Sorry, Peri. I can't make it.

On the one hand, it’s a nice convenient narrative device that doesn’t necessarily need to be explored, but if you do take a moment to think about where it came from or what it might look like, you find that there’s really only 2 possible origins.

In settings where humans speak common and only Common, while every other race has its own language and also speaks Common, the implication is rather clear: at some point in the setting’s history, humans did the imperialism thing, and while their empire has crumbled, the only reason everyone speaks Human is that way back when, they had to, and since everyone speaks it, the humans rebranded their language as Common and painted themselves as the default race in a not-so-subtle parallel of real-world whiteness.

In settings where Human and Common are separate languages, though (and I haven’t seen nearly as many of these as I’d like), Common would have developed communally between at least three or four races who needed to communicate all together. With only two races trying to communicate, no one would need to learn more than one new language, but if, say, a marketplace became a trading hub for humans, dwarves, orcs, and elves, then either any given trader would need to learn three new languages to be sure that they could talk to every potential customer, OR a pidgin could spring up around that marketplace that eventually spreads as the traders travel the world.

Drop your concept of Common meaning “english, but in middle earth” for a moment and imagine a language where everyone uses human words for produce, farming, and carpentry; dwarven words for gemstones, masonry, and construction; elven words for textiles, magic, and music; and orcish words for smithing weaponry/armor, and livestock. Imagine that it’s all tied together with a mishmash of grammatical structures where some words conjugate and others don’t, some adjectives go before the noun and some go after, and plurals and tenses vary wildly based on what you’re talking about.

So I completely agree with this, common would be an even larger mess than what we speak now because it would be a combination of the main human language, Elven, Orcish ,Dwarven words and syntaxes mixed together. The written language would be even worse because there would be Orcish consonants used in place of Elvish sounds because the letters are easier and faster to write, letters in places they don’t belong because of some old Dwarven writing habit three centuries ago that’s just become the norm. Short hand a long hand versions of the language because fuck why not. The dropping of the informal tense because most of the language is spoken in a formal setting anyway.

The original speakers of that language don’t appear to have been imperialists… but instead, the trade superpowers of their time.

They were among the first to domesticate horses, and also figured out wheels and carts pretty early on, and so they could travel *massively* longer distances than pretty much any of their contemporaries, and if that meant bringing Siberian firs to northern India or anotolia or even close to China (they’ve long died out, but there are records of ancient Indo-European languages in like, *Mongolia*)—then, well, you have a certain amount of cultural dominance, even if you’re not doing a lot of marrying into these other societies, or colonizing them, or any of that. You’ve still become an *important language for everyone else to speak*.

And so they uh… did, I guess? I’m sure the politics around choosing to adopt it at the time were fascinating, but most of these languages weren’t written, soooo, we’ll never know exactly how it went down.

But anyway, that could absolutely be an origin point for Common.

And heck, even if humans only speak it, it might not have initially been a human language! Almost all European languages today are Indo-European, but the initial speakers of Proto-Indo-European were from the western steppe—that’s way off in southern Russia, pretty far from places like Scandinavia and England.

So you could even interpret humans as having been comparatively “weak” to an encroaching trade language, and therefore only speaking it >_o

In the chaos and uncertainty around us, there is still so much love and hope.

A few weeks ago, a local international student nervously approached me and asked if I could photograph his wedding reception. We barely know each other — so much so that the only real thing he knew about me was that a) I was a graphic designer and b) he had seen me hold a camera. And the only thing I knew about him was that he came from overseas to study engineering in the U.S.

He explained that his friend (and expected photographer) couldn't make the trip. I sympathized and told him I had a similar situation with my wedding, but then he said something that made my stomach churn.

Almost all his family and friends overseas can't make it. So can't the bride's, as she's studying abroad as well. With the warmest smile, he says while he wishes his family could be there to celebrate, he's so lucky to have great friends who are helping them put on a small reception.

I told him I had it covered and I wouldn't accept payment. Photos like this will be invaluable over time, and I wanted to pay it forward as the volunteer photographer at my own wedding did.

The wedding was this weekend. I cried during it.

His fellow engineering students became wedding planners. A church opened its doors free of charge. Families of local students caught wind of the event and handled the food, learning cultural dishes from the bride and groom's home countries. A mom group banded together to make table centerpieces. A recently married couple donated their leftover decorations. There were almost one hundred guests. Most of us didn't know each other.

It was the most beautiful wedding I've ever seen. Not just because the bride and groom were so deeply in love with one another, but because strangers saw an opportunity to be kind. In a community where hate of anything 'foreign' seems to fester, a bunch of people saw two lovebirds separated from their families, stepped in, and said, "how can we celebrate love today?"

Bison Quilt - Wally Dion

Quilt Noir - Wally Dion

"The first fabric star quilt was made as part of a 2022 residency at Wanuskewin Park. It was my way of reflecting upon prairie tall grass and the reintroduction of bison into the Great Plaines. I wanted to make several transparent quilts and superimpose them; one in front another... a quilt for the microbiome, another for the bison, their manure & hooves, another for the summer fires that scorch the ground and a final quilt for the sweetgrass braid. "I was considering how all of these things worked together for thousands of years to create what is known as the 'prairie tall grass ecosystem'. A vast and fertile expanse of land stretching from the foothills of Alberta to the banks of the Mississippi. I wanted to highlight the invisibility of systems when everything is working well, as it should be. "I started with the green quilt because it is the colour of the sweet grass braid that is exchanged in ceremony and relationship building. I considered the nature and tradition of quilting; impoverished craftspeople using tiny scraps of fabric. I considered the act of offering fabric and adherence to tradition. I thought of a thousand tiny prayers and how that might look; invisible acts of respect and adherence to protocols spanning decades. My thoughts travelled across the land, imagining the trees and rocks collecting these prayers like a bush of cloth, or an etched bolders."