#fascinating question

So I have a random question for you because this feels like the kind of thing you’d have a take on: what do you think the Mikaelsons’ middle names would be and why? I’m so curious what your reasoning would be.

Thank you! I appreciate it and I’m happy you enjoy my blog!

I’m going to preface this with the fact that I think Esther was likely the one naming most of their children. I’ve talked about it before, but I think the shift to religious naming could be easily explained by Mikael being baptized after Freya disappeared and even taking on a new name himself after this spiritual rebirth. Elijah, in particular, reads like a celebration name—the first child born after that shift.

It was common for Vikings—“Viking” being a loose classification, but it works for the purposes of this post—to name their children using alliteration (where all the children’s names start with the same letter) or variation (where the names share the same base meaning but change certain elements). And while Christian names weren’t uncommon in the late Viking Age, it’s just my preference to explain the sudden shift from names like Freya and Finn to Elijah and Rebekah this way. (Niklaus has Greek but also Germanic roots, as does the name Ansel, so I’ve always assumed that name came from Mikael. The same goes for Henrik. Kol is an interesting one because it has a Norse meaning, but kol is also a Hebrew word, so it fits nicely within the naming scheme in either direction.)

All that to say, I don’t think they would have had middle names, since that really wasn’t really a thing in any of the areas their family could have plausibly originated from at the time. However, they could have had bynames—basically nicknames used to describe personality, occupation, appearance, and so on.

As for bynames, I think things like Freya Bright-Hair would be fun. Maybe Finn the Quiet, Finn the Tall, or Finn Slow-Smile? Elijah Dark-Eyes, Kol Never-Still, Freya Gold-Hair, Henrik Bright-Laugh—things in that vein. (I’m still undecided on one for Klaus because, despite all my positive feelings toward him, I’m not quick-minded enough to come up with one yet lol.) Two examples of historical bynames that I came across in my reading was “[name] Barefooted” and “[name] the Tall,” so that’s sort of the vibe.

Fun fact: this was actually an idea that I carried into Miriam’s story, where I was basically letting her give the people she encountered bynames.

I ended up googling the average height of a 12 year old and found a cotton-stuffed doll of about the same height, and it claims that doll is about 3 pounds. So, uh, 3 pounds, apparently.

mmm, I think my take is that people have a right to not want to use a condom for sex, but people also have every right to not want to fuck that person, you know? As long as you're having the kind of safe sex you're comfortable and happy having, I don't think it should matter what others are doing.

I can see an argument for banning those posts if they cause a lot of shitfights that the moderation team has to clean up. That's time and effort that isn't worth it. But if there aren't arguments, then I don't see a reason to.

IMO, it's better to have these people being upfront that they won't use a condom - so you can just immediately decide you won't be fucking them - than it is for them to be banned from saying so in their post and then to possibly try to coerce someone into something they aren't comfortable with once in physical space together.

Using or not using a condom isn't a moral issue. It's a personal health choice. And health is not moral. I believe it's best to allow people to be open about what they want so that everyone can make informed decisions about their sex life.

What a great question, but I’m going to start with some really nerdy definition of terms, because I feel that the way the term is used on the internet is unhelpfully imprecise. I often find myself saying ‘nope that’s just ordinary labour’ to posts about women wrapping their male partner’s Christmas presents or whatever.

I read a really interesting interview with Arlie Hochschild, who originally coined the term ‘emotional labour’, where she talks about the way the term had ben extended. She originally used it to describe the work of regulating your own emotions in the workplace - for example in hospitality you don’t just have to do the work of, but perform happines about that work as well. (And one of the interesting points is that there is a huge amount of emotional labour involved in being in 1D and fans demand that sort of performance of the right emotions very intensely and in all sorts of ways. The second thing I’d point out is that this analysis gets to the heart of why ‘Treat People with Kindnes’ is a super fraught command. And ultimately I go backwards and forwards about whether or not Harry is fundamentaly unaware of the dynamics of the cost of performing kindness, or if it’s a reaction to the demands put on him - and I suspect it’s both)

So I’m going to start with answering the question - who does the most work regulating their own emotions around their family. I’m not going to give individual explanations, but to me there’s two parts of the question - to what extent does their family context make complex emotional demands on them do they deal with this through emotional labour or withdrawl. So here is my list of emotional labour around families: 

Liam Payne

Louis Tomlinson

Niall Horan

Harry Styles

Zayn Malik

But I also want to answer the other question - who does the most care work responding to their family’s emotions.  Obviously that’s barely a question - it’s Louis, we have the screenshots from his sisters of their conversations.  

But with the others, I think it gets complicated, because now there’s the question of emotional competence. If two people do the dishes, and one is very bad at it and takes twice as long, do we say they are doing more work? With Liam I have no doubt that he thinks that making people happy is his job role and that includes his family, but is he any good at responding to other people’s emotions? 

And then the other question is again about withdrawal - to what extent do 1D members withdraw either from their family, or from any responsibility of people’s emotional response (and there’s all sorts of stuff to consider here - including Nick and Hary’s conversation about competitivenes in the car).