The Queen of Useless Information

which is why you get all these books that embrace hyper violence but flinch away from any -phobias and -isms, because that would be uncomfortable.

what makes the dissonance especially jarring is that viewing violence as abstract is a privilege. in Canada and the States, we get to sit comfortably in our homes while our governments fund weapons and send troops to inflict violence overseas. and sure, we can watch a genocide live-streamed on social media, but it still feels distant.

Yes I'll definitely use a word from another language instead of the correct one if i cannot remember it in this one we're mutually using, but I will not be spewing catchphrases like an NPC.

Do I still eat the trope up? 100% (I mean Jackie Welles Cyberpunk2077 hello-)

The irony also applies to pet names and terms of endearment. You're unlikely to use that many L1 terms of endearment on a loved one that doesn't speak said language (though some consciously choose to do so, whether due to sentimentality or as a form of flirting), and unless you're in a movie or carefully curated, slowburn fanfic, you'll be settling for more common terms, usually in a language you share. You'd more likely have to be limited by a lower level skill in L2 to resort to L1 phrases when you're at a loss of words, or rather overwhelmed by other factors such as emotions; and someone with other languages in their arsenal will compensate for this lack with one of them, not necessarily his native tongue, esp if it's rarer, such as in my case where the counterpart most likely still won't understand a fundamentally different word from Serbian or Greek for example.

One instance where I can imagine this bilingual conundrum working, is in creole or pidgin languages*. Languages meant to function in a multilingual/multicultural environment, or ones that are based heavily on such linguistic development, are more likely to mix terms and structures, producing their own in turn. Notice how these OP media tropes don't often happen in "less popular/romanticized" languages, either. We'll see a lot of French or Spanish terms thrown around for pet names, as they're notorious for romance settings, or perhaps some popular foreign slang that's been meme-fied on the net by other, less "romantic" languages. That's where these stop though, don't they?

Somehow Gambit calling you ma chér in French makes more sense when Cajun actively uses it in anglophone environments too, while Bane calling you a million spanish endearments while he's a genius fluent in several languages, can only be doing it for the love of the game (this man is an expert in psychology amongst other things, he knows the effect a nice little Cariña has on you) 😆

so was i

I 100% know that Tony would have (eventually, come on now) forgiven Bucky if he had known the truth about his mind control (and lets bffr we saw the devastated, regretful look on Bucky's face and how Tony primarily went to bite Cap's head off, prompting the 2vs1). And I understand people make mistakes, esp given the civil war context and circumstances. But Steve straight up kept the one thing he absolutely shouldn't have from Tony until it blew up in their faces, instead of breaking the news to him in a controlled environment from the beginning.

Steve proved single handedly that Tony loved him more than Steve loved Tony in their friendship (if he ever saw him as anything more than a coworker at all, cause i highkey see their dynamic as Steve realizing his loss only after the fact and acting in regret/late reciprocated/unrequited love from there on out). And that was the breaking point for Tony, who rarely lets people in, and for me who saw Steve Rogers become this mono dimensional, one track mind caricature that ultimately went back in time after all that work, at endgame. Whether this was an MCU liberty, or a comic accurate character trait (CA comics are not in my special interest and I fear it never will be after this), it ruined Steve Rogers for me thereafter lol cause look how they massacred my boy!! The glimpses of OG Steve were NOT like this, Peggy tell em!

I know its not that big of a deal, but to me, it was the clean break that made me shift my fondness onto Bucky who in all his tragicness goes on to atone through a lot of trials.