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starsfic · 3 years

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The Ghosts of Fiery Cloud Manor- Chapter 2: The Scholar's Manor

Summary: Xiaotian meets Tang and his partner.

AO3

-_-

"QI XIAOTIAN!"

The moment he stepped foot in the village, Xiaotian found himself freezing. The yelling was too close. Too close to the bark of his father. He slapped himself out of those thoughts, turning.

A man in a white and brown robe was hurrying up, red scarf fluttering after him. He came to a stop, leaning on his knees to pant. "Xiaotian, correct?" he said as he straightened, brushing dirt off his robe.

Xiaotian nodded, holding out his hand. "You must be Mr. Tang, right?"

The scholar gave his hand a firm shake. "Indeed, I am!" Tang said, using his other hand to fix his glasses. They turned at footsteps, watching another man, dressed in a yellow sweater, hurry up. "And this is my partner Sun Wukong."

"Like the Monkey King?" He couldn't help it. He had been obsessed with the stories since he was a kid.

For some reason, panic flashed across Tang's face. "Yes! Like the Monkey King! Not exactly like the Monkey King but close..."

Wukong took over at the scholar nervously laughed. "He's a big fan." He stage-whispered. "Anyway, kid, he saw your text and freaked out, thinking someone was still there and you were hurt or something."

"Actually…"

He explained about the lack of footprints in the dust and the paintings. Tang visibly calmed when he heard that there hadn’t been an actual intruder. “You’re right, the paintings still being there are a good sign.” He rubbed his chin in thought, not seeming to notice as Wukong wrapped an arm around his shoulder and start leading him down to the village, gesturing for Xiaotian to follow. “It’s possible that the stories kept any wannabe thieves away…”

“The stories?”

Tang glanced at him with a smile, his next words bearing a sharp contrast.

“Oh, the ghost stories.”

-_-

Sunlight drew Xiaotian from slumber. He didn’t get out of bed immediately, mulling over dinner last night.

In the inn’s dining room, over a meal of vegetarian noodles, Tang had laid down the history of Fiery Cloud Manor. Yes, the manor was built right where Red Boy, one of the most famous villains of Journey to the West, was claimed to live, giving the manor its name. One of Tang’s ancestors had built the manor centuries ago after he came back from studying in Britain. A few weeks after his sudden death, the manor had suddenly been abandoned and locked up and none of Tang’s family allowed to go in.

Which led to the rumors of ghosts.

But what kept playing Xiaotian’s minds was what Wukong had said, clearly not intending to be heard.

“Hopefully, ghosts are the only thing that’s in there…”

He finally pulled himself out of bed, stretching. He got dressed and packed a bag, a plan outlining in his mind. Tang didn’t have any maps of the manor, so Xiaotian would figure out the layout of the manor and get a feel for what was there and what needed to be done. He needed cleaning product and a unit more specific than ‘a lot’ would be helpful.

When he opened his door, the monkey waiting outside wasted no time in clinging to his front. “Seriously?” Xiaotian voiced, staring at the monkey. It gave a happy chirp. “This has to stop, you can’t get attached.” He continued on this vein as he walked downstairs, not even noticing the innkeeper, Mr. Syntax, watching until he chuckled.

“Good company?”

“He’s persistent,” Xiaotian said, plopping the monkey back onto the counter. “I’ll give him that. Hey, do you know if there’s anywhere I can get a packed lunch?” The monkey reached for his loose hair and he batted its hands away. “I want to get a full day out in the manor.”

“Oh, I’ll whip something up while you’re eating breakfast.”

Xiaotian thanked him and headed into the pub, ordering some dumplings. He couldn’t resist snapping a picture and texting it to Pigsy. Pretty good, but not as good as yours! A few minutes later, there was a response of Good. Miss you. Xiaotian sent back a miss you! before the innkeeper handed him a brown paper bag. He headed out and soon found the trail again.

The soft mist of morning lingered around him as he started his hike. Now that Xiaotian was slightly more awake, he noticed more details on his walk. Bull and monkey statues, worn away by weather and time, lined the path. Scattered here and there were wild peach trees, soft breezes scattering pink and white petals. With the sunrise, it was beautiful.

By the time Fiery Cloud Manor came into view, he was smiling. His smile stopped when he saw the closed gate…

And no headband.

Some critter must've gotten curious. At least he had a spare...which he had forgotten. Xiaotian pushed that aside and headed through the gate and to the door, making sure to wedge two large rocks he found to prop open the doors. When that was done, he studied the floor.

The entrance hall floor was made of red marble, gold veins cracking through it. The wallpaper was a similar shade of red- clearly, Tang’s ancestor hadn’t cared about how red on red would look- and when he wiped some dust away, he found a pattern of bulls. Above, a crystal chandelier would’ve offered light, but it was more spiderweb than crystal. Xiaotian shivered at the thought of spiders. “You probably have a lot of them,” he said out loud. His voice bounced off the walls, echoing into the depths. “You probably hate that- believe me, I would.”

Weirdly, he felt less weird talking to the house than the monkey.

“Let’s get to know each other.”

He set down the hallway, pulling out his phone to start his playlist. He hummed along to the music as he found more paintings, as well as vases and decorative armor and weapons. Which was weird. Wouldn’t someone take something like that when the house was abandoned? Xiaotian found himself pushing those thoughts away when he came to a traditional paper push door, a pair of large flames decorating it.

He pushed them open, sending dust scattering. The marble floor in this room had been replaced with wood with a reddish tint to it. Xiaotian moved his gaze up and yelped when he looked back.

"Okay." He said when his heart stopped racing. His several reflections repeated the motions of his mouth. "Mirrors. Didn't expect mirrors." Xiaotian headed in. There had to be windows somewhere, right?

Nope. All Xiaotian found in what he was recognizing as a ballroom were mirrors, occasionally broken by the white wall underneath. This room probably looked less creepy when the golden chandeliers above were lit. But for now, Xiaotian was glad to get out.

The rest of the manor was less creepy, thankfully. Four floors and an attic were open for examination. He found a door that must've led to a basement, but the door held firm when Xiaotian had tried to open it. He brushed it off, happy to wait to deal with that, and continued his exploration. Most of all, he found Tang wasn't kidding when he had said that the manor had been abandoned suddenly.

None of the furniture looked missing. The decor was still decorating. Some of the rooms still had clothes in their closets. Then Xiaotian entered the library. "Are you kidding?!" he yelled to nobody. "Who just leaves their books?!"

There wasn't a single gap in the bookshelves that filled the room. There was a marble fireplace, any fire having long since died out, and dusty furniture. There was a desk that, under further examination, looked like whoever had been writing had simply gone up to get a snack and had never come back. A portrait of a familiar woman- the same woman from the painting downstairs, that horn hairstyle was hard to miss- looked down at the desk with a look of distaste.

"I feel you." he told her.

He continued his examination, humming along to the next song to come on. He froze when a kid screamed for more candy. "Mei!" Xiaotian grabbed his phone, turning it on to show it had gone to his Don't Even Think About It playlist. In retrospective, he probably shouldn't have a playlist titled this. Or use Xiaojiao's birthday as his passcode.

He switched it to a different playlist and then turned to texting his best friend. You're five hours away, how are you still driving me crazy?

A minute later, his phone lit up with a call from Xiaojiao. He answered it and her giggle filled the library. "Sounds like someone found the new song!"

"Yeah, that horrible Disney remix. Thank you for that."

Xiaojiao let out a snort, soon calming. "So, how is it? Epic disaster or nice fixer-upper?"

Xiaotian looked around. "More like epic fixer-upper. Mr. Tang was right- this is the perfect place for a museum."

"How bad is it?"

That was another weird thing. For a house that had been abandoned for at least a century, there was surprisingly no damage. "Just some dust, cobwebs, and grime here and there. But seriously, this place is amazing."

"I see you found your soulmate."

He couldn't help his own snort of laughter. "Yes, I predict a spring wedding. I wish you were here to see it-" Something hit his back and he screamed. For a moment, there was nothing but panic.

Finally, the creature hopped off…

And the inn monkey blinked innocently up at him.

"MK?! Is everything okay?!"

"Fine!" Xiaotian said, feeling his heart race from the scare. "It's just the monkey."

"...the monkey?"

Said monkey let out a chirp before hopping up onto his shirt, reaching for the paper bag. "No," he told it, holding the bag as far as he could. "I will not feed you! Sorry, Xiaojiao, this monkey apparently likes to hop from the local nature reserve."

There was a coo from the other end before someone else spoke. "Okay, I have to go!" Xiaojiao said. Xiaotian froze at her planning voice. "Love you, bye!" And just like that, she was gone.

He was broken out of his confusion by paws batting at his hair and he gave in. "Fine." Xiaotian said, sitting down on one of those comfy-looking armchairs. "Let's see what we have that won't make you sick."

The bag was opened and he pulled out some noodles, Peking duck, white rice, and some spring rolls. Finally, Xiaotian found a bag of dried peach slices, marketed as peach chips. He popped open the bag and handed it over to the monkey.

They ate in companionable music-filled silence. The monkey occasionally paused to cock it's head. Then, when Xiaotian had finished his lunch and was placing the trash in the bag, it let out a series of chirps and squeaks, mimicking the tune. "You're a talented little guy, aren't you?" Xiaotian asked, reaching over to give it a head scratch. Realization struck a moment later.

Oh boy. He had gotten attached, to both house and monkey.

He could deal with that later, he mused as he leaned back, feeling sleepy. His stomach was full, the armchair was comfy, and the library was surprisingly warm, which all pushed him deeper into the abyss of slumber. It wasn't an issue. He could take a quick nap...

He didn't notice a figure watching him as his eyes fell shut.

#The Ghosts of Fiery Cloud Manor #my writing #Monkie Kid #Lego Monkie Kid #Peachtea #Qi Xiaotian #MK #Tang #Sun Wukong #Long Xiaojiao #Mei #Peachteashipping

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starvels · 3 years

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Fic Writer Interview Meme

tagged in this a while ago by the lovely @oluka ! thank you, bluebonnet!

name: starvels/dinosaur/dinostar/di/star or any combination thereof

fandoms: currently i have open fic documents for: marvel (616, 3490, AA, MCU and a secret one ~), naruto (yes i know 😪), avatar: the last airbender and fullmetal alchemist. i’m also obsessed w the locked tomb books over at @camillaloudhect

two-shot:

it's taking everything, it's taken everything is a legitimate two-shot about sex pollen trope subversion. it’s sad as hell and i’m rly proud of its style/narrative construction

funnily, are we satellites? is actually listed as a two-shot bc the map chapter that showcases s/t’s roadtrip path

and actually fourth time's a charm is a two chapter fic as well. it’s was a lil pinch-hit for stevetony secret santa about sparring and love confessions that i sometimes forget i wrote lol

most popular (marvel) fics:

by the numbers

wear it like a message: (v funny bc i’ve never had a person off of ao3 talk to me about this fic at all 😂) it’s a s/t ensemble cast kinkmeme fic about domestic shenanigans and dogtags/rings

we were meant for love: it’s the first in the we were meant verse about cliche, happy-no-hurt AU s/t falling in love at first sight

by measures of people asking me about it:

are we satellites? that steve/tony 616-inspired roadtrip with nature metaphors, takes the cake for sure

followed by some combination of any of my (overtly) trans fics like name it ever after which is a 3490 exploration and the firefighter/pyrokinetic as we touched and burned

actual worst part of writing:

that bit where you are 75% done with a piece and you can see the end and you know basically what you have to do to complete it all, but it’s SO close to being done that you’ve maybe started looking at other projects already/started crossing it off in your mind as done already.

that’s a hard space for me to be in and i run into it on anything over like 7-8k. i think the reason why is because the pacing of the writing changes so drastically - i will write 1k/hr easy when i’m in the zone, but when you get to 75%, you’ve got to start editing, nit-picking at things, being careful, filling in spaces, etc. that’s hard and i usually require handholding to get through that part lol.

how you choose your titles:

almost always a song lyric. i’m obsessed with finding new music and i’m constantly listening to different niche subgenres. when i find a song that fits the vibe of a fic i’m writing i will either listen to it ON REPEAT for the entire writing. wild! or i will make a playlist from it to write to. i like to pay homage to that inspiration.

occasionally, i will also do a word association tree and just nit pick through combinations like for syntax of bones

do you outline:

i generally do not and i would not recommend this style of life for other folks. it’s pure chaos lmfao.

i doubt that i will ever outline short (<6k fic) but i’ve been trying to be better about writing small outlines for mid-long length fics. i went through a phase when i was writing long fic a lot where i was doing a ton of moodboards and drawing of plot lines and literally breaking things down day by day for the text - which was fun! but i think there’s a balance b/w that and not outlining at all that i need to find somehow haha.

ideas you probably won’t get around to, but wouldn’t it be nice:

listed a bunch here and here! but also

more poly fic - janstevetony, carolrhodeytony, caroljessrhodey, janesamthor, etc! this is more about having background comic knowledge to do justice to each character. so much to read...

young avengers fic! this is actually really likely bc i truly do love otgay more than i love any other ensemble in marvel, and i did recently catch up on death’s head/strikeforce/empyre but i feel like i would need to do more specifically Fic Research to adequately get a handle on how to characterize everyone. and i haven’t done that yet lol.

war-time 616 steve’s relationship to gender/sexuality

mcu natasha/pepper start a relationship before im2, emotional fall out from the events of im2, tony both thumbs-up in the background

callouts @ me:

di, belief in yourself is the best writing tool you have! believe in your words. give them attention, give them water, give them space in your life. let writing be a habit for yourself and cultivate it how you would any other plant cutting. turn into challenges, bc they’re what keep you lively and growing. let your work be an average, rather than striving to make everything you produce your best thing ever. be kind and gracious with yourself.

prioritize EDITING before posting, oh my god, di. щ(゜ロ゜щ)

best writing traits:

prose/description is the most commonly complimented aspect of my writing! and i agree :’) i really do love to play with the inherent poetry of human existence. i also think i am good at setting up emotional tension (i want people to FEEL as much as i do all the time) and crafting a subversive narrative (starting with a climax and exploring resolution/genre blending/turning tropes upside down/talking about gender/queer experiences through a non-cishetero lens, etc.)

tangential opinion: “Friends and support are a thousand times more important for your well-being as a writer than anything else.” - oluka

gonna echo this, actually! i’m a part of a lot of og writing groups and its really taught me how essential feeling safe talking about your work and sharing it is. that’s how you develop inspirations. s’why i’ve been attempting to slide back into discord lately, as i get into marvel again haha.

also, tbh, don’t be afraid to like things! enjoy what you enjoy and do so wholeheartedly and unabashedly. don’t be ashamed of feeling things - about your writing or as inspiration for your writing!

tagging: i do NOT know who has done this already sorry! but i’d love to hear from @viudanegraaa @hungerpunch @alexenglish @ironlawyer @msermesth @welcomingdisaster @veryvincible (if you already did it, link me pls!)

#memes #my talk #my fic #fic talk #writing talk #once again i think to myself i have too many organizational tags

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sunnyrinusstudies · 3 years

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[Image Description: Dark green text on a floral background, it reads “Studyblr Re-Reintroduction”. The flowers are white hydrangeas. / End ID]

Photo by Tanya Trukyr on Unsplash

Studyblr Re-Reintroduction

12/02/2021 12:04

Hi everyone! I’ve been using this tumblr account off and on for a while now, and then proceeding to forget about it in favour of using my other account (the one true main tumble :p). So here’s my nth attempt at getting back into studyblr.

About me

Call me Rinus

He/him pronouns

I’m 20

Currently doing first year at Uni in the Netherlands

Queer as hell

Germanic/Norse heathen (shitty exclusionists not welcome here. there are no nazis in valhalla, none)

Newspaper delivery guy by extremely early morning, English student by day.

Interests

Linguistics

Conlangs?

Beekeeping!

Open source stuff, privacy stuff, security stuff

Whatever my obsession of the week is.

Academia

After some hiccups I’m finally in my first year at uni! Studying “English Language and Culture”

Classes

So far there’ve been two subjects every block, one is linguistics focused, the other is literature focused. For literature we’re currently discussing renaissance and restoration period texts. Linguistics is focused on phonology (and using voice frequency analysers, there’s suddenly physics in my english :/ ), syntax, and morphology.

Self-study

(I’m not that good at like, keeping up with any of these though)

Beekeeping!!!

Scottish Gaelic

Welsh

Esperanto

Trying to learn some programming because I wanna dabble in mobile development

Godot (game engine)

Germanic & Norse heathenry, and some local folklore

Sewing

Getting much more into online privacy, security, and open source stuff

Things I’m involved in

Freesewing! Where I’m attempting to help adapt old timey pattern drafting books to work with their pattern drafting software. Join in if you’d like! :D

See me struggle to code something functional on github if you feel like it, and if I ever get to it

Maybe check out my art website? It’s over at hornedmousestudtio.nl , I used to have a different one and then I forgot to renew my domain and such. So uhhh it’s still very under construction.

General Goals

Survive this schoolyear

Get vaccinated as soon as I physically can.

At some point I’ll hopefully become a teacher, or something in that direction.

Maybe do more art things?

finally learn to code so I can make that one app that I’ve been thinking about for so long

Maybe this year is the year I finally win nanowrimo

Why a studyblr?

I just really wanna get involved in the community again

Making friends!! or at least acquaintances :p

Hopefully this will help motivate me to keep studying.

I have opinions on some things, that I gotta just blurt out somewhere on the infinite void of the interwebs

What you’ll see here

Reblogged content

Probably some aesthetic-y things

Bujo stuff

Fibercrafts things?

Maybe some witchcraft and heathenry things too

Plant and gardening stuff?

ADHD studyblr things

A few shitposts probably

Mostly attempts at good vibes

(I’d like this blog to be a place where you can maybe take a break from all the things in the outside world. I wanna try to just no longer have any kinds of reblog bait or big news things or such going on on here. I’m on not here to feel miserable, I can continue participating in activism outside of hellsite dot org)

Original content

hopefully notes

planner pictures

desk setup stuff?

fibercraft related things

gardening stuff

probably heathenry stuff but in a studyblr vibes kind of way

I wanna make a short post series on how to get more open source stuff in your life, and also why it matters.

pictures of my chickens maybe?

Inspirations & cool mutuals

in no particular order

@studyfajr , @eintsein , @raebae-studies , @myhoneststudyblr , @upside-down-uni , @derflauschigstefuchs , @forensicscienceblr , @obsidianstudy , @softlystudying

#stuff i made #txt #studyblr #ADHD studyblr #wearefreesewing #freesewing.org #studying #studyblr introduction #studyblr reintroduction #studyblr intro post #knitblr #langblr

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ichorshrooms · 3 years

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hello!!! tell me about ur ocs!!! who are they?? what do they look like?? do they have anything quirky about ‘em??

hOOO BOY OK I HAVE A LOT OF THEM. no joke i probably have like 30 characters. maybe more! most likely more! i have never counted! i have... a Lot. i’m gonna try to tell you about as many as i can before i start to lose all hope. the things you asked are actually a good short list of intro questions so.

On to the characters! (Ooh, grammar and syntax! Joy! I’m getting serious now askjlfjklsa)

Israfil Bashir | Israfil is a man of science! He’s a recently out gay man in his 40s who has a lot of baggage about his father. He’s the head of a company that researches advancements in prosthesis -- something he has been passionate about since the loss of his left leg in a near-fatal wreck. He’s active -- a little less so since he developed chronic fatigue, but he still tries to get out there and bike regularly! And he has a child named Misha who he loves and cherishes! Israfil is of Pakistani and Indian descent. He has neatly-cropped dark hair, beautiful honey brown eyes, and he usually wears his beard in a short goatee (he feels like he looks too young if he shaves it off, and he’s sensitive about it). His skintone is light brown with a warm undertone.

His face is fairly angular, his body lean and immaculately toned (for the most part). He has a hooked nose with a slight deviation from a decades-old break that wasn’t set quite right. As I said before, he lost his left leg in an accident, so he wears a prosthetic! His prosthetic is not patterned or matched to his skin. It’s the color of the metal that was used to make it.

His... quirk... hmm... oh right, he’s telepathic. I almost told you about the secret lab under his prosthesis research facility that has developed identical-to-human sentient machines! Phew, that was close! I almost spilled the beans!

Misha Bashir | Misha is Israfil Bashir’s child! They’re just a couple of years old, but they’ve been given the intelligence of a very, very smart teenager -- and the body of one too! They’re a living, breathing machine. They’re also extremely naive and curious, as most new-ish androids tend to be. It’s not often that they leave the safety of their home, as Israfil has developed a pattern of strictness due to his fear that the government will disappear Misha from the streets and do experiments on them.

Misha is extremely lifelike. They’re modeled in part after their creator/father Israfil, but some... design cues... have been taken from a certain CSO of a rival R&D company who Israfil may have an on-and-off non-romance with. Misha inherited their skin tone, the shape of their eyes and their mouth from Israfil. The rest, though... Misha has bright white hair, blue-green eyes, an aquiline nose and -- perhaps most peculiarly -- a very slight Russian accent.

I think Misha’s existence as a sort of pseudo-lovechild of two embittered ex lovers counts as a quirk. That weird shit aside, though, they’re a robot! That’s pretty quirky! Oh and they may or may not be part of a research program that endeavors to find out if it is possible to teach a machine to read minds. And they’re nonebinery... they dont have any binery... thats ise so cool.........

Eleanor Louise French | Eleanor is a 15 year old witch who just loves to make it known that her middle name is Louise. It’s one of her most favorite things about herself. At the tender age of 14, she set out on her own (as all young witches do) to do some independent study and learn the ways of the world.

She is very gay, very short and very smart. Her hot-headed temper lands her in a metric fuckton of trouble on a daily basis, but she manages to escape dire consequences most of the time! She is narcoleptic, frog-obsessed (like all gays are) and is all about that baby-pink-and-blue aesthetic. She has some serious trauma from a werewolf attack, so wolves and ghouls and other “scary” magical creatures are not typically welcome in her alchemy shop. She will serve them, but it is very draining for her -- just as all trauma is. Spoiler alert: she eventually recovers, but that’s like! the main thing in her story! so! it takes time for her to get there.

She is fair-skinned with a cool undertone. Her hair is light blonde and straight as a board (which she claims is completely natural, but sometimes she forgets to drag a brush through her hair in the morning and it gets all frizzy and wavy hMMM CURIOUS). She has a grecian nose, a round baby face and bright blue eyes. Her scowl is so powerful it’s enough to strike the fear of god in... idk a lumberjack or something. Her fashion sense is a bit... conservative. She’s a little insecure and likes to cover up. Being a teenager kind of sucks sometimes!

Her Big Quirk (TM) is her ability to effortlessly turn people into frogs. She does it when she’s annoyed, and she has a frog collection. If you are bad enough, she will literally keep you in a terrarium until she decides you’ve learned your lesson. She has a couple of forever frogs and the reason is because they’re bad people (and decent frogs).

I have a lot more characters, but this is already quite long and I don’t want to write a profile for literally every character ‘cause then you’d be like “dude what the fuck.” I have demons, angels, superpowered villains in varying degrees of villainy, a ballet dancer, a park ranger, a televangelist, a fashion designer, an immortal who has seen the horrors of war, a haunted pianist, triplet thieves, princes, a princess, an embittered king, monsters of all sorts and a billion more types of characters that I honestly cannot think of off the top of my head. There is a massive list to get through! And that’s not counting some of my one-off projects involving characters I haven’t roleplayed with! You should see the state of my google docs. I have 50+ projects I’m currently working on.

I have too many characters. If you’re curious about anything on the list, I will elaborate!

#i mADE IT THROUGH THREE AND WAS LIKE ''holy fuck this is a lot''#i am really sorry for saying so much FKJAKSLFJSAKL #tammie-brown

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shilkaren · 3 years

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How Do I Start My Data Science Career?

I would say that my data science learning path was fairly traditional. I did my undergrad in economics and have master’s degrees in global commerce and computer science (concentration in machine learning and artificial intelligence). I learned my business acumen from my coursework during my commerce degree and picked up most of the technical elements from my master’s in CS. I had a data science internship, and I was on my way. Looking back, there was nothing wrong with my path, but knowing what I do now, what would I change about my learning journey? This question is particularly relevant for people that are new to the field. Many things have changed since I started. Positions are more competitive and there are far more learning options. I would hope that my experience could help others learn data science faster, more completely, and give them better job opportunities.

I will caveat this article by saying that learning is a little bit different for everyone. My word is not gospel, and there is a good chance that you will find something that works a little bit better for you. Still, I hope this is a good foundation from which to build off. I hope it instills in you the big picture priorities that are relevant when learning this field. This article focuses more on how to learn than on where to learn (courses, boot camps, degrees, etc.). I recommend these two articles for specific courses and online resources for learning the field.

If I had to start learning Data Science again, how would I do it? (Santiago Viquez Segura)

My Self-Created Artificial Intelligence Masters Degree (Daniel Bourke)

For Those Who Would Prefer The Video Version:

Lesson 1: Break it down

When I first started learning data science I was overwhelmed with the size of the field. I had to learn programming languages and concepts from statistics, linear algebra, calculus, etc. When I was confronted with this many options, I didn’t know where to start. Fortunately for me, I had coursework to guide my studies. The degrees that I did broke down many of the concepts into smaller chunks (classes) so they were digestible. While this worked for me, I find that schools have a one-size-fits-all approach to this. They also include many extraneous classes that you don’t actually need. If I could go back, I could definitely break my data science learning journey into chunks better suited for me. Before diving into data science, it makes sense to understand the components that are used in the field. Rather than breaking things into “courses”, you can make data science into even smaller and more digestible chunks. I generally break data science into programming and math. Programming — familiarity with Python and/or R

Variables

Loops

Functions

Objects

Packages (pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, sklearn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, etc.)

Math Statistics

Probability theory

Regression (linear, multiple linear, ridge, lasso, random forest, SVM, etc.)

Classification (naive Bayes, knn, decision tree, random forest, SVM, etc.)

Clustering (k means, hierarchical)

Linear Algebra Calculus By breaking data science down into its components, you transform it from being an abstract concept into concrete steps.

Lesson 2: Start somewhere

When I was starting out, I was obsessed with learning things in the “correct” sequence. After entering the field, I found that many data scientists learned their skills in drastically different orders. I met Ph.D.’s that had studied math first, and only learned the programming concepts after taking a Bootcamp. I also met software engineers that were incredible programmers and learned math later through self-study and application.I now realize that it is most important to start somewhere, preferably with a topic you are interested in. I found that learning is additive. If you learn one thing, you are not forgoing learning another concept. If I had to go back, I would start with the concepts that were most interesting for me at the time. Once you learn a single concept, you can build on that knowledge to understand others. For example, if you learn a simple linear regression, multiple linear regression is a fairly easy step. Still, I probably wouldn’t jump right in and start with deep learning. It helps to start small and simple and build on that foundation.

Lesson 3: Build Minimum Viable Knowledge (MVK)

Over time, I’ve had a change of opinion about how much foundational knowledge you need. After experiencing many different types of learning myself, I believe that learning by doing real-world projects is the most effective way to grasp a field. I think that you should understand just enough of these concepts to be able to start exploring your own projects. This is where minimum viable knowledge comes into play. You should start by learning just enough to be able to learn through doing. This stage is fairly hard to identify. Generally, you will feel like you aren’t ready when you first get here. This is a good thing though, it means that you are pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. You can reach this stage fairly easily. I think you can get to this level of knowledge with every introductory online course, and I generally recommend the micro-courses at kaggle.com. To get to this step, all you really need to understand is the basics of python or R and have a familiarity with the packages used. You can start learning math later by applying some of the algorithms to real-world data.

Lesson 4: Get your hands dirty

With your basic knowledge, I recommend getting into projects as quickly as possible. Again, this sounds scary, but a project is all about how you define it. At the early stages, a project could be something as simple as experimenting with a for a loop. As you progress, you can graduate to projects using data on Kaggle, and eventually using data that you have collected. I am a HUGE believer that the best way to learn data science is to do data science. I think that the theory is VERY important, but no one says that you have to understand it all before you start applying it. The theory is something you can go back to after you have a functional understanding of the algorithms. For me, real-world examples were always what made things click. If you start with the real-world examples through projects, I think things have a far higher chance of things “clicking” when you start learning the theory. Projects also have the power to make data science smaller. One of the biggest challenges I see for new learners is that the field of data science can be overwhelming. Confining the things you are learning to the size of a small project allows you to break things down even further than you did in Lesson 1. Projects offer one additional benefit. They give you immediate feedback on where you need to improve. If you are working on a project and you run into a roadblock about what package, algorithm, or visual to use, you now know that you should probably study that area of the field further.

Lesson 5: Learn from other people’s code

While doing your own projects is great, sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. I highly recommend going through the code of more experienced data scientists to get ideas about what to learn next and to better understand logic or syntax. On Kaggle and GitHub there are thousands (maybe millions) of kernels where people have shared the code that they used to analyze datasets. Going through these is a great way to complement your projects. I recommend making a list of the packages, algorithms, and visuals that you see being used. You should go to the documentation for the packages and expand your knowledge there. They almost always have examples in the docs for how they should be used. Again, this list can be used to help you think of new project ideas and experiments.

Lesson 6: Build algorithms from scratch

This is a rite of passage for most data scientists. After you have applied an algorithm and understand how it works in practice, I recommend trying to code it from scratch. This helps you to better understand the underlying math and other mechanisms that make it work. When doing this, you will undoubtedly have to learn the theory behind it as well. I personally think that learning in this direction is far more intuitive than trying to master the theory and then apply it. This is the approach that fastai has taken with their free MOOC. I highly recommend it if you are interested in deep learning. For this, I generally recommend starting with linear regression. This will help you to better understand gradient descent, which is an extremely important concept to build on. As you advance your data science career further, I think theory becomes increasingly important. You bring value by matching the correct algorithm to the problem. The theory associated with the algorithm greatly facilitates this process.

Lesson 7: Never stop learning

The beauty of the data science journey is that it never ends. You will need to keep learning to stay on top of new packages and advancements in the field. I recommend doing this through (you guessed it) more projects. I also recommend continuing with the code review and reading new research that is published. This is more of a mindset recommendation than anything practical. If you think that there is a pinnacle, you are in for a surprise!

Insideaiml is one of the best platforms where you can learn Python, Data Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence & showcase your knowledge to the outside world.

#ai #artificial intelligence #datascience #data scientist

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ghost-chance · 4 years

Text

Fanfiction Recommendation: “Fat. Beautiful. Tasty. Ravenous” by MoofyKitten

Title: Fat. Beautiful. Tasty. Ravenous Author: MoofyKitten on AO3/FFN/Wattpad Fandom: BNHA/My Hero Academia Rating: M/MA for a reason. (Detailed sex in over half the posted chapters. Perv away only if you’re of age!) Pairing(s): Fat Gum [Toyomitsu Taishirou] / OFC Found on: AO3

Deets Expect some light spoilers and a mini-rant.

I am an unrepentant fanfiction addict; this is no secret. There are fics I read to wind down after a rough day, fics I read to put myself to sleep in hopes of pleasant dreams, and fics I read to tear my hear into teeny tiny fragments then build it back again better than before. THEN there are fics that don’t fit the mold – the kind that I become so invested in that I physically cannot put off reading that update. THIS, my lovelies, is one of THOSE fics, and it’s earned that place from the early chapters. This story has almost everything I need from a fanfiction, and I have a feeling the rest is just around the corner.

Let’s get the basics out of the way.

The Spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all excellent – I have yet to notice a single error, so either the author and her betas are a force to be reckoned with or I’m just getting so sucked into the story an elephant could sit on me and I’d never notice. The formatting is effective and easy to follow, and the chapters have all been of a nice meaty length, perfect for plowing through in a single sitting only to realize you missed a meal and it’s time for bed and your brain is hopelessly lost in ship-land daydreaming about what’s up next. ...wait, that’s just me? My bad.

Syntax – This one requires an entire section of its own. The fact that I’m having to actually think about how well the author’s varying their syntax says they’re effing nailing it. If a story’s syntax is at all static or the sentence even the slightest bit predictable, it’s easy enough for me to recall it because I’m mentally rearranging the bits that irk or don’t impress me as I read. I can’t even get through a bleepin’ news article or an online recipe without itching to push what I’m reading up to the standards my professors held. It sounds harsh, I know, but please take my word for it when I say I’m not criticizing anyone. Suffice it to say, if my classes did anything, they made editing so instinctive I can’t turn it off. Confession: I have never found myself rearranging a single phrase in this masterpiece. Arguing with the characters? Encouraging the characters? Begging, pleading, and berating the characters for breaking my heart time and time again by stopping just short of the sugary fluff I can just smell right around the corner? Oh, Hell yes. I’ve done all of that and more, but I’ve never found myself with the urge to grab my red pen and strike out or scooch even a single word.

Something that strikes me about this story above others I’ve given the same rating (Spoiler: there are VERY FEW!) is the sheer variety of the scenes and environments. Sounds silly? Probably, but romances often develop a certain amount of location stagnation, and I know from personal experience how difficult it can be to bust through those patterns. (I mean, the majority of “A New Lease on Life” takes place in the Lair in some room, most commonly a bedroom, the lab, or the kitchen.) This story takes the couple off of familiar and ‘safe’ turf like homes and offices and drags them through countless other places without regard for their sense of comfort. Each scene feels real and multi-dimensional and directly or indirectly influences the characters’ behavior and reactions. It’s awesome. That’s a sign the author has done her people-watching!

Now, about that OC. I’ll readily admit, in the first chapter, I had my reservations. At first glance she seemed shallow, obsessed with appearances and her own view of the world, and – strange as it may sound – too skinny and too attractive. Yes, there’s some personal bias involved there, but the majority was practical rather than emotional. BUT! Because the writer of this story is the same who unleashed the beautiful Kacchako torment Hot-Headed upon me without a single breath of remorse, I gave Aiko a chance. Sure enough, my first impressions were entirely incorrect. The things that bothered me about Aiko? They all had explanation or purpose, and she’s turned out to be a pretty well-fleshed out character...pun intended. As the story progresses we’re seeing sides of her that I hoped for but didn’t expect and each chapter leaves me wondering what we’ll learn next.

Romantic connection. First word: “OOFTA.” The second word, I’d spell out, but it’s a shrill, wordless, begging whine that I cannot translate into English for the life of me. This pairing starts without any sort of romantic connection; it skips straight to the shenanigans and leaves hope that the snugglebunnies will follow eventually. Friends…if you’ve read any of my writing before, you’ll know that I. LIVE. For. The. FLUFF. The awkward mush, the sweaty palms, the am-I-gonna-barf-or-do-I-have-a-crush, the absolutely tooth-rotting sweetness capable of sending a reader headlong into diabetes with a dopey grin and heart eyes - they’re my crack and I love them. This story started with no fluff but it’s been slowly developing in the background. It’s an entirely new situation for me! I feel like I’ve gotten used to eating my dessert first then digging into an equally sweet dinner without a moment to cleanse my palate. This story? It’s like gorging on smoky, meaty St. Louie barbecue for weeks on end with literally just a smear of something sweet as an afterthought. Mind. Frackin’. BLOWN. It turns out I’m more masochistic as a reader than I ever suspected.

Another relationship I want to cover is the building friendship between Aiko and Fat Gum – because nope, she has not managed to mentally connect the half-starved Taishiro she’s climbing like a tree with the big-and-beautiful Fat Gum who owns the agency. Yep. She thinks she’s boning Fat’s beefy little brother. It’d be funny if my heart wasn’t whining for fluff. While frustrating to fluff-starved readers, Aiko not knowing the beefcake and the brother are one and the same provides an intriguing and natural way for her to build an actual relationship with him. This means none of the fetishistic bullarkey rampant in other stories pairing plus-sized male characters with OCs.

What sort of fetishistic bullarkey am I talking about? To name a handful: I love you so lose weight. I love you because you’re big. I’m fat too so it’s okay if we’re together. Blatant fat-fetish disguised as romance. Fat character’s life absolutely revolves around food and it’s gross/nvm it’s okay. Lastly, OC’s only chance at being loved by fat character is feeding them. Maybe to thin folks those don’t sound negative but to those of us who fit the description? NOPE. These don’t make healthy relationships. Using these can turn a well-meaning pairing toxic and frankly, it tends to piss off those of us who – GASP! - accept ourselves no matter our size. These...tropes, let’s call them, have made me hesitant to even try fiction involving plus sized male characters because I’ve been let down so many times. Finding plus sized female characters is easy, especially OCs, but appreciation for the chonky bois isn’t nearly as common. They need love too, dammit!

Ahem. Rant over.

As mentioned before, I ain’t seen any of that crap in this story. This author is treating Fat Gum like she would any other character instead of focusing on the fat. I wish with all my heart that more authors were capable of (and willing to) do the same with Fat Gum, and with other plus sized male characters. I can’t even put into words how much it means to me that she’s doing such a fantastic job portraying a character type that so many writers bungle without ever realizing it. I’ve needed this story my entire life and never realized it wasn’t there; I shudder to think of how long I might have been waiting for it if this author never found the inspiration to do so.

If I don’t shut up now, I fear I never will. I love this story that much. Moving on.

Warnings

Explicit sexual content – do NOT read this around your family unless you have a stronger will than I and can do so without creeping them out. (According to my husband, when I read smut I “look like a demented vulture staring down at a half-flattened ‘possum waiting for it to take its last breath,” complete with hunched shoulders and heavy breathing. Flattering, I know.) The smut scenes, while not my usual cuppa tea, wreck. My brain? Broke. Chapter four’s budding romance? It’s goin’ on my headstone ‘cuz I’m dead.

There are mentions of human trafficking and the future may include more about it. Slut-shaming comes up a few times because men are assholes and asshole exes are the ultimate assholes. Situational fat-shaming and lack of body confidence come up as Aiko comes to recognize Fat Gum for who he is instead of what he is; on the other end of the tag, Fat is also doing a lot of it to himself even when it isn’t spelled out. You can see it behind some of his reasoning in his POV chapters and since the writer is kickass at portraying thoughts and feelings without ever breaking out of restricted POV, you can also see hints in other chapters. That said, if the shaming was really bad without any redeeming purpose, I’d have noped my way right out’a that fic and never looked back. It has a purpose, and it’s not that bad. Give it a chance.

Recommendation level

This story lacks purple prose and excessive fluff, and I haven’t seen any signs of the pop culture, literary, and music references I love so dearly, but the rating remains the same:

Ten. Out. of. Farking. TEN!

YES! I’ve finally found another 10/10!!! A quick reminder for anyone who’s managed to not see my other reading recc posts, I don’t even need both hands to count off all the 10/10s I’ve read. Congratulations, Ms. MoofyKitten – your story rocks my world and I have an addiction I do not care to shake!

#fanfiction recommendation #BNHA #My Hero Academia #body postivity #Fat Gum #mature fanfiction #Plus size guys need love too #this story is KILLING ME #and I'm loving every minute of it because I'm weird like that #i stayed up for this

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passiontaee · 5 years

Text

love language | r

pairing: yoongi x jeongguk

genre: slice of life, camboy au

ratings: r

warnings: smutty smoot in here ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), masks, rough sex, anal sex, unprotected sex, orgasm denial, oversensitivity

word count: 8580

summary: camboy!au—college student jeongguk can't speak korean. yoongi can't speak english. this doesn't interfere with them having sex though. or yoongi is a twitter pornstar and jeongguk, a big fan, flies all the way from america to get dicked to mars by his favorite hyung

a/n: inspired by love language by kehlani and seegasm on twitter, the best korean pornstar who taught me everything I know and inspired this fic :)

ft. google translate korean so it’s probably not even accurate :’))

↬ s.

He groans as he releases, hand slowing down on his cock as he paints his hand and lower abdomen white. On screen, Suga cums seconds later, slowing down inside of his partner, named simply Soccer Player from a Local University in the description but Jeongguk doesn’t care. He’s insignificant to the task at hand. Has nothing to do with Jeongguk rubbing one out while watching his favorite porn star. In fact, the male that Suga had been fucking was simply a place holder—Jeongguk had plastered his own face onto the male’s masked face, having it stuck in his head that Suga was fucking him and not the smaller, blonde male on the screen. He doesn’t understand the words exchanged between the two after, hearing the soft, breathy rumble of the bottom’s voice paired with the husky, lowness of Suga’s voice. For a porn star who wore a mask on screen, he didn’t try to mask his voice. But Jeongguk doesn’t care. Said voice was a nice voice—assisted quite well when it came to these late night sessions or even the random moments when he’d get aroused and need to jerk off in the shower or something.

In the aftermath of his release, timed quite well to be honest, there’s a banging on his door.

“Jeongguk! Jeongguk open up!”

Hoseok’s voice startles him to the point where he drops his phone, earphones falling out of his ear and landing on the floor with it as the video officially ends. He panics, hoping that Hoseok hadn’t heard him viciously jacking off and probably moaning like a bitch in heat while imagining he’d been in the soccer player’s place. Pesky soccer player, he grumbles in his mind as he hurries to grab a nearby shirt and clean himself up a bit. Grimacing at the mess but it’s good enough. He’s unsure why Hoseok is so urgently banging on his door, but he dares not question it. Once he’s decent and wearing a clean shirt, he heads to the door. Unlocking it and opening it, seeing Hoseok sporting a bright grin, Taehyung on the couch munching on potato chips as he watches the latest episode of an anime they’d found together. Hoseok sniffs around, then stares at Jeongguk knowingly. Judging him. Jeongguk feels like kicking him in the shins.

“What?” he asks, leaning his head against the door frame. Hoping to not look as fucked up as he truly was.

“Are you done beating your meat to Suga?” he asks, as if Jeongguk was naked with his hand down his sweats fapping right in his face. This doesn’t make Jeongguk less embarrassed though, and he simply nods stupidly. “Good. Now, me and Taehyung are going out to grab something to eat. You coming with?” he steps away to reveal Taehyung, who’s still on the couch. But he looks over at them and smiles, nodding.

“I’m in the mood for Taco Bell. What about you Guk?” he shouts, as if Jeongguk can’t hear from where he is. He can hear quite well, as a matter of fact. But Jeongguk’s stomach agrees with Taehyung—Taco Bell sounds delicious right now.

“Yeah, Taco Bell is fine,” he agrees. Hoseok claps his hands. “Good! Who’s driving?”

Jeongguk nearly tears into his gordita, groaning in satisfaction at the flavor that pours into his mouth. Taco Bell was far too delicious for it to be fake meat. He doesn’t care at the moment, and neither does Taehyung or Hoseok for that matter. Hunger wasn’t enough to describe the feeling he had driving him to eat as quick as he was.

“Thanks Hobi,” Taehyung grins at the brunette beside him, who’d paid for everything. He simply hums, giving him a thumbs up and then petting Taehyung’s head. Jeongguk rolls his eyes. Hoseok nearly babies Taehyung when he’s the youngest. Hoseok babies him too, but not as often as Taehyung.

“Considering I just got paid, I figured I treat you guys,”

“Wow, you really sound like a sugar daddy,” Jeongguk snorts, reaching for his soda. Hoseok winks at him suggestively as he says this, causing Jeongguk to choke on his drink.

“Nah, I’m not the suga daddy you really want,”

“Oh my God, not here please,” Jeongguk begs, hoping Hoseok would shut his whore mouth about him obsessing over Suga.

“It’s so weird man,” Taehyung interrupts, taking a break from his burrito in order to join in on the fun. “I’m the one who introduced him to you, and now you’re like, obsessed with his dick or something,”

Jeongguk’s cheeks redden as the two men continue talking, like he’s not there.

“Wait, he’s Korean right? Jeongguk, I didn’t know you understood Korean,” Hoseok sounds amazed, considering out of the three, Jeongguk is the most American one between them. Even compared to Taehyung, who’s parents had been born in the states. They didn’t even speak Korean. Hoseok’s the only one, of the three of them, actually born in Korea.

“Nah, he doesn’t. His parents speak it to him and he just stares at them like he’s stupid. It’s kind of funny really,” Taehyung snorts, laughing over his drink. Hoseok joins in, and Jeongguk just huffs.

“It’s not my fault, they never taught it to me. Besides! I know some words!” He defends hotly. Hoseok leans over, smug expression on his face.

“Oh yeah? Speak Korean to me then.”

Jeongguk stiffens at this, but he’s not about to back down from this. So he thinks of something basic—the extent of his knowledge—and opens his mouth.

“Annyeonghaseyo cheoneun uli chingu geulub maknae Jeon Jeongguk-ibnida.”

Taehyung and Hoseok stop, stare at each other, and snort out laughter. Hoseok slapping the table and Taehyung wheezing so hard he chokes. Jeongguk doesn’t see anything funny about what he just said and just stares at them confusedly.

“What?”

“Is this how you plan to seduce Suga? With your cringey ass Korean? No, no this ain’t it,” Taehyung manages, trying to settle down. Hoseok gets up to toss his trash, already done eating. Taehyung reaches down, resting his hand on Jeongguk’s thigh.

“You’re not going to survive when we go visit my family next month.” he says, gravely. Jeongguk had forgotten Taehyung’s aunts had invited him to come to his family’s hometown to visit for the summer. And of course, Hoseok and Jeongguk were invited to. All expenses paid. Jeongguk’s anxiety decides to sky rocket at Taehyung’s statement, but then Taehyung slaps his thigh, grinning again.

“Just use with Google Translate.”

여러분 안녕하세요!

여기 스가. 당신은 모두 잘 먹고 내 비디오를 즐기기를 바랍니다! 다음 주에 새로운 파트너를 만나게됨에 따라 앞으로 몇 주 안에 새로운 콘텐츠를 준비하십시오. 그는 꽤 인기가있다. 하하. 너 모두 그를 많이 사랑하는 것 같다.

Jeongguk squints as he presses the Google Translate button to translate Suga’s tweet,

Hello all!

Suga here. Hope you’re all eating well and enjoying my videos! Prepare for new content in the coming weeks, as I’ve gotten a new partner who’s returning next week. He’s pretty popular haha, you all seem to love him a lot.

Impulse kicks in as he hits the retweet with comment button, furiously typing. Then remembering that Suga can’t speak English very well—he’d tweeted about it before and Jeongguk of course remembers—and for convenience sake, he translates it before sending it.

그는 스가 형을 만나기 위해 운 좋은 놈이다. 나는 그와 함께 밤을 보낼 것이다.

he’s a lucky bastard to get to meet suga-hyung, i’d love a night with him.

Of course, he knew to use proper syntax and call him hyung. Hoseok had taught him that word. He double checks to make sure it’s his NSFW account that he’s posting it to, and posts it. Hoseok would be very proud of his Google Translate skills.

“Jeongguk! Are you done packing!” Taehyung peeks his head in, sunglasses on his face. Jeongguk looks up from his phone, jumping as if he’d been up to no good—of course he has—and stares at Taehyung for a moment, processing what he’d just asked him, and then looks over at the two suitcases on his bed and his carry on bag, then turns back to Taehyung and nods.

“Cool. Okay, Hoseok is downstairs waiting on us to load up, so hurry please?”

“Yeah, yeah coming,” He says, pocketing his phone and moving to grab his things. His phone charger he stuffs in his carry on bag, and then he gathers other last minute things he needs. He then moves to grab his luggage, and follows Taehyung out the door and down to Hoseok, who’s gotten them an Uber to load their things in.

“You guys ready for Daegu?” He says, excitedly. Dressed quite comfortably. Taehyung’s probably the only one who’s actually seemingly dressed up, even in loose fitting pants. Jeongguk has some concerns.

“Hell yeah man, finally I’m meeting my fucking family. Mom and dad said they might tag along at some point, but honestly I doubt it,” Taehyung shrugs, tossing his things in the trunk. Jeongguk follows, but smiles and nods.

“I’m kind of excited to see what Korea looks like to be honest,” he then playfully shoves at Taehyung. “Bonus points I don’t have to really pay for anything,”

“Hey, are you telling me you’re only my best friend because I’m rich?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Oh, Jeonggukie. You wound me so,” He dramatically whines, then flops into the car. Hoseok and Jeongguk follow, Hoseok trying not to laugh at their dramatic display as the three of them pile into the backseat. The Uber driver seems nice, greeting them and asking them where they’re going. Hoseok, who’d bought the Uber, explains their situation—overshares more like it—and the woman and him converse the entire time. Taehyung’s on the phone with what sounds like a family member, speaking in dialect as he responds in Korean, very rarely using English. With his two friends occupied, Jeongguk pulls out his phone to check his NSFW account, hoping neither of them looks over and sees it’s a stan account. He sees he has a new direct message, but then freezes.

Oh man, holy shit.

He blinks, looks up and tries to buffer, then looks down at his phone again.

It’s still there.

It’s real?

Is he seeing things? Is this a prank?

No, because he knows, deep in his soul, that this is @_suugaa and he knows that he’s fucked.

“Guk you okay? You look pale, man.” Taehyung waves his hand in front of his face. Jeongguk blinks, then looks over at his best friend. On the other side, Hoseok is snoring away. Napping during their long flight, but he hopes its not that long. South Korea isn’t that far from Southern California.

“Huh? Yeah. I’m good,” He’s not good, and will probably never be good again. How can he, when his favorite porn star had not only liked his tweet, but had messaged him. Messaged him. Slid into his DMs. Jeongguk doesn’t understand why he’s suddenly being blessed and what he’d done to be blessed. Maybe it was actually a curse in disguise. Or maybe, it was an accident? He hadn’t even clicked on the message—he hadn’t even read it. Unsure how, when he’d seen the preview was in Korean and he really didn’t want to make a damn fool of himself.

Why had Suga messaged him?

“You sure? We can get you some water if you need it. You’ve never been on a plane before, right? Maybe you’re getting turbulence sickness or something,” Jeongguk feels bad that Taehyung seems genuinely worried about his well-being, but knows that if he tells him he’s about to cry because Suga messaged him, Taehyung would be on his ass trying to interact with Suga as well. He wasn’t that big of a fan anymore, but he still sometimes jacked off to him too. Jeongguk had heard him a few times.

“Yeah. I’m good. How much time do we have left before we land?” He asks, hoping that dropping the subject and acting natural would help. He really didn’t want Taehyung to know what just went down. Taehyung looks at his watch, humming.

“Probably about three or four more hours. It’s getting dark,” he points to the window Jeongguk is sitting near, and sure enough the sky was darkening. That jet lag paired with the time jump is about to be a bitch and a half, he knows it. Taehyung gets up then, quickly. Jeongguk looks at him quizzically.

“Gotta pee. Be right back,” he pats Jeongguk on the head, squeezing from between his seat and the one in front of him, then walks down the aisle briskly to get to the bathroom. Jeongguk watches him for a few moments, then looks over at Hoseok who’s still sleeping. Suddenly bored.

Suddenly wanting to read the message.

It wouldn’t hurt, right? Nothing painful about reading. Nothing at all. Besides, he had Google Translate on his hands. Thank God for the internet.

So, he makes the leap—the jump to open the message. He pulls his phone out and unlocks it with his face, then ventures back to Twitter, and to the cursed message. Hesitating as his thumb hovers it, but he takes in a deep breath. Don’t be a pussy, Jeon. He taps the screen, seeing the characters that Suga had sent him.

suugaa: 안녕하세요! 너 팬 이라구?

He stares at the message, understanding the greeting but hurriedly copies the sentence and switches to Google Translate.

suugaa: Hello! I see you’re a fan?

I beat my dick to you nearly every night, I hope that qualifies, is what he says in his mind, but it doesn’t see the light of day as a response so he keeps it generic.

jjk97: haha yeah, I watch you all the time.

He translates it then returns to the app, pasting it verbatum.

jjk97: 하하, 나는 너를 항상 지켜보고있다.

If Suga suspects he’s using Google Translate, he says nothing of it. He watches, nearly sweating as he waits for the read to pop up. If it’s night there, he should be up. yeah? He’d mentioned being a bit of an insomniac in a tweet once.

suugaa: 오? 내 비디오를 보는 걸 좋아해?

His response comes a few moments later, just as Taehyung returns, elbowing his arm and stretching with a yawn. Jeongguk hurriedly switches tabs.

“I’m kinda tired. You should sleep too, Guk,” Taehyung advises, but Jeongguk doesn’t think that’s a good idea.

“If it’s night in Daegu right now, should we really be sleeping? It’s gonna fuck up our sleep schedule,” he insists. Taehyung shrugs.

“Yeah, but then we can be up to go to a club or something. They’ve got karaoke places and stuff. Noraebangs. You’d enjoy those,” Taehyung mumbles, adjusting to get comfortable. Reaching for his bag between Jeongguk’s legs for his eye mask and neck pillow. Jeongguk mulls over the word Taehyung had presented to him in his mind, hoping he remembers it. And making a mental note to visit said karaoke places one night. They’d be there for a few weeks, so it should be fine.But Taehyung seems to be getting ready for a nap, a short one probably, and Jeongguk ceases his protests.

“Wake me up when we land, if you don’t fall asleep,” He asks, pulling the eye mask over his eyes and placing the neck pillow behind him. Jeongguk nods, though he can’t see him.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks man.”

suugaa: oh? so you enjoy watching my videos, huh?

Laying in bed, he stares at the message. Panting, sweaty after seeing Suga’s latest video. Not the blonde from last time, but a taller male this time. Vocal too. Hot Teaching Assistant Neighbor was his title. His mask was bright red—matching the color of his cock as Suga edged him. Matching his lips from Suga kissing him. Jeongguk honestly hadn’t expected Suga to fuck someone of the Hot Teaching Assistant Neighbor’s caliber—model-esque—but he had and had done it so well Jeongguk came twice. Taehyung’s in the shower and Hoseok had left to pick up food for them. Taehyung’s family had gotten them an AirBnB for their stay, and Jeongguk had shamelessly christened his room. But he could hear Suga saying this in his head as he’d watched it, oddly in English. And oddly, Jeongguk came a lot more than normal. He can hear Taehyung loudly singing some song in Korean from the shower, since his door was open, and sighs to himself as he tries to clean himself up a little. Knowing his shower was next and he really needs it.

suugaa: 최신의 것을 보았 니?

The notification of a new direct message comes up with this as the message, and Jeongguk twitches. Hurrying to copy it and paste it into Google Translate.

suugaa: did you see the latest one?

He can answer this well, but uses Google Translate again.

jjk97: 예, 정말 좋았어요.

yeah, it was really good

The next response comes a little faster than anticipated, which startles him.

suugaa: was it? did you get off from it?

Suddenly, he needs Taehyung. Or an adult. Wait, he’s an adult. Shit. He lays there, staring at the message, before trying to fathom a response. Going back to translate it and sends it.

jjk: 네

yes.

jjk:실제로 두 번

twice, actually.

Suga replies quickly, yet again.

suugaa: 네

yeah?

suugaa: 당신은 트위터에서 나와 개인 세션을 갖는 것에 대해 언급했습니다.

you mentioned getting a private session with me in your tweet.

suugaa: 한국에 살고 있니?

do you live in korea?

So, routinely, he returns to Google Translate, before throwing his phone across the room, sitting up and screaming bloody murder. Prompting the shower to stop and Taehyung to run into the room, soaking wet and towel clumsily wrapped around his hips. A shoe in his hand.

“Guk! Guk are you okay?” He yells, eyes wild. Looking around frantically with a murderous look on his face before he settles on Jeongguk’s shell shocked form. Sitting up in just his boxers, staring at the wall. Eyes wide and lips parted. Taehyung sighs, relaxing, but walks over to Jeongguk carefully. Jeongguk says nothing and doesn’t even react. He starts to mumble under his breath though, unintelligible. Taehyung doesn’t understand it, but he does smack the younger on the cheek, once softly then harder the second time until a hand reaches up and tightens around his wrist. Jeongguk swallows, jaw setting. Slowly, he turns to look up at Taehyung, eyes blank.

“Suga wants to fuck me.”

suugaa: 나를 Line에 추가해주세요.

feel free to add me on Line then

suugaa: myg1993

Jeongguk stares at the piece of information he’d been entrusted with, knowing that he will forever cherish this moment, this conversation. This time in his life when the Suga is interested in his ass. Glory, glory hallelujah. He switches over from Twitter to Line, quickly adding said man to his friends list. The icon is quite sexual; a picture of his hands, hiding what appears to be his dick. Bless the Lord above. Jeongguk is being fed and nothing had even happened from this just yet.

jeonbunny: hi

jeonbunny: it’s jjk97 from twitter

jeonbunny: is this suga?

He’s reminded of the fact that Line has automatic translation when Suga responds after a few moments.

myg1993: oh hello

myg1993: oh nice username haha

myg: very cute

He’s not blushing. He refuses. Him, Hoseok, and Taehyung are out shopping and he refuses to give away that he’s texting Suga. Last night was hard enough, as Taehyung relayed the events of the night to Hoseok when he’d gotten back, and the eldest had choked on his noodles from laughing. Jeongguk found nothing funny, but his not-so-secret secret was out. Which is why they were out shopping.

“Listen, Guk, thank goodness you’ve got me and Taehyung. We can’t let you meet Suga looking like you do,” Hoseok says but doesn’t even look at him. Jeongguk is moderately offended—they’re always talking about how he dresses but he has the ability to wear nice things other than his hoodies and sweats. Or large shirts and skin tight pants. He sees Taehyung pull out a pair of leather pants, holding them over to Jeongguk’s hips to check them, then to his own. Him and Taehyung do wear each other’s clothes sometimes.

“These will flaunt your thighs nicely. And after, you can wear them clubbing and pick someone up,” Taehyung grins, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“Speaking of that, I saw a club on my way back last night. We’ve got to check it out,” Hoseok points out, holding a silk shirt. Jeongguk can tell he’s going to buy it.

“A club?” Taehyung’s eyes sparkle. Jeongguk takes this moment to pull his phone out, seeing he had forgotten to answer Suga back, and while Hoseok and Taehyung discuss clubs and hotspots, he secures his dick appointment—if one could even call it that.

jeonbunny: haha thanks

jeonbunny: also, sorry for not responding, out with friends

jeonbunny: and no, I’m not from korea. i’m here with friends on a vacation

He then checks Twitter, exiting from the direct message page, then sees his parents texted him. He answers them telling them he’d made it fine and was enjoying himself. Perhaps enjoying himself too much, but that’s none of their business. It’s not like he’s doing anything illegal. To his knowledge.

myg1993: so you’re a foreigner?

jeonbunny: yes and no, my parents are korean but I was born in america

He hopes that Suga finds that attractive. He;s screwed a few men of varying ethnicities so he hopes that him being American isn’t a turn off. Truly, it would be an honor to be denied by him even, but he;s sure Suga is interested because if he wasn’t, would he have really given him his Line information? And from what he knew about usernames—which wasn’t a lot but that’s fine—this was a personal account. He might be reading too far into this, but why give him a personal Line account to contact? Unless, this wasn’t his personal? Jeongguk is confused.

The rest of the day is uneventful; more shopping and more gossiping. More embarrassing Jeongguk about scoring a hookup as soon as he got to Korea and more jerking off in his bedroom while the others did their own thing. The day turned to a week, and their first week had quickly passed in the city. By this time as well. Suga and Jeongguk were working out meeting times. Confirming that yes, Suga wanted to sleep with him and film it. Jeongguk wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but it was Suga. Automatic free pass.

myg1993: are you with your friends right now?

jeonbunny: one is sleeping, one is meeting with his family

myg1993: how about tonight then?

Jeongguk spits out his milkshake, but his fingers are frantic in their typing. It’d been a week, yeah, and he was a bit more comfortable with this. So he assumes it’s fine.

jeonbunny: will my identity be protected?

Considering the fact that Suga seems to take great care in protecting identities—even though the masks they wear are half masks—he was sure this question was a little stupid. Suga doesn’t make a comment about it though.

myg1993: yeah, you’re fine

myg1993: I even have the perfect mask for you

Had he really picked out a mask for him already? Had he been planning this? Jeongguk’s really curious, but he’s been sharing kinks with Suga in the week they’ve been chatting, as the other had asked and Jeongguk was either stupid enough for eloquent enough to share them.

"Have you packed everything you’d need?”

Taehyung helping him pack for the “appointment” with Suga reminds him of a parent sending their child off for school. He’s got a backpack in his lap—Jeongguk’s—and carefully adds things to it. A toothbrush, lube. Condoms. Toothpaste. There’s an extra change of clothes in there, then another outfit for tomorrow. Jeongguk doesn’t find that part necessary, but whatever. He might need half the stuff Taehyung’s throwing in his back anyway.

“Yeah, I think so,”

“Also, make sure to keep your phone charged. You’re in a foreign country and you don’t know anyone here. Other than me and Hoseok. Don’t call an Uber, call us. We’ll get there faster than an Uber,” he says, and Jeongguk believes him. Hoseok is a great driver, but will drive like a bat out of hell if he needs to.

“Gee thanks mom.” Jeongguk snorts, but Taehyung ignores him.

“Did you prep yourself?” Jeongguk drops his phone and whips his head around at Taehyung as if he’d slapped him.

“Why are you asking me—”

“You and I both know you’re a bottom and Suga is very much a top, so it’s kind of important that you’re a little prepared for this so that he doesn’t have to spend 84 years stretching your ass open,” Taehyung deadpans. Jeongguk squats to retrieve his phone, bucking and feigning throwing it at Taehyung who’s look of deadpan morphs into an innocent smile. Jeongguk doesn’t like Taehyung right now.

“Well, it’s settled! You’re all set then, come on I’ll drop you off.”

He knocks on the door when he arrives, a little nervous all of a sudden. The apartment complex isn’t far from their AirBnB, and Taehyung had lingered a bit, asking if he needed to follow and make sure that he got in safely. Jeongguk insisted he didn’t need that, so Taehyung had bid him farewell, once again reminding him to keep his phone charged in case he needed rescuing. Jeongguk really doubted he’d need it, but promised him he would.

The door opens a few moments later, and Jeongguk isn’t expecting the face he sees at the door.

Well, maybe a little since he’s seen half the man’s face before, but isn’t aware of how attractive he is until now. He’s always been attractive, but wow.

“Oh, hello,” He greets. The man—Suga—stares at him a little weirdly, causing Jeongguk to stare back. Confused as to why he wasn’t responding. He thinks for a moment, before realizing something.

“Oh! uh, annyeonghaseyo,” his parents had at least taught him this, which he adds a bow to. Ducking his head politely but not bend at a 90 degree angle or anything.

“Annyeonghaseyo. Jeonbunny?” The way he pronounces his Line username makes his stomach all gooey. It’s kind of cute, and he almost doesn’t answer.

“Jeonbunny,” he points to himself, affirming the statement. Suga seems pleased with this, stepping aside to allow him inside.

He steps out of his shoes, leaving them at the door. Suddenly a bit nervous because he doesn’t speak Korean. It’s honestly broken and poorly worded, and he’s sure at some point he’ll say something completely wrong. The man walks ahead of him, starting to talk but Jeongguk is lost and doesn’t understand a thing. Suddenly this wasn’t a good idea. He feels like he’s catfishing the porn star.

“Uh, Suga?” he calls, already whipping his phone out. Suga turns to look at him, curiously. He then points to his phone, typing something up in Google Translate, and allows it to translate for him.

“Naneun hangug-eoleul jal moshabnida.”

Suga looks a little surprised at this, but then laughs, nodding his head. He points to Jeongguk’s phone.

“I speak. . .little English? Not much,” he comments. Jeongguk’s ready to drop to his knees and give thanks that he can at least speak a little. That’s manageable. “Might need this,” he points to the phone again. A lot more understanding that Jeongguk had anticipated. He honestly anticipated having to call Taehyung and explain that he’d catfished a porn star and that Suga was no longer interested. But clearly, this wasn’t the case.

“That’s fine, here,” he hands the phone off to him, and Suga takes it. But doesn’t immediately go to use it.

“How is your Korean?”

“Minimal.” Jeongguk answers. Suga looks a little perplexed by this.

“Minimal?”

“A little. I’m not very good speaking it,” he explains. Suga nods again, then decides to use the phone to type his next phrase.

“You’re very good looking.”

The flush in Jeongguk’s cheeks is very noticeable. “Ah, gomawo?” This earns a smile from Suga, who simply says “cute” and turns to walk away, beckoning Jeongguk to follow behind him. Typing away on his phone.

“Are you excited?”

“Yeah,”

“Good. Me too,” he speaks that part, and a shiver runs down Jeongguk’s spine. What the fuck. “Your name?”

“Oh! Jeongguk. Sorry,” he apologizes. Suga points for him to sit on the bed, which he does as the shorter man moves to get everything set up.

“I’m Yoongi. Call me that, not on camera,” he warns. Jeongguk is honestly a little taken aback at how casual and considerate he’s being—not that he didn’t expect it, but it’s not what he’d had in mind. For some reason, he expected to be ambushed at the door. Not greeted and spoken to. Not a conversation.

“Nervous?” Yoongi asks again, coming over with a camera on a stand. It’s smaller, they both are, and he figures this is going on the bed.

“A little. My first time on camera,” Yoongi hums at this, clucking his tongue.

“Not bad. Your looks are really good for it,” he compliments. Jeongguk wants to crawl into the mattress and hide.

There’s silence for a few more moments as Yoongi gets set up, Jeongguk looking around the room and examining it. It looks like a room he’s seen in a few of Suga—Yoongi’s—videos. It’s almost surreal he’s sitting in the same room, in the same bed that Yoongi has had raunchy sex in with a multitude of people. Every inch of this apartment, in Jeongguk’s mind, is sacred. This place is truly a holy place. He feels dirty just sitting on the bed. Unworthy. While he’s processing the situation, Yoongi returns, sliding in front of him and pressing a mask against his face. He doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything as Yoongi fixes the mask on him, snapping it lightly behind his head to secure it. Wearing a mask of his own. Then leans in, pressing a long, searing kiss to Jeongguk’s lips, causing the boy to stiffen.

“Relax.” he mumbles against his lips, pressing into him. Pushing him backwards to lay flat on the bed, straddling his lap. He reaches for Jeongguk’s phone, typing furiously into it.

“Don’t bother trying to use Korean. My English is decent enough and I want you to be comfortable. Just tell me to stop if something gets too much and try not to say my name and I won’t say yours, okay?” it’s not Yoongi’s voice, but rather Google’s, and it’s not sexy but the care Yoongi is showing for him overrides the weirdness of Google’s voice.

“Okay?” Yoongi quirks an eyebrow, waiting for an answer. Jeongguk nods.

“Okay.”

Yoongi seems satisfied with his answer, then proceeds to lean down and press his lips against this again. He knows the video will be edited, posted in clips on Twitter and full length on Yoongi’s personal site, so he hopes to look appealing at least for it. Which isn’t hard, because Yoongi is a great kisser, and Jeongguk feel himself relaxing the longer it goes on and progresses into a heated tangle of tongue and teeth—him getting a little bit too eager to shove his own tongue down Yoongi’s throat. But he allows it, chuckling huskily into Jeongguk’s mouth at the show he’d given. Moving his hips to grind down against the growing erection he’s already beginning to sport. But really, who could blame him when he’s got a lap full of the Suga?

“You’re hard? So quick,” it sounds a little like a taunt, but it’s mostly a breathless observation as the lips on his mouth move to his cheek, to the angle of his jaw, and down his neck. Lips and teeth, careful yet calculated sucks. Yoongi’s being careful which he’s thankful for, knowing he didn’t want to pop up around Taehyung’s folks covered in hickeys and love bites from a random hookup. The mask shielding the top half of his face is a little sticky as it’s made of a latex material it seems, and not very breathable. He’s sure he’s going to be covered in sweat by the time they finish.

Not that he’s complaining.

Hands move to slither up underneath his shirt. Cold, slightly calloused hands. One runs over his nipple and his back arches on instinct. Begrudgingly, he must admit, he’d found the sensitivity in his nipples and seems to fixate himself on that for a moment. Moving back so that he can help Jeongguk get out of his shirt, then tosses it away and returns to planting kisses over the expanse of his pretty neck. Paying close attention to how Jeongguk sounds when he brushes a finger against one of his pink nubs. How he struggles to hold his sounds in even with Yoongi’s careful, barely there touches. Jeongguk, meanwhile, is torn over if he wants him to stop or keep going. Momentarily hating this curse but also relishing in it.

Particularly when Yoongi’s lips wrap around a nipple, wet tongue lathing over it. Flicking and providing a gentle suction, before he gets a little hungrier, mouth matching the hand giving attention to the other nipple. Jeongguk can’t resist the moans that bubble out of him, nor can he resist bucking his hips up in desire. It’s pitiful—they’ve just started and he’s already aroused just from having his nipples played with. Yoongi pulls off with a wet pop, moving to the other nipple and using his hand on the wettened one, twisting and tugging at it with fluctuation between his teeth and lips, hands and fingers. Jeongguk is in heaven and it shows.

“Like that?”

“Y-yeah, a lot,” he answers truthfully, lips parting in a silent moan at one particular, coordinated flick. His back bows a little as he squirms beneath Yoongi.

“Cute. So cute,” he praises as he pulls back again, removing his own shirt. He’s careful with the mask, as he had been with Jeongguk. It’s escalating moderately quickly, but he knows it never lasts long, the videos. Never longer than an hour, but he hopes they do this more than once. Yoongi moves then, climbing off Jeongguk briefly to readjust the cameras, then slithers back onto him, this time moving his legs apart so that he was between them. Hands ghosting up the younger’s thighs and admiring them in the leather pants. Mentally undressing him. Jeongguk feels a little vulnerable, though knows if he wants to he can easily maneuver himself to be the supposed dominant, but resists. It’s not his place right now.

The hands on his thighs move up to his torso, over the definition of his abdomen. A little soft from the frequent Taco Bell visits and lack of motivation to hit the gym, but Yoongi says nothing of that. Just stares in wonder at his abs. Reveling in them. He mutters something in Korean that Jeongguk doesn’t catch, but then he’s starting to undo his pants, leaning up to steal a few quick kisses from Jeongguk’s mouth, palming at the tent forming in his pants as he starts to fully undress him.

“O-oh God, oh my God,” he heaves, gasping and looking down. Watching how Yoongi bobs his head down the length of his cock. Rapidly, roughly. He can hear the gagging noises as he goes too deep, but says nothing. Yoongi just pulls off, regains his breath, and goes back down. Jeongguk feels like he’s reaching nirvana. He’s close, so close, but then Yoongi pulls off, and replaces his mouth with his hand. Lazily jerking him off while licking the precum off his lips. Staring down at Jeongguk with hazy, dark eyes. He can see them through the black mask, seeing that Yoongi is hungry for him.

It makes him feel like a caged animal.

“Gonna cum?” he asks, thumb brushing over the slit at the head of his cock. Jeongguk rapidly nods, whimpering as he feels his orgasm getting closer and closer, but before he can release, Yoongi’s hand tightens over the base of his dick. But this doesn’t stop the way Jeongguk’s body jerks, twitching as a frustrated noise comes from him.

“Not yet,” Yoongi cooes, voice saccharine. Jeongguk is not used to orgasm denial and can’t say he likes it, but he does like how Yoongi moves to grab a bottle of lube, then removes his hand. Motioning for him to turn over and get on his stomach, which he does a little slowly. Mind and body not cooperating at the moment.

“Hy-hyung that’s mean,” he complains, earning a slap on the ass from Yoongi’s hand. It’s unexpected and startling and makes his heart nearly leap out of his chest. But he likes it. He soothes the angry skin after the smack, shaking his head.

“Be quiet,” he knows a command when he hears one, and shuts his mouth quickly. Moving around a little and grabbing a pillow to lay under his head. Getting up on his knees and spreading them apart a little for better leverage. Arching his back and waiting expectantly. But when he looks back, all he can see is Yoongi admiring the sight with his eyes. Followed by the cool jelly of the lube. He hisses from it, wishing he’d had some form of warning, but Yoongi quickly follows up with his fingers, brushing one against Jeongguk’s hole experimentally. Only ghosting the rim; not pressing in. Jeongguk’s hands fist as he struggles not to rock back into Yoongi’s hands, seeking to feel good again like before. But Yoongi leisurely rubs against his pucker, pressing his thumb against, only to withdraw when Jeongguk’s hole tries to suck it in.

“Greedy. How greedy,” he chastises, smacking at the opposite cheek from before before spreading his ass apart with a hand on each cheek.Sighing in delight at the sight.

“Greedy for hyung, yeah? Want hyung’s cock?”

“Yes,” he pleads, almost exasperatedly.

“Yes?”

“Yes hyung.”

“Good boy,” the praise makes Jeongguk feel warm inside and he probably won’t admit it, knowing he doesn’t have a praise kink. It just feels good—that’s all. Feels even better when he finally does let Jeongguk enjoy a finger. Just a finger at first, but Jeongguk’s huffing. I can handle more, he wants to say, knowing he had in fact stretched himself out prior to coming here, but wasn’t about to blurt it out. Though deep down, he wanted to get spanked again.

Another finger is added, causing Jeongguk’s arch to increase a little, and causing him to rock back against the two fingers Yoongi begins to work in and out of him. Pressing against his and scissoring as they fuck him open a little more. Really, he should be annoyed at how he’s acting, but he can’t help it. Especially when Yoongi finds his prostate, basing it on the octave of Jeongguk’s moans, and how he reacts. It’s not hard to find, and easy to abuse—Yoongi finds this out as he presses both fingers to it. Withdrawing them a little and thrusting them back into the fullness of his ass. Rocking them, scissoring them. Jeongguk is weakly fucking back on them at this point. The orgasm from before is creeping up on him so fast he can taste it.

But then Yoongi withdraws his fingers.

Jeongguk really whines then, tempted to throw a childish tantrum, but another swat at his ass cheeks shuts him up momentarily, and he feels something prodding at his hole. It slides in easily, filling him up and causing him to stiffen out of instinct, but once Yoongi’s fully sheathed inside of him,he stops. Briefly just rocking into him. Rolling his hips and kissing along his spine and the back of his neck. Muttering against his skin, but Jeongguk has no idea what he’s saying. Out of instinct he glances over at one of the cameras, but there’s a hand in his hair that pulls at his head, then shoves it into the pillow underneath him. Yoongi seems pleased with this new development, satisfied that Jeongguk wasn’t staring into the camera so blatantly, and pulls out a little, only to shove back in roughly. Groaning and pulling a rough noise from Jeongguk that’s muffled by the pillow. He does it again, this time rolling his hips against the plushness of Jeongguk’s ass when he thrusts in, settling there for a little. A smug expression on his face.

“You feel so good, tokki,” he cooes. Jeongguk knows exactly what he’d just said—his grandmother called him tokki sometimes because he apparently resembled a rabbit—but it had never been used in a sexual setting. Until now, that is. He grasps the pillow and sighs into it, rocking back when Yoongi’s hips meet his ass again, but then he’s yanked by his hair to sit up, Yoongi still inside him and starting to speed up his hips. Less slow less sporatic. It’s a little rough and unexpected, but he doesn’t complain. Doesn’t complain either when Yoongi brings his face up to his ear—Yoongi’s a bit shorter and slimmer than him but in that moment Jeongguk feels smaller—and groans filth into his ear. He may only know a little English, but it seems he knows enough dirty English. Some things Jeongguk himself haven’t even heard; he’s absolutely filthy and Jeongguk loves it a little more than he’d like to admit.

“So good, so good, fuck,” a hand slithers down to grasp at his cock, still stiff from earlier and still sensitive. It ghosts over it, but Yoongi doesn’t do much. He seems to be wanting to drag this out a little, but Jeongguk kind of wants to cum at least once.

He fucks him like this for a bit, spurred on by Jeongguk’s noises of pleasure. Feeling his body shaking with each thrust, hearing how he begs for him. He figures he can grant him a little something, and wraps his hand around his cock for him. Other hand in his hair to hold him up still as he shows little mercy. Jeongguk really thought Yoongi would be sweet despite knowing Yoongi is always a little rough with his partners, but the kindness from earlier had really thrown him. Despite the hand in his hair, Jeongguk starts to lean forward a little, Struggling to stay up, struggling to either buck into Yoongi’s grip or rock his hips back to fuck back on him. His brain is confused, he is confused, and doesn’t quite know how he should do this. Should he ask or more?

Yoongi surprises him by pulling out, rather quickly. Slapping his thigh gently and loosening his grip in his hair. Jeongguk flops forward when the hand wrapped around him moves too, face hitting the pillow. He can hear what sounds like Yoongi laughing lightly, but then hands are at his waist. At first admiring it, but then guiding him onto his back. Which he does, rolling over and staring up at Yoongi’s face. Not expecting to make eye contact, but he does.

“You’re good?” He asks, checking on him. Jeongguk appreciates it though.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he nods, assuring him he’s fine. Yoongi nods at this, and moves between his legs again. Grasping his own dick and sliding it back inside with a grunt. Holding Jeongguk’s legs open and starts up the same rhythm from before. Jeongguk throws his head back and curses loudly, gut twitching from the pleasure of this new position, finding he likes it better than the first.

“H-harder! Harder please!” Jeongguk’s reduced to shameless begging. Yoongi’s holding himself up on his forearms, hovering over Jeongguk, who’s struggling to not be a loud mess underneath him. Eyes closed as he enjoys how Yoongi seems to use him selfishly. Said man smirks down at him, leaning down for a quick kiss, though his hips keep moving. Jeongguk tries not to tighten his legs around the elder’s waist too much but it’s hard. He’s close, Yoongi’s kissing him open and sloppy, and he’s pretty sure that Yoongi’s not going to deny him this time. It feels like they’ve been fucking for hours, but it’s probably only been maybe 45 minutes since they started. Neither of them seems to mind this though.

“Harder? You want it harder?”

Jeongguk nods, but Yoongi doesn’t seem to act initially. Instead, he pulls back, adjusting again but doesn’t pull out. He sits between Jeongguk’s legs, spreading his out underneath Jeongguk’s

“I think you want to cum too?” Yoongi’s voice drawls out lowly. Leaning back on one hand while the other is used to hold one of Jeongguk’s legs open. Honestly, Jeongguk wasn’t sure how Yoongi managed this long without cumming, considering Jeongguk had been close many times during this. Maybe Yoongi has better stamina than he does.

“N-no,” he complains. If he cums, he knows it’s over. This doesn’t appear to be the answer Yoongi had expected, and he rolls his eyes.

“You wanted to before? Why not now? You lying to hyung?”

Jeongguk has never shook his head so fast in his life. But he’s not lying, yet doesn’t know how to convey that he doesn’t want this to end, so he doesn’t want to cum. Not yet.

“So you want to cum?”

Jeongguk simply whines in frustration, but doesn’t say anything. Yoongi takes this as a yes, and nearly laughs at the sight before him. Jeongguk, sweaty and obviously wound up. Obviously he wants a release, right? Yoongi believes so.

“Okay,” he says simply. The way he says it alarms Jeongguk, dread filling him as he feels Yoongi grow a little lazier with his thrusting from this position, but his hand wraps around his cock yet again, making up for the lack of speed in his ass by pumping him a little roughly. Knowing that it’s what he’d wanted all along. Jeongguk squirms, lips parting as he moans loudly. Unable to hold back. Simply laying there, struggling to come to terms with what was happening and mentally cursing Yoongi’s existence, though Yoongi seems none the wiser. Watching him as he brings him closer and closer to his release, but this time he doesn’t clench around the base of his cock when he does start to spurt cum all over Yoongi’s hand. His chest heaves, back bowing as it gushes out. Legs trembling as it dribbles all over Yoongi’s hand, all over his lower abdomen. The thrusts inside of him stop as well, matching the way Yoongi strokes it all out of him. Seemingly satisfied. When he’s done, he lets go, watching as Jeongguk’s flaccid cock flops into the puddle of his own spunk. Yoongi doesn’t try to clean his hand at all and instead, as Jeongguk manages to lean his head up, pulls out of Jeongguk’s ass and uses his cum as slick to get himself off.

Oh. That’s hot.

Yoongi’s hand flies over his own erection, Jeongguk getting a good look at it and silently admiring it in person—he should’ve sucked him off earlier, pity—and jerks a little when Yoongi does cum. It doesn’t take long for him to do so, surprisingly, but he aims at Jeongguk’s abused hole. Panting as he paints it with his release. He softens, but it doesn’t stop him from pressing the head of his dick into Jeongguk’s hole, getting out the rest of his release and watching it ooze out of the younger. Transfixed and hating he had pulled out. Well, next time he wouldn’t.

“Pretty International Bunny Bottom? Damn Jeongguk,” Taehyung whistles, staring at the latest posts on Yoongi’s page. “Wait, how many videos did you make with him?!”

“Like three I think. We hooked up a lot, honestly. Sometimes we didn’t even record.” Jeongguk admits, feeling that this was probably common knowledge. They’re on the plane back, and he’s curled up beside Taehyung. Head on his shoulder as he stares at Taehyung’s phone, watching him scroll through the porn star’s page. Jeongguk was wrong—there were four compilations of him on Yoongi’s face. Something that didn’t happen, considering they were back to back as if Yoongi hadn’t slept with anybody else other than him or given anyone else other than him the time of day during the month that they were in Daegu. It was kind of weird to think about, and Jeongguk is a professional over thinker so it makes sense, but he doesn’t want to think too deeply into it. He probably liked Jeongguk’s ass. His own phone buzzed, causing him to pull it out and look at the notification.

myg1993: videos are up

myg1993: too bad you had to leave :(

It makes him sad too that he had to go back home, considering when they weren’t having sex, Jeongguk really did enjoy just hanging out with him too. Weird, but true. Yoongi was just a cool person, overall. No questions asked. He unlocked his phone to reply, frowning a little.

jeonbunny: i’m watching them right now with a friend

jeonbunny: yeah i know :(

Taehyung side eyes him, growing curious. “Who’s that?”

Jeongguk jumps, but locks his phone. “Oh, uh I met someone while we were in Daegu,” it’s not a lie, but not the whole truth. It’s all he needs to know, but he regrets it when Taehyung waggles his eyebrow.

“Oh? Jeon you sly dog,” he playfully punches him in the arm. “I see you, I see you,” he leans back into his seat, cackling as he continues to scroll through on his phone. Jeongguk pouts, glancing over at Hoseok, who’s chatting with some guy named Namjoon that he’d met at the airport on their way back. Hoseok had made a friend, why couldn’t Taehyung make a friend too?

“I need to pee,” he announces moments later, moving to get up and heads towards the bathroom. Too quick for Taehyung to say anything. When he gets there though, it’s occupied. Causing him to sigh, leaning over on the other side, against the wall. Yoongi seems to have read his message, but hasn’t responded. Which Jeongguk thinks nothing of, honestly. He figures that he’s probably sleeping or editing or doing something else.

"Sorry,” he hears when the door across from him opens and a person emerges, nearly bumping into him. He opens his mouth to apologize, but then his eyes go wide when he recognizes the person.

“Yoongi?”

Yoongi turns, looking at him and blinks. Then laughs.

“Wow, hey Jeongguk,” he says, casually. But pats his arm. Jeongguk’s mouth is dry.

“I didn’t know you were coming to America?” he says, stupidly. Suddenly, he no longer has to use the bathroom.

“Oh, ah. My family live in California. I’m visiting,” he thinks about his words then says them, and Jeongguk knows this, but also knows that he’s a lucky bastard that Yoongi’s family lives in California. He has no idea where in California, but apparently they’re in California and he’s in California and Yoongi’s in California—

“You wanna go out sometime?”

He can’t believe he’d blurted that out.

“A date?” The question has Jeongguk going beet red. Taehyung, Hoseok, somebody save him. “A date, sure,” he finishes, then turns and walks in the opposite direction.

“See you!” he hears, then makes his way into the bathroom. Locking the door and deciding to sit there on the toilet. Staring into space again.

A date with Suga.

He’s going on a date.

What are the odds?

↬ x.

[ part two ]

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#camboy yoongi #college student jungkook #bts fic #bts fics #yoonkook fluff #yoonkook drabbles

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helshades · 5 years

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French prompt! How does one look at être and arrive at fut? (I know "verbs of being" are notoriously unruly, but this was a mystery for me, even though my own language cobbles the tenses from two separate verbs, neither of which have all tenses.) Broader prompt: what used to be the point of passé simple and how did it become "the storybook tense"?

One of my mother’s favourite puns is the following: On ne peut pas naître et avoir été (’One cannot be born and have been’), a play on an old saying, On ne peut pas être et avoir été (’One cannot be and have been’) meaning that one simply cannot live at once in the past and in the present. Grammatically speaking, this isn’t entirely true, though: the French passé composé, like its equivalent the English present perfect, is trying very hard. When you think of it, ‘I have been doing this for the last five minutes’ is telling exactly that: one is performing a continuous action that began some time in the past and is still going at the moment. Every single French pupil learning English was subjected to the example of the vase that one has broken, and is consequently still broken at present. French has one time like this, known as the ‘compound past’, which technically works in the exact same way, except it has come to be used everywhere, replacing even the French equivalent to the preterite, or past simple, to the point that no one uses the French preterite anymore aside from the only people who may get away with reading as highly literary, which isn’t a lot of people nowadays. Children’s books rarely do contain verbs conjugated in the past simple anymore; in (junior) high school, students are only taught the third person of the singular and of the plural for ‘important’ verbs, and a number of people have been pushing for the complete eradication of a tense which they deemed ‘elitist’ for being more complicated than the compound past, which only requires one to know the present-simple forms of auxiliary verb avoir, ‘to have’, plus the past participle of the verb concerned by the action.

Of course, French students used to have no particular difficulty in learning conjugations, no matter how detailed; only, for a few decades now people deeming themselves progressists have imposed new teaching methods based on a supposedly ‘intuitive’ approach to knowledge as well as a downright utilitarian idea of the language itself—what isn’t useful in everyday life will never be of use, and can therefore be dropped altogether. French isn’t taught systemically in French school anymore, grammar rules are generally glossed over and since learning by heart is strongly frowned upon conjugations are more than imperfectly mastered, not to say anything about the basic principles of syntax. Today, it is estimated (by international tests also) that about one third of students enter junior high school (at age 11) without knowing how to read, or write, their own language. Parents usually riot if teachers seek to correct children’s spelling or enunciation, and after each national exam now students take to Twitter to complain about the difficulty of the exceedingly simple tests. In this context, it is very hard to know whether or not the passé simple is meant to fall out of usage definitely—but I suspect it won’t before long, as a matter of fact, as it already serves, along with other grammatical notions, to separate those who do master their own idiom from those who don’t.

In any case, concerning the structure of the simple past and its meaning, I’m reminded of a remark that famous French linguist Émile Benveniste made about the simple past: like narration, in which it is almost exclusively employed, the simple past is non-deictic, whereas discourse as well as the tenses used in it are deictic, meaning they are anchored in the ‘situation of enunciation’, the frame of the dialogue. Being outside the deixis, the simple past operates somewhat remotely from the event which it describes, inducing an impression of temporal and/or spatial distance with it. Quite frankly, it’s hard not to make a parallel here with the postmodern obsession with immediacy and its deep-rooted hatred of the long term...

Speaking of long-term things!

How does one look at être and arrive at fut? Well, that is a splendid question, reaching far into the history of the French language, and in truth all Indo-European languages since they all have the quirky habit of mashing up the conjugations for several verbs expressing slightly different aspects of an action and deciding that they are to be only one verb now—usually, an auxiliary, and the results are just wild. But let’s get a closer look at the conjugation we’re dealing with, here:

You’ll note that I didn’t include (amongst other things) the four tenses of the subjunctive mode, to avoid being too long as I only aim to draw a few explanatory comparisons with Latin, but just in case, I’ll remind you that the present goes que je sois (sois, soit, soyons, soyez, soient) while subjunctive imperfect goes que je fusse (fusses, fût, fussions, fussiez, fussent). And now, hoping you didn’t run away screaming and flailing, I propose a little comparison with the equivalent Latin tenses:

Please fawn over my pedagogical abilities. Once that is over, please note how the conjugation of être was mostly constituted in Old French (from the 9th century onwards), bar a few interesting exceptions, such as the concurrent forms in the future: the older stem, er- or ier-, directly evolved from Latin. Linguists theorised that the stem that ended up in modern French, in ser-, is actually a syntagmatic construction taken from the Latin infinitive (es)sere to which were added special endings borrowed from the conjugation of auxiliary avoir, to have. Romance languages all form their future synthetically. For instance, ‘we will love’, nous aimerons, is literally nous aimer-(av)ons. (Compare to Spanish cantaré, ‘I will sing’, which is cantar + hé.) Where être is concerned, the ser- stem replaced the original infinitive after too many speakers dropped the beginning of infinitive essere, especially in the first person, and a full tense ended up being constituted from that model (hence the ‘syntagmatic construction’ I was mentioning earlier: it didn’t evolve so much as it was reshaped to accommodate usage).

If you know a bit of Latin, you might have frowned upon the infinitive essere, since the classical verb is esse. Esse was a pretty archaic form to begin with, although it was actually conjugated regularly; the -s had mutated to an -r between two vowels in most other verbs pretty early in the evolution of the language, and that is where the French infinitives (-er, -ir, -re) come from. But esse remained unchanged, probably because of its particular role as an auxiliary. On the other hand, in Vulgar Latin, which was Latin as it was spoken by regular people, the strange infinitive got hypercorrected, ‘regularised’, into essere, after getting mistaken for a stem. And since Romance languages are mostly stemming from popular, late-era Latin, rather than the literary language... In Italian, the infinitive is still essere. In Spanish, it evolved into ser. In Occitan, into èser. The t of estre is, as you can see, a French particularity; it’s purely epenthetic, meaning it was only added to ease the pronunciation of the word, in this case after one of the vowels dropped: esre > estre.

The participles of être, however, both in the present (étant) and the past (été, ayant été) don’t come from any version of esse, any more than the imperfect tense, since its Latin equivalent was eram. They come, instead, from an entirely different verb: stare, which evolved into Vulgar Latin estare, which in turn became Old French ester, and which meant ‘to stand, to stay’. Well, it’s actually the origin of verb ‘stay’ in English, which was borrowed from the Old French. In modern French, you’ll find its descendant as rester, ‘to stay, to remain’.

And this is where we come to our strange Latin stem in fui-, and its French equivalence in the simple past. Now where does that come from?! Well, my dear Tatty, it is the last remnant on an archaic verb issued from an Indo-European root °bheu- meaning ‘to grow’, ‘to become’. It’s why the auxiliary in English is ‘to be’, actually! (Proto-Germanic °beuną > Old English bēon > Middle English been). In most languages this Indo-European root gave words beginning in b-. The exceptions are Sanskrit (bh-, with a strong aspiration), Hellenic languages (Ancient Greek φύω, phúô) and Italic languages, where it ended up being pronounced as an f, hence fui. In passing, the original meaning of the Indo-European root, ‘to grow’, has been preserved only in Greek φύσις, phúsis, ‘nature’—hence ‘physics’. Morphologically, though, the root is present everywhere in Indo-European languages, starting with the word ‘future’ itself.

A major difference between Latin (and Greek) and Germanic languages, however, is that fu- in Latin possessed in its meaning the idea of veering towards the completion of an action, but that was expressed differently in the future (participle) and in past-tense narration; eventually, the future aspect was dropped from the language altogether, and all that remained was the stem’s perfective value (the idea of accomplishment, of a done and over thing), which serves to explain how the fu- root came to be specialised in Romance languages as a form destined for the simple past/preterite/perfect tense. (In Germanic languages, the past is defined by the idea of staying in one place, whereas the enunciation is characterised by a general idea of ‘aiming towards’.)

In guise of a conclusion, I heartily recommend the Wikipedia article on the Indo-European copula, which is long and bountiful and makes a few salient points on the topic of this fixture in all Indo-European languages that is a weird, weird little verb corresponding to the English to be, and it tells a lot on the way languages get shaped.

#i had to revise #i thought it'd be short and fun and then i got lost in the meanders of philology #and it was beautiful #and then i proceeded to write #since it's now 2 in the morning i'm not entirely sure all of it makes sense #believe it or not i wasn't that giving on the details #so it could have been way brainier #i'll have you know #la linguistique c'est chic #french language #etymology #grammar is fun #answers #thatiswhy

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wardoftheedgeloaves · 6 years

Text

Of Sound Laws, Shortcuts and Sloppiness

I want to expand on Tocharian Irredentism’s last post regarding the decline of historical linguistics (as it’s short, I’ll quote it here in its entirety):

I don’t know what it’s like in the hard sciences, but my impression is that, past a certain point which we may or may not have already reached, the rate of progress in historical linguistics wouldn’t change much with the addition of more manpower because you need a lot of motivation and brainpower to do it right, and to the extent that anyone with those qualities isn’t already there it’s because academia is a raw deal nowadays. Adding more people would probably just result in more ‘work’ like Blevins’s Indo-Vasconic, where many of the proposed IE etymologies are straightforwardly wrong, or premature internal classification, or ~computer-aided statistical methods~. There are only so many people who are going to bother to learn four languages or spend years doing fieldwork on Malaria Mountain, especially since you could instead bung together some computer program and golly would you look at that, Japonic must be related to Ainu and Korean!

A lot of science is sort of fake, and if you add more people who are just going to do fake science, you’re not going to get anywhere – and it’ll be harder for the people who aren’t doing fake science to find each other, keep up with the papers, and so on, since the signal-to-noise ratio will change unfavorably.

What could increase the rate of progress is improving access to information. UPSID was useful, PHOIBLE is useful, Index Diachronica could end up being useful and that was put together by random people on a forum. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit! But how well does academia incentivize doing the infrastructure stuff? In many fields, not so much.

...............

About a year ago I had a conversation with a guy who was doing his doctorate at one of the top grad programs in the US for linguistics. He explained solemnly to me that the reason it was Important always and everywhere to transliterate Greek into the Latin alphabet was that otherwise the literature wouldn't be accessible--accessibility being the lodestar of linguistics (and other fields more broadly) in our modern age.

Never mind that many, many, many of these articles and monographs are paywalled at exorbitant prices. It's self-evident to me that transliterating Greek into the Latin alphabet in an article that costs $29 for any non-academic to look at isn't about "accessibility" at all, and that anybody who thinks it is is either blind or willfully disingenuous.

But more broadly I think the whole "accessibility" obsession is symptomatic of a broader loss of...it's not rigor and I want to make it clear that I'm not accusing the wider linguistic community of lack of rigor. It's something else. I think there's a big difference between how historical linguistics is done and how many other forms of linguistics are done, that this difference runs very deep, and that both the obsession with "accessibility" and the decline of good historical linguistics are symptomatic of. Consider the way theoretical syntax or sociolinguistics are done. You have a broad theory (minimalism, X-Bar, sociological observations about code-switching or class differences in language use), and you fit a case study into it: A Minimalist Analysis of the Syntax of Guaraní; Gender Differences in Spoken Egyptian Arabic; Class and Language Use in Brazilian Portuguese; The Morphosyntax of the Nivkh Verb (A Generative Approach). The case study is generally fairly self-contained and, although obviously references will be made to the existing literature (if you're doing a Minimalist analysis of Burmese, you'll probably be referencing a Minimalist analysis of Yoruba or Kurdish at some point), it's a case study: fit language A into theory B.

I don't say this to imply that these approaches aren't intellectually rigorous or valuable--they absolutely are! But they break down in the face of historical linguistics, where to figure out why a particular form in Celtic appears to show a lengthened grade it helps to be able to reach into the back of your head and pull out an obscure paradigm from Luwian or Tocharian, or where to explain why a particular word almost but doesn't quite fit the known sound laws you want to be able to rack your entire mind for neighboring forms looking for a dialectal borrowing or analogical reshaping. And if you can't find the form in the back of your head, you'd better have the patience to rummage through five or six dictionaries until you have a good picture of what might have happened. It is not a field that lends itself to doing anything quickly, by halves, or with corner-cutting, and it encourages, indeed almost requires, the ingestion of hundreds of individually meaningless factoids about individual words, sound changes, or morphemes--each factoid nigh-useless on its own, but enabling the historical linguist to make incisive and wide-ranging analyses by bouncing from factoid to factoid in one's mental or physical library until a slightly less murky picture emerges.

This is the fatal flaw in the fashionable attempts at macro-comparison exemplified by Blevins' attempt at Proto-Indo-European-Euskarian (a lengthy title--Indo-Vasconic works just as well, surely?) or the Automated Similarity Judgment Program. By not putting in the tedious spade-work of individual analysis at the word level the new approaches are doomed to see connections that aren't there and miss connections that are. An example from Blevins' newly published monograph on Indo-Vasconic is a proposed reconstruction *okho:

I won't comment on the Basque lemmata--I know very little about Basque. But PIE *ko- 'together, with, by' must have had a palatovelar, as Lithuanian sù (with unexpected depalatalization, but a clear etymology) and OCS съ readily attest--but PIE *ḱ goes back to *khi- in Blevins' PIV.

How about Tocharian oko? Here's Douglas Q. Adams' Dictionary of Tocharian B on the matter:

Probably cognate to "acorn", from a form *h₂ógeh₂- or thereabouts, with reshaping here and there. But under Blevins' framework PIE *g must go back to PIV *g.

Or take this entry:

But Greek τῑμή can't be from *t- anything; *t before *i *u or their glide counterparts yields σ in Greek (compare Latin tū with Greek σύ and Sanskrit tyájati with Greek σέβομαι. (Should I be writing all my Sanskrit examples in Devanāgarī? Perhaps, but there seems to be less of a tradition to do so--and there's certainly no such tradition for Tocharian). Instead τῑμή must be from the zero-grade of *kʷeh₁y-, probably with laryngeal metathesis, in the same family as τίω 'I honor'--on this Beekes and Chantraîne are in agreement. The development of the Greek consonants is hardly an obscure matter--the palatalization of the labiovelars before front vowels and sigmatization of *t before high ones are well-known.

Now it is all very well to propose "I think I'm right about these words, and the established etymologies are wrong, and here's why." But Blevins doesn't do that. τῑμή and oko indeed look like the other forms to which they are connected, but it is well-established that they are not related at all. Well-established etymologies are of course overturned from time to time. But you cannot overturn a consensus judgment without confronting it, and the consensus judgments here are not even mentioned.

And what of the Automated Similarity Judgment Program and similar attempts to do historical linguistics by bringing in Big Data, the Delphic oracle of our time? Anything a human can do, a computer can do faster; and insofar as the goal is to draw surface-level connections between similar-looking words that will fall apart upon closer inspection, these programs may be said to be successful indeed. Consider the way the ASJP codes sounds (Appendix C): all the sounds of the world's languages have to be mapped onto 41 characters. But the groupings are not made with reference to what sound changes and correspondences are actually found. For example, <i> is used for all four of /i ɪ y ʏ/ and their lengthened versions; but /y/ corresponds to /u/ in related languages far more often than it does to /i/, because /y/ derives from /u/ much more often than from /i/ (consider French, Ancient Greek, Dhegiha Siouan, Germanic umlaut, and California English). By using a simplified toy model of phonology with little reference to what actually happens, the deck is going to be stacked in bias of certain sound shifts and correspondences before the cards are even dealt. But the broader problem is that same as that seen in Indo-Vasconic above: historical linguistics does not deal in chance resemblances but in the historical derivation of lexemes and morphemes. A computer program is doomed to ring true on English bad and Persian بد (bæd), English day and Latin diēs, PIE *h₁ed- 'eat' and Mongolian идэх; it's similarly doomed to ring false on wheel and cakrá-, day and foveō, hear and ἀκούω.

Of course, you can always give it extra information, telling it to undo Grimm's Law with Germanic data, for example. But where does that extra information come from? It comes from the tedious nuts and bolts of real historical linguistics, thumbing through dictionaries, making lists of misbehaving words, for which there is no substitute and never will be.

Real historical linguistics is hard. Real historical linguistics is tedious. Long live historical linguistics, and long live historical linguists, who can't be replaced by computers--not until the computers are really reading through dictionaries and thinking about reshapings. More broadly, I think both the Indo-Vasconics and the Big Data-driven approaches are driven by the desire to make historical linguistics work more like generative syntax, the application of a theory to a well-defined, self-contained case study.

I'll leave everybody with a quote from the inimitable Ives Goddard's 1981 article Against the Evidence Claimed for Some Algonquian Dialectical Relationships (bolding mine):

The problem with Proulx's claim is that it is made without any explicit formulation of what the historical rules are that are taken to derive the attested languages from the protolanguage. But to do comparative linguistics by making reconstructions without formulating the subsequent historical developments that convert them into the attested languages is completely invalid, since the reconstructions are not ends in themselves and are only as valid as the histories that they imply. It is a widespread misunderstanding to consider the comparative method a method for reconstructing protolanguages or proving languages to be related. It is not. It is a method for doing linguistic history.

And that is the crux of the issue. To connect Basque okho to Tocharian oko, or to propose linguistic relationships based on a computer's similarity judgments among a list of forty words picked from the Swadesh list, without reference to the real historical work on the languages involved, is like asking a computer to write a history of the United States based on a random subselection of the literature while ignoring out a vast field of very important work on the subject. It wouldn't fly in history and it shouldn't fly here.

(A final word on transliteration of Greek? It's an OK norm to adopt, I suppose, if you're really concerned about accessibility. But I remain convinced that it's not really about accessibility. Rather--and this is a very unusual attitude for an academic to have--there are a lot of linguists who for some reason just don't want to learn how to read the Greek alphabet. I agree that there's a bit of Eurocentrism and arbitrariness in that e.g. we traditionally transcribe Sanskrit and Tocharian but not Greek or Cyrillic; but it is what it is. And much more often accessibility is made more or less possible not by the format of what is being written or even by paywalls but by the literature on which the subject is founded. There simply is no doing comparative Indo-European at anything approaching an academic level without knowing the Greek alphabet or indeed being able to make your way through an article in German, with a dictionary if need be. Absent a monumental effort to translate and transliterate two hundred years of literature, that won’t change.)

#linguistics

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