#littlehen

Thank youuu!!

2. Which language did you study the most this past year?

Probably Ukrainian!

3. Did you start studying any new languages this year?

This year I started studying Latin! I finally decided to get to it after reading a bilingual Virgil book, in Spanish and Latin. When i was 7 I was interested on Latin because I was into taxonomy, but I never got to learn it until this year!

15. What are you most proud of in your language learning journey this year?

Screenshots showing how they look in use:

rust: what is your favorite flower?

at the moment violas! i have a ground floor housing association flat and we have a tiny patch of garden that is only about 2m wide x 1m deep but this year i’ve planted loads of flowers and violas are my border flowers. i also have plant pots with them in and they’ve grown so much. they look beautiful. i’m gonna cut some soon and press them. 

cobalt: dream house?

i’d love a 1950s bungalow. if i ever could afford a house then that would be what i’d look for. a bungalow with a little garden would make me very happy. 

gold: do you wear jewelry

i have hundreds of pieces of jewellery. it’s the only thing i really collect, but my favourite piece that i own and the only one i wear every day (other than earrings) is a tessa metcalfe pigeon claw ring. it’s burnished silver with gold claws. they were out of stock for the longest time because she mostly makes commissions but then she made a few more so it was a belated christmas present from my husband. it’s a really solid heavy piece and i love it so much. this is it (and my hand)!

Screenshots showing how they look in use:

Part 1: X / Part 2: X

Screenshots showing how they look in use:

Part 1: X

And it occurs to me that we will probably never find out his name at all. There just might never be a canon answer to this one. 

Sitcoms are full of permanently teased and withheld information, and if that running gag goes on long enough, any reveal would be disappointing. The glorious not-knowing is the joy, because the answer could be anything. 

Like, think about all those hinted-at stories that sitcoms never explore. What on earth happened on that fateful fishing trip with Uncle Bryn in Gavin & Stacey? Just what is the ‘special stuff’ that causes all those nosebleeds in League of Gentlemen? Why was the money resting in Father Ted’s account? 

Or how about the trope of the invisible character – named but unseen. We never actually get to meet Maris in Frasier. Or the formidable Mrs Mainwaring in Dad’s Army. Or Beverley Macker in The Royle Family – yet just the mention of her name will cause conflict between Dave and Denise. Marsha’s hellcat daughter Amber in Spaced only streaks across the screen ever so briefly. (“Stop walking in front of the telly, your tights are strobing” is still one of my favourite line deliveries in anything.) The ridiculous mythology just builds and builds over time, until no human actor could do this impossible character justice. They can’t be revealed. That’s the joke.

I’m not talking about ‘stuff we don’t know’. (I have so many questions about Fleabag’s backstory!) I mean missing information that’s regularly dangled in front of the audience as ‘stuff we are deliberately not telling you.’ It’s all about the tease. It’s kind of like a MacGuffin, in that the question is fascinating but the answer is not really the point. Why would any competent comedy writer chuck away a rewarding recurring gag? Especially if that gag is a lovely part of the show’s world?

So for that reason, I bet he will always be just the Captain, at least until the very end. I know there’s a lot of theories about him hiding behind his military identity and how shedding that is part of his character growth, etc. The emotional and dramatic DNA of this show is so genuine, so heartfelt, that it’s easy to forget that – and I mean this with all the love in the world, Cap – it’s a sitcom. But the Idiots know what they’re doing and I reckon they’re going to string out this joke as long as possible. If that means we get to hypothesise about his name ad infinitum – what a gift.