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#only thing is i should have made them both start w consonants and end w s
new-babel · 1 year
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Log 4
This log I'll be trying to get back on track. I mentioned this in the last post, but this log will be mostly cutting down things. This experiment is already proving to be a learning experience, as I have learned something: Aesthetic goals should be aimed at, not added at the beginning.
I sculpted my phonology and stress system off of the end result of Latin. However, this would mean that as I changed the language, it would end up resembling Latin less and less.
As such, this log will detail changes I am making to the "proto-language." Keep in mind that the end result of this language will hopefully end up more like the system detailed in previous logs..
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This was the original intent, and while I am fine with it, I am going to be starting with something different, and aim for this as an end point.
This will be the beginning phonology.
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The changes involved are as such: No aspiration (the little H's,) and no W (the normal sized W.)
I plan to slowly morph this language's phonology into the final phonology by: 1) slowly aspirating the appropriate consonants, and 2) using phonetic changes to force diphthongs starting with "u", and then turning them into syllables starting with "w".
As for the phonotactics, I am going to leave it unedited. It will stay the same.
Now, this won't mean that Babellian phonotactics will stay the exact same. The first phonology I made will be for Babellian (relatively) shortly after launch. As the population travels in the clouds, the language will evolve further, drifting from the Latin-like tongue the spoke during launch.
As this is a more meta log, this is a good time to mention a concern/announcement. This language was meant to be an starter conlang to practice with. However, I am starting to realize that I aimed too high, and am struggling with balancing the basics with the more complicated elements of conlanging. This isn't something I can also retcon, lest I lose almost all of what I wanted for this project.
I have decided that I will temporarily abandon this project in favor of simpler side projects, and return to this when I have both more time and more skill. Announcing a hiatus is odd when I have only written 4 real logs, but I feel like it would be best for this language.
Farewell.
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regulushq-archive · 3 years
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if i ever say oliver and javier what i mean is remus and sirius shut up
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atmo-spherique · 3 years
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Kaminoan: Phonetic Inventory and Counting System
While discussing clone things with @daitoshi​, they offhandedly mentioned the weirdness of the number of clones in a batch (and incidentally the general structure of the GAR). Apparently this was all the inspiration I needed to decide I was going to create base-4 counting system for the Kaminoans. 32 clones per batch seems pretty random, but it is just 2 x 16 (2 x 4^2), so in a base-4 system, it’s no more random than say 200 (2 x 10^2) is in base-10. Base-4 also ties in thematically with DNA irl, so that’s fun for a bunch of cloners!
I’ve put together a guide to my process and rules for the enjoyment of all. And by enjoyment, I mean frustration because this counting systems it incredibly upsetting.
We normally assume most human counting systems are base-10 due to our (standard) number of fingers. How the heck to do count to four with three fingers, then?? Well, this is how Imma say the Kaminoans count on their fingers:
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Does it make sense? I guess. Does it seem probable? Not really. But the joy of conlanging and worldbuilding for aliens is you can always just be like, “Whatever, their alien brains are built differently.”
Anyways, we’re gonna want some names for these numbers, so we gotta come up with some mouth sounds to represent them.
We do not have a lot of canon (or legends) words for Kaminoan stuff, and what we do have is of course plagued by the same issue that every collection of made up words in SW suffers from: absolutely no internal consistency. Okay, well maybe there is some internal consistency, so let’s look at what we got:
PEOPLE
Taun We Lama Su Kina Ha Ko Sai Nala Se Erla Halle Burtoni
PLACES
Tipoca Timira Derem Baran Wu Su Des Slici Tal An Glascretia Razoral
STUFF
aiwha nahra
AIWHA POD STORY
Protas Melkorr Kikla Thalina iiaa oii sso uded
DAITOSHI
Sre Len
Taun We, Lama Su, Nala Se: these are iconic of the vibe I want the phonetic system to embody. So, what features from this data set should I keep for the phonetic inventory?
I dismiss Glascretia and Razoral outright since they have a very “fake English vibe.” Same with Protas and Melkorr, since they just seem to be plays on Proteas (Greek myth) and Melkor (Tolkien) respectively. Also, I throw Halle Burtoni right out the window because every other Kaminoan we meet sounds like their name came from the same language. What the heck happened here?? Whatever language she’s named in, it’s not the one I’m building.
Get rid of thalina, too; I don’t like the <th> just because. Additionally, I’m not sure what the <h> in nahra represents (is it silent? pronounced? part of a digraph with <r>????), so we’re gonna ignore it for now. Finally, the terminal <d> in uded doesn’t fit the vibe I want to go for. I consider keeping the terminal <s> in Su Des but eventually decide against it.
From Tal An and Erla, I decide that approximants can occur finally.
I take <c> and <k> to represent the same phoneme.
For absolutely no good reason, I have always assumed the <wh> in aiwha was inspired by Maori, so I’ll count that as one phoneme. However, I decide to have all approximants have a voiced and voiceless form. So, I end up not using the Maori rendering anyways.
Great, overall we’ve got what looks like it could be a very CV syllable structure. In order to match the vibe I’m going for, I won’t complicate that too much.
We have several C<l> consonant clusters, so we’ll say that it can occur initially. And since we said all approximants can occur finally, we’ll just say all approximants can occur in this position, too. Plus, since I’m mostly just doing this project to amuse Daitoshi, this also allows for their OC’s name to be permissible in the system.
Now, what is going on with these words from the Aiwha Pod short story?? Suddenly double letters. Okay. We’ll say <a> and <i> have long forms, and then we’ll say <u> does as well for a more balanced system. Same with <s> and then <h>, again for balance. Do these words represent diphthongs? Meh. I’ll say no, they’re bisyllabic because I want them to be.
After all that, we’re left with :
m /m/ n /n/
p /p/ b /b/ t /t/ d /d/ k/c /k/
s /s/ ss /sː/ h /h/ hh /hː/
lh /l̥/ l /l/ rh /ɻ̊/ r /ɻ/ wh /ʍ/ w /w/
i /i/ ii /iː/ u /u/ uu /uː/ e /e/ o /o/ a /ä/ aa /äː/
ai /äɪ̯/ au /äʊ̯/
(C1)(C2)V(C3)
C1 = -approximant if occuring in cluster
C2 = +voiced approximant
C3 = +nasal or +voiced approximant
Yay! Let’s work on naming some numbers now.
We’ll obviously want unique names for 0-4. Additionally, the number 9 is very significant in the GAR; squads consist of nine troopers, so every other division ends up divisible by nine. Cool, let’s give 9 a unique name and let it play a role in counting. I also give 36 and 144 unique names, thinking of things like “dozen” and “gross” and “score” in English. Aside from these, we’ll want the various powers of 4 to be something simple.
Futz around with the phonemic inventory, maybe drop it into a word generator, and here are the unique number name around which all other numbers will be based:
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And there you have it! The basics, at least. I’ve worked out the names of number 0-64 with which, as long as you know the powers of four, you can work out any number you’d like up to 206 billion~!
Additionally, I decided to create a numeral system (I mean, it’s only four characters, so why the heck not?) very loosely inspired by the structure of the DNA nucelobases (adenine, guanine, thymine cytosine), so here’s that:
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And here is a list of the names of all of the numbers through 64! The general rule is simply that if the smaller integer appears first, it is multiplied by the following. If the larger integer appears first, it is added to the following. Aside from a few of the earlier numbers, it’s pretty regular! 9 lends its name to its multiples, and of course 36 (and 144) have unique names, as mentioned above. After hitting 64, the numbers repeat (the same way that they do in English after 100).
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*both rai hhel and kwado lho are used, though the latter is rarer
Aaaand for examples in this system, I thought I’d convert some clone designations into it :3
Rex 7567 → 1312033
each digit: lho hhel lho kwa abo hhel hhel
full number: rai hhelto lho whenau kwaiil hhelte hhel
abbreviated: tehhel tekwa abo hhelte hhel
wooooow you can immediately see why they wouldn’t go with base-4 designations haha
Fives 5555 → 1112303
each digit: lho lho lho kwa hhel abo hhel
full number: rai te lho whenau kwaiil hhelrai hhel
abbreviated: telho tekwa hhel abo hhel
maybe we will just call him “Telhon” in Kaminoan :)
Cody 2224 → 202300
each digit: kwa abo kwa hhel abo abo
full number: kwate whenau kwaiil hhelrai
abbreviated: kwate dokwa abo abo (or perhaps “abora” for “double zero”)
I accidentally made his name start with “Kwate” which sounds enough like his nickname I suppose :)
And that’s it! If you read this far, um, thanks (unless you’re Daitoshi: curse you for inspiring me to create this). idk why you would, but anyone is welcome to use this for whatever purpose. Would love to see what you come up with if you do, though, so hmu~! ;)
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pumpkinpaix · 4 years
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anonymous:
I just discovered your mdzs pronunciation stuff and it's super helpful!!! Especially to an english speaker, it's so helpful to hear everything pronounced slowly! Would you ever consider doing more but on Chinese basics? Like tones, or differences between similar sounds? (But please don't feel obligated! Just a suggestion bc I find your pronunciation super helpful :) 
hhhhh the file was too big for tumblr :’) even after I exported it at medium instead of standard quality, so i made a soundcloud after all aha.... it’s downloadable, even!
anyways! chinese school with cyan? :D transcript with helpful links under the cut.
previous chinese pronunciation posts with pinyin if you want to go back review them armed with new knowledge to practice: mdzs names 1, mdzs names 2
rough transcript (brackets indicate things i didn’t say but wanted to add as a note, or laughs lol):
hello everyone! okay, so I’m going to make an attempt to do some basic pinyin, I guess, a basic pinyin post? so the goal is by the end you should be able to hopefully! look at basic pinyin or any pinyin word and get a general sense of how it might sound. this is not comprehensive, and you shouldn’t take it as such,  but i hope you might be able to get a good foundation out of it? I don’t know, just for sort of, a basic general overview.
I’ll use some MDZS words or names or whatever to I guess keep it fun as examples? But the rules should be generally applicable across the board. This is geared towards native English speakers because that’s what I am. I am not a linguist, just a layperson, so I’m going to be explaining like a layperson.
So, this is pinyin with cyan! chinese school with cyan. horrible, I thought i escaped this [laugh] oh, all those horrible saturdays. [all sounds will be read with first tone unless otherwise indicated]
okay, so, I’m going to do the basic vowels first. there are five so it’s: a o e i u ü
so I’ll do that a — oh wait, no there’s six, oh gosh! okay. bad start! so there are SIX basic vowels: a o e i u ü
so i’ll do that one more time: a o e i u ü
so there’s actually a seventh vowel sound, but we can get to that in a minute. it’s not included in the orthography.
so ü is usually the hardest for native english speakers since it doesn’t exist in english, but a friend of mine recently explained it really well. so if you say “ee” just like, “ee” like in creek or something like that, then shape your lips as if you’re saying “oo”.  so if you speak french or german, it might be easier for you, those are just the two languages I’m familiar with. the ü is the same as the ü in german, like in die Tür, in french it’s just like you know, la lune, mur, etc.
basically say “ee” then move your lips until it looks like you’re saying “oo” — eeeeeüüüü or you can do the opposite, you can say “oo” then move your tongue as if it’s saying “ee” so: ooooüüüüüü. ü. and that’s basically it.
so now i’m going to do the initial consonants. that’s all the vowels. but the initial consonants, the consonants, or the consonant sounds that can start words, there are… well there’s not that many, but I’ll go through them really quick. there is an order, and every consonant is associated, every initial consonant is associated with a natural vowel sound and they come in groups. the order that i learned them in is this:
b p m f • d t n l g k h • j q x • z c s zh ch sh r
[repeated slower]
b(o) p(o) m(o) f(o) • d(e) t(e) n(e) l(e) g(e) k(e) h(e) • j(i) q(i) x(i) • z(i) c(i) s(i) zh(i) ch(i) sh(i) r(i)
I think the official one [the official order, i mean] might have the z c s and the zh ch sh r switched, but it doesn’t really matter they’re both in the same group. so you’ll notice that there are only four naturally associated vowels: o e i and ï [not sure if this is technically the right way to write it, but it’s convenient for illustrative purposes here].
so ï is the one that’s with the z c s, zh ch sh r group. I also think this is a pretty hard vowel to pronounce for english speakers, but i don’t really have a handy way of explaining it. i’ll try though!
so for things like the z c s sounds: say “sss” like you would in english. “ssss” then change your lips to the way you say “ee” and then vocalize without moving your tongue. so you can also produce this sound without changing your lip shape, but doing so will kind of force it, or make it easier to find I think. so ssssssi. sssssi. so that was me doing the whole process with saying ssss and then moving my lips and then vocalizing. but i can also do it with my lips rounded. “si”. that’s me with lips rounded, but having the lips wide like that helps i think
[or you can just vocalize “zzzzz” like in “buzz” or “jazz”. that zzzzzz sound gives you the vowel you want. that probably would’ve been an easier way to explain it haha.]
for the zh ch sh r sounds, to get that, you can say “juh” like how you would say j, a j sound in english, so it’s “juh” but dont’ say the “uh” just stick to the “j”. so that’s the zh sound. “zhii” just like hold it. then ch sh r. I don’t know, I think that’s pretty intuitive once you get those.
in terms of the consonants that i think that are difficult, they are d, j q x and z maybe? so i’ll go over them.
so d taps the palate in english, “duh”, “duh”. the d sound, it taps further back on the little bump [on the roof of your mouth] there, but it taps on the teeth in chinese. I think it’s a non-aspirated t sound? so say “tuh” but then instead of having that breath, just take that out. “de”. it’s a non-aspirated t, it taps in the same spot. so that’s the d, the “de” sound.
j q x, it’s the same sort of things, if you stretch your lips, I think i helps to move it into the right space. so instead of “juh” it’s “ji”. “ji”. “ji ji ji ji”. “qi”, “xi”. the q has the “ch” sound, but instead of sitting so far in the front, it sits a little further back [in the mouth]. instead of “ch” which is the ch, it’s “qi”, which is moving further back. and same with “xi”. instead of “sh” it’s “x”. i don’t know if that helps [laugh]. but instead of “sh” it’s “x”. so “xi”.
again, instead of “ch” it’s “q” and instead of “sh” it’s “x” [laugh]
[I forgot to talk about z oops. it’s basically a combination of d and z in english: “dz”. like the end of “hands”. that “dz” sound.]
okay, so, you can start a word with any of the vowels, any of them can be initials, but some of them will change orthography when they’re at the start of a word. so i think it’s pretty intuitive, but a o e all stay the same. but the “i” sound, the i, turns into a y, the “u”, the u, turns into a w, and the “ü”, the ü turns into yu. so “yu”.
okay, so that’s all the initials! that’s it! that’s not too bad.
okay, so now I’m going to start doing the finals, like the ends of words. you can end any word with any of the vowels, but I’m going to include them anyways because it’s in the table. i just copied this table from wikipedia because it’s i think pretty intuitive and clearly stated. they show both how the sound would be written as a full word and how it would be spelled when it was attached to an initial. so basically what i just talked about regarding changing orthography when you start a word with vowels, things like that.
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[link to table in wikipedia]
okay starting with the first row, I’m pretty sure this is ï. the i sound that i said was difficult:
[row 1]
so I’m going to do that again. I’m going to do each one twice and then we’re going to move onto the second row.
[row 1 repeated, each sound twice]
okay, now the second row:
[row 2]
so we’re going to do the same thing again, twice each:
[row 2 repeated, each sound twice]
okay, and the third row:
[row 3]
and again, twice each:
[row 3 repeated, each sound twice]
and then the final row:
[row 4]
and then one more time, twice each:
[row 4 repeated, each sound twice]
okay so that’s it, that’s all the finals I think.
so I think -(i)un/yun is probably one of the harder sounds, the -un with the y at the beginning, the -iun? “yun”, with the umlaut. I don’t really know how to explain how to pronounce that one, but you know it’s the… yun [laugh]
okay so a note on u vs ü. when a word begins with j q x or y, and it’s followed by a u, it’s automatically be pronounced as ü even though it will not be marked. so here are some examples.
names like Ā’Yuàn: yuàn. it’s a ü sound automatically, and it’s not marked in the orthography. or Yú Zǐyuān. yú zǐ yuān. same thing. and then with something like in hánguāng-jūn, jūn, the j the “ji” combined with the -un becomes “jun” like the “yun” sound. or Jīn Zixuān. Xuān. Xuān. it’s the ü sound.
so an example of the same final spellings but with different initials. like the yuàn in ā’yuàn — you can see it automatically changes to an ü pronunciation, but spelled the same way the -uan ending, but you have a different starting consonant that’s not one of the exceptions, so “le” — so in luànzàng gǎng. luàn. it’s “u”. luàn. and then for like yú, yú zǐyuān, yú, instead of the ü, in jīn rúlán, rú, rú, it’s the “u” sound, and they’re marked the same way.
okay! yeah that’s pretty much it. that’s like all the basic sounds in chinese, I’m pretty sure. [laugh] it’s not actually that hard. i mean, it’s obviously hard, but there’s not as many sounds as you expect, or it’s less complex than you might think.
so obviously now we have to deal with tones. i know this is the one that everybody finds really scary, but i actually i know it’s easy for me to say because i’m a native speaker, but i actually think they’re very intuitive and easy to hear, as tones go. it’s gonna be fine. anyways, we’re gonna get through it.
here is how i remember tones: I do it with a cadence. and i literally sometimes have to go through this cadence on words when i’m not sure how to identify what tone they are. this is how i learned it, my grandmother taught me this, you know, i mean, it’s very standard, but:
ā á ǎ à
or hummed it’s: ¯ ´ ˇ `
and then I’ll do it again:
ā á ǎ à
¯ ´ ˇ `
so yeah, i really do sing it sometimes when i’m trying to figure out or remember what tone mark goes on something, I go dūh dúh dǔh dùh [laugh] over and over again until i figure it out.
and yeah, that’s it! they’re pretty intuitive, they follow the path of the tone, or the shape of the tone markers. so you can see the ā is flat, the á goes up, the ǎ goes down and then up, ǎ, and then à, the fourth one, just goes down.
so whenever you’re writing a tone mark on a word, they always go on the last vowel UNLESS there’s an a or e present. those always take precedence. I’ll spell out a couple of examples in the text.
[EXAMPLES: hào not haò and méi not meí, but jiù]
[laugh]
so i will go over, um… okay, i think my dad’s having a meeting downstairs, so maybe you’ll hear him in the background, but okay, the last thing i will go over a couple of sandhi rules, just a few! this isn’t all of them, i think there might be five? but i’m just going to do the three that are most relevant or the most commonly seen I think, or the ones that I think about that will trip you up most likely, i think, when you’re pronouncing things.
so the one that everybody knows, or the one that everybody teaches first, i think is the two third tones in a row will cause the first third tone to turn into a second tone. so for example, in Yílíng Lǎozǔ. “Láozǔ”. the two characters by themselves are lǎo and zǔ, but because they’re right next to each other, it becomes láo, second tone, “láozǔ”. [NOTE: the pinyin will still be spelled as lǎozǔ. you will just automatically read it aloud as láozǔ] so instead of “lǎo zǔ”, it’s “láozǔ”.
and then, the second thing that a third tone does is that a third tone that is followed by anything that is not a third tone drops to a thing that is called a low tone, I know i said there are only four, but this is… here’s an example. [there is also the soft tone, which is kind of the absence of tone, but I’m not going to talk about it here haha] in liǎnfāng-zūn, jin guangyao’s title.
liǎnfāng-zūn, you can kinda hear it doesn’t really rise again at the liǎn, liǎn, liǎn, by itself it goes down up, like a valley, but when it’s followed by the rest of the title, liǎnfāng-zūn, it just kinda sits at the bottom and then jumps back up. liǎnfāng-zūn, liǎnfāng-zūn, it just kind of sits at the bottom as opposed to coming back up, so it’s still. it still follows the same curve, it just doesn’t quite come back up i think
i actually had to look that one up, because I was like. oh is that real? i hadn’t noticed it.
but the third tone on its own is just the third tone, so for example, in xuē yáng’s courtesy name, xuē chéngměi, měi, you can hear it there, it comes back up—oh birds!
so xuē chéngměi, měi. dǔh. [laugh]
[LOL I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE THIRD SANDHI RULE I WAS GONNA TALK ABOUT. you can read about it in the link to sandhi rules i’m going to post at the end of the post.]
so yeah, that’s pretty much it actually! hooray! I’m sure, I mean, chinese is a whole language, so it’s complicated, this won’t really get you to a point where you can read pinyin entirely, but i think those are like the basic rules that i use when i’m reading pinyin, but of course, i’ve been reading pinyin for a really long time, that was the primary way i engaged with chinese text for many many years because i was illiterate! i’m still pretty illiterate, but that’s okay. i’m getting better! but yeah, so like i said, this isn’t comprehensive. if it was horribly confusing, if there was stuff in it that just didn’t make any sense, you can ask me questions! I will try to answer them. my brother’s coming home today, and i’ve been using his desk to record because his room has been empty, so i’ll have to figure out something else. but for now, um, yeah!
okay, bye. :)
/end transcript
okay!! so here are the promised links:
tone sandhi rules
very useful interactive table where you can click on sounds to hear them read aloud! (linked to me by @nerd-bastard​ thank you so much!)
obviously the wikipedia page is very good, though it’s a little dense
@tonyglowheart​ sent me a thread of someone reading out mxtx names on twitter here! the reader has a different accent than i do (they say they sound like they’re from the northern mainland. i would guess my accent is probably closer to something near shanghai? since I learned pronunciation from my grandmother, and then of course tempered by my american upbringing)
I would probably recommend going back to the other pronunciation posts I made to see a variation of sounds written out with different tones? i feel like that would be helpful!
anyways WOO thanks for your patience, it’s been a minute. brain’s doing kinda oomf these days, but we’re gonna make it :’) state of the world is. something.
normally i would just link my ko-fi here, but this time, i’m going to say check out my donations tag or do your own research into someplace more in need to put your money instead. :)
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happyandticklish · 3 years
Text
Never So Sweet A Dream As Laughter
Summary: Ronan keeps dreaming of feathers and he can only hide the reason for so long before Adam discovers why.
Ronan had been dreaming of feathers lately.
At first it was only one, barely noticed except that it was pure white, a color so opposite Chainsaw that it couldn’t possibly have come from her. Days went by, however, and the amount grew so that sometimes he woke up surrounded in a blanket of them, brushing them off irritably.
He always cleaned them up before anyone could notice.
As far as he could tell there was nothing special about these feathers, nothing significant about them that made them stand out as a dream thing. They were simply feathers, all different kinds after that first one, some stiff and velvety and other soft with frayed edges. Some had dots on them, freckled with color, and some were bright and exotic.
The only special quality they held was that Ronan couldn’t look at them without blushing.
He knew why they were there and that was the reason why he could never let anyone see them. He had been dreaming also, lately, of Adam. This wasn’t unusual in and of itself, only the manner in which he did. Adam, lying on his back, bare-chested, curls crushed against grass or a mattress or whatever else their setting was that dream. His head was thrown back in laughter, sweet, melodious laughter, caused by the simple touch of a feather drawn softly across his skin by none other than Ronan himself.
Fuck.
It was getting more and more difficult to be around Adam now, as the only thing he could think about when he saw him was the sight of his naked body writhing and laughing under Ronan’s soft touch. Adam joked and teased and kissed him like normal, unaware of this strange secret desire that Ronan harbored. Sometimes he spent the night. It was harder to explain the feathers then.
“Dreaming about pillows,” he explained when Adam woke up surrounded by feathers as well, one eyebrow raised at the mess. “Big ones. Big enough to suffocate you with. Haven’t quite got it down yet but I’m working on it.”
“Ha,” Adam said, a single consonant by itself that said Ronan was full of shit but he wasn’t going to pursue the issue if Ronan didn’t want to talk about it. So they didn’t. They cleaned up the feathers and stuffed them in the trash, and Adam joked that they really could make a pillow if they wanted. Ronan kissed him because he had learned recently that kissing was a very effective way to shut Adam up.
The dreams, however, their desire unfulfilled, began to grow more ambitious in their designs. One day he woke up with handcuffs. Handcuffs and feathers. He hadn’t known a way to explain it so he only shrugged when Adam asked him, throwing the handcuffs in the trash as well. Adam didn’t ask him again, but now his eyes remained on him, a piercing gaze that Ronan found himself unable to hold in return. They cleaned up the mess again and went about their day, refusing to acknowledge the reality of the situation.
Eventually things grew to be too much and when Adam woke surrounded by feathers for the fifth time that week he turned to Ronan and demanded, “Talk to me.”
Ronan, groggily, sat up and shoved off a pile of feathers. “Fuck off.”
Adam circled his wrist with his fingers, not quite grabbing, a gentle insistent tug so that Ronan finally looked at him. “Hey,” he whispered, not pitying or demanding, just a quiet noise for Ronan to focus on. “Ronan.”
Ronan held his gaze a second longer before diverting it to a wall across from them, able to either look at him or talk but not both, not at the same time. “I’ve been dreaming about tickling you.”
Adam was silent. He was half-tempted to look back, and the desire grew to a needy itch that he forced himself not to scratch. Finally Adam said, “Oh.”
Neither of them moved or spoke. Ronan could feel energy, red-hot like molten iron running through his veins, and he wanted to bolt, to run, to blaze through a whole fucking marathon and never come back. He didn’t.
“I’m not going to,” Ronan assured him, a bit too quickly. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”
He finally looked at him because if he didn’t he was going to explode. Adam was holding a feather between his fingers, staring at it and twirling it ruminatively. He grabbed Ronan’s hand, placing the feather there and closing his fingers around it. “Okay.”
It was like someone had knocked the feet out from under him. He snapped his gaze to Adam, narrowing his eyes. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“I’m not forcing you to.”
“I know.”
“So if you don’t want to—”
“Ronan.”
He was blushing. Adam was blushing and it spread across his face like wildfire, tinging the ends of his ears. The sight made Ronan’s limbs tremble. “I want to. I mean, I want to try.”
Ronan looked down at the feather held in his hands, spinning it gently as Adam had done. “Okay.”
“Okay.” For a moment that was that and they sat in silence, both waiting for the other to make the first move. Then Adam spoke, hesitantly. “Should I…?” He indicated his t-shirt and with a stiff, jerky nod from Ronan he pulled it off, throwing it on the floor away from them. Ronan took a moment to appreciate his body, the stark lines and muscles that made him up, every part of him carved in perfect detail, like that of a statue. But he wasn’t a statue. He was soft and malleable, with bruises and moles and freckles that covered his skin like art. When Adam pulled his arms above his head, the skin stretched and arched with him.
“D-Do we start now or—mm!”
Adam’s sentence was cut off as Ronan drew a feather down the length of his arm, wanting to trace the contours. The feather was stiff and black, like those he often found lying around the house when Chainsaw was molting. He continued going up and down his arm for a while, content with the goosebumps prickling up and down Adam’s body like an invasion.
“Does it tickle?” he asked curiously, as Adam’s lips were pressed together in a tight line, having not spoken since the initial beginning. Now, though, he shakily opened them to reply.
“Not exactly,” he answered honestly, considering the question. “It’s more like… a soft itch, like when a bug crawls on your arm.” He paused. “It’s kind of pleasant, actually, in an unbearable kind of way. It’s hard to stay still, though.”
“Hmm.” Ronan moved the feather down quickly, now circling the outer edge of his armpit. Adam stiffened immediately, his mouth clamping shut as he focused on anything but the increasingly devastating feeling of that feather getting closer and closer to such a sensitive area. The edges of his lips were pulled into a reluctant smile that only grew wider when Ronan finally reached his destination.
“Does this tickle?” Ronan repeated, more sure of the answer this time. Adam gave a stiff, jerky nod, arms trembling. He looked like he wanted to say something, or laugh, or both, but he refused to open his mouth. Ronan found himself needing to hear what Adam’s laugh sounded like, genuine and helpless and carefree, a need that burrowed inside him and prompted him to pick up a second feather, quickly targeting his other side. Both armpits now being relentlessly assaulted by the feathers’ soft touch, Adam whimpered softly before a tiny giggle slipped out, followed by a second one and then a third one. Soon Adam was overcome by melodic giggles that seemed to almost trip out of him with each second that went by.
It was beautiful. It was everything Ronan had dreamed it would be, only better because this time it wasn’t his imagination conjuring up flickering images. This time it was Adam, real and alive with laughter that stumbled and fell in heart-stopping bursts. 
Ronan never wanted it to end. 
There was only so long that Adam could keep his arms up, however, with Ronan relentlessly tormenting the singular area. With a soft whine Adam drew his arms back down, clutching them across his chest protectively.
Ronan paused, worried he had overstepped a boundary. “Do you want me to stop?”
Adam blushed, shaking his head. “No, it just… it really tickles, okay? I can’t hold still for it. Maybe try somewhere else?”
Ronan nodded and Adam carefully placed his hands back above his head. For a while he merely swirled the feather along his shivering form, circling the soft, vulnerable skin of his stomach and dipping down across the V of his hips. Adam managed to contain his laughter at this, but he expressed its effect in the way his stomach jumped and contracted under the feather’s touch and the shuddering sound of his breath as he inhaled. 
As he did so, Ronan considered his splayed out form for a moment, trying to think of a spot the feather would have the greatest effect on, aside from the obvious. He knew for a fact that harder tickles worked on Adam; the two had been friends for years beforehand and there were sparse moments when Gansey would dig his knuckles into his ribs affectionately or Ronan would goose his sides in passing. 
It was not harsh, intensive tickling that he desired right then, however. At that moment, he wanted to see strong, prideful Adam fall to such a simple thing as the touch of a feather.
Glancing up at Adam to make sure this was okay, Ronan firmly gripped each of his thighs and pulled them apart. Having worn only a thin t-shirt, lying discarded on the floor, and boxers to bed, the entirety of his speckled, tan thighs was on display for the other boy to admire. Ronan traced a hand wonderingly over them, momentarily distracted from his mission. It was only when he saw Adam squirm beneath his touch that he was reminded once more. He picked up the feather and then, after considering for a moment, grabbed quite a few others as well. He traced the long plumage up his thighs, a thousand fluttery kisses that surprised a squeak from Adam.
“W-Wait!” he stuttered, grinning helplessly. “T-Thahahat’s nohot fahair!”
“You agreed to this,” Ronan reminded him, delighting in his reactions though his face remained stoic. “Remember?”
“B-Buhuhut—” Adam protested, but ultimately he could find no excuse for something he had asked for, and fell back on the bed in a pile of giggles. It was unfair, he held fast to that. It was unfair because there was no possible way Adam could have known he was that ticklish on his thighs or that a feather would tickle him as much as it did. He had hardly ever been touched there, and when he had it was usually by Ronan and usually in far more erotic scenes than their current one.
He would like to say that had he known how sensitive he was, he would have told Ronan no. However, as sparks of feeling scurried through his nervous system to his brain, filling him with a sensation not too far off from floating, he thought that maybe he wouldn’t have. Adam closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the feeling and to the idea that this was far from the last time that Ronan would take a feather, or other things, to his skin in that torturous way.
Adam couldn’t help but smile at the thought.
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pets-beaty · 5 years
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How to Pronounce English Words Correctly
how to pronounce: Pronunciation of words becomes a very difficult topic once you leave a single location. How Americans pronounce words differs from how British speak words, which also differs from how Australians, Canadians, Indians, Singaporeans or South Africans pronounce words. We are always looking for a "correct" statement, but is there really an international standard?
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how to pronounce
If you live in a country and only speak to a small group of people who all use the same pronunciation of words, you are lucky. You must try to pronounce words in the same way as this group of people around you.
However, the majority of us live in more international environments. We regularly come into contact with people from all over the world. We don't know how to pronounce English words because we always hear different statements!
It is estimated that 96% of English conversations around the world include at least one non-native English speaker. This means that the pronunciation of words will inevitably change.
Instead of concentrating on one "correct" statement, I choose to focus on how we can speak with greater clarity to better communicate with people from all over the world, who all pronounce words differently. Despite the many different English pronouncements, we can still understand each other as long as we focus on these three pronunciation areas:
It is very important that you speak words with clear consonants. "D" and "T" have different sounds. This also applies to 'V' and 'W', 'R' and 'L', and all other consonants of the alphabet (all letters except the vowels, A, E, I, O and U). If you confuse consonant sounds, people will misunderstand your pronunciation of words.
2. How to Pronounce Using short and long vowels
The way your vowels actually sound is actually not as important as the length of your vowels. Consider the words 'cap' and 'cab'. The 'a' sound is the same in both words, but if you pronounce the words clearly, you will notice that you hold the 'a' in 'cabin' a little longer than the 'a' in 'cap'. This is because 'cap' ends in the voiceless 'p', while 'cab' ends in the voice 'b'. The 'p' and 'b' are very similar to the ends of words, so the way in which we distinguish them is to extend the vowel sound for voiced endings.
3. Appropriate sentence stress
The final area, which is not so much about how you pronounce words, but more about the overall flow of your speech, is to emphasize the right words in your sentences. You must emphasize the words that really matter - topics, objects or other words that are important to your meaning. Linking words such as 'and' or 'or' does not normally need to be emphasized. Prepositions (from, about, about) are also non-stressed words, unless your main message is that the book is on the table, and not under it, for example.
Learn Pronunciation Now.
How to pronounce French
French can be a difficult language to learn, while it is based on Latin such as English, there are many differences in concepts, grammar and pronunciation that can make many people stumble to learn French causing them frustration and weeks and weeks of extra study add their time. However, learn to speak French online and you can shorten this time and gain valuable insights into language and culture!
Online learning has become the new way for people to learn when they want and how they want for all kinds of things and how they can speak French. The benefits of flexible learning and better pronunciation through repeated learning, interactive games and easily available explanations make an online solution for language learning better and cheaper than French lessons.  how to pronounce With audio components and visual components, people can bring together the most difficult parts of learning another language in the style that they are better at consistently drilling pronunciation, or get a cultural background about why you say something to see exactly how and where to hold your tongue when you speak to see the words as you speak them and even every syllable as you say it and listen to it.
To learn French quickly, you need all the resources at your disposal and a good pronunciation is an essential part of fluent speaking so that you can talk easily, so if you speak French online, you can become fluent faster and become a source have that you can use again and again to keep improving your skills. Learn French Pronunciation Now
How to pronounce in German language
How to learn German is the most difficult problem for the students, and how to pronounce German is another difficult question. Because leaning on a language is a kind of art of speaking, you must learn to pronounce when you learn a new language. It is known that pronunciation is the basis of German. However, the German pronunciation rule is very simple, so it is easier to control.  German has a total of 26 vowel letters plus three variables, if you learn these 28 letters well, you can also read the basic German words, because there is generally no phonetic in German. If you come across a strange word, this can of course be highlighted in the dictionary and you should not worry about this problem. The most difficult problem of the German sound is the sound "r", for beginners they are generally unable to pronounce. Because "r" is from the elastic tongue, which is from a small retroflex. Here is a training method for you.
When you get up in the morning to brush your teeth, you can drink a mouthful of water in your mouth and keep it still in your mouth, and then have the water stop at the space between the hood and the pipes when looking upwards. you try to make vocal cords vibrate so that the water vibrates at the same time, you can successfully feel your heel vibrate. Repeat this exercise for 2-3 months and take 5 minutes each day to do this type of exercise until you can vibrate your heel without water.
If you find it very difficult, don't worry, here is another way for you. Because the German people do not pay much attention to the statement of "r" in their daily conversation, you use two other methods instead. One is that you can make an "h" sound and have a vibration of the vocal cords, the other is that you can make an "h" sound and also have a vibration of the vocal cords. After all, regardless of which method you choose, you must pronounce the sounds as a high speed.  If you want to learn this type of language, and if you want to learn the correct pronunciation of the German language, it is better to choose a good learning tool to improve your pronunciation. For example, you can choose Rosetta Stone German to try, because it can offer you standard pronunciations for every word you encounter. With this type of software you can improve your language level as quickly as possible. If you browse through all of the above, you may have learned something about learning a foreign language, especially the one you have chosen. Learn German Pronunciation Now
How to pronounce Spanish
There are some difference sounds in the Spanish language that are not in the English language. Learning how to pronounce Spanish words is not so difficult if you learn the basics of the Spanish language.
The Spanish alphabet has thirty letters compared to the English twenty-six. Also those thirty letters produce more than thirty sounds due to certain environments and circumstances of certain letters such as the letters c, v and y to name just a few.
All language consists of sounds. Learning Spanish pronunciation in sounds is the first step to learning how to pronounce Spanish words. It's really not that complicated, but we as adults tend to always think things through.
If you learn to pronounce Spanish words, it's best to start from the beginning. Think about how you learned to talk as a child. You first listened and observed. Then you made a few sounds that eventually developed into words, then sentences and finally sentences.
If we, as adults, can follow our children's signals, we would get to know and build on the basics of Spanish sounds. By building on the basic sounds in the Spanish language, we learn how words and sentences originated and we develop a greater and more basic knowledge of the Spanish language. You have learned how to pronounce the most difficult-looking and sounding Spanish words, because you know how the word is derived. This simple learning method is called the language approach to language learning. Learn Spanish Pronunciation Now
How to pronounce Polish words
The Polish language is often considered one of the most difficult languages, as the pronunciation is very special for non-native speakers. After all, any language can become easy if you do your best to learn your language. In essence, if you like something, you will regard it as entertainment, while if you don't like it, you will consider it an offensive matter. Most language learners see language learning as a headache because there is so much complex knowledge and information that you have to deal with, making this complex information the effective source for your language study. However, if you can keep a calm heart to study this language step by step, you can maintain your perfect learning attitude until you have finished your language study.
Today, the world has become a spinning ball in which thousands of information quickly move from one place to another every day. There is a new trend that more and more individuals and companies are participating in a language learning group. There are different languages in the world, and the majority languages contain special functions that attract different people. Different people choose different languages to learn for different reasons. how to pronounce - For example, the people who are present to learn Russian may be very interested in Russian literature or Russian history. Rosetta Stone Russian is a good language software that can facilitate your Russian learning and improve your interest in Russian culture and Russian language.
If you are a Polish student, it is imperative that you know more about phonetic knowledge. This is because that Polish language is very different from other languages that are receptive in the phonetic section. Every word must be pronounced precisely in Polish so that you can clearly express your information to others. For most beginners, they often do not know how to use their language study because the alphabet seems so difficult. If you can see the Polish language as your native language and learn it naturally, you will benefit greatly from it.
In short, there are many extra accent characters and special letters in the Polish language. You must pronounce each letter carefully so that you cannot get confused. The Polish alphabet contains 32 letters and Polish has more vowels than English. Moreover, there are also many Polish letters that are spoken together as one sound. If you are a Polish learner, Rosetta Stone Polish is your best learning assistant who can offer you standard audio tracks that can help you master Polish pronunciation as effectively as possible. Learn Polish Pronunciation Now Thanks for reading about how to pronounce or pronunciation
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How I Write Baybayin (Handwriting and Straight-cut Nib Calligraphy) Subtitle: This is a freaking long-ass post so be warned now
You can read the entirety of this post as is, or you can go straight to the calligraphy portion. It’s at the end of the post (sorry dunno how to link that portion here).
Writer’s Note: First and foremost, I will advise everyone who reads this somewhat master post that I am not an authority when it comes to how baybayin is written, as what you shall be reading is just based mostly on my own experiences on how the characters are written and comparing them with other writing systems that are based on syllables rather than individual letters, like the Japanese Kana and the Korean Hangul, among others. This is because baybayin are not technically letters (individualized, can’t stand alone, only comes either as vowel or consonant but not both, you get the picture), but rather are syllables (i.e. the consonants have free vowels with them lol) that form words.
Also, as far as I know regarding how the baybayin texts are originally written pre-Hispanic colonization era, some of the written texts in the Philippines (or at least, those that survived, or I remember seeing in old history books) were written from right to left, top to bottom. This also coincides with other writing methods in some parts of Asia that also read from right to left. The technique of writing and reading from left to right may be a Western invention, in my opinion so I just did some of the strokes in the baybayin characters go from right to left, except for the straight-cut nib section. Again, I am no authority so I’m just doing what I think makes sense to me, as there is no existing ANCIENT written rules on the stroke order of the baybayin. Other people may disagree with my stroke orders here due to various reasons, but if you’re into what I did then feel free to learn from them, for free. *heart*
This author’s other notes: I won’t be elaborating the history of baybayin here because that would take around (counts how many years I spent in school) 5ever as it basically intertwines with the “current” history of the Filipino people. I put quotes on “current” because every decade or so, some written histories get re-written based on some evidences or what, and I totally respect that. It’s like in scientific papers: legit today, debunked tomorrow. And it’s completely OK, because THE MORE YOU KNOW~
Also this author’s note: I keep calling baybayin alibata, because that’s what they were called when I was a kid and how it was taught by history teachers before the process called “being politically-correct” became the norm. It’s because alibata was supposedly an incorrect term which signifies that the characters were letters based on Arabic, but apparently it wasn’t so.. Yeah. I’m just saying, so the kiddies would know. And if you’re like me who also refers to baybayin as alibata, let’s get a high-five! (Cause you’re also old, but gold =D) Some biased history FTW lol ok let’s get started.
Handwriting Alibata Baybayin Strokes with a Bamboo pen (or Ballpen, or Pencil, w/e floats your boat)
OK, before I start I would be first putting here the somewhat traditional ordering of the baybayin, which is:
A BA KA DA E GA HA I LA MA NA NGA O PA RA SA TA U WA YA
As well as the borrowed/loan syllables (which correspond to C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X, and Z were apparently added some 6-7 years ago, in which I didn’t get the memo x__x)
CA FA JA ÑA QA VA XA ZA
OK, now that’s out of the way, it’s time for the actual stuff. For ease of practice and recall, I’m grouping the letters based on how I write them and in turn, their forms. This would make sense as the pictures move along, don’t worry. The forms are built sequentially, I tried making that a bit obvious in the diagrams, but there are red arrows in case I wasn’t that clear. For those that only have one picture or arrows in the sequence, I would be implying that the form is built on a single stroke.
Group 1: A, MA, PA, YA, FA, JA, VA
OK, let’s start with A:
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Then MA:
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PA:
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YA:
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FA:
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JA:
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VA:
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Group 2:  E/I (more on that later), KA, DA, HA, RA, CA, QA, XA
I’ll start with HA because it’s a foundational stroke:
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E:
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I looks structurally like E, but only with a vertical stroke on its hat.
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It’s because originally, E and I were the same character and whether it should be read as a syllable from the E or I line depends on how the reader would read it and the dialect used in writing the words, like it’s a fill-in-the-blanks kind of thing.  It’s also the same with O and U, so if you see that part yeah they look alike. This is also the reason why revisions on writing the E-I and O-U consonants were made, but that would be for a later part. Just be patient for now. =D
Ok, moving on, we’ll go to KA:
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DA:
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RA:
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A short note on DA and RA: In olden times, these two were only one character, and are used interchangeably based on word usage, thus for words such as doon/roon, which both mean way over there one is used for passive and one is used directly (sorry not a speech comm person). This is also the case for marami and ang dami (both meaning “there are many/there is much” but one is active and one is passive. Madami is, IMHO grammatically incorrect. But then again, I’m not a speech comm person so sorry if these are wrong. I’m just saying).
CA:
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QA:
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XA:
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Group 3: O/U, GA, SA, ZA
Just like in E/I, O and U are also structurally similar. To make an O:
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To make it a U, just put a vertical line on the right side:
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GA:
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SA:
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ZA:
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Group 4: LA, NA, TA, ÑA
I grouped this bunch based on having a downward stroke in the middle of the form. The initial strokes are written as a single stroke from left to right, like in the first group.
LA:
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NA:
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TA:
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ÑA:
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Group 5: I have no idea where to put BA, NGA, and WA so I just made a miscellaneous group lol but they deserve just as much love OK?
BA:
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NGA:
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WA:
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How the E, I, O and U lines are written:
In writing E, I, O and U (as in the case for the example below, which is GE, GI, GO, and GU), the original positions of the additional marks (such as the vertical lines for I and U) were kept but in order to differentiate E from I and O from U, the marks were made to be further distinct. For instance, GE is basically GA which has a horizontal line above it, while GI has a dot above it. As for GO, it has a dot below and GU has a horizontal line. 
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GI and GO can have either a hollowed dot like in the sample, or can also be filled like the samples below. It’s based on personal preference. Also I used G for the samples because it looks nice, fun to write, and most other examples of alibata on the internet use BA as their examples for this portion. Whoops, I meant, baybayin. XD
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Vowel Killers: Invented by People who Needed It
I’m not entirely sure why vowel killer was the term used but it does tell it exactly what it does: it silences the vowels in the characters (because baybayin is composed of syllables) in order to make separate letters. It was invented by some Spanish friar who couldn’t properly write the native words because words that have consonants at the end were written incompletely. I.E. the word DOON (over there) was written as DO-O in baybayin. It was such a drag that he decided to introduce the Spanish/Latin alphabet by making baybayin characters that acted as alphabets, which is essentially killing all the vowels and leaving the consonant behind. So instead of using dots, the friar made a cross underneath the symbol which they called a kudlit (for obviously non-secular reasons), so that the words with consonant ends can be written and read as they were. As per the revision that was instated a few years ago, in order to make the baybayin a bit more secular, more forms of the vowel killers were made, which in my opinion look better than the original kudlit, because they look more organic with the forms.
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As you can see in the pic of the letter G above, the first on the left is the original kudlit, which is shaped like a cross. The next one has an X, or sinawali (it’s literally based on the patterns of hard, woven rattan walls called sawali which look like X’s), the next one is called a kawil (sorry dunno where that came from) and the right-most one has a pamudpod (which may have come from the word “pudpod/pudpud” literally meaning grinding or repeatedly striking something on a hard surface or on a whetting stone till it disappears or becomes flat/dull, so pamudpod is the surface that makes the item pudpod like a used pencil or eraser. Do I even make sense anymore? Oh well, YOLO).
Stringing them All Together
My personal preference is using a kawil on horizontal writing (left to right) and using a pamudpod when writing vertically. I think the overall impact is better. But then again, it’s just my personal idea. Using any of the vowel killers are, like the filled or hollow dots on I and O are personal preferences, as long as there is consistency in usage.
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If you can read the above and understand where the reference came from, you probably also call baybayin as alibata, and we should totally get some tea together. XDD It pretty much means “What is there, yonder?” smth idk but yeah, it sounds like that. Old and formal Filipino/Tagalog.
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Langit -  sky or heaven, Lupa - ground or earth, Araw - sun, and Buwan (or Bulan in Ilokano) - moon
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Soliman - A variant of the name Sulaiman/Solomon 
Amihan - the northeast monsoon, the nice wind that brings in cool, dry air around November-March. Or if you watched the old and new Encantadia, she’s the protag. XD
The third sampler is a phrase (I ran out of space it was supposed to be a sentence), and vertical double bars are used to end the sentence. I just made them into diagonal slashes to make them look cool. Also I ran out of space. x__x It’s transliterated as a wailing mom looking for her child: Ai anaku (bunga) - Ah, my child (fruit). No space for fruit so it ain’t there.
Author’s extra rant note: Of course, some early Filipinos didn’t wanna use the kudlit due to being comfy with whatever they had at that time, but eventually they gave in. Fast forward to a century later and the baybayin was pretty much dead, as it was for the next 4 centuries or so. Romaji became the norm (except for some of the native tribes that have their own awesome writing systems), but then again some Filipinos didn’t forget it entire time, as many of the revolutionaries’ battle flags had the syllable KA, which is the first syllable of Katipunan, their group which can also be transliterated as “the entire group of the people who meet and come together”. I can’t say more because this is a long-ass post and it’s not about Philippine history. But we can talk about that if you want. Just hit me up with an ask. Warning though: I might just say “thanks for asking but please ask something else” lol j/k XDD
Writing Baybayin using a Straight-cut Calligraphy Pen/ Dip pens with Straight/Oblique Nibs
For this portion of the post, aside from posting pictures of the baybayin in black and white ink I would be pointing out that the techniques I used here are based on Western traditional calligraphy techniques used by scribes of the past, so some of the stroke patterns would be a lot different from the handwritten strokes above. But then again, if you clicked the link to get here straight away instead of reading the previous portions, well you won’t be having that much problems then. Also I will assume you already learned how to write baybayin so I’ll leave you at that. For the black baybayin, I used a calligraphy fountain pen with a 2mm straight-cut nib from the Visual Deck Set – Calligraphy box, not sure where you can buy it online but I bought mine at the National Bookstore because nobody wants to buy it. (Should’ve also bought the other calligraphy set while they’re on sale. LOL Just saying XDD). The surface is just the back of old calendars because I was just testing the strokes. For the white baybayin, I used a Speedball™  C-2 oblique-cut nib and for the ink, it’s glittery silver poster paint from Reeves™ (diluted with dH2O), and the surface is some random paper with nice surface and sizing which my father got from the office. (Apparently you can’t print anything on it so it aged well there until my father disturbed the papers’ sleep and brought them home. Now I ran out of both the calendar and the weird red paper so business is halted for a bit. XDD) Again, these are all based on how I write stuff so it’s pretty much a personal opinion, it’s not absolute but it certainly works for me so here you go.
Group 1
A:
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MA:
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PA:
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YA:
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FA:
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JA:
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VA:
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Group 2:
E/I: I’m just putting I here because E and I basically have the same strokes. To make E, just omit the final vertical stroke.
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DA:
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HA:
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RA:
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CA:
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QA:
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XA:
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Group 3
O/U: Same with E/I, I just placed U here because O is practically the same, minus the vertical stroke on the right.
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GA:
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SA:
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ZA:
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Group 4
LA:
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NA:
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TA:
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ÑA:
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Group 5
BA:
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NGA:
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WA:
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E, I, O, U Lines
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Vowel Killers
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I didn’t make any full sentences or words because I ran out of nice papers, so maybe I’ll post some next time. Sorry. ._.
Author’s final note on writing using baybayin: I’m still on the fence in using the loan letters C, F, J, Ñ, Q, V, X, and Z because in my opinion apart from having redundancies with some other letters, they were just invented to spell out proper nouns that are foreign in origin. I wouldn’t even spell my full name using baybayin, except my nickname and would just rather use the Romaji/Latin Alphabet for ease. As for using baybayin to write foreign words, well, that can be as tricky as using kana to write foreign words. Both methods boil down to localizing a foreign word into how it would be pronounced based on the original language that the writing system belongs to. For instance, the Japanese waifu (as in “My waifu”) is the Japanized form of the English word “wife”, but because their spelling system is a bit different they had to estimate which kana would be suited to approximate how the word would be pronounced and in turn, be spelled. It is also the same case for some Filipino loan words that got Filipinized (and bastardized because long words are hard lol not kidding tho) such as the word istambay which originally came from “standby” and is now shortened to “tambay” which means “just loitering and doing nothing” or in how the young ones use it now: to hang out with friends (and probably just loiter and do nothing lol don’t kill me ok?). Thus, the usage of baybayin (or kana, or hangul, or Arabic because I think their writing is very lovely or whatever writing system you like that works as syllables more than letters) in writing words from another language would take extra steps such as following the rules of the written language or localizing the word first before writing them in whatever letters or syllables that you want. It’s like using what you have then making do with it/winging it out.
The End!!!! No just kidding. But it’s the last part.
To be honest there are a lot of stuff in the internet about baybayin so I’m not that entirely sure if what I have here is pretty much redundant or not. There are a lot of sites so just use your Googling skills to find what you need, although it may be a bit difficult for readers/users who simply try writing and not understanding the entire language so just use with caution. It’s hard to end up with THAT tough guy who has a kanji tattoo that actually spells “poop” instead of whatever it was supposed to be. I actually saw a guy sporting a tattoo that reads FUUBEN in Japanese, which translates to inconvenience. I lol deep inside but the guy seems happy with that so I just let him be.
Well, I hope this long-ass post helped you a lot, or at the very least the stuff made sense to you and it was worth your time reading. Please leave an ask if you have other questions, I’ll try to answer them if and when I can. Have a great day and may the force be with you. =D
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dubsdeedubs · 7 years
Text
A Diverging in the Wood [2/3]
hi sorry
Summary: Events shift.  History rearranges.  Another horror beyond human comprehension joins the fray during Weirdmageddon. 
Good thing they're on the side of humanity.
[A/N:  I Honestly don’t know how to explain the context to this and it’s been literally half a year since I’ve posted anything for it, but.  Canon Divergence AU for this fic which is just sleeping, I promise.  Features eldritch abomination Stan - it makes sense in context. Kind of.]
[AO3]
To Stanford's complete lack of surprise, hell was freezing cold.
Though a revolutionary discovery to be sure, he had doubts it would stand up to any reputable academic committee. The main issue was, his current location was more accurately described as "Ford Pines' Personal Pyramidal Hell" than the classic Judeo-Christian equivalent. Specifically, traits of demons present were more "horns and cloven feet" than "sixty-degree angles."
Unfortunately, that fact narrowed down the field of concerned individuals significantly. To two, actually - him and his fellow captive, the rather perturbed looking child (?) dancing frantically in a cage hanging from the ceiling. 
Not Ford's oddest roommate experience, but it did make top five.
It was just one of those days. Weeks? Months? Extra-temporal periods of existence?
The worst part about the death of linear time, Ford thought to himself sadly, was the language involved.
He hung there in his chains for a moment that could have been a minute or a year, or anything in between. Not that it would have mattered. There was the occasional squeaking and click-clack of tap-dancing from above, but nothing here changed or grew or learned. This was his personal hell, after all.
Then on a day that could have been any other, a massive black hand reached through the opening to the chamber.
A moment afterwards, the rest of Bill Cipher followed through, folding out like a model ship in a bottle. His single large eye stared Ford down with evident glee.
"Heya, Fordsy!" He chirped. "How's it hanging?"
Bill snapped his finger, and a deafening rimshot echoed throughout the room. Stanford stared back at him blankly, his tongue limp and leaden in his mouth.
The demon let out an exaggerated sigh. "Tough audience, huh? Man, I miss the good ol' days. Just you, me, a meddling research assistant to drive insane, and a world-ending interdimensional portal to build.
You would've laughed at my jokes then," he said sulkily. "Heck, you would've done anything I told ya to do. Anything for your blessed muse - right, Sixer?"
Ford made no reply. There was a dull metallic taste in his mouth, his mind felt dazed and woolen, and there was something inexplicably funny about - well, everything. Who had come up with the interior design scheme for the Fearamid, anyways? Was being a fan of neon rainbow highlights another black mark on the long list of Bill Cipher's sins?
Somewhere on the fringes of Ford's awareness, Bill Cipher narrowed his eye in realization. He poked Ford with one smooth, black finger. The old man shifted slackly in his chains. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me I messed up on rewiring a few synapses or 7,283! How am I supposed to torture answers out of you if ya get to duck out of the consequences?" His glare turned thoughtful. "...Don't suppose you have anything to share about the barrier around this hick town now?"
Ford might not have been in his right mind, not anything close to it, but he knew there was only one way he could respond to that.
"No," he muttered hoarsely. His throat felt sore and his voice came out in a rasp, like he had been using it a lot recently. "Not to you."
"Oh, what a pity!" Bill said, his cheerful tone making it clear that to him, it was anything but. He snapped his fingers with obvious relish, the sound echoing sharply across the otherwise empty chamber.
Sensation rushed into his numb limbs, bringing with it the burning chafe of chains and a bone-deep exhaustion that washed over him with all the force of an ocean wave. He could hear a dim ringing sound in his ears now, and Ford swallowed down a sudden burst of nausea. His entire body felt like one unholy amalgation of bruise and electrical burn.
The briefest of moments later, so came logical thought. Bill was here, in front of him, for the first time in... a while. Their last meeting had ended especially - brutally, which explained Ford's previous - condition.
The most logical reason for the demon's long absence was that, at that point, Bill must have realized that torture by itself was pointless.
Which meant.
Bill would not have returned if he did not have new information, new bargaining pieces, new -
The list of reasons with which Ford could be convinced to bargain at all was short. Specifically, it was limited to three people. The thought of any of them in the clutches of the malicious, capricious chaos god before him chilled him to the core.
There was nothing funny about his situation now, not anymore.
"Why are you here, Cipher?" Ford asked with forced calm, every bit of restraint he could muster used to keep the dueling emotions of fear and fury from his face. "What do you have planned? You know that I -"
Bill let out a shriek of laughter. "You wound me, Sixer! Why can't I just have a nice conversation with an old friend?" The creature leaned closer, eye shining. "Geez, does everything have to have an ulterior motive with you?"
"There is no conversation I want to have with you, Cipher," Ford said shakily, voice barely a whisper. "Do not mock either of our intelligences by pretending I was anything close to a friend to you."
"Eh, friend, unwitting pawn…" Bill waved a large, spidery hand with calculated nonchalance. "Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh. Don't be so sensitive, pal!"
"You have held me captive, kept me in chains, have tortured me to the brink of death -"
"Brink of? ...Ooh." The triangle winced exaggeratedly. "Oh right. I never told you!
"...W-what?" Ford asked hesitantly, before logic chased him down, pushed him to the ground, and poured a cold bucket of regret over his head and down his shirt. "No, actually, I don't ="
"Yea-ah, about that last part - tell ya what, Fordsy." Bill batted his eyelashes. "I've decided to turn over a, hah, new leaf. Call it making up for having you wait for so long!"
"I said I don't -"
"It's honesty hour here in the Fearamid, folks!" The triangle flung his hands up and out, practically beaming despite a lack of a mouth or real facial features. Glowing confetti burst from the air and scattered all over the landscape.
Then just as suddenly, he was close - too close, his solid black pupil inches away from Ford's flinching face.
"Oh, don't pretend like you're not INTERESTED, Sixer! You've always been a real smartypants, but I KNOW you've got mysteries ya can't figure out. So, HOW ABOUT IT? A little secret to start with, just to give omnipotence a test run?"
There was no doubt for Stanford that - whatever Bill was building up to - was not something he wanted to know. His tongue had already gone instinctively to the roof of his mouth, ready to form the harsh consonant sound of the 'no' that he wanted to, had to say.
But there was a dangerous glint in the demon's single eye, one that made it clear that his question was no question at all.
He sighed. There was a time and a place for everything, and 'enraging a chaos god' was no exception. He still had no idea where or how Dipper and Mabel were. (Or Stanley.) His pride was not worth the safety of his family.
"Fine," Ford said blandly, determinedly keeping all emotion from his face. He refused to give Bill the pleasure of watching him squirm. "A little... secret."
Even without a mouth, Bill gave off the distinct impression of a smirk.
"Weeeell," he drawled, spinning his cane casually. With no apparent process of transformation, he was suddenly dozens of times smaller than before, around the size he maintained in Ford's memories of past dreams. "So. I, uh, miiiiight have taken it a bit too far a time or two with these things."
Electricity sparked around Bill's raised hand in demonstration. Ford flinched back instinctively.
"Y'know. Used a little too much juice, sizzled an organ that shouldn't have been sizzled. Beginner's mistake."
Bill shrugged nonchalantly and stretched out his thin arms in placation. "Hey, but I fixed ya back up, didn't I? Even made a few tweaks, free of charge!"
Ford stared at him silently, expression slack with slow dawning horror.
"What's with the long face? Focus on the big picture here for once," the demon said crossly. "You're alive! C'mon, no thanks for your favorite muse?"
No, this had to be another trick. Gods knew how many of those Bill Cipher had up his metaphorical sleeves. He was trying to - unnerve him, shake him, get him into that precarious mental place where he might actually be thrown off enough to make the mistake Bill had been waiting for all this time.
And the worst part was, it was working.
Already, his thoughts were going places where they shouldn't. Was resurrection even something Bill was capable of? How did that interfere with existing processes for death and life, if they even existed?
And yet... it would make a great deal of sense. Not only did Bill have little to no concept of human limits in regards to survival, Ford highly doubted he cared - not if he had a way of circumventing his mistakes. And, given that most of his own memory consisted of pain and occasional flashes of blue light, there were more than enough gaps in it to draw... damning conclusions.
But… if Bill was telling the truth, what did that mean for him?
Was he just a copy of a copy, ad nauseam, of an original, deceased Stanford Pines? Or was he just a reanimation, not much different from a simple -
Bill was looking at him now through a single half-lidded eye, both hands resting on the handle of his cane, his stare uncomfortably knowing. "Well, Sixer? You, of all people, should know how much I hate it when people make me wait."
As if struck, Ford straightened his back suddenly - and heard, disproportionately loud to his ringing ears, the familiar crackle of aged paper.
Like breaking through a trance, he held one trembling hand to pat the general location of his heart, and there it was - that slightest resistance pressing reassuringly against his chest. It was still there. Despite the decades, despite whatever had happened to him in his current captivity, it was there. He blinked rapidly, trying to dissipate the burning at his eyes.
And just like that, his previous concerns were wiped from his mind.
Ford let out a breath. Of course. He had been being ridiculous.
Bill would not have known about the tattered photograph he kept hidden under his clothing, strapped to his chest - nor would he have understood the significance of it.
Therefore, if Ford really had been remade in a way that departed from who he was before, into something Bill wanted him to be... then the picture would not have the same effect on him. It certainly wouldn't have this effect on him.
"I'm disappointed, Cipher." Ford's voice sounded distant to his own ears. "That bit of information is a waste of omnipotence. But then again, perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised - you also made the decision to tear down the walls between dimensions, effectively end an entire universe, and for what? To have a party?"
Bill bristled, visibly affected by his gibe. "I'll have ya know, Sixer, we've got more time punch here than any other point in existence. This ain't just a party, bucko! It's the party!"
"You're right," Ford said hoarsely. "I am an idiot, Bill."
His captor turned slowly, single eye open in pleasant surprise and baited anticipation -
"But not because I trusted you." He wet his dry mouth. "I'm an idiot because I thought you were ever worth worshipping."
The triangle demon was quiet for a long, long moment.
Regardless of exactly how long it went in linear terms, it was definitely enough time for Ford to review his words and mentally curse himself for mouthing off. There was nothing Bill could do to him that he hadn't done previously. But with his family's survival in the balance, it was an extremely stupid move of him to push an already erratic, capricious creature into -
"Well," said Bill slowly, "well, WELL."
There was a note of deep anticipation in his voice, obvious even as the volume of it climbed to deafening levels. "GOOD OL' SIXER, HUH? I knew there was a reason I liked you more than the other fleshbags. Always jumping the GUN. And here I thought you'd APPRECIATE the build-up! BUT HEY, I SURE DON'T WANNA KEEP YA WAITING!"
He snapped his fingers and the chains holding Ford up disappeared suddenly from around his limbs. There was a heart-stopping second or two of freefall as the world around him blurred and reformed -
- then he landed, inexplicably enough, on what looked to be an oversized therapy chair that - he noticed blearily - matched the neon color scheme of the Fearamid.
Ford lunged forwards on an instinctive attempt at escape before bands of eerily glowing blue substance shot out from the handles and wrapped themselves around his wrists, holding him tightly in place.
"LEMME TAKE A WILD GUESS, SIXER! All ya wanna know about now is how that squishy little family of yours is doing." Bill sat on a stool next to the chair, squinting at a little notepad and pencil he held in his hands. After a moment of deliberation, he burnt them both in blue flame. "BOOORING! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE GUY I USED TO KNOW, HUH?"
"You did."
Bill ignored him. "I can't even interest you in the solution to the Hodge Conjecture? What about the Computational Theory of Mind? You're KILLING me here, FORDSY!"
"Either tell me what happened to my family, or -"
"Or?" The triangle asked in anticipation, leaning forward. "OR? Tell me, Fordsy, what exactly is it that you wanna do to me? Got another dimensional gun hidden up your sleeves? A muicide detonator strapped to your left ankle?"
"Or bring back the chains," Ford spat. "I'm tired of your games, Cipher. I know what you want from me, and no amount of sidestepping will make me forget it."
Bill leaned back again. If Ford didn't know better, he would have said he looked disappointed. "Oh, don't give yourself a heart attack, Sixer - that doesn't come for a few more decades! 'Sides, honesty hour's still on, and what with me killing linear time, you've still got…" He checked a watch-less wrist. "...eternity!"
Ford licked his stinging lips. There was no question that he had to play along. Especially with Bill dangling his family's fates in front of him like this. There was no doubt that there was something unsaid - something that the triangle was positively raring to share.
He thought through his words for a long time.
"Are they hurt?" Ford asked at last, still wary, unwilling to even consider the other alternative. Dipper had the Journals with him, though in hindsight, giving those books to him was a decision Ford deeply regretted - it was the equivalent of a bright red target on his back. And Mabel had been outside when Weirdmageddon had began, lost somewhere in the woods (and there was another burst of guilt there, because he shouldn't have done… that. Why did he possibly think it would have ended well? This was the second time he had made the exact same mistake.) "Are they… safe?"
"Oh," Bill said dismissively, "Pine Tree and Shooting Star are just fine. From a certain point of view! But they're alive and breathing and doing everything you humans do… just a whole lot less of it."
Ford jerked forward, a movement aborted by the thick bands of cosmic material holding him down. The triangle waved a placating hand. "I'm kidding, Sixer! Geez, talk about not bein' able to take a joke! They're both holed up in that Shack of theirs, and I have to say… real good job on the unicorn hair barrier. Very…" His voice darkened. "Clever. But you always were, weren't you, Fordsy?"
Realization dawned. "...You can't see inside the Shack at all, can you?"
"Never tried!" Bill exclaimed, and Ford knew he wasn't imagining the fact that the dream demon had responded a little too quickly. "Bunch of dinged up humans, huddled up and marinating in their own fluids like time sardines in a can… can I say booo-ring?"
Despite his best efforts, Ford sagged in relief. For all his age and near-omnipotent knowledge, Bill was at his core a childish being. His family was safe, hidden away in the Shack. Maybe powerless, unable to fight back at all against the extradimensional creatures rampaging through the town… but alive and uninjured - because if they were otherwise, Bill would certainly have mentioned it.
"Hey, what's with the hurry?" Ford blinked in slow confusion. "Aren't ya forgetting someone, Sixer?"
Bill shrugged. "Actually, can't say I'm surprised! I mean, you sure have had a lot of experience forgetting about him in the past -"
Ah. Ford frowned. "My brother is safe in the Shack," he said coldly. "Try another one, Cipher."
No, there had been no forgetting involved. Just the simple fact that the kids had been in direct danger and therefore, had been at the foreground of Ford's panic. Stanley, on the other hand, had been inside the Shack the last Ford remembered, and at any rate, could not have gotten far enough from shelter in the few minutes before the start of Weirdmageddon to be in any real danger.
And... while his brother made indubitably unwise decisions, he doubted that even Stan would casually venture out into the post-apocalyptic wasteland.
(...without reason. Which meant, unless the kids had not made it to the Shack immediately and Stanley had noticed their disappearance. Or unless... no, it was stupid - but then, this was Stanley - his brother had gone outside to look for him -)
"Sounding a bit too sure there," Bill remarked, leaning back and swinging his black cane in one fluid motion. "But you've been doing some assuming over there, haven't ya? And... we both know what that does - don't we, Fordsy?"
He wants me to ask him, Ford thought distantly. He wants me to ask him about Stanley.
There was an obvious answer to the question of 'why' - his brother had been captured, or injured, or. But he also understood - as much as anyone could, really - the spiteful polygon of overgrown immaturity before him, enough to know that there was something more here. Bill wanted to enjoy this game, and he was drawing it this long to make up for -
"Well?"
Ford, on the other hand, was sick of playing games. "Cut to the chase, Cipher. What did you do to my brother?" He demanded, rising as much as he count against the binds holding him down to the cartoonishly oversized therapy chair.
"What an accu-sation! I haven't done anything, Sixer." Ford flinched, despite himself. "...For once. Nah, Fordsy, the question you should be asking is, what has your brother done to himself?"
"I don't understand," he said carefully.
"Oh come on - you're smarter than this!" Bill bemoaned, sounding almost disappointed. "You spent ten years in this dump of a supernatural hot spot, you know what kind of things are lurking about in its corners. You knew what you were getting into - oh, don't give me that look, I saw your cute little handwritten guide on fae technical wording." Ford flushed red. "Stan-o, however…"
His tone turned contemplative. "All that knucklehead had was one of your little cryptid diaries and good ol' fashioned desperation. And we both know how dangerous that is in Gravity Falls - don't we, Fordsy? How many things out here would be all too willing to take advantage?"
"My brother isn't an idiot," Ford said flatly. "He wouldn't have fallen for the tricks of - creatures like you. He's better than that."
"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure - you know what they say about birds and feathers! Tell me, Fordsy - how has your brother been, since you've made it back? Does it feel like coming back home? Or… "
Bill prodded at Ford's chin with his cane, a thoughtful look in his single eye. "Is he different? Not how you remembered him? A - stranger?"
"It's been thirty years," he said dully, leaning his face back and away as much as he could. "People change. He changed. I changed."
"Oh, is that all it is?" Bill exclaimed in mock-surprise. "Or is that just what you're tellin' yourself?"
Ford was quiet.
"C'mon, Six Fingers. I know all about your habit of lying to yourself, but this is ri-di-culous. Before this summer, you haven't talked to - heck, seen - your brother for forty years. And that hour of beating the crud outta each other doesn't count! What's the difference to you between Stanley Pines and some guy off the street, huh?"
Ford refused to meet his eye. "You wouldn't understand," he muttered raspily. The demon went still. "You've never had a fami -"
"I don't NEED to understand!" Bill said loudly - shrieked, really, his one eye wide, as if he was shocked at his own vehemence.
"...No, y'know what, Stanford? I think you're the one who doesn't understand. In fact, I think there are plenty of things you don't understand. ...Good thing I'm here to get you up to speed."
The triangle's physical size hadn't changed - at least, not by Ford's own reckoning - but now, he loomed, his single unblinking pupil narrowed into a nearly imperceptible slit.
"Don'tcha know? Your real brother hasn't been around for a very, very long time, Fordsy."
"...What?" It sounded lame and ridiculous the moment it left his mouth, but there were no words that could be used for the current stunned confusion of Ford's mind. "I don't -"
Bill sighed once, for obvious effect. "Lemme tell ya about an old - pal of mine. Seems a bit overdue for an introduction, considering what they've been up to for the past -"
Then, just then, there was a deafening crunch.
The entire Fearamid shook in a massive jolt of movement. Several chunks of glowing extraterrestial building material cracked off and fell haphazardly from the ceiling, and Bill went abruptly quiet as he dodged to the side to avoid a hit to the eye.
Distantly, Ford heard the sound of demonic screeching and - human shouting?
Bill blinked once, slowly and disbelieving. Then, he swelled, growing twice - thrice - a dozen times his original size, bright crimson red and glowing like a supernova, his eye a glaring gold on black.
"WHAT IS IT N̮͍̠̠͓̻̝͖̬̗̅̄̂̽̀̂̓͊̍͠O̴̪̬̪̬͍͈̐̂̎̌̍̒̿͜W̶̭̹̝̟̱̑͆̉͑̿̇͋̕ͅ?" he demanded to no one in particular, bass voice loud enough to vibrate the leather under Ford's fingers.
The pseudo-therapy chair dissolved like mist, but a massive and inhuman black hand grabbed Stanford from mid-air before he could even mentally register the lack of physical reinforcement underneath his body.
He flinched. Around the two of them, the world distorted and reshaped itself into a room he had long mentally associated with the crackling of pain through his limbs and the odor of burnt cloth (and hair, and flesh, and -)
The walls had holes in them now, brutish and irregular, and through them Ford could just barely catch the occasional blur of fast-moving color beyond them. Color, and something he simply could not make out for the life of him.
Bill hummed in thought, vibrating like a naked wire. "...Huh. Would ya look at that?"
"P-please." Ford hadn't realized it was him who had spoken before his mouth was already open and he was babbling again, words rolling down his tongue and spilling out despite himself because who else in this damn town would storm the stronghold of a chaos god? Who else but - "Bill, please, don't do anything to them -"
"Looks like Truth or Dare's gonna have to wait a few," the demon said, tone light as a feather. Dimly, Ford realized he could see himself in Bill's huge dilated pupil. His reflection's mouth was open in a silent scream. "I've got a rebellion to crush into bonemeal! And who knows… Maybe I can find myself a Shooting Star or a Pine Tree, and then you can finally start making some Independent Decisions - starting with, choosing which one of 'em gets to take your place!"
His fists landed uselessly on the smooth black surface of Bill's cartoonishly simple hand as Ford struggled in his grasp, screaming and shouting and shaking, barely registering the telltale movement of air across his face that meant Bill was moving elsewhere.
Then, somewhere on the fringes of his awareness, he registered the clink of metal - then, the loosening of his bonds as Bill deposited (dumped, really) him onto a hard surface.
Within seconds, Ford had flipped onto his feet. He immediately lunged at the bars that held him back, his six-fingered hands futilely clawing at the huge unblinking eye staring at him in amusement, just a few inches away from his fingertips.
"Calm down, Fordsy," Bill admonished with a sigh, voice loud over a stream of obscenities that had never before been uttered on the surface of this particular version of Earth. "That heart attack creeping on isn't supposed to happen till you're 92, remember? So why don'tcha sit back, make a new friend, and I'll bring your family right back to ya - just like you wanted!"
"If you hurt them," he said hoarsely, "if you touch a single hair on their heads - I don't care what I have to do, what I need to bargain with -"
Bill shrieked with ear-splitting laughter. "Birds and feathers, Stanford!" He exclaimed cryptically, and - unfolded, for lack of a better word, his single eye bursting into flame and a dozen legs emerging from his now pyramidal frame. By the time Ford could react, Bill had already clambered through and out of one of the larger cracks like some oversized demonic arachnid.
He stared forward for a moment, one hand still loosely holding the metal bars of the hanging cage, adrenaline draining as quickly as it had came and leaving behind aches and strains in its wake. Ford felt sick, nauseous, a burning sensation somewhere in his throat that felt nothing like 500 volts of electricity yet hurt just as much.
There was nothing he could do but wait, wait for the world to end because he would not watch those children suffer for his mistakes.
It was… quiet now, without Bill's deafening voice and his own screaming in his ears. Just him and his thoughts, the latter of which were so deafening that he would not be surprised if they had somehow crossed into physical reality.
...As well as, he realized slowly and dimly and with more than a little confusion, the sound of expert tapdancing.
The sound of expert tapdancing, coming from… approximately two feet behind him?
Ford turned around. After a brief moment of quiet confusion, he looked down.
The dancing figure - short, squat, and inexplicably clad in a sailor suit - let out a terrified squeal.  
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