simpleidiot:

kimjongillbeats:

wonderwheels:

elastic-bands:

how the fuck…..

i reblogged this while watching it

a cartoon not shown, as usual.

NONE OF YOUR FREAKING MOVIES GET IT RIGHT: a guide to Russian names.

justamus:

silvenhorror:

This post was inspired by years and years of watching movies, series, and fanfics royally and hilariously fuck up the use of names in the Russian language, coming to the point where, if I see another pair of best buddies call each other by full name, I will shoot something, I swear to God.

There are 3 ways people in Russia address each other, and they denote different levels of formality, and the relationship between the speakers. You should know this stuff if you wanna write anything that includes Russian people talking to each other, because if you get it wrong, it will be, alternatively, hilarious or cringe-worthy. I have seen soo much of this in fanfic it’s not funny anymore. So read up y’all!

1. Name + Patronymic.

A patronym, or patronymic, is a component of a surname based on the given name of one’s father, grandfather or an even earlier male ancestor. (thank you, Wikipedia!) A patronymic is not a middle name. Russian people don’t have middle names, period. But we all have patronymics!

Use: formal

Used towards: your teacher, your big boss, a senior citizen with whom you don’t have a close relationship (say, your classmate’s grandma), your doctor, any kind of professor or scholar when you address them formally, a client when you’re in the service industry/work with people (not always, but very often).

Example: Ivan Petrovich, Sergey Vladimirovich, Anna Anatolyevna, Maria Sergeevna, etc

Things that happen:

Student: Ivan Petrovich, could I consult you on my essay after class?

Teacher: Sure, Sasha, I’ll be in the classroom till 3.

Things that don’t happen:

Student: Ivan, when are you gonna grade our tests?

Teacher: Tomorrow, Alexander!

Remember: patronymics are gendered, they’ll have different endings for male and female names! The best way to figure out how to make a patronymic out of any given name is to go and ask a Russian speaker.

2. Name.

I’m talking about the full form of a name here, because there’s also a short form and that’s the next one.

Use: semi-formal

Used towards: if you’re an adult - towards any other adult with whom you are in an equal position but don’t have a close relationship; a colleague with whom you’re not close; a business partner; your boss if you’re close to them on the corporate ladder;  another adult you just met and with whom you’re making friends with but you’re not close yet (not always though, but often); basically in any kind od setting where someone’s your equal but you’re not close. Teenagers/youngsters and children don’t really do this inbetween themselves, preferring the informality of short names. When people use full names, it means the relationship between them is formal in its nature, not really close or based on friendship.

Example: Vladimir, Pyotr, Alexander, Anna, Nadezhda, Valentina, Ivan, Natalya, Mikhail, etc

Things that happen:

Businessman 1: I think the business lunch went pretty well, don’t you, Alexey?

Businessman 2: I believe so, Mikhail, if things keep going this way, we’ll get some solid funding for our joined project.

Things that don’t happen:

Classmate 1: Hey, Mikhail, pass me the history textbook!

Classmate 2: Sure thing, Boris!

Friend 1: What do you say, Anatoly, wanna hit a few bars tonight, get a few beers?

Friend 2: Sure thing, Dmitry, it’s been a while since I got hammered last time! A good fuck afterwards would be awesome, too.

Remember: if two people are close in an informal setting, they’re not gonna do this. This is the number one mistake they make in movies. Siblings and close friends and people who are meant to be friendly and close to each other don’t bloody do this in modern Russian. Unless it’s for laughs or something.

3. Short name.

This is the one people get wrong often too, because the world generally seems to be uninformed about the existence of short names in Russian. And when people do know, they have serious difficulties telling short names for girls from short names for boys, or making a short name out of the full version correctly. The best way to figure this out is to ASK A RUSSIAN, y’all.

Use: informal

Used towards: your peers, buddies, friends, classmates, siblings, relatives, children and teenagers regardless of the speaker’s age, sometimes young adults too if they’re very young-looking and the other person is older. (I’m 22 and all my teachers use my short name, so does my dentist, my friends’ parents, etc. Note the difference: if I go to a bank, I will only be addressed by name+patronymic by the workers there, regardless of my baby face, because that’s a formal setting.) It’s also acceptable to use short names towards people much lower than you on the corporate ladder, sometimes: bosses often use short names for their secretaries, but not always, it really depends. Small children use short name + uncle/auntie to talk about any adult (this is sort of similar to Japanese).

Exaple (Full name - short name): Vladimir - Vova/Volodya, Mikhail - Misha, Evgeny/Evgenia - Zhenya, Nadezhda - Nadya, Ekaterina - Katya, Alexander/Alexandra - Sasha, Dmitry - Dima, Sergey - Seryozha, Maria - Masha, Natalya - Natasha, Ivan - Vanya, etc.

Things that happen:

Classmate 1: Morning, Katya! Ready for the test?

Classmate 2: Morning! Not sure about that one, Nadya, got any cribs to share?

Boss: Masha, could you please make me a cup of strong coffee? No sugar.

Secretary: Yes, Evgenya Pavlovna, it’ll only be a minute.

Things that don’t happen:

Teacher: Your last test was awful, Kostya, when are you going to start trying harder?

Student: I’ll try harder next time, Vanya, I’m really sorry. Please don’t fail me?

Remember: It can be very hard to guess if a short name is a boy or girl name if you don’t know, because they have similar endings, and that confuses people. Some short names are unisex, because they’re short forms for male and female versions of the same name, like Sasha or Zhenya. If you only know the short name, you will most likely fail at figuring out the full name if you don’t already know it, and vice versa. The best way to figure out the short form of a name is to ASK A RUSSIAN, seriously. Or a Russian speaker with a good vocabulary. Someone who already knows.

Also note: Russian is VERY creative with suffixes and diminutives, so a single name can have 3 or 4 short versions which get fluffier and fluffier. Example:

Nadezhda -> Nadya -> Nadyusha -> Nadyushen’ka. (my name)

Ivan -> Vanya -> Vanyusha, Vanechka -> Vanyushen’ka (the last one is so fluffy noone but your grandma would ever use it)

The last version is UBER fluffy. The third one is what my ex used to call me and what my close Russian friends call me to show tenderness/love/affection, same with my parents, and even my teacher calls me that but only due to our very close relationship. It’s not the fluffiest but still mighty fluffy.

NB for ficwriters: using names correctly is an A+ way to show contrast in relationships, or a contrast between a formal setting and a private setting. Especially if you’re writing m/m, use the fluffy versions SPARINGLY if you wanna convey a serious atmosphere (even in a cracky one, people aren’t gonna use them all the time either), but figure out the right moment to use them, when you wanna show a hurricane of affection/emotions and extreme tenderness, and you’ll hit your Russian readers right in the heart (for example, character A is returning from a war all wounded but alive, and character B is running towards them, hugging them and crying). But don’t try to make the fluffy versions yourself, just find someone and ask! Ask me, I’m always here.

Mkay, I hope that was clear enough and made some sense. If you’re not sure about something, the best thing to do is ask a Russian/someone who’s really fluent. Online translators don’t do SHIT, forget about them if you wanna get Russian right in a fanfic, the results are hilarious. ASK! That is the key : )

Reblogging for ficwriting friends.

OMG OMG OMG

lovelycarose:

misplacedlemon:

I was watching a documentary on how the image of the devil was formed over time, and they did a section on a middle-aged painting. It was their first real evidence of Lucifer being portrayed as evil; it showed him being locked into the cage of hell with all the demons and sinners etc, truly the devil.

Guess what the painting was called.

GUESS WHAT THE PAINTING WAS CALLED.

THE WINCHESTER PSALTER.

Ain’t My Bitch

andythanfiction:

I’m not going to pretend that this is a comprehensive, authoritative, or definitive examination of this tremendously complex issue and its intersectionality - that would take a large book or Doctoral thesis to even scratch the surface of - but one thing I haven’t seen explored a lot in the meta of this fandom and which I think is VERY relevant to his character is Dean’s effemiphobia, and I would like to at least open discussion on the matter.  

Because it’s huge.  I cannot overstate its importance enough in shaping the psyche of the average “dude.”  Effemiphobia was a word that, as a man, changed my life.  Literally.  If Fred Jones had been around when I fully grasped its meaning and how much it ruled my existence, the lightbulb that went on over my head would have blinded Vegas. 

See, I was one of those guys.  I considered myself enlightened, forward-thinking, liberal, but still not some pansy-ass kumbaya pushover, you know? 

Like, I had no problem with gay people.  Legit, look down to the bottom of my heart could put my hand on a stack of bibles and swear that there was nothing wrong with LGBT people, that everybody had the right to love whoever they love, and that if we’re going to call ourselves the land of the free, they’d better have all the other rights, too.  I’d even taken and thrown a couple of punches and gone to some rallies in the name of LGBT causes, because it was just right.  And a couple of my guy friends were gay – but awesome gay.  Like, you’d never know it, because they were just dudes that loved dudes, not that simpering girly sissy sashay you go girlfriend crap…which made me incredibly uncomfortable, even dirty, and feeling like I had to go out and eat a raw alligator I’d wrestled to death with my bare hands as an ‘antidote’ if I was around it.      

Likewise, I considered myself absolutely not at all sexist or misogynistic.  I was favoring Clinton over Obama in the Democratic primaries in 08.  I could rattle off more badass heroines of stage, screen, math, science, and history than many women’s studies majors, and with true respect for how amazing they were, not just a Tomb Raider fetish.  I fought for equal pay, reproductive rights, against sexual harassment, and against rape culture.  I had more female friends than male, many of whom I’d happily trust with my life in a fight, and they were awesome women, tougher than any six men you could hope to meet, women who wore cargo pants and no makeup, who could take an impressive shot with a gun or a glass, who could do manual labor for a ten hour shift and then work on the car for a while while discussing action flicks and microbrews and immigration policy.  Not shallow, empty-headed, bleach-blonde bimbo chicks with their Daisy Dukes and fake tans and romcoms and romance novels that I smiled and put up with and rolled my eyes at even as I genuinely believed they should be treated well and have equal rights. 

Sound familiar?  It should, because it’s a fuckton of men; men who are being slowly exposed now that the cultural tide is shifting and we’re getting a better look at the vast, armored, buttressed hulk at the center of the Island of Patriarchy in the sludgy swamp of Privilege.  It used to look like it was all one thing with Homophobia Atoll and Misogyny Point, but now it’s becoming clearer that although they sit on the same bedrock and a lot of people commute frequently between all three and hold multiple citizenship, there is still a distinct separation between those nasty colonies and the Fortress of Effemiphobia…where many, many, many men, including Dean Winchester (who is a high-ranking commanding officer in their guards) reside.

Effemiphobia doesn’t care if you have a vagina or not.  It doesn’t care what genitals the person you prefer to rub your genitals on has.  It cares that you had better not be feminine.  Because all things feminine (as opposed to the misogynist’s all things female or the homophobe’s all things that like to fuck the same things) are weak, inferior, silly, flighty, and did I mention weak?  Because weak is the big one.  Weak is the important one.  Weak is the reason that we run screaming from anything perceived as feminine like…oh, hey, look!  The automatic cliché to use there would have been “like little girls.”  Because, you know, symbol of weakness.  Or maybe I’d have said “pussies,” and then explained sincerely that “pussy” is just another word for “coward,” and there were plenty of people I knew who had them who weren’t them and that made it ok, right?

Of course not right.  But it’s deep.  It’s ingrained in most men (and hell, people, it’s not like there’s aren’t plenty of women begging TPTB not to have Dean be queer because he’s not girly and please, please, we don’t want to weaken Dean’s character that way) stronger than we ever realize, especially because it’s rarely talked about as a thing on its own, and since we know we don’t hate gays or women, we tend to stop listening when the conversation is about homophobia or misogyny and would be telling us that we really shouldn’t be afraid of going to a romcom.    

Because guys really are afraid.  We’re taught to fear feminine things with all the intensity of any cultural taboo.  We describe someone’s strength in a list of how they demonstrate masculine traits…see every Chuck Norris joke ever.  We sincerely believe, even if we don’t understand why, that there is a kind of magic about feminine things.  Like Sampson’s haircut, they drain your masculinity (and therefore your strength) just by exposure.  Let a little girl paint your fingernails or willingly go see The Notebook and not hate it, and you might as well be  castrating yourself or slitting a vein and bleeding out all your strength, while taking a punch to the face during a football game and having a rare burger afterwards is eating the dragon’s heart and taking on its strength by accumulating masculinity.  Don’t laugh. It’s a real fear, it’s a real cultural magical superstition, and it’s one we’re taught from the time little boys have adults react to picking up lipstick as if it were more dangerous than finding the rat poison under the sink.  “NO! That’s for GIRLS!”  And we will uphold it even to our own cost, because we are afraid. 

It wasn’t about the gay thing. Not when they were staking out a suspected fang bar and Cas wanted to order something with eight different ingredients, at least three of which were fruit, because it “looked fascinating.” And ok, yeah, it did, and even like it probably tasted pretty good, but that wasn’t the point, and he resented having to explain it hissed between his teeth as low as possible in a crowded room.

The point was that there were certain things that were Dude things and certain things that were Chick things, and those were lines that very few people got to cross and then only in very specific, careful ways, like how Sammy’s six foot four and change vertical and two and a half feet across the shoulders bought him public salads and that haircut. For everyone else, especially angels who looked like unemployed junior lawyers or Hunters who needed every advantage their squishy mortal selves could eke out, the lines were set in stone.

The point was that hesitation in an adversary tonight when the shit went down could save someone’s life - even their own - and could be as simple as how they were assessed right now. It could be the difference between watching he and Cas take doubles of gasoline-brutally disgusting and potent cheap whiskey without flinching or watching them sip something tasty and sweet in a glass with fruit and colored sugar on the rim. The way when he had ordered a double bacon cheeseburger and sworn he could eat the whole thing he’d gotten that hint of a smile from Dad that said he was becoming a man, a Hunter, someone who could be trusted to have his back in a fight, carry a piece, take care of Sammy without help, dress his own wounds, and when he’d ordered a grilled chicken sandwich, nothing was said but there had been an appraising stiffness, a caution that worried unspoken that Dean was one fat-free frozen yogurt from fleeing lisping and limp-wristed from the next thing that might muss his hair or break a nail.

It wasn’t about the gay thing. No one messed with a badass. Everyone and their bloody-clawed cousin was ready to play smear the queer. It was just tactical, and he didn’t hold anything against those who had the luxury of fruity drinks or fruity clothes or fruity anything at all. Because Cas was right; pomegranate, raspberry, lime, and blueberry was probably really great, especially in South Carolina in August, but Senator’s Club blended whiskey gave people the far more honest in its way warning that this was a man who could put his fist down your throat with an excellent chance based on a lot of experience of coming back up with your spleen on the first try.

That’s from my fanfic, “Greed,” but it’s also a really clear look into the inner workings of what it’s like to live with the effemiphobia that is so canon for that character, because for young Dean Winchester, it was ground in even deeper, and from several fronts:

• Hunter Culture
  
  Everything about that subculture and what it values is steeped in the traditional masculine stereotypes.  If you are going to be a Hunter, you actually do need to be able to use fifteen kinds of weapons, handle physical pain, fight hard, fix your own damn car, side-eye the law, and live rough.  You will live in denim, cotton, leather, corduroy, jersey, and flannel because they wear tough and wash easy.   And of course, it’s a traumatic life undertaken by traumatized people, so alcohol use and abuse will run rampant, and not a lot of people will want to talk about their feelings. 
  
  It also has very much its own entry filter for “butches only”, because to be blunt, Dean was right in “Yellow Fever”.  It’s not a mentally healthy occupation.  Everyone we’ve seen in the job is either in it because they were raised in it with little choice or because they lost someone to a supernatural entity…and the only way they could emotionally cope was to lash out in vengeance and violence at other monsters, which is in and of itself a response that is trained by effemiphobia which says to forgive, accept, let go, or heal is weak and feminine. (possibly because women were expected to grieve their soldier husbands and move on to another provider, while men were expected to avenge the loss of their property, but that’s another socio-anthropological paper…)   
  
  
• Women as Victims
  
  This is something that not only is a general part of our culture (there’s no masculine equivalent of the “damsel in distress” trope) and its resultant tendency for monsters to seek out female prey, but was a particular issue for Dean’s upbringing.  He was raised in the shadow of the Great Failure that John had not been man enough to protect his wife, and thus she had been killed.  Mary was a passive figure in this parable, there was absolutely no consideration for even the possibility that she may have been capable of doing anything for herself.    Combine this with the incredible emphasis on Dean to Protect Sammy, and you have a toxic potent lesson for a small child that he had damn well better be more of a man that his own (ex-Marine who became manically hyper-masculine after Mary’s death in an effort to accumulate enough strength magic to avenge her killer and protect his children) father or he too will not be a good enough protector and fail in his charge.   
  
  And if there’s any doubt about protector/victim binary being completely inextricable from weak/strong in that family, remember when Bobby was trying to convince Dean that Sam was strong enough to take on Lucifer?  He used an example that proved that Sam was no longer a thing to be protected but a protector of others.  Ironically, it was being raised in the bubble of “one who is protected” and having to define his strength on his own terms while being allowed to see how toxic John and Dean’s rules were that let Sam escape 90% of the effemiphobia.  
  
  
• Weakness as Threat
  
  This is actually true in the Hunter’s life more than for most people.  For a retail manager, it’s a fair point to say “yeah, and what if it DID make you a little weaker?”  But for a Hunter, there is zero leeway.  Your survival from one day to the next does depend on not being weak; there’s no question about it. If you are easily frightened, exhausted, intimidated, or overpowered, you might as well write your own eulogy.  You’re living in a no-rules combat zone, and therefore there are few more potent fears you can lay against someone than that they will be weakened by ____.  Combine that with a world in which magic, talismans, rites, sigils, charms, etc are very, very real and legitimately dangerous…that appletini doesn’t stand a chance.
  
  
• Lack of Female Role Models
  
  Women for Dean have always fallen into two categories: Civilians (weak, victims of monsters, to be protected, so of course they can be feminine) and female Hunters (and if they’re not tough enough and butch enough, they don’t belong in the life).  It’s why he rejected Jo initially, because she was pretty and had feminine traits, she obviously couldn’t be strong enough to Hunt.  The biggest exception to this was Bela, but she actively made it worse, because her flaunting of the ability to waltz in a slinky formal gown while kicking his ass was just part of her bigger package to him of being a Cheating Liar Bitch Who Cheats And Lies.  To him, she ‘pretends’ to be feminine and need protection when she’s ‘really’ masculine and will hurt you.  None of this is exactly helpful to his developing a more nuanced understanding of gender role.  Crossing my fingers with Charlie Bradbury on this one, actually, but I’ll get to that later.
    

•      ”Delicate Features For A Hunter”  
  
  Unlike some fictional universes, where they pretend that gorgeous actors are just Average Joes, Supernatural openly acknowledges that Jensen is absolutely fucking beautiful.  But they also acknowledge the public teasing about his beauty having some feminine qualities, especially when he was younger, and thanks to Jensen’s portrayal, we’ve seen that for all the cocky armor that comes up and gets cheeky when that sort of thing is pointed out, he’s genuinely upset by it.  Because it’s terrifying.  
  
  It’s an accusation, both that he can never be truly masculine/strong and therefore will always be half a step from failing Sam, and  because it gives other men an excuse to, not to put too fine a point on it, implicitly and explicitly threaten him with sexual violence because in being a feminine-faced man who is otherwise more masculine than they are, he challenges their power on the same levels as a woman who is “usurping” power by owning her own sexuality or personhood and likewise needs to be “put in his place.”   No matter how hard he tries to be masculine enough, he has soft, pouty lips and wide, jade-green eyes with long lashes that will always make him a target for gendered bullying, which and in and of itself would have been a fertile field for raging effemiphobia. 

Now, Dean is displaying a lot less effemiphobia in the latter half of Season 8, but unfortunately, that’s not really an indication that he has any less, and I would really caution against thinking that it’s resolved or even resolving.  As was hinted at in the section of fic I quoted, there is a system of “points” or “counter-magic” that says you can ‘earn’ limited amounts of feminine things with an opposing number of masculine things. 

In Purgatory, Dean earned ALL the manliness points, in his own eyes.   He was in the Hunger Games from hell, and he survived for a full year either alone or in brotherhood with a vampire pirate who respected and deferred to him because of the sheer size of his blade and balls.  After that, his account is so far in the black that it has more than enough room to spend a few on being Charlie’s “handmaiden” or accept the flirtation of another guy. 

While this might hold him a while, it’s not a permanent solution.  Fortunately, effemiphobia is its own worst enemy, and that’s where we get back to it being a word that changed my life.  Most guys have no idea it’s even a thing.  We’ve heard of homophobia and misogyny, but if you actually take the time to sit down and introduce us to effemiphobia, you’ll watch our jaws drop.  That’s the thing!  The nasty, fanged monster that sits at the heart of the BroCode enforcing it on everything we do!  And then, if we actually are decent men, we’re pissed.  We’re pissed at society and at ourselves for actually brainwashing us to seriously, honest to God live in fear of pink.  We feel like the moment when Dean realizes he’s been fleeing the Yorkie.  And no, it doesn’t get fixed instantly, but ironically, because we’ve been trained so hard all our lives that we shouldn’t be afraid of anything, that turns on the effemiphobia and it winds up bibbing itself.  

Dean, like any healthy person, is yin and yang.  He’s balanced – or he should be.  He is an extraordinarily gifted, courageous, and instinctive warrior…who is incredibly kind and compassionate with small children.  He loves the feel of grease on his hands…and satin elsewhere.  He loves Metallica…and Air Supply.  He’s a rich, complex, wonderful man who, like so many others, is being horribly shortchanged by a bullshit phobia that shames and punishes him for being real and is cutting him off from so much of himself.   And I hope, oh I truly hope that the show addresses this – though I think in Charlie, we finally have a character who could do it, especially because Dean is all set up to praise her for not being a ‘girly girl’ – more urgently than and certainly before I hope they address that he’s queer. 

Because that’s the elephant in the room, and it’s stomping on a LOT of people.  Because maybe then, if he wasn’t afraid it made him weak or gay or a girl or someone’s bitch, his sexuality wouldn’t even be that big an issue because it would be so easy to just accept that he’s occasionally attracted to men…and in love with a being currently presenting as one. 

Because the first step to not being an effemiphobic asshole is to realize you are one, and Supernatural has accumulated more than enough “man points” to get away with teaching that lesson.  If, that is, Jensen and the writers know it themselves, and honestly, in our world, that’s a sadly big “if.”