rangerofaraluen

[rangerofaraluen]

day 1 back on langblr - watched a grammar course in Norwegian - watched an episode of Blue's Clues in Italian and did some flashcards - did lesson 3 in emirati arabic in prep for moving to Dubai to do? - write a diary entry in Russian

[rangerofaraluen]

arabic is kicking my ass but I love it

Reblog this if you’re a langblr that is studying/posts about • Finnish • English • Japanese • Swedish • German • Arabic

[rangerofaraluen]

my ao3 wrapped: writers edition

Words Written: 73, 157 words (oh boy, that's a solid novel right there) Hits: 60, 429 across 14 different fics Subscriptions: 1,279 with a concentration of 724 in a PJO fanfic

193 comment threads, 3,573 kudos, and 943 bookmarks My longest fic is incomplete at the moment and currently at 15,460 words. My most popular fic was in the PJO fandom and has 23, 713 hits at the moment. Fandoms I wrote for: Percy Jackson, Shadowhunters, Supernatural, Descendants, and the Mauraders

I wrote fics in 2 languages, English + French.

[rangerofaraluen]

a list of languages i would like to study and why

i'm already trilingual in English, French, and Latin (not that...i ever have to speak Latin...you'd be surprised how not often i get to brag about this skill) i'm currently studying: Russian, Arabic, Spanish

Spanish: my gf's family <3 is Mexican Russian: i wanted to be Natasha Romanoff when i was younger and i've put too much effort in it to quit now Arabic: it just sounds effing cool, mkay Greek: i studied ancient greek for several years and fell in love with it before promptly forgetting ALL of it Czech: family Scottish Gaelic: also family Acadian: family history Italian: i would one day, like to live here. Portugueuse: that One Conference haunting me Hebrew: cultural Japanese: my eventual trip, i've sworn i'll take it one day Icelandic: I aspire to be Tolkien tbh German: why tf not??

[rangerofaraluen]

i'm fluent in french and english and latin so of course, instead of deciding to learn german (did two years, may come back eventually) or spanish/italian, i chose

russian. and. arabic. as my language focuses this year.

i could've taken advantage of roots and alphabets and similarities in germanic and romance languages but what would be the fun in having a easier learning path? give me different alphabets and systems.

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Everyone is guilty of something and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true. Hope in the shadow of fear in the world's most powerful motivator. Consider our inability to grasp literature and most entertainment from the mortal age. To us, the things that stirred mortal human emotions are incomprehensible. Only stories of love pass through our post-mortal filter. Yet even then, we are baffled by the intensity of longing and loss that threatens those mortal tales of love. I think about religion and how, once we became our own saviors, our own gods, most faiths became irreleavant. What must it have been like to believe in something greater than oneself? It was an unyielding homage to ancient Greece and Imperial Rome, the birthing place of civilization. For only the pain of empathy will keep us human. There's no version of God that can help us if we ever lose that.

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from The Maiden by Alex Michaelides

...she was still in love and didn't know what to do with all this lvoe of hers. There was so much of it, and it was so messy: leaking, spilling, tumbling out of her, like stuffing falling out of an old rag doll that was coming apart at the seams. Something beautiful, something holy, had died. All that reamined were the books he read, the clothes he wore, the things he touched. She could still smell him on them. She was stuck, paralyzed-- as Demeter had once been, when Hades kidnapped her beloved daughter, Persephone, and took her to the Underworld to be his bride. Demeter broke down-- overwhelmed by grief. She refused to move or be moved. She simply sat and wept. And all around her, the natural world grieved with Demeter: summer turned to winter, day turned to night. The earth fell into morning, or more accurately, melancholia. This is what those old Greek plays are about. What it means to be human. What it means to be alive. And if you miss that when you read them-- if all you see is a bunch of dead words- then you're missing the whole damn thing. I don't just mean in the plays-- I mean in your lives, right now. If you're not aware of the transcendent, if you're not awake to the glorious mystery of life and death that you're lucky enough to be a part of- if that doesn't fill you with joy and strike you with awe...you might as well not be alive. That's the message of the tragedies. Participate in the wonder.

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

I've learnt there are things in this world that defy the imagination. Your voice is a weapon. Never forget that. I am but paper. Brittle and thin. I am held up to the sun and it shines right through me. I get written on, and I can never be used again. These scratches are a history. They're a story. They tell things for others to read but they only see the words, and not what the words are written upon. Humanity is so weird. If we're not laughing, we're crying or running for our lives because monsters are trying to eat us. And they don't even have to be real monsters. They could be the ones we make up in our heads. And though I've lived in a world where you didn't exist for most of my life, I don't believe that's a world I can be in any longer. It started with the sun, and it was warm. And then came the sea, and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. It was followed by this place, this island so mysterious and wonderful. But it was you who gave me peace and joy like I've never had before. You gave me a voice and a purpose.

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

"You love stories, Emilia. Well, the trees hold hundreds of years of stories," she'd tell me, touching the bark. "Think of it, everything those trees have seen and felt. All of the secrets are inside of them." Seagulls were the souls of dead soldiers. Owls were the souls of women. Doves were the recently departed souls of unmarried girls. Was there a bird for the souls of people like me? A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land. "That kid. She's a warrior." "Yes but fighting who?" He looked at me, surprised. "Everyone. Everything. Fighting fate."

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas

those scars would always remind her of what she'd endured. And that even if she was free, others were not. Magic was dead, the Fae were banished or executed, and she would never again have anything to do with the rise and fall of kingdoms. She wasn't fated for anything. Not anymore. "Guards are of no use in a library." Oh, how wrong he was! Libraries were full of ideas-- perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.

She used to play-- oh, she'd loved to play, loved music, the way music could break and heal and make everything seem possible and heroic. We all bear scars, Dorian. mine just happen to be more visible than most.

[rangerofaraluen]

i'm at the mental stage where i want to rewatch tinkerbell its not going well over here

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Neither. Beauty is nothing. Nothing anyone sees is real; only how they perceive it. Funny how that worked; the innocent fragility of being human. A flaw of humanity. The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness. Perhaps it was a tired thing, all the references the world had already made to the Ptolemaic Royal Library of Alexandria. History had proven the library to be endlessly fascinating as a subject, either because the obsession with what it might have contained was bound only by the imagination or because humanity longs for things most ardently as a collective. Because the problem with knowledge, Miss Rhodes, is its inexhaustible craving. The world was filled with poets who thought a woman's love had unmade them. Why have empires and not democracies? The Society's version of an answer was obivous: because some things were unfit to rule themselves. Depending on how you viewed it, Persephone had either been stolen or she had run from Demeter to avoid being used. Either way, she had made herself queen. We are the gods of our own universes, aren't we? Destructive ones. We aren't normal; we are gods born with pain built in. We are incendiary beings and we are flawed, except the weaknesses we pretend to have are not our true weaknesses at all. Gods demand blood in almost every culture. Was magic any different? When an ecosystem dies, nature makes a new one. Simple rules, simple concept, for which the Society was proof itself. It existed from the ashes of its former selves, atop the bones of things abandoned or destroyed. It was a secret buried inside a labyrinth, hidden within a maze.

[rangerofaraluen]

MADE FROM ANGELS: A SHADOWHUNTERS ZINE is now collecting contributor applications!!

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from A Coin for the Ferryman by Megan Edwards

Does everything happen by sheer chance, or are there forces at work that we- with enough diligence and thought- can understand? It was both distressing and enlightening to realize that history, even when reported by an eyewitness, is not the same thing as the past itself. At most, it is an impressionist painting. It conveys an image of real events, but it is blurred by swirls and daubs of opinion and agenda. Somehow, in spite of two thousand years, six thousand miles, and what should have been insurmountable differences in language, world view, manners, and social custom, they had connnected on a level so deep she knew it would have her life forever. "It's a story that has been told for twenty centuries," she said. "Julius Caesar went to the meeting of the Senate on the Ides of March, even though he was warned that he should stay home that day." Those who surrender to fear perish a thousand times before their deaths. The brave die only once. It seemed too fantastic to be true, but somehow Shakespeare had peered into the haze of ancient history and teased out the essence of Caesar's character so perfectly he could quote him. Caesar was right about poets. They cut through facts to tell far more important truths. "Cassandra," he said, "you carry a dark cloud with you, worrying as you are about death and time. Let me share with you another truth this warrior has learned. Life is but a short and turbulent pleasure, grasped only in its moments. Let us seize this moment and the joy it offers us." "Your society has conquered many physical challenges, Cassandra," he said. "You can fly, both in the air and over the ground. You can talk across great distances, freeze water inside a house. Had I seen all this without your company, I might have thought you were a country of wizards, or even gods. But looks are deceiving, are they not? In spite of all your technology, you have not conquered your humanity. You, my dear, still chafe at the knowledge that others will ignore your words. You struggle to increase your power, only to find that you still stand in the shadow of those who work with equal diligence to keep you weak." The greatest emperors in all the centuries since your birth- all have claimed your kinship, assumed your name. In a sense, you have a thousand heirs. Your legacy lives on, vast in glory and influence. You are immortal in the hearts and minds of people everywhere." Fragments, Cassandra, fragments. We see only broken pieces of the great whole. only the wisest men are able to draw completed pictures from this mortal glimpse. People don't want their fondest histories rewritten. They don't like having their foundations rattled, their assumptions shaken. Blame is everywhere, but you need not cloak yourself in it. Caesar returns to Rome of his own free will. He leaves Cassandra nothing but thanks. Victory in surrender. The greatest generals know when to find it there. On my eighteenth birthday, my mother told me I was a little like Theseus. She didn't mean I would have to fight monsters on my way to Athens.

[rangerofaraluen]

the real reason to stay alive is to see Tessa and Will and Jem on the silver screen in (never). we gotta become immortal.

[rangerofaraluen]

quotes from The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

"You will not do this to me," he said, cold in his anger, though I heard the taunt fear that lay under it. "You will not throw away your life because you were unlucky enough to be nearby when those fools started their blundering 'investigation.' Or because of that selfish bastard who lives with you." He clenched his fists. "And you will never, ever again offer to die for my sake." I sighed. I didn't want to hurt him, but there was no reason for him to stay in the mortal realm and put up with petty mortal politics. Not even for me. I had to make him see that. "You said it yourself," I said. "I'm going to die one day; nothing can prevent that. What does it matter whether that happens now or in fifty years? I-" "It matters," he snarled, rounding on me. In two strides, he crossed the room and took me by the shoulders again. This caused a ripple in the surface of his mortal shape. For an instant, he flickered blue and then settled back, sweat sheening his face. His hands trembled. He was making himself sick to make a point. "Don't you dare say it doesn't matter!" Not all of it, of course-- some things I heard from other gods or remember from old stories of my childhood. But mostly, he just told me. It was not his nature to lie. It should have ended there. That would have been best, wouldn't it? A fallen god, a dead demon, two broken souls limping back toward life. That would have been the end that this tale deserved, I think.

[rangerofaraluen]

Me: