagerness in the genuinely admirable goal of defending themselves, their loved ones and neighbors, and their rights with their automatic rifles; insisting that the question isn’t “Lives or guns?” but something like “Lives defended with guns or lives left undefended?”. This appears to be the only proposed alternative solution by automatic weapon advocates to national gun control law in the problem of mass shooting deaths.

(The only proposed alternate solution besides doing nothing, under the counterargument that we don’t need any further gun control because violent crime rates are dropping. I guess everyone’s meant to just wait in an orderly fashion for the random slaughter of innocents to eventually stop? Gun crime stats may be falling, but mass shooting deaths are rising; they averaged more than one per day in 2022, and the figures I see for 2023 are the same or worse. That’s why the whole of violent crime is a whole separate topic. Anyway, the CDC says gun related deaths have most recently been rising - at least in, surprise surprise, open carry states [citation below].)

How the presence of a good guy with a gun would have been/will be arranged ahead of time in any given specific case past or future hasn’t been made clear to me. I suppose each individual advocate is suggesting their personal presence with a gun on them makes a location safe from mass shootings for everyone. But one commenter did ask me whether I knew of any “successful” mass shootings where a good guy with a gun was present. For that I have answers. These are just the examples of which I already knew without doing any research [I researched anyway and there are citations below]:

After the shooting at the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, the mayor stated there were many armed civilians present, who did not draw or use their firearms. The official position on that, paraphrased: “Good! They’d only have made themselves appear to law enforcement that they were our target.”

There was a “good guy with a gun” at the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Not an armed civilian who happened to be nearby, a trained uniformed county sheriff department law enforcement official stationed there from a division charged with serving and protecting the schools specifically. He was recorded on camera when the shooting started going up to the building’s entrance and standing there outside for the duration. In the intervening time there have been conflicting rulings on whether it had been the uniformed official’s responsibility to act differently [citation below]. But still, this is disproof that the mere presence of a “good guy with a gun” and the presumption that they'll take action is any practical protection whatsoever.

Most recently, there were police on the scene in Uvalde before the shooter entered the school who reportedly exchanged fire with him but did not prevent him from entering nor follow him in. He did not have body armor [citation below], but their reason for failing to stop him was they thought he did. At least, they stated they thought he did and that that was their reason for failure. And later on it's come out that they hesitated because they had identified that he was carrying an AR-15 [citation below].

I anticipate being accused of cherrypicking data for making answer to a specific request for specific examples of specifically this kind of thing. But, while I was looking around collecting citations for those events, I also found a 2014 FBI study that tells us mass shooters are stopped more often by unarmed civilians than by armed civilians. That’s a national statistic documented and released by civil law enforcement authority, not a cherrypicking. And while the report, in its own words, “support[s] the importance of training and exercises - not only for law enforcement but also for citizens” (without, unless I missed it, making any judgment on whether more or fewer civilians ought to be undertaking such gun ownership and training), it distinguishes between that and prevention, stating also, “seeking to avoid these tragedies is clearly the best result.��

A good guy with a gun does not constitute needed and recommended prevention for mass shootings in the eyes of federal law enforcement authority.

Finally, the good guy with a gun argument is a bad-faith logical fallacy at its heart. The logic statement form “if you or someone else on the scene of your mass shooting had had a gun, then you wouldn’t have got shot” is the same logic statement form as “if you dressed differently, then you wouldn’t have got raped”. This is a logical fallacy because law-abiding people’s right not to have crimes committed against them isn’t legally, morally, or factually contingent on their own behavior. The logic of the “good guy with a gun” argument places responsibility for the consequences of the actions of the mass shooters elsewhere than on the shooters, and that’s why it’s a logical and moral fallacy and why in simple practical terms it fails to constitute prevention.

sources

mass shooting deaths rising http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/

gun homicides rising per CDC https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/homicides-using-guns-31-percent-cdc-finds-n895366

Dallas https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/about-that-good-guy-with-a-gun/2016/07/11/3ed098fe-47a2-11e6-acbc-4d4870a079da_story.html?utm_term=.9271a0507018

Parkland https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-parkland-shooting-did-have-a-good-guy-with-a-gun.html

FBI report https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-weisser/fbi-report-active-shooters_b_5900748.html https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf/view

The Parkland sheriff officer liability https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/21/us-judge-says-law-enforcement-officers-had-no-legal-duty-protect-parkland-students-during-mass-shooting/

no body armor in Uvalde https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2022/05/25/khou-11-in-houston-the-uvalde-gunman-was-not-wearing-body-armor/

Uvalde cops scared of AR-15 https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-police-were-afraid-of-the-uvalde-gunman-s-ar-15-166823493564

8. “You sound like a Nazi.” Another fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument

9. “Correlation is not causation. There is no scientific evidence of causation.” The lack of evidence to support causation is a contrivance, the result not of conclusion from investigation but of the willing, purposeful obstruction of investigation into causation. From the NBC News article linked above on rising gun homicide rates: “[The CDC] regularly reports on gun deaths, but its role in researching the underlying causes has been limited by the so-called Dickey Amendment, which is tacked on to congressional funding legislation every year. It bars the CDC from using federal funding to ‘advocate or promote gun control'.” Powerful gun control opponents in Washington DC are afraid of the evidence being investigated, which betrays that gun control opponents are as certain as gun control supporters what proper investigation of the evidence would show.

But there certainly is correllation. From the same article: “[M]ore states had loosened rules on gun ownership and the carrying of guns at around the same time that firearms homicide rates went up.“ That’s a negative example. For a positive example, there’s every nation, e.g. Scotland/the United Kingdom, to have had one mass shooting decades ago and in response implemented gun control only to have few or no more mass shootings since that first one in the same period of time that the U.S. has had escalating deaths from mass shootings. In fact, there's the U.S., where certain types of automatic weaponry were banned for about ten years but the ban was allowed to lapse and the number of shootings per year has gorwn every year since.

Even if there’s no causation, when the correlation saves lives - as it demonstrably, statistically does - then the lives are still saved.

10. “'Lives or guns’? I choose guns.” Here I deliberately evoke the no-meeting-of-minds clause in the reprint post for declining to engage with you which is nevertheless not to be mistaken by you as any kind of concession. It's not a rebuttal of anything I've written and says more about you than about me or about my argument.

11. The first few times I had cause to reprint this essay since January 6, 2021 I felt that my remark in my quoted Facebook comment’s paragraph about self-defense against tyranny, “good luck storming the capital” (a flip allusion to The Princess Bride dialog), called for some sort of comment or qualifier, since a storming of the Capital is now an actual historical event whose consequences to date to its top-level organizers have been minimal. But ultimately, while the insurrectionists brought onto the scene a gallows (ultimately unused), and while there were five deaths including a police officer, gun presence doesn’t seem to have had any significance (little enough that Fox News has even lied that there were no firearms brought in by the insurrectionists).

12 (conclusion). My stance is: nationally banning at least some kinds of guns is an effective solution to the problem of mass shootings, its effectiveness proven and documented for the purpose in every case it’s been implemented including formerly the United States, and therefore it needs to be reimplemented in the United States. The second amendment needs to start being treated the same way every other law/right in the United States is treated in terms of review and update against constantly developing status quo and technology. No counterargument to the statements in my reprint yet brought to my attention either 1) provides a proven alternative for mass shooting prevention other than the proven solution I advocate 2) fails to amount to answering, “Lives or guns?”, with, “Guns.” (Except “You called me racist!” which is untrue; what I called you was ignorant about racism.)

#guns #gun safety #second amendment #second amendment rant

[silverandbone]

The Arrangement | Chapter Four

Word Count: 1,850

Warnings: General Harry Potter warnings, and discussions of blood purity and bigotry (I don’t know what you’d expect, given the context, but if that bothers you please don’t read), also there is a brief mention of sexual harassment, and also of physical abuse on the part of Walburga Black, and drunkenness/drinking, also, and I’m not sure if this needs a warning or not but I’ll put it here anyway, this entire story revolves around an arranged marriage between two people who aren’t thrilled with the idea but can’t do much about it inspite of being adults.

A/N: Parts of this story have been edited and now contain mentions and brief descriptions of sex and sexual activity. MDNI, adults proceed at own discretion.

The Arrangement Masterlist

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Regulus placed a mug of tea on the coffee table in front of his brother, before turning and silently going back to the kitchen.

“Don’t you have something you want to say?” Sirius groaned, slumping back into the couch, throwing his arm over his eyes.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Regulus replied poking his head out of the kitchen door, “You’ve gone out of your way to make (y/n)’s life miserable.” He stepped out of the kitchen, this time carrying a beaker with a vile-looking liquid and another mug of tea.

Sirius groaned again, regretting his decision to keep drinking the night before when he had been kicked out of the first bar.

“Well, yeah, but…” he trailed off unable to come up with a reason for his actions beyond resentment, and jealousy, and sadness.

“NO!” Regulus shouted, “you do not get to try and come up with some ridicules excuse for your behaviour.” He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down before he continued. “You have been in love with (y/n) since the first time you saw her.”

Sirius gulped, “So have you,” he replied to his brother, finally uncovering his eyes, only to see Regulus shake his head sadly, and take a sip of his tea. “And you could have married her years ago.” He laughed bitterly, “Mother certainly would have approved of the match, and then she…” he didn’t finish his sentence, too afraid that if he did, he would be forced to acknowledge the very real possibility that you might not only be better off with his brother – but happier too.

They both knew why Regulus had never asked you out, why he had never pursued any type of relationship with you beyond that of friendship, and later physical. It was the same reason he was marrying a woman he could barely stand to be in the same room as.

What Sirius didn’t know, was that he had. Had tried to persue a relationship that was more than physical or friendly. That, despite wanting to keep you safe from the horrors of his family, Regulus would have married you in a heartbeat if he could have. Instead, Regulus had fucked you right there on the couch Sirius was laying on. Had been your first, only a few months after you had both graduated, and had decided not to pursue it farther. He wished he had. He wished you would have gotten pregnant then – the decision would have been made for the both of you, and everything that was happening now could have been avoided. And he hated himself for even thinking that. But most of all, he wished he hadn’t been a coward.

“I could have,” Regulus whispered, “but I could never be the one to trap her in our family.”

Regulus abruptly stood up, pushing the glass with the potion in it closer to Sirius, and walking out of the room.

From his place on the sofa, Sirius could hear the muffled sound of his brother’s bedroom door closing and then choked sobs.

After what seemed like hours spent staring blankly at the wall in front of him Sirius slowly stood from the sofa and knocked back the muddy brown liquid in the glass his brother had left for him, barely registering the putrid taste, and headed for the door. The last thing wanted was to be anywhere that reminded him of the people in his life he had disappointed – his brother and his fiancée chief among them.

He thought about heading to a bar, and then quickly dismissed the idea. Getting drunk sounded good. Showing up at a bar at 11 in the morning sounded like a nightmare. Spending another night in the drunk tank sounded like a death sentence.

Instead, he went to a muggle liquor store, one not too far from his apartment, ignoring the bell that wrang shrilly as he opened the door, and the overly cheery greeting from the woman at the counter, making a b-line for the largest, cheapest thing he could find, and grabbing three.

No one had heard from Sirius in several days. He had missed the appointments you had set at the florist and the one he had actually seemed, at the very least, not completely miserable about, at the bakery leaving you to make the final decisions for both – hoping to Merlin that Sirius wouldn’t hate what you chose.

When your mother reminded you one morning over breakfast that your rehearsal dinner was only in three days, the unsaid concern over where the man you would marry abundantly clear to everyone in the room, you decided enough was enough, and conscripted your sister, who was home for your wedding, into helping you find your missing fiancé.

Eventually, after a search of all the bars he had been seen in most recently, and a fair few he hadn’t been seen around for months, you and your sister decided to try and ask around some of the people he might have spent time around last – not including any of his previous hook-ups simply due to time constraints.

Regulus hadn’t seen him since the confrontation at his apartment (he had spent the last few days trying to come up with the best way to break off his engagement and hadn’t had the mental or emotional energy to think of much else).

Your older brother had been busy with his family, spending as much time as possible with your pregnant sister-in-law, and keeping Basil and Oliver busy while she was on bed rest.

Walburga had actually laughed when you asked her if she had seen Sirius.

“He isn’t actually missing,” she had insisted, rolling her eyes as she poured you both a cup of tea, “he’s likely just holed up at some whorehouse, drunk off his ass and fucking some filthy mudblood slut.”

You had flinched at her harsh words, “Maybe,” you whispered hoarsely, worry for Sirius outweighing your dislike of him and his behaviour as you took a small sip of the tea you had been offered, “but I’d like to know all the same.”

Walburga rolled her eyes, setting down the teapot more forcefully than was strictly necessary. “I can’t tell you where he is.” her expression softened as she saw how worried for her son you were. Pausing as she called for Kreature, and requested he bring her a small piece of parchment and a self-inking quill, she replied “But I can give you his address.” Hastily, she scribbled the address down and handed you the paper gently guiding you to the door.

As your sister scrambled to follow you, Walburga turned to her, “If you don’t mind,” she started, and your sister paled knowing it wasn’t going to be a request she could refuse, “I would sooner you stay here and help me with a project I’ve been working on – I don’t feel that the neighbourhood Sirius lives in is an appropriate place for a young lady and if your sister weren’t trying to find my good-for-nothing son I’d have never given her the address in the first place”

You laughed softly as you sister turned to you for help “Maybe you should stay here, if something happens you won’t be able to defend yourself”.

Sighing, your sister nodded stiffly, following Walburga back into the large house, turning to glare at you over her shoulder as she turned the corner back into the sitting room.

Sirius’s apartment was, unsurprisingly, a mess. It reeked of alcohol and old greasy food. There was a layer of grime on most surfaces. The dishes in the sink, still unwashed with bits of days-old food still clinging to their surface, had turned the little water that had collected in the bottom of an old saucepan the colour of sewage, and the trash bin was overflowing with old take-out containers.

Picking your way through the apartment, you eventually found him passed out on the couch – the only sign he was still alive was the occasional snore, or grumble as he slept off however much he had managed to drink the night before.

Quietly, with a quick flick of your wand, you set about cleaning his apartment – no one should live like that, and if he couldn’t keep his apartment clean because of his issues you would have to do it for him, if only to keep yourself busy while you waited for him to wake up.

Once the dishes in the sink had begun scrubbing themselves clean, the take-out containers were no longer stacked precariously on top of themselves on the coffee table or spilling out of the trash bin, and the floors swept and mopped, you tiptoed to the door, and slipped off your heels – they had long ago began pinching your toes, but you would have sooner gone to Azkaban then walk barefoot before you finished cleaning.

Gliding into the, now clean, kitchen, you pulled down a glass from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap, before taking it and a couple of muggle painkillers to the living room. Turning back to the kitchen, you didn’t notice Sirius shifting in his place on the sofa, slowly beginning to wake from his drunken stupor.

At first, Sirius thought he was dreaming. There was no way you would be voluntarily spending your free time cleaning up his mess.

And then his hangover caught up with him.

Head pounding, Sirius groaned as he pulled himself to a sitting position, noting the blanket that had been draped over him, and the glass of clean water sitting on the table in front of him next to the painkillers you had got for him.

Quickly swallowing the pills and downing about half of the water, Sirius blinked rapidly – willing his head to clear for even just a second – and stood from his place on the couch, nearly doubling over as the blood rushed to his head and having to grab the back of the couch to keep himself upright.

Looking around, Sirius could see that you had cleaned his entire apartment. Not a spec of filth was able to be seen, but instead of being greeted by the sight of you, he was met by the sight of his empty, though now clean, apartment. Catching sight of a piece of paper stuck to his fridge, Sirius pried himself off the leather sofa, his skin sticking where his t-shirt had ridden up on his back.

Shuffling over the refrigerator, he pulled the paper off the door and realized that it was multiple pages, making up some sort of official document, with too many big words for his bleary mind to comprehend. On the front was a sticky note with the words: ‘due to the ministry by 9:00 a.m., Saturday’ in your handwriting.­­

With that, Sirius grabbed his jacket, and disappeared out the front door of his apartment to get drunk again. This time opting for the closest bar - he needed a distraction, and a pretty girl or two would probably do for at least a few hours.

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Taglist: @gretavankleep37 @srhxpci @bleh-bleh-blehs @howaito298

#× reader #× fem!reader #slytherin #hufflepuff #ravenclaw #gryfindor #marauders #the maraunders map #sirius and regulus #sirius black #sirius x reader #harry potter #slytherin reader #rubeus hagrid #hogwarts #slytherclaw #slytherpuff #slytherdor #huffleclaw #huffledor #ravenpuff #ravendor #everyone lives au #arranged marriage #series #re write #finally #authors note #the arrangement #regulus black x reader

[wags-confessions]

Their accomplishment is that they are in relationships with famous guys who have crazy fans and are obsessed with them and give them all the attention (like you said, it doesn't have to be positive attention).

*hav is have? //

Take a chill pill, my opinion doesn’t need to offend you as much as it seems to have. Strangely enough, I am not behind any account, I do not care enough about either them or their relationships to spend time piecing together every hypothetical mistake they’ve made. In fact, I don’t even follow such accounts, I don’t need to. However, I don’t respect any person acting like these “wags” aren’t fully aware and putting themselves in the position to receive negative attention. They get positive attention too, and they profit off both. I don’t give two shits if they play victim or not, they are ultimately victims of online harassment as far as I’m concerned, But by that standard you and their “fans” are pushing shouldn’t everyone who spends time caring about them or posting about them just fuck off and leave them alone entirely? You can’t hav the positive without the negative. That’s unarguable, don’t get involved with famous people if you can’t take the heat. 

Also, don’t act like I said anything about Isabel NOT being a victim from the “point of the law.” I’ve defended Isabel and the hypothetical idea that she’s been groomed on this account before, I know the law and I have morals.

But just fyi, have can be spelled hav if I want to spell it as such. I’ve literally never met someone under the age of 25 who doesn’t spell it like that in a context outside of the work place 🤷‍♀️.

However, if we’re correcting grammar, in this response, is should have started with a capital I, exposing only needs one s, the or in parentheses should have been lowercase, the period after the quotation marks should be in the quotation marks, “(very strong and logical)” makes more sense if you placed it between the words “the” and “reason,” the if in parentheses should also hav been capitalized since you used it to start a sentence, and didn’t need the parentheses in the first place.

But for reference, I apologize in advance for any hypothetical future grammatical errors :)

.

[inventors-fair]

Balancing Act

Hey folks! It’s @naban-dean-of-irritation​ back at the helm for another contest! I don’t have much of a preshow blurb for this one, just that I hope y’all have fun with it! I will say as well- it’s been a while since I’ve picked a contest from our #contest-submissions Discord Channel, so I’ll be doing that on my next rotation. If you have some good ideas, make sure to throw them in there in the next few weeks! Anyways, here’s what you really came here for:

This week’s contest: Design a card with more words of flavor text than words of rules text + reminder text.

M.E.O.W.

Mandatory: What does this mean? Exactly what it says. There aren’t many limitations this week, so design your heart out! Make a card that is all the things you like. The only caveat is that there has to be more flavor text alone than there is rules text and reminder text together. As long as you do that (even if it’s only a difference of 1 word!), you’re good to go. IN TERMS OF MANAY/ TAP SYMBOLS: Each "clause" counts as one word, so "2U, T" would be two words. Basically, anytime there's a space, punctuation, or a line break, count it as a word!

Encouraged: While there is the above restriction, the cards will be judged on their own merit, not solely on their flavor text. To that end, you want to find a nice middle ground between a card with enough abilities to be interesting, but not so much flavor text that it’s squished and unreadable. That’s why it’s a balancing act!

Optional: I want you to show off your mechanical designer skills and your creative writing skills this week. It can be hard to write more than one sentence of flavor text without letting it drag on or be expository, so get your fellow designers to help out and critique your work! Remember though- It’s your card, and you have final say on it if you disagree with any suggestions. Be open to commentary, but stick with your gut!

Warning: As stated above, this is meant to be a delicate act of balancing the two blocks of text. This means that something like a vanilla/ french vanilla card with a few words of flavor text, OR a Yu-Gi-Oh card with 9 lines of each, will be very weak submissions in the context of this week. I still want fun and interesting designs, first and foremost! Also, if you make a new custom mechanic or use an old mechanic on a common, don't forgo the reminder text for the sake of the contest! Your design should incorporate those limitations and work around them, not just ignore them. If you need reminder text, use it!

If you have questions, comments, concerns, opinions on the state of fruit fly politics, anything, you know where to find me!

Toe the Line in our Discord!

Submit your Balanced Design Here!

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom Magic card #Inventor's Fair #contest #announcement #balancing act

[basedkikuenjoyer]

Kishotenketsu and You: Rethinking Wano

Let's talk narrative structure for a moment. Well, more than a moment. Shocker, I have trouble speaking up in groups so I’m a long-winded writer.  This is bigger than Kiku. Which is hard because she is very tall. Wano made the interesting choice to have these explicit act breaks unlike any prior One Piece arc. Closing the curtains for the first time on a chapter titled "Ha" based on a theatrical flourish used within. People sorta made up their minds we were using a 5-Act structure called jo-ha-kyu. It could have worked, not saying it was a bad idea. Just...a long time ago another one started to become obvious for a reason we just wouldn't have been able to get then. By the time it became apparent, people had moved on.

And thus, my true goal was accomplished. Cramming in Sssarahebi somehow. This Snake Princess is good with kids, the other kicks puppies. Kishotenketsu, a portmanteau of the four parts of a four-part story structure. It's a big deal with deep roots in East Asian writing, from teaching the proper flow of a single sentence to the structure of epics, even argumentative essays and legal writing. China and Korea have their own variants. It is every bit as core to Asian writing as a conflict-driven, three act structure is to the West. I know you’ve seen it in action if you’re reading a post about Wano because Alabasta, Water 7, Zou, and Whole Cake all fit this template. 1057, 1058, & 1059 all do internally, as do Acts 1,2, & 3 as standalone stories. By the time you finish reading the parts it’ll be very obvious why it pertains to Wano:

Ki- is for Kiku, in this case meaning introduction. Setting the setting, characters, themes. Act 1 fits this like a glove.

Sho- is next, development. Build off of part one, usually with some twists that deepen the core. Act 2 works but would be a little short. Add the Oden flashback and pre-Raid though? Now we're talking.

Ten- follows, twist, with the biggest climax being called the Yama. Think peaks, biggest mountain. That idea. Should feel tonally different even to the point of being jarring. Or a story that could stand complete on its own. Focusing on a new setting, characters, etc. 

Ketsu rounds it off. This is the conclusion. Where we tie off the loose ends and solidify the intent in a manner that draws the ultimate point out of the contrast between the setup and the twist. 

So yeah...Wano, that already weird and lowkey kinda meta theatrical arc? It’s been doing something like if a “Hero’s Journey” story named the two biggest new faces “Call” (as in, to adventure) and “Ordeal.” Then the two are total mirrors of each other but never really interact. In short, don't be so sure we aren't about to head into “Act 4.” Especially when it doesn't have to look like the other three at all. The curtains don’t have to open, Hiyori doesn’t have to play us in, it doesn’t even need to involve Wano anymore.  Doesn’t have to be about Kiku no matter how well she could do it, like I said long ago this could all be for Vivi’s sake. I’ll add Hancock as well.

If you've seen a few old samurai movies or enough anime you've probably seen this. If you want something Western The Handmaid's Tale does a good impression. Book, not show. Main story ends, but we're not done. There's some coda. Maybe it's in the future, maybe it's some random new faces commenting on what happened, maybe it gets really fuckin trippy and leans on the fourth wall. Or perhaps it jerks into a completely different format! Rakugo Man could tell the people of Wano another story for all we know, Marco could incidentally reveal some last bits of context pouring his heart out to Ace/Whitebeard’s graves, or maybe we get a cute Kamishibai-style flashback!

It doesn't have to be wild though, the crew on the ship for a few chapters does the job as good as anything. Alabasta did it with two naval challenges and through Jaya in tandem with setting up Skypiea. Thriller Bark is the setup two, with Sabaody as part 3 and Amazon Lily as part 4. These have long stood as some of my favorite parts of the series for this...ephemeral, foreign pace that leaves me thinking about them so much more. How elegant they are as transitions. How much weight the small island stories truly carry. Also like, this is an arc where the big powerup was cartoon nonsense.

Look at what was left on the table for Wano, a lot of it was the impact on the main cast or threads that would heavily involve one or more. That wasn’t an accident. None of us know what's happening next, but it has all the potential in the world to be incredibly unique. I can't wait to see it with you all.

For a little extra reading on Kishotenketsu, check out this excellent piece from 2012: https://stilleatingoranges.tumblr.com/post/25153960313/the-significance-of-plot-without-conflict

#one piece #chapter 1059 #Wano #MY snake princess #Post-Wano Musings

[not-caused-by-those-who-love]

This was originally a Facebook comment in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting that I’ve taken to reprinting here in reponse to the mass shootings I hear about, such as the three in a week in California the other week. (And, please bear in mind, these are only the ones I hear about, meaning the ones with mass media coverage which hardly happens in every case.) When I reprinted it at the time of the Annapolis Capital Gazette shooting, for the first time I got a substantial amount of replies in disagreement, so now rebuttals to the counterarguments I have received then and since are in a lengthy appendix to the reprint text.

My usual procedure for responding to any substantive new comment to a reposting of this is to edit my response into the next posting, or sometimes of the current posting, rather than to reply directly. This is because, when I allow myself to get sucked into engaging with counterarguments directly, almost always I end up wearied again by new, merely paraphrased instances of the same old arguments already rebutted here. New as of the Highland Park shooting is the section on bullets.  

I keep saying “it’s proven that the killing can be stopped” and you keep saying, “but we have rights” as if having rights was an end in itself. No, rights are intended to serve a purpose.

They’re for preventing people getting killed!

You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload [EDIT: supposed factual inaccuracy of this statement is addressed in the appendix]. That document also contains the built-in capacity for itself to be updated when its provisions are no longer effective. It is not Holy Writ. It even presented itself as updateable before it was completed: the sentence you’re so fond of is itself an amendment. Do you believe the sentence in question was written ultimately for the protection of guns or for the protection of lives? Because it’s used for protecting only one of the two, these days, and that’s not lives. Therefore it needs updating.

I will not accept any citation of theoretical future insurrection against a government turned hostile (which government, by the way, in that event would use planes or drones to drop bombs, against which your home weaponry is no protection - it’s doing so right now to civilian populations overseas, and it did so during the 20th century in Tulsa and Philadelphia - so good luck storming the capital) because firstly, actual civilian innocent lives being lost in the present are more important than any merely theoretical future; and secondly, that’s not what the Second Amendment was truly about anyhow. The militia it refers to were the nation’s first police forces whose original formation was for the purpose of hunting and killing black people. The only valid (using the term loosely) reason for denying that the Second Amendment now requires amendment itself is that you’re okay with police shootings of people of color. Those US government bombings on US soil I mentioned parenthetically above? Black neighborhoods, residences and businesses, rich and poor. That’s what you’re defending whether or not you know it.

You think your postion is “rights are important” but you aren’t seeing the context, the difference between what you think the rights are for, and how they are instead now actually being utilized. You aren’t seeing the logical fallacy in what you’re saying which is “this right whose purpose is the protection of innocent lives is more important than all the innocent lives that are being destroyed by people exercising this right”. You aren’t seeing that your position ultimately reduces to “lives are less important than guns” but I do and it outrages me wherever I see it.

Even if you were correct that Americans’ minds somehow work differently than the minds of all the people in all the nations where gun law successfully prevents mass shootings (which, by the way, seems disproven by the majority popular support of the gun control legislation that Congress brought after Sandy Hook then voted down), it would only mean that disregard for human life has become the American way. It’s not in me to quietly allow that to stand. While that’s your position there can be no meeting of minds between us, no agreement to disagree. I may give up arguing with you in particular as a bad job, but never mistake that for concession.

The question before us is, “Lives or guns?”, and you keep answering, “Guns.”

[end of reprint]

Popular counterarguments I’ve received:

1. Inquiries as to what form I would give the gun control law I advocate and what type of guns I would see banned. I would model such laws on the laws that have drastically reduced or have eliminated mass shootings in all nations that have implemented them including, at one time, the United States. I would use those laws’ definition of what was banned. (I anticipate receiving complaints that this statement is not specific enough to sealion but, because such a law were better drafted by someone with legislative expertise and experience and a research staff than by an unpaid webcartoonist, I consider that a feature not a bug.) (I anticipate rebuttals that the previous parenthetical statement constitutes effective admission on my part that I’m too ignorant on the subject to have an opinion at all, but you don’t need to be a plumber to know when you need a plumber.)

2. Rebuttals seeming to assume that I’m calling for the banning of all guns. Nowhere in the reprint did I call for that. What I called for were two things: the reexamination of the Second Amendment just like any other legislation that’s two and a half centuries old and therefore in need of review, and the implementation in the United States of the solution proven by other nations (and by, at one time, the United States) for the problem of mass shootings which is some manner of national gun control. Now, it may be that the U.S. needs to ban all handguns like some nations, or only some guns like other nations, or ban guns from only certain demographics such as those with known domestic abuse history (which would rule out an uncomfortable percentage of police) and as known violent crime offenders, and may need even to experiment at first to find out what’s best, I can’t say. And I didn’t say here (for the reason noted parenthetically in the above paragraph). It remains that the loss of life under the status quo is unacceptable to me and to the majority of the nation (the majority who supported the national gun control bill in Congress after Sandy Hook which bill failed due to special interest lobbying) and requires action be taken; that’s what I say when I say, “The question is, ‘Lives or guns?’”.

3. Rebuttals that gun control won’t stop criminals from killing people. That’s off the topic. The topic is not stopping all murders or violence, the topic is stopping mass shootings, for which national gun control is drastically or wholly effective in every nation that has implemented it, including at one time the United States. (My impression that some comments assume I’m calling for total gun ban may only be an artifact of this consistent failure of counterarguments to focus on the topic.) Refusal to implement the known solution to a given problem on the grounds that it’s not a solution for all problems is not rational.

(Also: The presumption that a given argument’s focus on one topic demonstrates indifference in the speaker/writer on any or all other topics is one of the classic logical fallacies. That means, declining to be deflected off topic by the subject of other violent crime in a discussion of mass shootings in comments on my own post about mass shootings does not demonstrate that I don’t care about the victims of other violent crime; that’s the tu quoque logical fallacy, known in these online days as “whataboutism”. Declining to be deflected to other topics than mass shootings demonstrates, and demonstrates only, that my post’s topic is mass shootings.)

4. Rebuttals to my discussions of the unexamined racism in the second amendment pointing out, correctly, that gun control since emancipation has often been purposefully biased against black people … as if that were a reason to oppose gun law reform instead of a reason to support it. …or as if I were arguing in favor of racially biased gun law, when unexamined racial bias is the only actual specific complaint I bring against the second amendment.

5. Rebuttals (but not genuine rebuttals, deflection attempts, obviously) that the first amendment also has not been updated since it was enacted, which means I must want that one reexamined too. It can be difficult to judge tone in writing but I’m reasonably certain comments to this effect are in bad faith and are pursuing an anticipated gotcha moment, when I’m expected to bluster, “Well, that’s different,” and be caught in a contradiction somehow. But this is, in fact, different. However the reason it’s different is not that I oppose reexamination of free speech rights (as such an attempted gotcha would be predicated on) because I don’t oppose it. The reason it’s different is that reexamination of free speech rights happens, in exactly the manner I’m advocating for gun rights.

Over the last two-plus centuries there’s been plenty of Supreme Court case law on free speech (and obviously these are only cases that weren’t resolved in lower courts). Most SCOTUS free speech case law consists of the striking down of laws that were ruled to violate the first amendment but there have also been innovations in SCOTUS free speech case law. For example, a case from 1969 gave rise to the “imminent danger test” used, to this day, for determining whether a given sample of hate speech is protected speech or not. Constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.

I’m going to say that twice because it’s important: In 1969 constitutional protection was determined by SCOTUS not to apply to something whose obvious intended and sole purpose is to harm people immediately, quickly, violently, and in large numbers.

Of course I support periodic reexamination of the first amendment. I support it as an existing model for what the second amendment stands badly in need of. (More of the Constitution too, possibly, but the topic on the floor is mass shootings.)

It’s the same with the obvious, bad faith, unabashedly transparent gotcha attempt I also get, “There wasn’t internet technology when the Constitution was written so you must want to get rid of the internet like you want to get rid of modern weapons.” As above, this objection fails because it inadvertently supports my point: internet regulations are being created and struck down all the time. It’s another example of how our laws are meant to be treated. And of how they generally have been treated. But gun law hasn’t.

Same with the counterargument that maintains allowing any restriction at all to our rights is a slippery slope. If it is a slippery slope, we live on that slope already because - as noted in my reprinted post - the Constitution was purposefully built by its writers smack in the middle of that slope. Again: feature, not bug. (“Slippery slope”, by the way, is also on all lists I see of common logical fallacies.)

One of the quotations of Jefferson engraved on the Jefferson Monument in Washington D.C. is: "I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and (and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Jefferson to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval), July 12, 1816.

6. A rebuttal to the factual accuracy of my statement in the reprinted post, “You keep invoking directly or indirectly one sentence in a document that was written in an era when rifles, pistols, and cannons could hold only one projectile at a time and took minutes to reload;” the rebuttal sourced by, e.g., the article linked below detailing the history of several more efficient firearm designs dated to or predating 1787. I stand corrected. It is within the realm of possibility that the writers of the Constitution were familiar with these designs. However the only claim made in the article of actual use of such a weapon, the Ferguson breech-loading flintlock which fired “up to seven rounds per minute, two to three times faster that the muzzle-loading weapons of the day“, on American soil before the writing of the Constitution was “by the British against the Americans in 1777”. The Wikipedia article on the Puckle gun, a mounted gun documented to fire nine rounds per minute, makes a point of asserting no more than two may ever have been manufactured (apparently on the basis that only two survive to the present). These guns existed in the late 18th century but they were few and would have been prohibitively expensive to the private citizen or to the military- or law- officer; if not, the Colt revolver wouldn’t have been such an innovation when it came along some fifty years later.

Thank you for the correction on historical detail. However the contemporary existence of these designs, somewhere on the planet or somewhere on the same contintent and not all of them historically documented to have been actually manufactured anywhere let alone mass-produced at reasonable cost, hardly demonstrates that the writers of the Constitution anticipated the proliferation we have today of the automatic rifles which fire a thousand bullets a minute or the mounted guns which fire six thousand bullets a minute.

Also, bullets were not invented until about sixty years after the drafting of the Constitution. However quickly the founding fathers imagined it was possible for guns to shoot projectiles, the projectiles they would’ve been imagining were small metal balls, not constructions designed to mutilate bodies beyond recognition. The Uvalde, Texas shooting victims’ families were required to submit to DNA swabbing for the coroners to determine which corpses were whose children.

It’s pure speculation whether the founding fathers had any concept of the possibility of the degree of destructive power of today’s firearms, unless someone reading this can produce further historical documentation. And even with such confirmation it’s beside my actual point, which is:

The writers of the Constitution did foresee, and designed the Constitution to accomodate, that it would at times need to be updated with the will of the majority. In regard to the second amendment and to gun control law generally that hasn’t happened and needs to start happening because the lack is costing lives. In regard to the intent of the founding fathers: Jefferson said the Constitution ought to be rewritten from scratch every twenty years.

http://arizonadailyindependent.com/2018/03/11/multi-shot-assault-weapons-of-the-1700s-and-the-2nd-amendment/

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0248

7. Rebuttals suggesting or stating that contriving somehow to place the proverbial “good guy with a gun” on the scene of a mass shooting shall prevent/should have prevented it. Usually it’s a variation on a statement of willingness and eagerness in the genuinely admirable goal of defending themselves, their loved ones and neighbors, and their rights with their automatic rifles; insisting that the question isn’t “Lives or guns?” but something like “Lives defended with guns or lives left undefended?”. This appears to be the only proposed alternative solution to national gun control law in the problem of mass shooting deaths.

(The only proposed alternate solution besides doing nothing, under the counterargument that we don’t need any further gun control because violent crime rates are dropping. I guess everyone’s meant to just wait in an orderly fashion for the random slaughter of innocents to eventually stop? Gun crime stats may be falling, but mass shooting deaths are rising - they averaged more than one per day in 2022, and the figures I see for 2023 are the same or worse - and that’s why the whole of violent crime is a whole separate topic. Anyway, the CDC says gun related deaths have most recently been rising - at least in, surprise surprise, open carry states [citation below].)

How the presence of a good guy with a gun would have been/will be arranged ahead of time in any given specific case past or future hasn’t been made clear to me. But one commenter did ask me whether I knew of any “successful” mass shootings where a good guy with a gun was present. For that I have answers. These are just the examples of which I already knew without doing any research [I researched anyway and there are citations below]:

After the shooting at the Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, the mayor stated there were many armed civilians present, who did not draw or use their firearms. The official position on that, paraphrased: “Good! They’d only have made themselves appear to law enforcement that they were our target.”

There was a “good guy with a gun” at the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Not an armed civilian who happened to be nearby, a trained uniformed county sheriff department law enforcement official stationed there from a division charged with serving and protecting the schools specifically. He was recorded on camera when the shooting started going up to the building’s entrance and standing there outside for the duration. In the intervening time there have been conflicting rulings on whether it had been the uniformed official’s responsible to act differently [citation below]. But still, this is disproof that the mere presence of a “good guy with a gun” is any protection whatsoever.

Most recently, there were police on the scene in Uvalde before the shooter entered the school who reportedly exchanged fire with him but did not prevent him from entering nor follow him in. He did not have body armor [citation below], but their reason for failing to stop him was they thought he did. At least, they stated they thought he did and that that was thehir reason for failure.

I anticipate being accused of cherrypicking data for making answer to a specific request for specific examples of specifically this kind of thing. But, while I was looking around collecting citations for those events, I also found a 2014 FBI study that tells us mass shooters are stopped more often by unarmed civilians than by armed civilians. That’s a national statistic documented and released by civil law enforcement authority, not a cherrypicking. And while the report, in its own words, “support[s] the importance of training and exercises - not only for law enforcement but also for citizens” (without, unless I missed it, making any judgment on whether more or fewer civilians ought to be undertaking such gun ownership and training), it distinguishes between that and prevention, stating also, “seeking to avoid these tragedies is clearly the best result.”

A good guy with a gun does not constitute needed and recommended prevention for mass shootings in the eyes of federal law enforcement authority.

Finally, the good guy with a gun argument is a logical fallacy at its base. The logic statement form “if you or someone else on the scene of your mass shooting had had a gun, then you wouldn’t have got shot” is the same logic statement form as “if you dressed differently, then you wouldn’t have got raped”. This is a logical fallacy because law-abiding people’s right not to have crimes committed against them isn’t legally, morally, or factually contingent on their own behavior. The logic of the “good guy with a gun” argument places responsibility for the consequences of the actions of the mass shooters elsewhere than on the shooters, and that’s why it’s a logical and moral fallacy and why in simple practical terms it fails to constitute prevention.

sources

mass shooting deaths rising http://time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/

gun homicides rising per CDC https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/homicides-using-guns-31-percent-cdc-finds-n895366

Dallas https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/about-that-good-guy-with-a-gun/2016/07/11/3ed098fe-47a2-11e6-acbc-4d4870a079da_story.html?utm_term=.9271a0507018

Parkland https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-parkland-shooting-did-have-a-good-guy-with-a-gun.html

FBI report https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-weisser/fbi-report-active-shooters_b_5900748.html https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-study-2000-2013-1.pdf/view

The Parkland sheriff officer liability https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/12/21/us-judge-says-law-enforcement-officers-had-no-legal-duty-protect-parkland-students-during-mass-shooting/

no body armor in Uvalde https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2022/05/25/khou-11-in-houston-the-uvalde-gunman-was-not-wearing-body-armor/

8. “You sound like a Nazi.” Another fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument

9. “Correlation is not causation. There is no scientific evidence of causation.” The lack of evidence to support causation is a contrivance, the result not of conclusion from investigation but of the willing, purposeful obstruction of investigation into causation. From the NBC News article linked above on rising gun homicide rates: “[The CDC] regularly reports on gun deaths, but its role in researching the underlying causes has been limited by the so-called Dickey Amendment, which is tacked on to congressional funding legislation every year. It bars the CDC from using federal funding to ‘advocate or promote gun control.’” Powerful gun control opponents in Washington DC are afraid of the evidence being investigated, which betrays that gun control opponents are as certain as gun control supporters what the evidence shall show if proper investigation were to happen.

But there certainly is correllation. From the same article: “[M]ore states had loosened rules on gun ownership and the carrying of guns at around the same time that firearms homicide rates went up.“ That’s a negative example. For a positive example, there’s every nation, e.g. Scotland/the United Kingdom, to have had one mass shooting decades ago and in response implemented gun control only to have few or no more mass shootings since that first one in the same period of time that the U.S. has had escalating deaths from mass shootings.

Even if there’s no causation, when the correlation saves lives - as it demonstrably, statistically does - then the lives are still saved.

10. “'Lives or guns’? I choose guns.” Here I deliberately evoke the no-meeting-of-minds clause in the reprint post for declining to engage with you which is nevertheless not to be mistaken by you as any kind of concession.

11. The first few times I had cause to reprint this essay since January 6, 2021 I felt that my remark in my quoted Facebook comment’s paragraph about self-defense against tyranny, “good luck storming the capital” (a flip allusion to The Princess Bride dialog), called for some sort of comment or qualifier, since a storming of the Capital is now an actual historical event whose consequences to its top-level organizers have been minimal. But ultimately, while the insurrectionists brought onto the scene a gallows (ultimately unused), and five deaths including a police officer, gun presence doesn’t seem to have had any significance (little enough that Fox News has claimed incorrectly that there were no firearms brught in by the insurrectionists). If the event is relevant to the present discussion, it’s as evidence that a successful revolution attempt needn’t involve guns.

12 (conclusion). My stance is: nationally banning at least some kinds of guns is an effective solution to the problem of mass shootings, its effectiveness proven and documented for the purpose in every case it’s been implemented including formerly the United States, and therefore it needs to be reimplemented in the United States. The second amendment needs to start being treated the same way every other law/right in the United States is treated in terms of review and update against constantly developing status quo and technology. No counterargument to the statements in my reprint yet brought to my attention either 1) provides a proven alternative for mass shooting prevention other than the proven solution I advocate 2) fails to amount to answering, “Lives or guns?”, with, “Guns.” (Except “You called me racist!” which is untrue; what I called you was ignorant about racism.)

#guns #gun safety #second amendment #second amendment rant

[studiousfoxden]

ACT Testing Tips

ACT English Tips

The first section you'll take on the ACT is the English section, which focuses on your knowledge of grammar as well as your editing skills. #1: Choose the Most Concise Answer ACT English questions look for answers that result in the most straightforward, logical sentence structure, so try to find the choice that provides all of the necessary information for the sentence to make grammatical sense—and nothing extra. The best writing says what it needs to say clearly and concisely! #2: Read the Paragraph First A good plan of attack for ACT English is to read the whole paragraph that has the sentence you must revise before you look at the answer choices. This will give you context for your choices and a better grasp on the structure of the sentence and how you might need to change it. With this strategy, you can reduce the number of errors you make caused by careless misreadings. #3: Be Careful With "No Change" Answers On ACT English questions that ask you to choose the answer that makes a sentence grammatically correct, you'll have the option to pick "No Change." This is a dangerous choice because if you aren’t aware of more obscure grammar rules, you might be tempted to choose it on some questions for which the sentence actually can be improved. Thus, it’s really important to double-check all other answers before settling on "No Change" as the correct choice. That said, keep in mind that "No Change" really is the correct answer around 25-30% of the time it's an option, so don't second-guess yourself if you're relatively certain there isn't an error. Read the sentence through with each of the possible suggested changes before you bubble in “No Change” to ensure that you’re ultimately making the right call.

ACT Math Tips Up next is the ACT Math section. Here, we give you two key tips you'll need to know in order to get a high Math score on test day. #4: Pay Attention to Diagrams The ACT Math section will often provide you with diagrams of figures that describe the problem you’re trying to answer. It’s important to pay attention to these figures, as they will give you clues about which answer choices are the most logical. If a problem asks you to figure out an angle, for example, and some of the choices are acute while others are obtuse, you’ll be able to eliminate at least a couple of these answers just by looking at the diagram. If it doesn’t seem like an answer is possible based on the visual aid alone, it’s usually safe to cross it out. #5: Plug In Answers and Numbers Two of the most important strategies to help you confirm you've got the correct answer on a math problem are to plug in answers and plug in numbers. Here's how to plug in answers: if a question asks you to solve for x, simply plug each answer choice back into the original equation and see which one works. This will tell you which answer choice is the correct one. You don’t even need to really solve the problem! Plugging in numbers is a little different. With this strategy, you'll choose random numbers to plug into algebraic variables. This strategy lets you analyze the problem using real numbers instead of unknowns, and works best for questions with multiple variables. While helpful, these strategies can sometimes be more time consuming than just solving the equation directly, so only use them as a last resort if you're stumped.

ACT Reading Tips With ACT Reading—the third section on the test—you'll need to know how to read and interpret passages both quickly and accurately. #6: Start With Your Strengths The ACT Reading section is always structured the same way with four topic areas in the same order. Each topic corresponds to a passage or pair of passages. These topics are as follows: Prose fiction/literary narrative Social science Humanities Natural science To make sure you’re getting the most out of this section, start by reading the passage(s) that correspond to the topic area in which you are most comfortable. This might simply mean starting with subject matter that is most interesting to you and will thus make for a quicker read. This way, you can get the questions that are easiest for you out of the way first and won’t risk running out of time before you have a chance to answer others. #7: Skim Passages There’s a lot of time pressure on the ACT Reading section, so try to read the passages as efficiently as possible. For some students, it might be manageable to read passages normally and still have enough time to finish the section, but you have to be a really quick and thorough reader in order to pull this off. The best strategy for most people is to skim the passages instead. In order to skim effectively, read the introduction and conclusion paragraphs as well as the first and last sentences of every body paragraph. This will give you a good overview of the main ideas and allow you to answer most main point questions. When you get to questions about details, you can then reread specific parts of the passage if necessary.

ACT Science Tips For the Science section, you'll need to know how to interpret data and must answer questions dealing with graphs, tables, and scientific experiments. Here are our two best tips. #8: Do the Conflicting Viewpoints Section Last The conflicting viewpoints section on ACT Science is usually the most time consuming for students. In case you’re not familiar with it, this part of the section asks you to read two or three passages that detail different viewpoints on a scientific issue. You'll then answer questions about these viewpoints and how they relate to one another. Since this is more reading-intensive and can eat up a lot of time, it’s best to save this part for last so that you don’t end up missing other questions later on in the section that will be quicker and easier for you to answer. #9: Rely On Visuals The ACT Science section hits you with a lot of complicated terminology and unfamiliar facts that make it seem overwhelming. The best policy when faced with all of this information is to ignore it and go straight for the graphs, which should provide enough information for you to answer the majority of the questions you’re faced with. Most of the information you’re given is just extra stuff thrown in there to make this section seem more difficult than it really is. In reality, ACT Science is more about logical reasoning and data interpretation than it is about actually knowing any science. As long as you can read the graphs, you'll be fine!

#study tips #ACT tips #studying #tutoring

[fieurissons]

i would like a so called ‘deranged drabble’ on ww and seokmin in the konstelasi universe…i think seokmin’s twitter birthday post broke me today

I'm overdue to write about them tbh, so thank you for giving me a reason. <3

won&seok, 559w, gen

CHEERS’ rooftop is roaring with laughter and the clinking of glasses. Wonwoo would much prefer a quiet dinner rather than a night out at one of Seungcheol’s bars, but this is one of those compromises one makes when they are in love.

“Happy birthday, hyung.”

He turns to see Seokmin coming over with a beer in hand. Before he accepts the glass, he makes sure to make a mess of Seokmin’s kept hair. “Thanks, kiddo.”

“No, I should be thanking you.”

Oh, he can’t possibly take credit for the open bar. “Mingyu has his hands on the bill. He won’t even let me bring my wallet tonight.” 

Seokmin joins him, leaning back against the railing. “I meant for being my brother.”

There’s something odd about how he posed the sentence. “I didn’t really have a choice.”

“Oh, but you did.” Wonwoo follows Seokmin’s line of sight to get some context and finds him staring at Chan. “You did.”

“Hey,” he nudges Seokmin’s leg with his foot, “you know it’s complicated with Jihoon.”

“Sure, but I also know what ‘complicated’ did to Chan.” 

Two days ago, Jihoon invited him out for dinner—a farewell of sorts. Minghao showed up when they were one glass of bourbon in, but even if they had not been interrupted, Jihoon probably would still keep his plans upon leaving Seoul to himself. 

Seokmin turns to him, looking the second-most solemn Wonwoo has ever seen him. The first wasn’t too long ago, barely a month, in fact, when he came hand-in-hand with Chan to ask for Wonwoo’s blessing for what they wanted to do. 

“So, thank you,” he says sincerely. “For sticking around. It would’ve been easier, simpler to leave, but you did everything you could to stay. You listened, too. You always do. Even when I asked you to quit.”

Is being easily overwhelmed a symptom of ageing? Wonwoo feels his throat constricting. He used to be so young, Seokmin. Tall for his age, surpassing Wonwoo by the time they were in middle school, but always cowering behind Wonwoo whenever he spotted a spider in his way. Now he wants to build a life with another person. They always grew up so fast.

“I hope we get to celebrate a hundred more birthdays together,” he adds, bumping his shoulder to Wonwoo’s.

“Seokmin-ah.” Wonwoo turns his gaze to the stretch of shining lights before him. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I don’t want to live to see 131.” He grins lopsidedly at his brother. “Please put me out of my misery before then.”

Seokmin punches his shoulder, knuckles lacking the force Wonwoo knows they have.

“What will Mingyu-hyung say?”

Right. That’s the thing about love, isn’t it? You stop living entirely for yourself. Mingyu, loyal and brave and devoted Mingyu, senses Wonwoo thinking about him and swivels around to meet his gaze. He raises his eyebrows. Why are you so far away from me? Wonwoo licks his lips. I need a time out. Be right back. Mingyu tilts his head. Better not take long.

“Gross,” Seokmin comments, noticing their silent communication with each other. “Come join us when you need another glass.”

Wonwoo calls him before Seokmin gets too far away to hear him.

“What?”

“Thank you,” Wonwoo smiles, “for being my brother.”

Seokmin nods, pretending like his eyes aren’t misting. “Whatever.” 

Kids.

#q #writing #konstelasi #wonseok

[hueningwonnie]

♡˗ˏ✎*ೃ˚ : Y.JW Babysitter ₍ ᐢ.ˬ.ᐢ₎

back ground info : typical childhood best friends, also you're each other's childhood crush (everyone saw that coming) your parents obviously know each other and have basically been each other's first best friends from adulthood and not some high school chap (I'm not a brit but I thought it was funny) anyways you guys are extremely close and tell each other everything OK BUT LIKE I KNOW U KNOW WHAT I MEAN BY TYPICAL CHILDHOOD BESTIES IM DODNE EXPLAINING LMAO

tw : small mentions of drinking (context : jungwon’s dad is telling you that they *jungwon’s parents and your parents* are probably going to drink so just in case they get drunk they aren’t coming back to the house until tmr)

WARNING THERE MAY BE SPOILERS OF ALL OF US ARE DEAD 

"y/n~" your mom said before knocking on your door 

"come in!"

"Mrs.Yang called and she said she needed a 'babysitter' for jungwon while she and Mr.yang go out"

"i'm guessing you're going on a double date :smirk:"

"..."

"hehehe, anyways, what does jungwon needing a babysitter have to with me?"

"did I raise a dumb child?"

you were absolutely astonished

"MOM-"

"OBVIOUSLY you're the babysitter"

"oooh-"

" *heavy sigh* anyways get in the car"

"r-right now- you literally just told me"

your mom likes to leave things until the last second, at the point it shouldn't surprise you

"yes right now come on we can't be late for the double date!"

time skip to you pulling up to jungwon's house 

"good evening Mrs.Yang" you said to jungwon's mom

"wheres wonnie?" you asked looking around the first floor, because he usually greets you as soon as you walk in

"As soon as we said we were getting him a 'babysitter' he stormed off... didn't even let us finish *sigh*" Mrs.Yang said with disappointment in her voice

"I get it though, he's always the kid taking care of everyone else, also hes 17 of course he's going to be upset" your dad pipes in

"true... well we better get going, you know where everything is y/n" Mr.yang says

"Yes sir, have a good time! Oh, when will you be back?" you asked not wanting to fall asleep before they come back

start of tw

"well we were thinking.... you know how adults are, were probably going to order a few drinks, so to not put you guys in danger were uber-ing back to your house and staying the night- is that ok?" Mr.yang asks a little concerned

end of tw

"yes of course that's fine!" you say putting on the best fake smile you can

your first EVER sleepover with your crush??? yep. you were freaking out.

"well we better get going, take care y/n!" Mrs.Yang said before giving you a bear hug

"Have a nice night!" you say before closing and locking the door

well time to go and drag jungwon out of his room and also reveal myself as the 'babysitter'

I knocked on his door, he didn't answer... huh weird? so I knocked again 

"leave." he said coldly

"bruh it's me-"

I could barely get the full sentence out before jungwon opens the door, lunged at me and pulled me into a hug 

"Y/N!!! IT'S BEEN TOO LONG!"

"It's been 2 days jungwon... I live across the street from you???" I said confused, if he missed me why didn't he come over... oh yeah I forgot. he's lazy

"im lazyyyy you know this, anyways let's go downstairs and watch a movie! Or actually lets continue to watch that show we were watching... what was it called again??

"all of us are dead?" 

"Yeah that one, cmon!" he said as he pulled me downstairs

he sat me down on the couch while he went to make some popcorn.. wait- weren't you supposed to be the babysitter? oh well, you don't mind getting treated like a baby since that's all jungwon does. He came back about 5 minutes later with 1 big bowl of popcorn for you two to share. As soon as he comes back you turn on the show and start watching.

about 20 minutes go by and it was getting pretty sad and also scary, you couldn't believe that girl framed your favourite character! He was never a zombie, you were so mad, but also extremely sad because he was your favourite. You even started to tear up, jungwon took notice of this,

"he was your favourite right?" jungwon asked looking at you

"*sniff* y-yeah.." you replied

"I'm sorry :( it’s ok, we can find a new favourite character!" he said trying to cheer you up

"*sniff* o-ok ;("

then he did something that you will NEVER forget. it gave you SO many butterflies it's not even funny.

your head was still facing toward the tv, so he took the opportunity to lightly push your head onto his shoulder and put his arm around your waist to pull you closer. He was pretty confident ngl.

 you on the other hand...    OH...MY- you were not ok, you were a blushing MESS. Then you thought you were going to be BOLD, his hand was right in front of your hand bc of how his arm was positioned around your waist, so you went ahead and held his hand. 

he wasn't expecting this but went along with it. you stayed like this for another episode before you started to get tired and your eyes were getting droopy.

you eventually fell asleep so he carried you to his room, but because of all the movement you woke up, and because youre STUPID when you're tired you said

"h-hey jungwon?" you asked with extremely droopy eyes barely awake

"go back to sleep y/n it's late." jungwon said putting on a soft smile

"not until you answer my question," you said pouting

"*sigh* you're about to ask a really dumb question.. but go ahead"

".... do you like me like i like you?" you ask

"w-what.. how do you like me??"

"well i LIKE like you, you're very caring and pretty!" you put on a very tw drunk tw looking smile

"o-oh... well I like you to.. go to sleep yn we'll talk in the morning, k?" 

"okayyyy"

#jungwon #jungwon fluff #jungwon fanfic #enhypen #enhypen fluff #enhypen fanfiction #fanfic #kpop #kpop boys

[write-lets-do-this]

What is it? If, like me, you’ve been fairly active on online writing spaces, be it reposts of Tumblr screenshots on Pinterest, or avidly following all your favourite authors on Instagram, chances are you’ve come across this term.

It’s a fairly popular piece of grammar to use, but also a pretty controversial one. Some people (like me) use it all the time, while others will avoid it at all costs.

What it actually is, is a comma that goes at the end of a list before the ‘and.’ Like so:

I bought apples, pears, bananas, and oranges. I bought apples, pears, bananas and oranges.

The first example above uses the Oxford comma, while the second does not.

The reason I and so many others swear by it is the clarity it can add to a list without overly complicating the structure of a sentence. For instance, if you’re including a pair of items in a list, or something that might be misunderstood as a pair when you don’t want it to be, an Oxford comma can simplify matters without you having to contort the structure of your list just for it to make sense.

I invited my friends, Linda and John. I invited my friends, Linda, and John.

Now, looking at this, you would think from the first example that Linda and John are the friends being invited, but in the second, the friends are more clearly a different group of people.

You could, of course, avoid this by rearranging the list to be:

I invited Linda, John and my friends.

This doesn’t need an Oxford comma to be clear to understand, but even here in terms of the rhythm of the sentence, it just sounds better with one. Also, when you have a more complicated example than this, it can become quite difficult to reorder the list without it ending up sounding all clunky.

In another example below, the same sort of rule applies, but here we’ve got a ‘paired’ item in the list.

I study Music, English and Design and Technology. I study Music, English, and Design and Technology.

This makes it a little more complicated, too, because, if you’re familiar enough with the two words being paired together to mean a separate thing than what they might mean together, then the addition of the Oxford comma isn’t especially important. But if you aren’t, the comma serves to separate the items in the list more clearly. Without it, it’s very much possible that the items could be read separately and the reader might just think you’ve worded the sentence a bit weirdly or, if it’s in a bit of dialogue, want to make someone’s speech mannerisms more accentuated.

Of course, these are all fairly minor things to be considered when reading a list, and can often be overcome by simply reading in the context of the rest of the text, but in my opinion at least, the Oxford comma adds an invaluable extra level of clarity that isn’t achieved otherwise.

Overall, whatever you decide, what’s most important is consistency. Don’t go using it in one paragraph and then a few lines later write another list without it!

Are you for or against using the Oxford comma? Let me know in the comments if you have any interesting thoughts on this pesky little piece of grammar!

-Olive Tree

header image by Paisley Diaries. source.

#my blog #blogging #writing blog #writing #grammar #the oxford comma #oxford comma #writing tips

[translationwala]

Transforming Texts: Secrets of English to Malayalam Translation

Kerala is a beautiful place with lots of history and culture. The rolling green hills, the rhythmic swaying of Kathakali dancers, and the smell of freshly made cardamom coffee all make people want to visit. But for people who don’t know Malayalam, the state’s soul language, getting through its depths can be like reading old runes. This is where English to Malayalam translation comes in handy; it lets you connect two worlds, one word at a time.

Beyond the Basics: Capturing the Essence of Malayalam

A precise version might get the point across, but it misses a lot of what Malayalam is really about. There are a lot of different tones in the language, like honorifics, delicate humor, and regional differences. To translate from English to Malayalam, you need to be aware of these subtleties and make sure that the translated text keeps the emotional impact, cultural context, and even the flow of the writing from the original.

Weaving the Threads of Culture

There is a lot of beautiful poems, interesting myths, and deep intellectual writing in Malayalam literature. It takes more than language skills to translate these works. Understanding the cultural threads that run through every sentence—the allusions to old epics, the unsaid social rules, and the unique way that Malayalis show how they feel—is important. A good translator learns a lot about the culture to make sure that the translated text makes sense to people who read Malayalam while still keeping the main ideas of the original work.

Mastering the Melody of Words

Tamil is a tongue that sings. It has a tune that goes beyond the written word thanks to its rolling vowels, rhythmic consonants, and internal rhymes. A good translation from English to Malayalam doesn’t just get the message across; it also gets the rhythm of the language. Translators need to pay attention to how the words move together, where they are placed, and the little differences in how people say words that can make or break the rhythm. If you turned a song into a repetitive drone, it would lose its magic. Professional interpreters make sure that the musicality of the original text stays in the translated text, so that people who read in Malayalam can enjoy the full beauty of the language.

Embracing the Regional Tapestry

Malayalam is not one language. It’s like a fabric made of different regional accents, each with its own words, accent, and quirks. There are several different versions for a single English line, based on the audience and the situation. A translator who knows how to deal with regional differences makes sure that the text they translate will connect with the Malayalam group they are writing for. If you translated a business paper for people in the country using too serious language, it would not make any sense at all. Skilled interpreters know the subtleties of regional languages, which makes sure that people from different groups can communicate clearly and effectively.

Technology as a Guiding Light

English to Malayalam translation has changed a lot in the digital age. Even though machine translation tools aren’t perfect, they can make a good first draft that lets human translators improve the text and make sure it is culturally correct. Online dictionaries and glossaries make it easy to find local words and phrases right away. When used by proficient translators who know how the language works, these tools can make the translation process much faster and more accurate.

UNLOCKING THE DOORS OF KERALA

It takes more than words to translate from English to Malayalam. It takes people coming together. It lets you learn about Kerala’s rich literary history, have deep talks with locals, and enjoy the subtleties of a lively culture. It can lead to business possibilities, help people understand other cultures, and make relationships that last. So, whether you’re a tourist looking to learn more about a culture, a businessperson trying to make it in the Kerala market, or just a language lover smitten by the beauty of Malayalam, learn the secrets of English to Malayalam translation and open up a world of opportunities.

Source: https://translationwala.wordpress.com/2024/01/23/transforming-texts-secrets-of-english-to-malayalam-translation/

#English to Malayalam translation #English to Malayalam #Malayalam translation #English to Malayalam translation Online