He listens to every word, watches every little action. Looks for anything that could clue him in to this being a trick. This wasn't like in that game he'd played with Shadow. This wasn't White Space. This was a city full of mystics and threats that want to bring them down. Her description of Shadow was... Accurate, though. And her calling the hedgehog her brother was correct as well. Things seem to be lining up.

But there's still threats that would stoop this low.

"I know who you're looking for." The fact that she called him a mobian... That would've taken some digging if this was a spell meant to trick them. Dedication to detail that he doesn't know any of their enemies have in them. ...Well... Big Mama doesn't care yet, and this isn't her kind of trick anyway. The Baron doesn't know of them yet, and even then this is also not his kind of trick. This also isn't something Bruce or Beverly would use, and Shadow's not on their radar yet either... Hm.

His eyes soften after a moment, lifting a hand to lower the hood of his cloak before removing it. "You need to keep your voice down, you'll draw attention." The slider gently warns as he steps forward. It was more that he didn't want a certain hedgehog nearby to wake than it was about drawing attention of the local yokai. He can fend off an agitated citizen.

"And you can't be seen. There's... Mobians in this city who aren't very fond of humans." The assassin is careful as he drapes his cloak over the girl's shoulders and pulls up the hood. Closer now, the mutant takes a better look at the human now hidden from others' view by his cloak. Observes her eyes, looks for any signs of mystics. Her face, any marking that doesn't match what he knows. Her hands- one is fine, but the other...

Oh yeah! I graduated in September with a BA in it. The Grand Plan™️ was that I was going to go into voice therapy, which is something I was/still am super interested in. I’ve had to go to voice therapy twice now as a client, and even though any sort of PT sucks, I was super into the therapy itself and found the whole thing really cool. 

But as I was graduating I just realized that any time I had extra credits and could pick any course in my University to fill them, I always chose a music course. And looking at my grades and the amount of effort I put into music vs linguistics assignments, I realized that yeah I was wayyy more into audio engineering than linguistics. I still enjoy linguistics, but I enjoy it more as a side hobby now. 

I think going for the minor is still worth it if you’re into it! You won’t be able to get that personalized, in-depth study of your favorite field of linguistics, but having the more broad overview of it is still cool.

Fair warning, linguistics is a science at its core and it’s vastly different from what people think it is. You don’t learn grammar or spelling (that’s English), you don’t learn foreign languages (that’s foreign language studies), you learn about language as a science. You learn about the vocal tract, every sound in every language, how different language families build sentence structures, the history of languages, how to observe and track language change, how to read formant graphs and build syntax trees, logic math in language, language data analysis, etc. It’s kinda like the chemistry of languages.

For every 🚰 my muse gets, my muse will act a little more drunk.

@the-bastard-entity

The Entity shifts himself into the makeshift bar, just a couple feet down the bench from her, and Sam hides her face in her hands, beet red.

It’s not like she hasn’t kissed him before - several times, even - and it’s not like... well, can she refuse? She’s not exactly on her A-game at the moment, not really in a place to do any mental gymnastics to weasel her way out of either the kiss or the drink. There might be some way to interpret meaning here? Something about “for” or “or,” but she can’t think clearly enough to go step by step with what the words mean in context. Instead she’s left squirming in her seat as her mind goes ten steps farther, because...

Because she really wouldn’t mind kissing him. Wouldn’t mind doing a lot more. She’s feeling, ummmmm touchy. Clingy. Drunk Sam is a big fan of PDA - any kind of contact, really - and the Bastard is so very appealing...

“Hhh—” Her breath is audible - a wanting sigh - before she finally nods from behind her hands, “Mmmmhmm.”

The note appears on the table while she’s still locking lips with the Bastard. Sam isn’t even entirely sure how she knows it’s there. The Fog just pulls her attention to it.

Untangling her arms from around the Entity, she tries to un-straddle and ends up settled in his lap as he helps her turn to face front. His arm stays around her waist, keeping her pressed up against him as she reaches for the note on the table. She bites her lip, wiggling a little as his mouth slides down the side of her neck.

It’s hard to focus on the note while the god licks at her skin, her breath shallow and cheeks flushed, but she tries. It didn’t come with a drink, so it’s not part of her assigned task of the day. Just a note. A note from— from Jed.

She doesn’t even take in the words on the first reading, just the heart and the J. When she reads again, she almost has the presence of mind to find her lack of focus ironic, given his plea.

Send my muse a truth and a dare!  

((Setting this pre-gift/date happenings-- @the-bastard-entity))

As always, memories of encounters with the Entity bring a whole slew of emotions, all mixed up in the least pleasant way possible. Sam hates that they make her weak in the knees with that mix of lust and dread and shame. Her head lowers into her hands.

She should take the dare. That was a reasonable response, totally justifiable, and all in all a very logical choice. But she hesitates. She tells herself it’s because she’s not sure, after her last time holding a knife, that she could go through with it. And maybe that’s true. Her head raises. 

“I...” Sam has to clear her throat and wet suddenly dry lips. She really has to choose a moment? From encounters that often more closely resemble torture than anything else? She sorts through moments in her head, and finds herself growing more fidgety by the second. There are definitely some higher points.

Tell us about a memory you hold close to your heart.

omg ily for picking this one

i recently found my footage from the 1989 tour on my icloud sooooo i obvs have to answer with:

deeeeeefinitely my first time ever seeing taylor swift live. like. i genuinely hold going to the 1989 tour in such a special place in my heart simply bc it was the day i think i became like. a diehard swiftie??? i grew up w taylor's music and knew every word but never considered myself a swiftie (when those polls appear like 'when did you first discover taylor's music' i put debut era but when it asks 'what era did you become a swiftie' i always lowkey pick 1989 bc it's truuuuuue)

but yeah i went to the halloween show (october 31st 2015) in tampa. i got my ticket THE DAY OF (lower bowl off stubhub for $165) after weeks of debating if i should go and drove hours to get there. and not only was it my first taylor show, it was my first solo concert ever <3

genuinely wanegbt rock version Changed Me. i'd never heard her sing like that before and it's the reason i always defend taylor's vocals bc if there's one thing she did in her career it's work hard and improve!!!!!!

also one of my fav moments of that night was when the girls next to me asked if it was my first time seeing her live and when i said yes they were like "ohhhhh you're gonna LOVE IT" (truer words have never been spoken!!!!!!!!)

anyways here's the One Photo i still have from that night 🩵

With my boyfriend it’s not an issue because we rarely talk in English when we’re together.

But generally speaking the she/see sounds aren’t too much of an issue. When in conversation, the context of whats being said usually makes she/see differences not that noticable.It’s a kind of tricky pronunciation for Japanese because there is no see sound in the language. Just the she. And it’s such a slight difference that sometimes they can’t even hear the difference. But really it’s not much of an issue. Just a bit of fun trying to get the pronunciation down.

While teaching I’ve noticed there’s quite a lot of sounds we have in English that Japanese doesn’t have. Things like ‘th’ ‘r vs l’ ‘tr’ ‘f’ ‘v’ I could go on (it honestly seems to go on forever). But most of these differences in context don’t really impede understanding.

From my experience (especially with my students) the biggest problem with pronunciation causing language barriers is with different vowel sounds.Japanese has 5 pure vowel sounds that can be either short or long. English by comparison has around 19 I believe. Native Japanese speakers can often be left completely baffled as they can’t even hear the difference in the sounds, let alone produce them! Not only that but the sounds that are used in words can vary massively with British, American and Australian accents.In some situations soft British vowel sounds can be particularly difficult to produce. But in other situations can be easier for Japanese natives that American vowel sounds. There’s just so many variables.

An example that springs to mind was one student of mine was trying to tell me that they studied ‘law’ and I could have sworn she was saying ‘row’.There’s 2 problems here. A very well known problem is that Japanese doesn’t have an l or r sound and so Japanese natives often get these two mixed up. Secondly is the ɔː sound in law. In British English this makes a very ‘or’ sound whereas in American English it’s closer to an ‘ah’ sound. The ‘or’’ sound British people use in the word law is extremely difficult for some Japanese natives and so comes out kind of like ow. This is mainly because the japanese spelling of these two sounds is the same.There’s probably way more examples of difficulties like this but that’s the one that springs to mind.

English is a really fucking difficult language for native Japanese speakers to learn and I have massive respect for everybody who tries to learn.