Blind and hungry I wait

(via @transfem-tomgirl)

- There are 14, 15 or 16 cases, depending on who you ask. One might be accusative. Accusative may not exist at all. It depends on who you ask. Who do you ask? You don’t know who to ask. You can ask nobody. The accusative case stares at you, accusingly.

- Imperative exists in three persons. Which three persons, you ask. Plural, they reply. Don’t forget the plural imperative. You stare at your textbook. Your textbook stares back at you. The negative active 2. person imperative has ceased to make any sense. Has it ever made sense?

- You’re learning the difference between the short and the long vowels. The short vowels are short. The long ones are twice as long as the short ones. But really, they say, they’re thrice as long as that. Even longer than that. Ä, you say. Ää. Äää. Äääääääääää- It never stops.

- The verb types are easy, they say. There are only six verb types. Six. Your text book lists only five. What is the sixth verb type? It’s in the next book, your professor says. There is no next book. What is the sixth verb type?

- The vowels come in groups. You don’t know why they’ve come or why they’re in groups. You learn their harmony all the same. You shed a tear when you’ve mastered it. But have you mastered it? The vowel harmony lulls you into a false sense of security. The vowels will strike when you least expect it.

- Consonant gradation.

- There is no accusative, your professor screams at you. It’s genitive! Or partitive! Or plural nominative, but only in the personal pronouns! The accusative does not exist! He is red in the face. Why does the accusative not exist? Do grammatical objects not exist in this language? you ask. (You shouldn’t have asked.) You are met with blank stares.

- In the future you would like to speak Finnish fluently. You make the mistake of saying this aloud. The ground opens beneath your feet and a terrible voice booms: THERE IS NO FUTURE! Silly you, you think. Of course there isn’t. You dutifully note down the three different past tenses.

- Sentence replacements replace sentences, your professor tells you. He does not tell you what the sentences are replaced with. You stare at the list of sentence replacements. There are nine items on the list. One is a quantum sentence replacement. You dare not ask.

- New words are easy to create, they say. So easy. What could possibly go wrong? You decide to create a new word. You have created an abomination.

- You’re conjugating -i nouns. There’s another group of -i nouns conjugated differently. These are very old words, your professor says. There’s another group of -i nouns. These are very old words, she says. Even older words. There’s another group of -i nouns. These are very old words, she says. They are ancient words. Blood and devil words, the past whispers in your ear.

- Some of those 14 or 15 or 16 cases are fossilised, so don’t worry about them, your professor says. Don’t worry at all. But you worry. You must worry.

Tenna art by @9Aaaalt29 on twt

The crowd roared in confused enthusiasm as Tenna gave a gracious flurry of low-FPS bows, pausing only for the occasional stink-nose at his audience plants who weren’t throwing enough 3D roses.

Eventually, the room fell silent. It was Senshi’s turn to speak.

He puffed out his chest, took a long, sweeping look over the audience… and shook his head.

“I can see not all of you are eating properly.”

The crowd murmured with embarrassment.

“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but it’s time to take the turkey out of your icebox. I have seen the ingenious technology with which your people store food... and I have also seen the waste which results from such convenience.

“The food you take had a life. Beasts grew fat on the grass of the field, plants grew from the sun’s rays, and mushrooms grew from minerals in the cracks of caves. And yet, it sits in your iceboxes, collecting moisture until it perishes.

“Eat what is given to you. Because its life will make you stronger, too.”

Without another word, Senshi left his podium and stepped away from the stage. The crowd murmured in confusion. “Is he really like that?” somebody said. “I only remember reblogging the photosets of him tripping and showing ass.”

--

Back in the Green Room, Tenna wrung his antennas nervously.

“Y-y-you think they liked me!? They HAD to!! I mean, I don’t know what Asgore was thinking, getting that weird haircut and running that food waste campaign, but… YOU thought I did good, didn’t you, Kris?”

Laios nodded aggressively, a streak of blue face paint peeling from his forehead.

“You did AMAZING, Tenna! By the way, now that we’ve seen all your insider campaign secrets, do you have any more videos of Susie? Especially her tail... If I could get a look at that, I could finally tell if she’s a dinosaur or --”

THWACK. Fake antlers butted Laios’s head.

“LAIOS?? Weren’t we dressed up to help SENSHI???” Marcille hissed, gesturing awkwardly with her hooves.

Suddenly, Tenna turned to the two adventurers.

“Hey, WAIT a second. SOMETHING’s not right here...”

Laios and Marcille held their breath.

“Where the heck are my POINTS!?”

Just then, the door opened. Chilchuck took one step into the room, whistling and holding a large bag.

Everyone turned to him.

Chilchuck paused, took a step backwards, and closed the door.

“CHILCHUCK!!!” yelled Tenna.

“How come Chilchuck got to stay Chilchuck!?” yelled Marcille at the same time.

--

Happy birthday, Frantz Fanon! (July 20, 1925)

One of the most enduring and influential anti-colonial theorists of all time, Frantz Fanon became acquainted with racist colonial violence growing up on the French Caribbean colony of Martinique. During World War II, Fanon enlisted with the Free French forces, and experienced further racism from Europeans during his time fighting fascists on the continent. After the war, he studied psychiatry as his political consciousness continued to grow, and in 1952 he published Black Skin, White Masks, which discussed the psychological impact of colonialism on Black people. He worked as a psychiatrist in Algeria for a time before deciding that he could no longer support the French colonial project in Africa and defected to join Algeria's National Liberation Front in its struggle for freedom. He continued to put out a number of influential texts, including his last and most famous, The Wretched of the Earth. In poor health, Fanon died in 1961 at the tragically young age of 36, but his legacy is outsized for his age, having influenced a bevy of revolutionary figures, including Che Guevara, Malcom X, Kwame Ture, and Huey P. Newton.

Summons not a big, terrifying, snatching cinematic movie monster, but an actual pterosaur of the genus Pterodactylus, which is only about the size of a seagull.