swyllh

the reason “hola mi nombre es juan. oh my god I didn’t realize I was speaking spanish.” is ridiculous is because it’s exceedingly rare anyones going to accidentally switch languages. in everything everywhere all at once, they speak chinglish to each other. they never accidentally speak mandarin to deirdre in the IRS office for example because that would be ridiculous.

So as a preface: Cantonese and Mandarin are two dialects of Chinese but they are fairly different grammatically, and while many people in Hong Kong and Guanzhou (Canton) region speak both, understanding one dialect if you only speak the other is more or less impossible. Native speakers of one often treat the other as a second language.

so in the prime universe, Evelyn speaks Cantonese and only Cantonese with prime!Gong Gong, who is never seen speaking any other languages aside from Cantonese. He barely understands Joy's broken Mandarin and only offers a berating response to her in Canto. Waymond and Evelyn's Chinglish is a mix of Mandarin and English together, but they mainly speak English with Joy, and she can barely understand her mother tongue.

between prime!Gong Gong and prime!Waymond, Waymond is only ever talked at. Gong Gong speaks to him in Cantonese (which he presumably understands) but he only replies back in Mandarin once. There is very little direct communication between them without Evelyn.

so you have a major language barrier between Joy and her grandfather and minor language barrier between Waymond and Gong Gong - they have the means to communicate and could understand eachother, but it takes tremendous effort to do so.

and Evelyn has to navigate all three worlds, between her daughter, her father, and her husband, and be the bridge between them all, and be the balance and the tether and their touchstone. Which is such a brilliant metaphor for generational disconnect here and how Evelyn really is in the centre of all that chaos — but it doesn’t stop there.

most crucially, Mandarin and Cantonese are used for the emotional and private and intimate dialogues between Evelyn, Waymond and Gong Gong. In all their flashbacks, in the kung fu/movie star universe, and also when Evelyn and Waymond talk about their domestic life in the IRS building - their divorce, their marriage, their daughter - conversations about the matters of the family are in Chinese.

Which leads us to: the alphaverse Wangs all speak English with each other and exclusively in English. Alphaverse!Waymond calls Alphaverse!Gong Gong “sir”, Alphaverse!Gong Gong tells prime!Evelyn to kill Joy in English. The only time prime!Evelyn talks to alpha!Gong Gong in Cantonese is when she confronts him about letting her go.

English is depersonalised in the movie — it’s used practically and for exposition and to communicate quickly, while Chinese usage is infinitely personal. (really the first clue that we get that Waymond is…..different is when he speaks to Evelyn in English with no Chinese at all).

And the most ironic thing about it all: the universe where the Wangs all understand and communicate perfectly is also where the family is most broken - alphaverse Waymond thinks that his own daughter is no longer capable of mercy or worthy of saving. Alphaverse!Gong Gong thinks he has to kill Joy in every universe.

Then as their conversation fades, there is a gesture of sudden and unexpected intimacy. The two men still, turn to eachother and Goncharov lights Andrey’s cigarette with the fire from his own. He cradles Andrey’s face with shocking tenderness that speaks of a casual familiarity and Andrey leans into the touch, almost indulgent. There is a moment of tension between them before Andrey looks down, uncharacteristically coy. The camera lingers as they stare at eachother for a few seconds before turning away. As they turn towards the glittering city that will doom them, we fade back to a dying Goncharov.

The nature of the scene is intentionally ambiguous— Andrey has only known Goncharov a few months, so chronologically, it’s out of place. Is it a false memory, a hallucination, or the wish fulfilment of a dying man?

Further examination shows another layer. Goncharov’s chosen alias was that of an actor best known for playing a time traveller, a low-budget sci-fi show whose key theme was defying your destiny. Andrey’s was that of a thespian who was playing a London National Theatre post-modernist production of Odysseus at the time. They are pretending to be other people, who pretend to be other people — actors whose characters escape their tragedy, from stories that defy fate. As if, in telling himself a story where tragic characters can escape, Goncharov puts himself in a story where he, too, can survive.

But the story is already over and nothing can be changed. Goncharov dies a lonely, desolate man, having alienated everyone who cares for him and the last act of tenderness we see him commit never even happened.

so, first of all, tumblr’s culture has changed a lot in the past couple years. there’s a genuine community effort to not start any drama, and ironically a lot of the current hostility is an effort to keep things calm. there’s also a change in how people interact with posts, so if you haven’t been here in a while please skip down to the tags/replies/reblog with text section.

for newcomers: you should be reblogging posts about as liberally as you would like something on twitter. if you only like stuff, people will think you are rude/a bot. you’ve probably heard people talk about “cultivating your dash,” and thats because this platform is 100% centered around your dashboard. trending matters less, unfollowing and blocking in order to shape your dash into it’s best form is widely accepted, the majority of the content you’ll find and interact with will be because of your dash, and the only way to put things on your dash is to reblog them. tumblr users are deeply distrustful of algorithms and have largely turned off the “see posts your friends have liked” function (i recommend you also turn of the various algorithms in settings → general settings → dashboard preferences).

so, once you’ve reblogged a post, there’s three ways to add content to it. the tags, replies, and reblogging with text. all of them have different connotations

the tags: an inside voice. originally they were meant for organizing your blog (and they’re still used for this), but they’ve also morphed into a way to share thoughts that aren’t funny/insightful enough for non-followers to be interested in. when in doubt, put your comment in the tags

replies: basically talking to your friends in class. your followers have no way of finding your replies (they don’t pop up on the dash, nobody gets notified except for the original poster) so chances are, only the person who made the post is gonna see your comment. it’s for quick one-offs that you’re okay with other people overhearing, but really is only made for one person. they’re like a public dm

reblog with text: an outside voice. you’re getting up on a stage in town square and entertaining people. make sure it’s funny or insightful— bottom line, add something new to the conversation. you should use this the least

general rules of thumb: 

when in doubt, reblog. people will judge you if your blog is only personal posts and you only interact with other content by liking it.  

the only things people will judge you for reblogging are personal vent posts. leave a like to give a little virtual hug

if a post is asking about your personality/opinions (i.e: tell me what’s the last tv show you watched, that kind of thing) put it in the tags 

If everyone comments inane things like “Lol! so true!” and “Wow I can’t believe this!” the comments will all be added to the end of the post and it will become extremely long and difficult to scroll past on mobile. So instead, people started using the tagging system to add comments, because your tags will not be carried over to subsequent reblogs unless someone intentionally preservers them (that’s what they mean by ‘peer review’)