ephyranpit

[ephyranpit]

What we know about Goncharov’s mysterious director, Matteo JWHJ 0715 and his tragic, yet fascinating life.

He was born as Matteo Di Sciocchezze to a poor catholic farming family on November 5th, 1938, in Torre del Greco, just outside of Naples, during the fascist Mussolini regime.

It is rumored that the Sciocchezzes were heavily indebted to the Russian-Italian Chmerkovskiy crime family, after they bought a surplus of inventory from Matteo’s father’s cheese-making business when they weren’t able to sell off the excess supply.

His older brother Macareo was killed by German Nazis during WW2, causing him to have an intense hatred of Nazism and fascism, which would later be themes in his work.

Self-identified as bisexual in his teens but was shunned by his family. He would later join Fuori!, or “Out!”, the first homosexual organization in Italy, in 1972, soon after its founding after being attracted to its initial Marxist ideals. It was one of the first associations of the Italian homosexual liberation movement.

Matteo was briefly married to actress Rita Lozionne and had one son with her, Bruno Lozionne, in 1970, but the separated soon after she gave birth.

Sophia Loren mentioned in a 1984 Variety article that she had been “madly in love with Matteo” at one point during their relationship in the early 1960s but had to end their relationship because of the “incident in Prague.” She would not go into further detail.

Changed his last name to his license plate number, rejecting his homophobic family and becoming disillusioned with the idea of nationalistic self-identity.

Knew John Waters and helped fund some of his earlier films.

Aside from Goncharov, the only other surviving work in his filmography, most which was tragically lost in a studio fire in Milan in 1987, were the underground early 60s short films “Tales of the Dog,” a 4 part series, and his 90 minute 1968 film “Green Candles.” These works are incomplete and partially damaged due to the fire.

Matteo had been in a gay love affair with the married producer Domenico Procacci (pictured below from a still one of Matteo’s “Tales of the Dog” films) during the production of Goncharov. Procacci admitted to this years later in 1998, and that they had been planning to leave for San Francisco before his untimely death.

Matteo died tragically in 1974, however, after falling backwards out of a window, supposedly while playing the mandolin (his favorite past time), as sources claimed.

His son Bruno Lozionne emigrated with his mother in 1976 to the United States, and is currently living in Carbondale, IL, working as the senior office manager of Hardison Supply Co.

If anyone can send in more information on Matteo please feel free to add to this post.

[ephyranpit]

Hi, welcome back to Tumblr! Your Trigdasleng posts back in the day were fascinating, even though I never watched the show they're from. Keep on keepin' on.

Thank you! It's good to be back, and this is as good a place as any to talk about why I'm here and what I'm doing.

First, I left Tumblr when many others did when they instituted their infamous "female-presenting nipple" policy. It's not as if my Tumblr was ever a nsfw blog, or as if I had any female-presenting nipples, but I felt it was the wrong response to the difficult situation they'd been put in. It was something that hurt a lot of people who had a lot less of a voice and not much of a platform, and so I felt it was my responsibility to use the platform I had to take a stand, even if ultimately it didn't change anything.

As it happens, years later, Tumblr has finally reversed the policy (well done, @staff!). Tumblr may not be the wild west it used to be, but at least they aren't targeting anyone presenting a specific gender unfairly. I've missed my time away, and the people I got to know here, so I'm happy to be back!

As I see it, I'll probably be reblogging stuff less here, even though that's how I made my name way back when, and instead responding mostly to asks in my inbox.

To give myself a fresh start, I have deleted all 3,999 of my asks. I'm starting fresh—with this one, which was the first! My inbox got too overwhelming, so this was needed.

To answer some questions some may have, if you haven't followed me elsewhere recently:

I'm most active on Instagram, where I am @athdavrazar.

I have a YouTube series with partner and significant other Jessie Sams, who is @quothalinguist on Instagram. That series is called LangTime Studio, and we create a language from scratch together live on camera (we work on two hours a week every Thursday at 2 p.m. Pacific).

Jessie and I work together almost exclusively now, and we've done work on Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem (which I hope you loved, Tumblr!), Peacock's Vampire Academy, the second season of Shadow and Bone (forthcoming), Amazon's Paper Girls (though you can blink and miss our stuff), and the second Dune film.

I worked on HBO's House of the Dragon, and got to create a writing system for High Valyrian, which I'm very excited about.

I created the Sangheili language for Paramount+'s Halo with Carl Buck, who is on Instagram as @tlacamazatl (he's on Tumblr as @tlacamazatl too!). We are presently working on season 2.

I worked with Christian Thalmann on Shadow and Bone seasons 1 and 2. The breakdown is this: Christian and I jointly created the Fjerdan language; I created the Ravkan language and orthography as well as the Kerch and Zemeni orthographies exclusively; Jessie Sams and I created the Shu and Zemeni languages jointly; Christian created the Shu orthography. I can't wait for you to hear and see our work in season 2!

Yes, I left Twitter (quite a bit ago). I'm now more active on Discord, where I'm on a few servers.

I created a wiki for all my languages, and am unevenly working on all of them, and some languages have a team of people working on them (in particular High Valyrian).

Despite being double-vaxxed and getting not one, not two, but three boosters, I got Covid in June, and that PoS hasn't completely left me alone since. (Note: I'd only had one booster before I got it; two have come since then, including the new one, which will hopefully be the last!)

I am traveling again, so I hope to announce those here when they happen.

If there's anything I missed, you let me know. I look forward to answering asks again, and joining in the general silliness of Tumblr! <3

[ephyranpit]

Source

[ephyranpit]

Background and Phonology of Kiy Seth

Introduction

Kiy Seth is the ancestor language of most of the current languages of the Hekou Lowlands, a flat veld gated by the Austral Mountains to the north and the Western Sea to the south. Due to the insular nature of the region, it resisted imperial efforts to standardize Juśqe across the outer territories, and Kiy Seth remains a traditional prestige and religious language throughout the Lowlands to this day.

How the language was imported into the Lowlands is unclear, as it does not appear to be related to the Lösse languages that preceded it and still survive in some corners of the region. Due to similarities in vocabulary and grammar, it's been suggested that it may be related to the languages of the seafaring Ipáasa on the opposite side of the Strait of Wiigéu. Unfortunately, the connection is tenuous and may have been due to later contact during the heyday of trade between its northern suzerain and Vógyípáa - though it shares enough areal features to be considered a part of the Wiigéu linguistic zone nevertheless.

Phonology

Consonants

Kiy Seth (pronounced /ki sɛt'/) distinguishes three series of stops - voiced, voiceless, and ejective. The other three modes of articulation - nasals, fricatives, and approximants - each have only one series apiece. This results in a total of seventeen consonants in the standard dialect. Notably, this number is somewhat smaller than the number of consonants in the regional dialects that gave rise to its modern descendants.

Labial

b /b/

p /p/

m /m/

f /f/

w /ʋ~v/

Alveolar

d /d~ɟ/

t /t/

th /t'/

n /n~ɲ/

s /s/

l /l/

Post-Alveolar

sh /ʃ/

y /j/

Dorsal

k /k/

kh /k'/

x /x/

r /ʁ̞~ɴ~ɢ/

Vowels

There are six, but they exist in a tongue root-based vowel harmony system, so in a significant number of words the number of distinctions is closer to four (with exceptions). This harmony spreads from the leftmost vowel.

+ATR series : -ATR series

i /i/ : ü /ɨ/

u /u/ : o /ɔ/

a /a/ (+ATR)

e /ɛ/ (-ATR)

In general, a is perceived as being +ATR without context, but due to an earlier merger with a schwa, can exist in roots with -ATR. Similarly, e can appear in a +ATR root, but it triggers -ATR harmony in vowels farther to the right.

Phonotactics

Kiy Seth has middle-of-the-road restrictions on syllable structure: (GA)V(S), where G is all consonants including a couple allowed initial geminates (ff, ss, ssh, as in sswen), A is any approximant, And S is sonorants + s and sh. One additional restriction is that if the initial consonant is an ejective, an approximant, or a nasal, there cannot be an approximant in the secondary position (i.e., kras exists, but there is no *wrün).

Stress and Rhythm

For the purposes of stress, Kiy Seth recognizes two types of syllables: light syllables, which take the maximal form CVC, and heavy syllables, which are either CCV or CCVC. These syllables are then paired off into feet from left-to-right, with light syllables filling one slot and heavy filling two:

kwemernü -> (kwe)(mer.nü)

Incomplete feet are allowed at the end of a word, but not at the start or inside: there is no *maryi, for instance.

Once the feet are assigned, stress is then given to the first syllables of each foot, with the final foot taking the primary stress:

(,kwe)('mer.nü), ('xan.di)ne

Additional Notes

Between vowels, fricatives are often voiced immediately following the stress (like in thuse ['t'u.zɪ])

Final e reduces to [ɪ] in the standard dialect, and final a to [ə]

Final -nen, -mem, reduce to [n:], [m:]

The realization of r varies widely depending on position and dialect. Most frequently, however, it is realized as [ʁ̞] or [ɴ] between vowels, and [ɴ] before another dorsal consonant. Initially, it usually occurs as either [ʁ̞] or [ɢ], and in some dialects has disappeared in that position altogether.

[ephyranpit]

So I'm writing for this amazing audiodrama podcast and guess what: we have a trailer out!! It's on Spotify!

If this sounds good to you, you can follow the show, or look up our twitter, where any further developments will be shared!

@amongstacks on Twitter.

This show is gonna be so awesome, you're gonna flipping love it #bestjobever

[ephyranpit]

Do you have any insight on how to make the identify spell less boring?

Drafting the Adventure: Making items more Interesting

I love magic items, I love the feeling of adding to my character’s toolbox, and the childlike thrill of discovery when cracking open a treasure chest to pull out some new toy or gismo.  I think coming across a powerful “signature” magical item can be one of the most meaningful parts of a hero’s arc, a physical representation of their progress through the narrative and their actualization as an individual. 

Now, if you’re asking if d&d captures that magic... eh? A good DM can work wonders with 5e’s iffy system, turning a random lootdrop into a loveletter to their players, but that doesn’t chance the fact that the base system of how magic items are handled doesn’t do much heavy lifting when it comes to focusing in on that feeling of wonder and discovery the game in part sells itself on. 

Put succinctly, the reason the “identify” spell seems to fall flat is because it’s a vestigial remnant of a gameplay cycle that’s slowly gone the way of encumbrance and alignment: systems that existed to in some way constrain the players that most groups disregarded more and more over successive editions until they barely existed at all.   Back in the day, when you found a magic item in a dungeon, you had no idea if the item was magic or what it did, and had to get someone to cast identify on it. Identify used to take 8 hours to cast, cost 100gp per casting, and only identify a single item at a time, but unless you payed that fee, your shiny new magic wand or enchanted shield was just going to take up space in your inventory. Paying this price was also worthwhile because there were a fuck ton of cursed items that would do things like peel your skin off, throw you into a berserk rage, or just kill you instantly if you interacted with them. 

This style of play wasn’t exactly what you would call fun, so more merciful dms just started handwaving the step of identifying items and just telling their players what the items did. Identifying items got included in 5e along with the “all items are instantly identified on a short rest” rules from 4e, which is how we get to the current state where identify seems both superfluous and lack luster: The spell itself is an extra step between the party and their new toys, and there’s little that can be gained from the identify itself that can’t be learned over a short rest. 

Below the cut I’m going to go into detail on how we can fix identify by simplifying how magic items are handled in our games, as well as how to use it to generate amazing quest hooks that’ll have your party getting invested in the lore of your world. 

To make Identify more interesting, we need to play into the fantasy of what the spell is supposed to do in the first place: reveal hidden secrets about items, making those characters that can cast it valuable sources of knowledge for the party. At the same time, we don’t want to bog our games down with having to play out a weighty exposition scene for every new trinket we encounter, so we need to be selective. 

The solution is to have 90% of the items the party encounters instantly identify themselves to the party. Most magic items WANT to be used, and give those that interact with them an intrinsic understanding of what they’re all about, some over a short/long rest, while others all but shout their names and use instructions as soon as they’re picked up.  

Other items however resist identification, usually the ones that seem the most overtly magical/powerful, instead giving off odd feelings or glimpses of potential while denying their true nature. In comes the identify spell, which now functions like this:

When identifying an item, the caster gets glimpses of significant moments during the item’s history, including the feelings or ideas that inspired it, its creation, a significant moment when it was used, or how it ended up in a dungeon. (This can just be flavor, or it can be hints about where to go to unlock the item’s true power). 

When identifying an already revealed item, the caster may make an arcana check (dc10 for common items, 15 for uncommon etc) to uncover hidden features, including unlockable abilities and/or curses. subsequent checks may be made with successive castings, but the dc goes up by 5 each time. Some items will reveal themselves, but have only hidden abilities, necessitating a use of identify. 

Some items will not reveal themselves or allow attunement until certain prerequisites have been met. The identify spell can tell you these prerequisites and gives a hint to fulfil them. 

Identifying a sentient item gives you a sense of the item’s personality, though it is under no obligations to actually make contact with you. 

Though this, we retain the “solving the mystery” aspect of finding magic items, without denying our party the majority of their rewards. Likewise, by putting questhooks into our loot drops, we end up turning the culmination of one adventure into the beginnings of another, conserving the momentum of our narrative and keeping the adventurers always on the mood. 

 Art

[ephyranpit]

Šɯk, Sumerian, and marking phrases instead of words

So, I was reading through the new(ish, I'm late, sue me) grammar for Šɯk from Mark Rosenfelder's Almea project and came across what at the time seemed like a really bizarre detail. To quote from the very first line of the nouns section,

Nouns do not inflect, but NPs [noun phrases] do.

Needless to say, this seemed like a less than naturalistic choice - very out of step with the usual tone that the languages in Almea have (besides, possibly, the lack of pronouns in Munkhâshi, but I wouldn't be too surprised if a language did this in real life as well).

So, I searched the bulletin board for a post about the grammar, and in the very top of one, someone asked about the system... and then compared it to Sumerian.

Yeah, it's a natural feature, and with a real-life example. And I've got some thoughts.

How Šɯk and Sumerian handle noun inflection

These are very similar and both really easy to understand, so I'll group them together here. When a clitic is applied to a noun, it is added to a "stack" at the end of the noun phrase in a certain order and duplicated as needed, as in these samples:

Šɯk:

meʇ ɯsak ʘily-at-at-nye son healer queen-gen-gen-pl the sons of the queen’s healer

Sumerian (From the Wikipedia article on Sumerian, so take with grain of salt):

dig̃ir gal-gal-g̃u-ne-ra god great~ints-3poss-plr-dat for all my great gods

And in cases where it would lead to three or more doubled segments, the third is left ambiguous. Simple enough. But what does this mean for someone like me who wants to put their own spin on it in their own conlang?

Implications

In my opinion, the big takeaway here is that phrases can carry segments, even including ones we generally think of as "belonging" to a specific word in a phrase. On the surface level, of course, this means verb phrases could of course do the same as the NPs above. For example, you could have a system where TAM gets marked on the earliest element of a verb phrase - normally probably a verb or auxiliary, but... adverbs? Nonfinite verbs?

But also, there's other phrase structures that this seems to apply to easily. What about relative clauses? Maybe a full-phrase stack like this could form its own strategy for relativization: assuming an ancestor language uses the gap strategy, non-reduction strategy, or the internally-headed relative clauses strategy, that these behave like clitics more than suffixes, and that they get placed in a consistent place within the phrase, then could these stacked roles behave like a combination of a relative pronoun as well as keeping track of the roles of the rest of the nouns in the clause?

Additionally, speaking of reanalysis, I could see a system like this degrading over time into something that encodes specific relationships. Let's say we have some accusative, instrumental, and genitive cases, and their clitics get shunted to the initial position of a phrase. Over time, these may degrade into single words that encode the meaning of both nouns involved - a particle for first-instrumental, second-genitive, a particle for first-accusative, second-zero, and such. And let's also say that our instrumental particle is used with the accusative to represent giving someone something (i.e., a "You received the book via me" approach). Eventually, if most of the clitic system falls out of use, than this previous stacked-cases word becomes a valency-increasing operation! It might even come across as a marooned part of the verb phrase. (Or it could be something else, but that was the first place my brain went).

Regardless, I think there's a lot of interesting things that could be done with the idea of inflecting phrases instead of smaller blocks. Obviously, it isn't something common, but it could add a lot of flavor to a conlang concept, which is definitely something I'll need to keep in mind for my next project.

[ephyranpit]

I ask your forgiveness and your kind patience while I pitch this to you on these trying times:

A chronological reading of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days.

THIS IS NOT A SUBSTACK, NO EMAILS.

This is a Tumblr blog, where we will be posting the corresponding text for every day, and then a post at the exact time the main character -Phileas Fogg- reaches certain locations, according to the times provided by the book. This way you can choose to what degree to engage with the text: you can subscribe to the blog and be notified of every post, catch texts on your timeline, or just know where in their journey the characters are, with the log posts. The choice is yours!

Around the World in 80 Days is an 1872 novel that follows eccentric British gentleman Phileas Fogg, as he bets to his club friends £20.000 that he can travel around the world in 80 days, and makes the trip with his recently hired valet, Passepartout.

We will start posting on October 1st, the day before Phileas Fogg Makes a Bet Day, and our last post will publish on December 22nd.