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theancientgeekoroman · 6 years

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Hey there! I'm about to start University in the fall working towards a BA in Ancient Greek and Roman studies with a specialization in languages( Latin and Ancient Greek), I love your blog and was wondering if you have any advice or tips? Thanks in advance!

Hello, friend! Congratulations on beginning University!

I’ll begin with some general advice for university that will apply not just to your major, but all your classes, and then I will get into the specifics.

The first thing that might help is figuring out what kind of learner you are - for me, it’s a combination of auditory and repetition. I learn best by hearing things and then listening to them multiple times, so I always asked my professors if I was allowed to bring a recorder into class. Not all professors allow this, but it never hurts to ask. This way, you can record the lecture and then transcribe the notes later and possibly make a playlist of the course for you to use as a review before you have any assessments/tests/exams.

The repetition, for me, is rewriting notes. This can mean having a slopping notebook for fast writing during class and then rewriting the notes in a nicer notebook with better handwriting / better organization than your original notes. Or, you can type your notes (which is usually what I did) because if you forget anything, you can always insert it without having to worry about rewriting a whole notebook page. The trick to this part of note-taking is to make sure you have time to do it; don’t wait until the end of the week to rewrite your notes, but do it after your class while it’s still fresh, or no later than the end of the day after your lectures are over. If you keep putting it off and try to type all your notes a few days before a text/exam, you’re going to be overwhelmed (this happened to me a few times, and I was Not Happy With Myself).

The next general thing is to find a couple of people in your classes and ask if they’re willing to start a study group. This might be more difficult, especially if you’re introverted (I’m an ambivert, so it’s hit or miss with me if I don’t vibe with people in my classes), but you’ll probably find people who are willing to get together to discuss the course material and do homework together. It does make learning a lot easier and a little less lonely. It’s also helpful doing homework with other people when you might understand a concept they’re struggling with and vice versa.

And finally: go to the office hours of your professors! They’re there for a reason! Or make an appointment to talk to them. Get to know your professors and ask them for help if you need it. A lot of my professors ended up getting to know me rather personally, which helped some of them understand why I was struggling so much with certain things (some professors will be less perceptive, but putting yourself out there will help you find many professors on your side because they want to see you succeed). If you are unhappy with a grade or don’t understand why you got a particular mark on an assessment, you can go and discuss it with them. This may not change the initial score, but sometimes, professors will allow a redo of an assignment if you go and ask for feedback and just ask. You wouldn’t believe how many things I managed to get done at my university just because I asked. I had a pretty severe meltdown during my junior year, and I missed an exam for Latin once, but I went to the professors’ office hours, and he allowed me to retake it on my own because I explained to him what had happened. Professors want you to succeed. Just ask for help when you need it, and they will help you. (Also, ask for accommodations if you need them! It’s easier with letters from the Disabilities Office if you can get them, but most of my professors allowed me extra time for things because of my ADHD and dissociation issues because I just talked to them about it personally).

Now, for how I tackled Latin and Ancient Greek specifically.

I am better at Latin and Latin came easier to me, but I liked Ancient Greek better, and I can’t explain why, really. But knowing where your weaknesses are in the languages are good.

If you’ve never taken any Latin or Ancient Greek before, you might want to try and learn basics before you enter the classroom, but keep in mind that you don’t have to know anything on the first day of class if you’ve never taken these languages before; you’re there to learn!

I’ve talked about these before, but for the sake of this ask, I’ll include the resources that might be helpful for you!

Latin:

https://www.latinitium.com/

Resources for teaching yourself Latin (including video and audio)

https://latinlexicon.org/

Dictionary and Grammar Tool

http://lexicity.com/language/latin/

Dictionaries, Grammars, Charts & Aids, Texts, and Other Resources

University of Texas Austin Linguistics Research Center:

https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/latol

If your course uses Wheelock’s Latin but doesn’t require the workbook (which is how my course was set up), I would get the workbook and use the exercises in it to supplement your other lessons.

Ancient Greek:

Ancient Greek Grammar:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzvug8fVliPkMV2c9RmUix19nR4SvLOvW

The Center for Hellenic Studies

Learn Ancient Greek video series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGYUXZJ15RI

Introducing Ancient Greek

http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/greek/

http://lexicity.com/language/greek/

Dictionaries, Grammars, Charts & Aids, Texts, and Other Resources

Teach Yourself Ancient Greek:

http://tyancientgreek.org/index.html

University of Texas Austin Linguistics Research Center:

Classical Greek: https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/grkol

New Testament Greek: https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/ntgol

There are plenty of more resources, but these are the ones I would start with (and some of them will lead to more resources, too).

For Latin, I would write out the declension charts a lot because I would have issues with remembering them. I would then type them up in tables on Word and print them out and have them in my binder for class so it would be easier than trying to find it in my textbook.

When I first started Ancient Greek, I had the most trouble with the alphabet so I would write an entire college-ruled page of each letter. The pronunciations were difficult too for me so I would make a lot of notes about that, too. The YouTube videos above will help you with that.

Another thing I would suggest is that if you know what types of reading you’ll be doing is to be familiar with the works in your native language first. For example, we read excerpts from The Iliad and the Odyssey and various myths for Ancient Greek, all of which I was already familiar with in English before I began reading them in Greek. I know that I had an entire book of Catullus in Latin for my poetry course, too. You might want to check out http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/ for both English and Greek or Latin texts. (Finding these texts in Latin or Ancient Greek and English is good practice translating, too, which is what I did for practice sometimes and what I’ll probably be doing in the near future because I’m a little rusty).

One thing I think people tend to forget about universities is the clubs/activities that might relate to your major. If there’s a Latin, Ancient Greek, or Classics club(s), they’re going to be helpful because a lot of the activities might help you learn more outside of class. Especially if you find upperclassmen who are willing to help you or give you advice about professors, what classes to take, and some of them might be willing to help with homework, etc. Professors are helpful, but remember that upperclassmen are indispensable for you as well.

And, finally, for the last bit of advice: remember that time management is so, so, so important. I’m extremely bad at it, but I’ve found ways to set schedules and apps to help me with it. If you know you’re better at working in the morning, getting up early to get some work done helps. If you know you’re good at working at night, set some time at night for your work. Remember, however, that you need time to relax and take care of yourself.

I hope that was not too overwhelming and please let me know if you want any clarification on anything I’ve said here!

All the best,

Tychon, the Ancient Geeko-Roman

#the-fiery-ghost #ask #asks #tagamemnon #Ancient Greek #Latin #Ancient Greek and Roman Studies #Classics #personal #academia #study skills #long post #links

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uglyducklingpresse · 5 years

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“WE ARE ALL SOMEWHAT COLONIZED IN OUR EXISTENCE”: JAMIE CHIANG IN CONVERSATION WITH ZAHRA PATTERSON

UDP apprentice Jamie Chiang interviewed writer and educator Zahra Patterson in February 2019 after the release of her UDP title Chronology, recent winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. They discussed Zahra's journaling in Cape Town; her friendship with Liepollo Ranekoa, who passed away in 2012; the impact of language choice in postcolonial literature; tattoos; and more.

Taking as its starting point an ultimately failed attempt to translate a Sesotho short story into English, Chronology explores the spaces language occupies in relationships, colonial history, and the postcolonial present. It is a collage of images and documents, folding on words-that-follow-no-chronology, unveiling layers of meaning of queering love, friendship, death, and power.

Can you talk about the background of your decision to go to Cape Town to find who you are or the meaning of life? Did you find it? (In Chronology, Zahra refers to her journey to Cape Town as a search for herself.)

Yeah, I mean sometimes I get a little dramatic perhaps when I'm writing in my journal.

How old were you? How many years ago was that?

It was the end of 2009 into 2010, so I would have been in my late twenties. I feel a journal is a place to express one's ideas, but it's also a creative space. I wouldn't take myself totally seriously in everything that comes out in a journal. I think there's definitely some self-awareness of one's own—my self importance, but also the quest to find oneself is not just to be made fun of. I think it's an important concept.

How long did you stay in Cape Town?

I was there for around five weeks. As far as the decision to go, it was more spur of the moment. I was in South Africa for a wedding. My cousin got married and instead of going off traveling that far for a week, I thought I would just spend a couple of months if I had to go to that part of the world; there's no point in going for a week, so I was going to stay. I hadn't actually decided where I was going after the wedding until I got there, and Cape Town seemed to make the most sense to me.

It perhaps felt the least imperialistic to go and spend time in such a cosmopolitan, international city as opposed to going somewhere more remote. You're either a tourist or a local, whereas Cape Town is an easy city to integrate into.

I see. On page 33, you mention that you have a tattoo, and in the caption there is this word ke nonyana. What does ke nonyana mean?

It means I'm a bird.

That's the first word you spoke in Sesotho?

Yes. I found the words in Liepollo’s English-Sesotho dictionary one day, and when she came home I spoke them. It meant a lot to her that I’d engaged with her language.

If you don’t mind, could you elaborate the story behind Liepollo’s colleague’s Facebook profile picture. What happened?

It was the day she died, and his Facebook profile changed to her picture. It was an image of her. That was jarring because why somebody would put an image of a friend up, and there are very few circumstances that someone would do something like that and usually it's because they're dead. So when I saw that his Facebook picture changed to her face, it occurred to me that something terrible had happened. And I was at work at the time, so it was just very disorienting.

Sorry to hear that. Did you get your tattoo because of this?

Yeah, so I didn't have anybody to mourn with because I had met Liepollo in Cape Town and we didn't have friends in common. Actually, we had a friend in common—an American who interned at Chimurenga while I was staying with Liepollo who I met once at the house in Observatory and once for coffee in Brooklyn—but she had moved to D.C. by that time, so I didn't reach out to her. It was a very isolated mourning experience. That's kind of why I got the tattoo, just to have her with me and to have that symbol and to think of her every day. Because when you have a long distance friendship, you're not going to think of the person every day. We were in touch every few months. I don’t want to forget her due to not having a lot of people to remember who she was with, so I needed to make her memory permanent on me. I think everybody thinks about getting tattoos in this day and age. My rule for tattoos is if I want it for a full year, then I'll get it, and I've never wanted anything for a year. So it’s my only tattoo.

And ke nonyana sounds beautiful.

Thank you. I think it's beautiful also.

And on page 37 and 38, there’s an interesting conversation you had with a Muslim guy named Saed. I found some of his talk kind of sexist. What was your reaction when you were talking to him? It sounds like he's almost preaching to you, trying to change your idea about what a woman's purpose is in this world.

Exactly! But he also wasn't that; he was as if playing the role that he thought he was supposed to play and open to other ways of thinking. We're socialized beings, all of us. He wasn't terribly dogmatic. I don't think he'd been challenged too much in his way of thinking, but at the same time maybe he had because he was open to being challenged. So yeah, it was very interesting.

On page 47 to 48, you write about the panel What is the value of age and wisdom? at the Bronx Museum of Art. The five panelists are: Vinie Burrows, Boubacar Boris Diop, Yusef Komunyakaa, Achille Mbembe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. There’s a quotation from Mbembe: “If the language we use is in itself a prison...We have to put a bomb under the language. Explode language!” Could you tell us more about the context?

Achille Mbembe is a leading postcolonial theorist. I think his words are also quite poetic, so he's speaking metaphorically. The context of that part of the conversation is imperialism and language. That intellectuals from formerly colonized nations use the colonial language to express decolonial ideas is problematic, but it's still very accepted. And even these intellectuals who are on the panel, they write in English and they write in French, but they also find it problematic that they do that; however, it's also part of their survival. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote Decolonizing The Mind in the early eighties, where he swore off ever writing in English again, but then he is put into prison and he's exiled, so he can't actually exist in his mother tongue and his mother land; the government there has ostracized him because he speaks out against what they're doing to the people. Therefore, he has to make his life in English in America, he teaches in California.

Circumstances don't necessarily allow a person to decolonize their lives because in order to survive in this society, we are all somewhat colonized in our existence. I think that saying to put a bomb under language is saying that we need to just get our ideas out there. There’s also the visual aspect of it, I see words and letters, like, splattered. Like fucking. . .we need to fuck with language; we need to push the boundaries of language.

As Diop said “Teaching Wolof enhances self-esteem.” Does Wolof have a writing system?

I’m not positive about the history of Wolof’s writing system but I know some, especially in more northern Sub-African countries had created writing systems using Arabic script and maybe some of them now use the Latin alphabet, so I would have to look that up for Wolof specifically.

You use your mother tongue to express yourself because ideas in a specific language can't be translated. When you lose the language, you lose the culture and the history of people. Also if you're writing in any of the indigenous languages to Africa, you're not writing for the colonizer; you're writing for the people who speak that language, which is also important.

A lot of this theory, especially academic theory that is taught in universities, is very limited in its reach. I think even though these are serious intellectuals who write academic works for academia, they're aware and they're problematizing the limits of writing scholarly work for institutions that isn't necessarily reaching the people.

What other languages do you speak?

I speak French. I lived in France for awhile. I would say I used to be bilingual; I'm kind of monolingual at this point in my life.

What about in Sesotho?

I was working on the project (an attempt to translate Lits'oanelo Yvonne Nei's short story “Bophelo bo naka li maripa” from Sesotho to English) originally, but the access to the language was limited. I wasn't able to access decent grammar books, I wasn't able to access the orthography that I wanted to access so I gave up pretty quickly...but it wasn't as simple as giving up. I stepped back because I didn't really feel it was totally appropriate for me to do what I was doing. I think that’s a hugely important part of my text, the part where I put myself into conversation with Spivak and she tells me, via an essay she wrote about translation, that what I’m doing is wrong. I want to learn a language in which I'm going to be able to speak to people. I’m still not totally sure if I should have published what was supposed to be such a personal exercise, so that section with Spivak is essential to me.

On page 72, you wrote Liepollo an email about a friend who taught you how to say Your sister is a whore in Tagalog?

A friend of mine, her first love was Filipina so she knew how to insult people in Tagalog. When she said it, it sounded Spanish to me so I was wondering if that kind of insult comes with colonialism...also a misogynistic perspective can come. Not to say that misogyny doesn't exist in all cultures, although I think there are probably some cultures where it doesn't exist. Just problematizing the way language can infiltrate into a culture and then become part of the existing language but isn't part of that cultural history—the etymology isn’t actually Filipino; the etymology is Spanish.

Are there any books and authors that inspire you a lot?

For this work, Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, that was a huge inspiration. Mouth: Eats Color by Sawako Nakayasu in terms of thinking about different ways, different things that can be done with form and then different things that can be done with translation. It was very liberating to read those two authors. I don't identify as a translator nor as a poet, so most of the things I've read are novels. My background is primarily in postmodern and postcolonial pieces of literature. I also thought about the nature of collage while I was working on Chronology. I looked at Wangechi Mutu’s work specifically for inspiration, but I’ve loved Romare Bearden’s work for years.

Thanks for sharing. The last question, what are you working on now?

I've started writing and hopefully I'm able to continue it. It's a piece that will potentially be called Policy. I'm an educator and I'm pretty passionate about how distorted and messed up the reality of public school systems is in this country. Although one could say I've been researching since I've been an adult, I started specific research for Policy last summer and I didn't start writing it until a couple of weeks ago. It's experimental in form. I'd say it's fiction meets theory, whereas Chronology is memoir meets theory. I'm not sure exactly where it's going but I'm thinking critically about charter schools and desegregation efforts in New York City and also the history of that. So going back to Brown versus the Board of Ed. . .I'll probably address school shootings, the school-to-prison pipeline, school lunches, teachers’ strikes; it’s about as intersectional an issue as there is—how we educate ourselves as a nation, and on the stolen land of our nation.

I think right now, especially with the current administration, though public schools have been in danger for a very long time, our current secretary of education is a billionaire who wants to privatize education, so her agenda is to destroy our public school infrastructure. It's worrisome. Processing this information in a way makes me very angry because it's systemic. It's how you keep people oppressed. If you don't give people access to education, you're not giving them access to themselves. Never mind the tools they need to achieve and succeed in a capitalist society.

I don't feel the United States has a liberatory agenda for education and I want to explore that a little bit in the history of curriculums and pedagogy because there have been, at the turn of the century, there were some really interesting education theorists like John Dewey and Ella Flagg Young, and their ideas for public education were very progressive, such as student driven classrooms, and not having really punitive systems. You find that education in private schools but rarely in public schools, so why are we not educating our youth in ways that let them think critically about the world that they're living in? Educating children to just follow rules and memorize doesn't work for most children. How many do you know in public schools who are excited to go to school every day? I think humans naturally are curious and want to learn and know things. So why is education taking that away from children?

I don't know exactly how the project is going to manifest. It will be weird.

Zahra Patterson’s first book, Chronology (Ugly Duckling Presse 2018), won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography and received a Face Out Fellowship from CLMP. Her short works have appeared in Kalyani Magazine The Felt, and unbag (forthcoming). A reading of her play, Sappho's Last Supper, was staged at WOW Café Theatre. She is the creator of Raw Fiction and currently teaches high school English at a Quaker boarding school. Her writing has been supported by Mount Tremper Arts and Wendy’s Subway, and her community work has been supported by Brooklyn Arts Council, The Pratt Center, and many individuals. She holds an MFA in Writing from Pratt Institute.

#author interviews #read #zahra patterson #chronology

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imperium-romanum · 6 years

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Tip Tuesday | Translations

We’re fortunate as classicists that so many texts have survived the centuries. They give us valuable insight into the everyday lives of ancient (usually elite) citizens and their perceptions of their world.

Reading these texts in their original language, however, isn’t always possible. I’ve been studying Classics at a university level for six years, and even as a PhD candidate, I’m not ashamed to admit that I still regularly rely on translations of the ancient texts in my research. For me personally, there are two main reasons why. First, while I have a minor in Latin and regularly study the language, I simply do not have the necessary skills built up to read the original texts cover to cover, especially without a commentary. It takes years to develop any level of fluency and confidence, and I’ve only completed two years of formal study. So, translating even short passages takes up a lot of time; I tend to save translating for excerpts I am actively using in research. Second, I can’t read any Ancient Greek. At all. I’m starting to work on the alphabet, but that’s about all I have time for at the moment. I simply didn’t have the room for it in my Bachelor because I double majored. This didn’t change when I did Honours or when I started my PhD - focusing on Latin was a better use of the few electives I was allowed, as I am first and foremost a Roman historian.

Translations, then, are an incredibly valuable resource for Classicists at all levels - but you have to find the right ones. You can’t simply throw some Latin into Google and expect to get a good - or even readable - result. Let’s take a look at an example. I put Propertius 1.1 through Google Translate, and this is what it came up with:

Cynthia his unhappy with her eyes, no desire. Then my ankles drooped The head pressed on my feet Till taught me to hate girls That wicked and wily. to him, to me, the frenzy has not already been a whole falls short of the year, are against gods. Milanion, Tullus, crushed hard Iasid. For Parthenian girl wandered into caves; on the other hand, in their shaggy hair along as he went: and the wild beasts; He also wounded Hylaecius Arcadian cliffs sighed. That's how he was able to tame the girl, are they in love, faith and good deeds prevail. In my latest love does not stimulate any arts and he forgets to, as before, to go to his ways. O, whose deceit moon and work with magical alter fire, Come on mind, And what do sacrard more! to you, then I'll believe in ghosts and the stars, Cytinean songs. Or you are late fall, friends, Seek the help for the insane. bravely and iron crule fires; just let me say whatever I want in my rage. Take me to exotic lands and bring waves which no woman may know my path. You stay, for whom God consented; drought, and of the love of their peers is always in safe hands. For me, Venus works bitter And in no time absent. I warn you, avoid bad one linger his sweetheart and not change the nature of the love of an accustomed us a bed. Because if anyone should slow ears Alas words to him!

It’s a bit of a disaster, isn’t it? Let’s compare the Google translation to one by Katz (1995):

Cynthia was the first. She caught me with her eyes, a fool who had never before been touched by desires. I really hung my head in shame when Love pressed down on it with his feet. He taught me to hate chaste girls! He was cruel when he told me to live without plan. It's already been a whole year that the frenzy hasn't stopped. Even now, the gods are against me.

Milanion wasn't afraid of anything, Tullus, when he crushed hard Atalanta's savagery. He wandered mad in Parthenian caves, face to face with hairy beasts. Another time, shocked by a wound from Hylaeus' stick, he groaned loudly on the Arcadian cliffs. That's how he was able to dominate that brilliant girl: in love, you've got to pray a lot and do a lot.

But in me Love is slow, does not stimulate any art, and he forgets to go on ways he used to know You who do that trick with the moon, who perform rites on magic altars, change my mistress' mind, make her face more pale than my own! Then I'll believe in you, that you can lead stars and Medea's streams from their paths with songs.

But you, who called me too late as I was slipping, friends, get help for the insane. Bravely will I endure knife and savage fires, just let me say whatever I want in my rage. Take me to exotic peoples, across the waves, where no woman may know my path. You stay, to whom the god has easily consented, stay equal always, throughout your love. On me old Venus works bitter nights, and Love is at no time absent.

Don't do what I do, I'm warning you. Keep to yourself, don't move from an accustomed love. Because if anyone should turn slow ears to my warnings, you'll see how they'll come back to haunt him!

I don’t think I need to tell you which version is the better option, especially when we’re fortunate that so many quality translations are freely available online. Here are just a few resources:

Perseus Digital Library A large catalogue of ancient texts, both in the original Latin or Greek, and in translation.

LacusCurtis Includes a photosampler of Roman and Etruscan cities and monuments; a site for teaching yourself to read Latin inscriptions; a collection of complete Latin texts; several complete Greek texts in the original Greek; a selection of secondary source texts; some maps of the Roman Empire, and lots more.

Loebolus “Loebolus is based on Edwin Donnelly's “Downloebables” , aiming to make all the public domain Loebs more easily downloadable by re-hosting the PDF's directly, without the need to enter CAPTCHA's.”

Attalus “This site contains detailed lists of events and sources for the history of the Hellenistic world and the Roman republic. It includes links to online translations of many of the sources, as well as new translations of some works which have not previously been easily available in English."

eBooks@Adelaide Contains a large variety of out of copyright primary source texts and translations in an easy to read format.

Tips for using translations:

With every translation, be aware that the translator may be taking some artistic liberties. Often, this is subtle, such as using ‘flowery’ language, but it could also be a significant change, such as using rhyming language in poetry. This is particularly concerning when it comes to Latin translations, as Latin poets purposely avoided rhyming.

Partner your study with a commentary. Commentaries often give insight into the historical contexts of the text and discuss contentious words, making them valuable for broadening your understanding of the text.

Don’t be afraid to ask a mentor such as a lecturer if there are translations they prefer. Often, they’ll know which are reliable and/or faithful to the original text.

Do you have a favourite translation? Is there an online resource that I haven’t listed here that you think people should know about? Comment or reblog, or send me an ask or submission to share!

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walteinsamkeit · 6 years

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Information about the Courtiers

So, here we are. This is a huge post with all the information I could possibly gather about the Courtiers. The idea for this post was born out of sheer interest in this kind of stuff and the desire to know more about it, and I figured other people might as well be interested in it. Some of this might be far-fetched, so I would like to say that this isn’t a theory in any way, shape or form. It’s just a collection of information that caught my eye or facts that I found particularly interesting. Some parts involve me drawing conclusions or making assumptions. This is how I interpreted these things. You are allowed to disagree with me, but please be respectful. More might be added to it at a later date. If you see anything that isn’t correct (including typos/spelling mistakes), or would like to add to this, make sure to contact me! If you’re missing something here and have a question that you would like answered or a thing you want to see explained, don’t hesitate to shoot me a message either. Finally, I would like to thank @gummy-vitamin-gobbler for being my proof reader. I honestly didn’t want to put anyone through reading this entire thing and I’m super grateful you volunteered. You’re the best <3 Proceed with caution as this text does contain spoilers! This post is in alphabetical order based on their names, with a few general facts at the bottom of it.

General information Vesuvia’s royal court consists of five members. Their titles were given to them by Lucio when he became the Count. As reported by Valerius, the other four Courtiers were present on the night of the murder outside of Lucio’s room, thus making them key witnesses. Quaestor Valdemar is the palace’s head physician and Julian’s former boss. They seem to be obsessed with the Red Plague and delight in the chaos the disease brought to the city of Vesuvia. Not much more is known about them. Consul Valerius, as his title suggests, is a consul to the royal Palace and reportedly a key witness to Lucio’s murder. A tarot reading done by the apprentice reveals that Valerius has his own agenda, despite seeming supportive of Nadia and her aims at first. Praetor Vlastomil, besides serving as a judge, was Lucio’s business partner. He is an eccentric man obsessed with insects, particularly with worms, and has entire rooms dedicated to them at his manor. Procurator Volta is in charge of the city’s food supply and was essential during the Plague according to Nadia on account of her being able to smell the Plague off of people and other things. She is always hungry and never seems to be satisfied. Pontifex Vulgora is described by Nadia as a warmonger who has won many battles in Vesuvia’s name. They are extremely aggressive and obsessed with destruction, often threatening others. Quaestor Valdemar Name • Valdemar is a Scandinavian masculine name that finds its origins in the Old High German name Waldemar. It consists of the elements wald (meaning “to rule”) and mar (meaning “fame”). This German form was introduced to Scandinavia as Valdemar in the 12th century with King Valdemar I of Denmark. It’s particularly famous for being the name of many Scandinavian monarchs, and is sometimes considered to be the equivalent of the Slavish name Vladimir (meaning “of great power” or, in folk etymology, “ruler of the world”). The Old Norse form is Valdamarr (or Valdarr), which occurs in many tales and sagas. Title • A quaestor, back in Ancient Rome, was a public official. The term quaestor translates to “investigator”. The position served many different functions that differed per time period. In the Roman Kingdom, the quaestores parricidii (quaestors with judicial powers) were appointed by the king to investigate and handle murders and capital crimes. Headdress • The type of wrapped, horned headdress Valdemar wears is called a hennin. It was worn by European women of nobility in the late Middle Ages, and although it’s not clear what distinct styles of headdress the word hennin specifically referred to at the time, it has been recorded to be used in France as far back as 1428. However, the word wasn’t used in the English language until the 19th century. There are many different styles, such as the conical hennin generally accompanied with a veil (which is called the cointoise), the escoffin (a more heart-shaped hennin), the truncated hennin (with a flat top), the divided hennin (which was often covered in white cloth), the beehive hennin and the related Lebanese tantour headdress. The particular style worn by Valdemar seems most inspired by the butterfly hennin (thank you for this suggestion @gummy-vitamin-gobbler!) Appearance • As stated on the Arcana Wiki, Valdemar has dirty blonde hair (as can be deducted from the color of their eyebrows) and red eyes with slit pupils, like a cat. It is to be noted that their facial structure seems very similar to that of Nadia (and her sisters), with the same nose shape and eye color, and what seems to be the same skin undertones. It is a possibility that Valdemar is from Prakra. They wear a white lab coat with an overlapping mandarin collar on which they wear their beetle brooch, shoulder length gloves, a black waist apron and a white surgical mask. While there is no existing labcoat design that looks like Valdemar’s, the buttoning style is somewhat similar to the “Howie” style lab coat, although it might be a bit of a stretch. This is a variant of the basic lab coat adopted for the added safety. The Howie coat was named after J. W. Howie, who was the President of the College of Pathologists. This style has the buttons on the left flank, elasticated wrists and a mandarin collar. Tarot card • The card Valdemar represents is Death. Death is ruled by Scorpio, suggesting that their zodiac sign might be Scorpio. There is, however, a discrepancy at play here, considering Valerius’ sign, which we will come to later. The number of the card is 13, which is a number sacred to the Goddess as there are 13 full moons in a year. In Asra’s tarot deck, Death is portrayed by a skeleton horse. It’s not clear whether Valdemar represents the upright or reversed card meaning. Considering Valdemar’s seeming inability to let go of the Red Plague and desire for it to return, one might argue they represent Death Reversed. In traditional decks, Death is often portrayed by an armored skeleton riding a white horse and carrying a banner. The armor is symbolic for the fact Death is invincible and unconquerable - no one can triumph over him. The white horse stands for purity, as Death is the ultimate purifier, and doesn’t discriminate between age, race or gender. This card is probably the most feared and misunderstood out of all of them, as people often take the meaning of it far too literally. Upright, it is actually a positive card that stands for significant transformation, change, transition and new beginnings. Reversed, Death reflects reluctance to let go of the past and a refusal to accept change.

Consul Valerius Name • A masculine name of ancient Roman origin. This was a patronymic family name derived from the Latin valere “to be strong” or “to be healthy”, and was the name of several early saints (this ties in with him representing the Hierophant card). The Valerius family was prominent from the very beginning of the Republic to the latest period of the Empire, and a lot of its members were among the most celebrated statesmen and generals. This even went as far as several of the Roman emperors claiming to be descendants of the Valerii. It’s also to be noted that there were a lot of consuls who bore the name Valerius. Valerian is also an herb with sweetly scented pink or white flowers that has sedative and anxiolytic effects. The name of the herb is derived from the verb valere, just like the name Valerius. It has many other names, one of which is all-heal. This name is also used for plants in the genus Stachys, although one of the nicknames for this specific plant is lamb’s ears. Nicholas Culpeper, a seventeenth century astrological botanist, said that the herb was of special value against the plague. Title • Consuls, back in ancient Rome, were magistrates comparable with prime ministers or presidents. Apart from the oldest, it was also the most important position in the cusus honorum or “course of offices”. Consuls always came in pairs and served for only one year to prevent corruption. They were the chairmen of the Senate (which served as a board of advisers), commanded the army and exercised the highest juridical power in the Roman empire. Consuls had the right to interfere with the decisions of praetors and quaestors. Appearance • Notable about the Consul’s clothing is the golden ram brooch he wears on his shawl. In the tarot deck used in The Arcana, The Hierophant is represented by a ram. Valerius is also the only courtier who doesn’t wear a red beetle brooch, so this makes it an exceptionally remarkable feature. Valerius wears his ombre hair French-braided and draped over his shoulder. Ombré, literally meaning “shaded” in French, describes the gradual transition from one hue to another, usually from dark to light or vice versa. Ombre was popular in fabric printing as far back as the early 19th century. His underclothing seems to consist of what is either a jumpsuit-like one piece or two separate pieces with gold trim on the cuffs and collar. On top of this he wears an asymmetrical, taupe, frock-inspired, tunic-like overcoat with three-quarter bell sleeves, a golden cord in the front and what seems to be some kind of button and loop fastening, also called “frog fastening” or “Chinese frog”. This is a type of ornamental braiding of sorts consisting of a button and a loop and serves for fastening the front of a garment. This particular type of closing is often found on clothing of Asian design. Frogging was also a popular type of fastening for military uniforms from the 17th to the 19th century. His shoes have gold decoration, red soles and spool heels. The hand that Valerius keeps near his body also seems to be lighter than the rest of his skin, leading me to believe he wears a glove on this hand. Tarot card • The card Valerius most likely represents is The Hierophant. The Hierophant, in Asra’s tarot deck, is depicted as a ram. Valerius’ ram brooch seems to allude to a connection between the two. There is however one problem concerning this theory, namely that The Hierophant is ruled by Taurus, and not by Scorpio, which happens to be Valerius’ canon zodiac sign. This would make him the only known character in the entire story representing a card that does not match their zodiac sign. The card’s number is five and it is commonly depicted as a religious figure sitting on a throne. The three elaborate vestments of his office that he wears represent the three worlds. He wears a crown and his right hand is raised in benediction - this is the same hand that the Magician has raised, but where the Magician draws raw power from the universe and manifests it on the material plane, the Hierophant channels his power through society (in the form of religion). The crossed keys of the Hierophant represent a balance between the conscious and subconscious mind, and are used to unlock mysteries. Upright, the Hierophant means religion, group identification, conformity, tradition and beliefs. Reversed, it means restriction and challenging the status quo. What is interesting to note is that the Hierophant is also known as the Pope, the High Priest (as a masculine counterpart to the High Priestess), the Shaman, and Chiron. Chiron is a comet with an erratic orbit. In astrology it symbolizes the “wounded healer” in the natal chart. Chiron represents our deepest wound and our efforts to heal it. In Greek mythology, Chiron was a centaur who was a healer and teacher who ironically enough could not heal himself. The symbol for Chiron is a key, much like the keys that the Hierophant himself holds, used for unlocking secrets. The wounds of a Chiron in Scorpio native are nihilism, sexual addiction, power struggles, jealousy and obsession and trouble leaving bad relationships. Praetor Vlastomil Name • While Vlastomil isn’t an actual name (I know, I was surprised too), Vlastimil is. It’s a common Slavic masculine name consists of the elements vlast (meaning “homeland”) and mil (meaning “favor”). This however is the modern meaning of these words and it should be said that they are derived from volsti (power, government, rule, sovereignty) and mil(a) (kind, loving, and gracious). The Latin form of this name is Patrick (I have no idea how). Patrick can be found as a name derived from the Latin Patricius, which means “nobleman”. Title • Praetors served as judges of the Roman Republic and, in the absence of the consuls, commanded armies. It was a title granted by the government and was inferior only to senators and consuls. One could only become a praetor after serving at least one term as a quaestor. The Praetor Urbanus acted as the chief administrator of Rome and wasn’t allowed to leave the city for more than ten days. They were the main magistrate responsible for trying the people of Rome. Hat • Vlastomil’s feathered cap is called a beret. It is a soft, round, somewhat floppy, flat-crowned hat for both men and women that originates in France and Spain. It fits snugly around the head and can be shaped in a variety of ways. There are many different styles of berets and aside from it often being seen as headgear in the military it was very much beloved by European nobility and artists throughout history. The Basque style beret, which is probably the most well-known and most simple style of all, was first commercially produced in the very South of France in the 17th century. The beret that Vlastomil wears seems to be inspired by berets worn during the Renaissance, and in particular those worn by the German Landsknechte. The Landsknechte (a word combining land “land/country”, here in the sense of “lowlands”, and knecht “servant/vassal”, here in the sense of “foot-soldier”) were mercenary soldiers who were an important military force in Europe during the 15th and 16th century, consisting mostly of pikemen and foot soldiers. They wore large, slashed berets (sometime referred to as starfish hats) that, when puffed out, showed a different color fabric underneath, and were adorned with big feathers. Although it doesn’t have much to do with the hat on itself, it should be said that the Landsknechte had a reputation for unprincipled, ruthless violence and were infamous for the fact it wasn’t unknown for entire regiments of Landsknechte to swap sides in the middle of a battle if they were offered more money or to desert en masse when there was no more gold to pay them. Appearance • Vlastomil has grey hair and white eyes with slit pupils, much like the other Courtiers minus Valerius. A very striking feature is his one visibly pointy ear with a golden earring in his stretched earlobe. There seems to be another gauge right behind the first one, but he doesn’t wear any jewelry in it. He wears a gown that is most likely inspired by traditional ceremonial court dresses/judicial robes, although I don’t know enough about these to be able to determine which one exactly it is most similar to. The open puff sleeves with white insets are reminiscent of the slashed style of his beret. They seem inspired by the paned sleeves that were popular during the 15th and 16th century European Renaissance. Furthermore he wears fabric chausses, worn in the 14th century when they served as leg armor made from chain maille. These could extend to the knee or cover the entire leg. Tarot card • Vlastomil’s card is Justice, ruled by Libra and bearing number 11. It was in fact confirmed by the devs that Vlastomil’s zodiac sign is Libra. In Asra’s deck, Justice is represented by a boar. The traditional depiction is that of Lady Justice sitting in a throne, holding a sword in her right hand and her scales in the left. The sword signifies impartiality and victory, and the scales show that logic must be balanced by the intuition, as the left hand is the intuitive hand. It is to be assumed that Vlastomil represents the reversed meaning of Justice. Justice upright symbolizes fairness, truth, cause and effect and law. Reversed, it stands for unfairness, lack of accountability and dishonesty. Considering the Praetor’s course of action during Julian’s trial, it’s evident why he would be Justice Reversed. The card shows an unwillingness to understand, refusing to take responsibility for one’s actions and blaming others for your mistakes. It reflects a very judgmental, biased, black-and-white view of the world and under-handed behavior, all of which is incredibly dangerous while swinging the sword of justice. Procurator Volta Name • Volta isn’t an actual given name either, but there are a lot of things that is is. In a poem, the volta, or turn, serves as a rhetorical shift in thought and/or emotion. It has gone by many different names such as fulcrum, modulation, torque, swerve. Leslie Ullman called the volta the poem’s “center”, which is largely the poem’s dramatic and climactic turn. Phillis Levin said that “we could say that for the sonnet, the volta is the seat of its soul”. It’s interesting to note that the stomach was once thought to be the seat of the soul, instead of the heart or the brain (particularly in Buddhism if I am not mistaken). The Volta also a quick-moving Italian dance that was mostly popular during the 16th and 17th centuries. Title • Procurators were officials who were in charge of the financial affairs of a province in ancient Rome. Although they worked alongside the imperial governor they were not subordinate to him and reported directly to the emperor. The procurator had its own staff and agents and had a few primary responsibilities, such as the collection of taxes and rents and the distribution of pay to public servants. Headdress • The headdress Volta wears is a cornette, which is essentially a type of wimple. A wimple is a large piece of cloth worn around the neck and chin and covering the top of the head. The wimple was popular in early medieval Europe, where during many stages of medieval Christian culture it was unseemly for a married woman to show her hair. Originally the wimple was creased and folded in prescribed ways. Later, elaborated versions such as the cornette were supported by wire or wicker framing. Both the wimple and cornette are perhaps most famous as a headdress for nuns. Like the horned hennin, the cornette was folded in such a way as to create the resemblance of horns. In the mid-17th century, it was worn by the Daughters of Charity: a Roman Catholic society consisting of women that took care of the sick and poor and attempted to resemble ordinary middle-class women as much as possible in their clothing. Appearance • Volta has curly, reddish-brown hair and brown eyes, although one of them is invisible due to what seems to be a lazy eye. One sharp snaggle-tooth sticks up from her bottom row of teeth. She wears what seems to be some sort of nun dress, or a habit, which were traditionally plain garbs worn by members of a religious order. The reason for this uniform outfitting was that nuns and monks had to be recognizable as such. Considering the cornette Volta wears (which is tied to the Roman Catholic society Daughters of Charity as explained above), it is most likely that her dress was based on the typical Roman Catholic habit. Ironically enough, the habit was a symbol for living a sober life in poverty and consecration, all of which seem to be the opposite of the tarot card Volta represents (as described below). Her dress has puffed sleeves and, considering the shape of it, probably an empire waist. Her shawl is clasped in the front by her beetle brooch, and she wears what seems to be a tasseled fabric and a lace fabric draped over her dress. Finally, she wears fingerless lace gloves. Tarot card • Volta represents Temperance Reversed, as seen during the lunch scene with Vulgora and Volta in Nadia’s route where the apprentice can read the cards for one of them. Its number being 14, it is ruled by Sagittarius; traditionally the teacher of truth, enthusiasm, tolerance and beauty. In Asra’s deck, Temperance is depicted as a dove, but traditionally it is a winged angel we can see on the card. The angel, being a child of Hermes and Aphrodite, is both male and female, symbolizing a balance between them. One foot stands on dry land (the material world) while the other stands in the water (the subconscious). It represents a need to “test the waters” before jumping headfirst into unknown circumstances. The angel carries two cups with water that are being mixed, thus mixing the sub- and super-conscious minds. Upright the card means balance, moderation, patience, purpose and meaning. Reversed it is imbalance, excess and lack of long-term vision. As Volta is known to be extremely hungry and greedy when it comes to food, it’s clear what the element of imbalance and excess is. This conflict creates a lot of stress and tension. Temperance Reversed is also about people you are dealing with proving to be uncooperative. It may feel as though your interests are in conflict or competition with each other, and solving this may seem like an impossible feat. Although not consciously, one might still realize something isn’t quite right, and it may lead to role reversal. Pontifex Vulgora Name • In Roman mythology, Fulgora was the female personification of lightning. She is a minor goddess and the Roman equivalent to Astrape. Astrape was a shieldmaiden of Zeus, and was given the task of carrying his thunderbolts together with her sister. She is described as “flashing light from her eyes, and raging fire from heaven that has laid hold of a king’s house”. There isn’t a lot of information to find on her, sadly. Another possible origin for Vulgora as a name could simply be the word vulgar, meaning “not suitable, simple, dignified or beautiful” or “rude and likely to upset or anger people”. Title • The pontifex (literally “bridge builder”) was a member of a council of priests. The college of the pontifices was the most important Roman priesthood, responsible for regulating the relations of the community with the deities recognized by the state, called the jus divinum. They fulfilled duties such as for example regulating expiatory ceremonials needed as the result of pestilence or lightning. The pontifices were probably advisors of the king in all matters of religion and all held office for life. Headdress • Like Valdemar, Vulgora wears a hennin - albeit a perhaps somewhat more historically accurate version without the fabric wrapping. Their headdress seems to be slightly more similar to an escoffin in general shape but features the same horns as Valdemar’s hennin instead of the open-centered top a normal escoffin would have. Aside from that, their hennin is veiled with a sheer cointoise attached to both steeples. They wear a neck-covering wimple much like Volta’s, making their headdress into what seems to be a combination of these three styles. Appearance • Vulgora has red hair and yellow eyes with slit pupils. They seem to wear some sort of diamond-quilted knee-length tunic with a fabric waist tie and a tasseled golden rope on top. The red-and-gold striped, puffed sleeves are alike in size to gigot sleeves. Introduced to the English court by Anne of Cleves (one of Henry VIII’s wives), these sleeves were extremely wide over the upper arm and narrow from elbow to wrist. Once more, and much like the clothing of the other courtiers, Vulgora’s garbs seem to be Renaissance-inspired in design; specifically by the Tudor clothes worn during the reign of Henry the Eighth. Back then, the type of tunic Vulgora wears was also called a petti-cote; technically a waistcoat with sleeves. Furthermore, they wear a skirted, somewhat flaring, sleeveless cloak lined with gold near the bottom. These particular pieces of clothing were worn to make physical proportions appear larger, with padded shoulders and stuffed sleeves enlarging the figure. This was done to accentuate manly features that made the wearer appear bigger and stronger. It is hard to tell what the lower half of their arms might look like considering the clawed silver gauntlets they wear. Gauntlets like these were worn as armor, made out of hardened leather or metal plates protecting the hand and wrist. An interesting fact is that the term “gauntlet” is used in the idiom “throw down the gauntlet”, meaning “to issue a challenge”. A gauntlet wearing knight would challenge another to a duel by throwing one of his gauntlets on the ground. Picking it up meant that the challenge was accepted by their opponent. Tarot card • The card Vulgora represents is The Tower upright. It is ruled by Mars (the planet named after the god of war), which in turn rules Aries and Scorpio. It is assumed Vulgora is an Aries to tie in with their theme of war and strife. Its number is 16. In Asra’s deck, the Tower card shows a stag surrounded by red beetles (also note that Vulgora’s masquerade mask was a red stag beetle mask). Traditionally it is depicted by a tower aflame, tormented by lightning strikes. People are seen leaping off of it in desperation, fleeing from the destruction and turmoil. The Tower is generally one of the more negative cards in the deck. It signifies physical darkness and destruction as opposed to spiritually, and represents ambitions built on false premises. It is however important to note that the destruction of the tower also signifies the creation space for something new to grow in a sudden, momentary glimpse of truth and inspiration. Upright the Tower means disaster, upheaval, sudden change and revelation. Reversed it symbolizes avoidance of disaster and fear of change. The Tower is about the destruction of inadequate foundation of false thought, belief and action. It is humbling, frightening, but necessary. It is often descriptive of a major upheaval, disruption, emergency or crisis, and is likely to bring chaos in the aftermath of such an event. Only after this will come change and regeneration. Beetle brooches All courtiers, except for Valerius, wear a red and gold beetle brooch on their clothing. As we know, these pieces of jewelry are shaped after the red beetles that are occasionally seen and mentioned in the story. They are found in a specific room in Vlastomil’s manor, as well as burrowed in the ground beneath a spring nearby Nopal and kept in a well by Valdemar in the dungeons beneath the palace. Nadia mentions that the beetles were once used to dye fabric a bright crimson red, and in Asra’s route, a local named Saguaro tells a story of how a giant red beetle was once defeated by Lucio before turning into thousands of smaller red beetles that then hid in the ground. Finally, the red beetles appear on the Tower card in Asra’s deck. They seem to play a significant role in the spreading of the Red Plague. Judging by the general shape of the beetle, it is assumable they are based on scarabs. Scarabs held great meaning to the people of Ancient Egypt, who saw the them as symbols of creation, life, rebirth and immortality. The scarab-headed god Kephri was responsible for rolling the sun across the sky every day, where it died at night and was reborn in the morning. The sacred beetle also had protective abilities that they lend to its wearer. The scarab beetle was also sacred to Khepera, the god of creation, resurrection and immortality (all of which seem to allude to Lucio, the ritual, the apprentice and perhaps the Arcana). It is a highly spiritual bug that carries messages that bring our attention to renewal, spiritual maturity, and the powerful influences of the invisible side of life. When a person died, it was believed that their heart was weighed by Ma’at, the goddess of truth. If the heart was heavy with sin, the spirit of the deceased was not allowed to move on to the after life. In an attempt to convince Ma’at that a person was good and deserved her mercy, scarab beetle amulets were placed over a mummy’s heart. With the update of Lucio’s tale I feel like it’s safe to draw a few careful conclusions here. Lucio is from a wartribe referred to as the “scourge of the South”, depicted as red beetles on the tapestries that tell their tribe’s story, and referred to as “the swarm” by Lucio himself. In fact, Lucio describes his tribe as “a plague of voracious beetles, leaving nothing but bare bones in our wake”. It must be noted that the beetles kept in a well in the dungeons by Valdemar were used to dispose of the bodies of their deceased patients, as the insects were “[...] so effective at disposal” according to them. It is hinted that Lucio contracted the Plague from a beetle bite while fleeing from his mother after he failed to kill her. As stated previously in the story, the Plague is directly tied to Lucio’s life and will follow wherever he goes - as are the last words of his tale. The Four Horsemen In my previous Arcana plot theory post, I mentioned and quickly explained the Four Horsemen theory. While you could go and read it there I will here once more explain what exactly this theory is about. Quite a while ago when the Valerius sprite first was released, the devs jokingly mentioned that the Courtiers were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and that Valerius was the fifth Horseman. While I do not remember the precise context or interactions that took place, this was the gist of it. At multiple points in the story it is mentioned that the Courtiers (minus Valerius) are not exactly human, or as not perceived as such by the apprentice. They are frequently described as “[having] a presence like a dark chasm” (Valdemar), a “beast” (Volta) and “not necessarily human” (Vulgora). Last but not least, Vlastomil’s manor is described by the apprentice as “confusingly designed [with] doors that lead to nowhere [and] halls that suddenly stop in dead ends, as if the manse itself were trying to disorient us” (Nadia’s route: Book VIII). It seems as though the four Courtiers represent the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This idea is now further supported by the wyrm in Lucio’s tale introducing himself as “the worm of pestilence”. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are described in the Book of Revelation - the last book of the Bible’s New Testament. The chapter says that God holds a scroll in his right hand that is sealed with seven seals. The Lamb of God, or Jesus Christ, opens the first four of the seven seals, which summons four beings that ride out on a white, red, black, and pale horse. The four riders are called Pestilence (on the white horse), War (on the red horse), Famine (on the black horse) and Death (on the pale horse). The colors of the horses also match the color schemes of the Courtiers. The Four Horsemen, as harbingers of the Last Judgement, set a divine Apocalypse upon the world. We can now with (near) certainty say that Vlastomil is Pestilence, Vulgora is War, Volta is Famine and Valdemar is Death. During the Last Judgement, the dead will rise from their graves after which the Second Coming of Christ (the Lamb of God) occurs. Everyone will then be judged, and will “receive what they deserve” depending on how they have lived their life. What goal this serves story-wise we can’t say just yet.

#the arcana #the arcana game #courtiers #valdemar #valerius #vlastomil #volta #vulgora #spoilers

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cassatine · 7 years

Text

So my copy of the TLJ artbook hasn’t arrived yet, but thanks to @ashesforfoxes I was able to stare at the concept art of the pages from the Jedi texts and ramble some.

The script

Seems to be an alphabet of 30+ letters. The actual letters seem to take inspiration from several more or less ancient writing systems. I don’t know how it was designed, but a good half of the letters have simple shapes for which it’d be easy to find correspondences in a bunch of real writing systems. It’s a pretty good choice, gives an air of familiarity but not too much.

Some of the symbols associated with the illustrations do not occur in the text. Could be a set of numerical or symbols, astronomical, zodiacal, something something?

The dots between the letters are interpuncts I think. Interpuncts are word dividers, signalling the boundary between one word and the next (the use of spaces is far from universal – some writing systems are scriptio continua, they don’t use word dividers at all, a bunch of ancient scripts just used vertical lines, in some latin texts there can be multiple interpuncts to indicate the length of the pause, etc). Some of the pages in the Jedi book do use spaces instead, which is interesting.

It’s not fully random. There’s repeated words (one no less than seven times) and letter associations, but it really doesn’t look like a text in English with swapped letters + a few more phonemes either. I don’t think it’s meant to be deciphered anyway.

A note on the hand / calligraphy style – it’s relatively thick and kind of blocky, and probably an aesthetic choice considering there’s a lot of thinner lines in the illustrations.

The other books are probably written in different scripts (well if there’s anything inside the props - maybe they only did one book?); this is the best picture of the spines I could find and it’s still crap but there’s two decently visible scripts and none looks like the one in the concept art pages.

The manuscript

Generous use of space. Either the Jedi of old weren’t worried about their paper supply and/or its cost, either it’s a statement.

Not in so bad a state, considering the age it must have and the fact that it’s been kept in a damn tree for a number of years.

Most of the text in in black, fading to brown, so in our-universe it’d probably be some kind of iron gall ink. Checks with the state of the manuscript as seen in the movie (brittle pages). But who knows what weird shit the Jedi of old used for pigments?

Red ink seems to be used for rubrication - it’s mostly a medieval thing, scribes would use red ink to write a header, signal the beginning of a section, emphasize something, etc. In The Book it seems to be mostly used in this way - the sixth page’s framed text is not rubrication but the goal is the same, emphasis.

Blue and gold (ink or paint, not actual gold leaf) are also used to emphasize parts of the text, words or standalone letters. Some seem to be initials, but others stand apart from the text. Both colors are also used for the illustrations, along with a bit of white. The red ink is only used in one illustration.

The gold is also used at the top of some pages or in-between paragraphs, with series of rectangular shapes, seemingly to mark different sections. Or it could be for the aesthetics. For a moment I thought it looked like Morse code, but i don’t really think it’s carrying meaning of its own.

The illustrations

The blue and gold illustrations seem to be cosmological/astronomical in nature. The red one on the final page is... different. The use of colors in illustrations may be codified somewhat, though the sample is too small to know for sure.

The first page is the one seen in TLj, without the “spent thousands of years in a tree” option. Looks like some kind of star chart to me, without the actual stars and with the Jedi Order’s symbol slapped on top. Or something like zodiac quadrants maybe. Compare to:

The compass of mystery

The design of the Lothal Temple grounds (x)

According to the artbook, Hidalgo and Chee shared a six-pages PDF of “ancient symbols” of the Jedi with the TLJ creative team, which informed “the shape of the library tree; the Jedi text covers and page designs; the temple’s celestial carving; and the reflecting pool mosaic.” I have no idea whether this was included - but both the TLJ symbols and this are informed by the same preexisting worldbuilding, so have it nonetheless.

But really, five pages out of six have space-themed illustrations, most of which seem to deal with lunations. Second and fifth page’s illustrations seem to represent the waxing and waning phases of a moon. The little one at the bottom of the second page has a Nebra sky disc feel to me, stylistically, but it clearly represents moon phases. The other, bigger illustration of the second pages features another moon phases pattern, inscribed in a circle divided in two (maybe more moon imagery, a full one and a half one). The pattern of thinner lines could be random but they could also be more star-charty stuff or zodiac thingy. It could be some kind of representation of astronomical observations with a more symbolic representation slapped on top. Third page is in the same vein, and fourth page seems to represent orbits? Or more phases stuff.

I’d be surprised if any of it was, you know, scientifically accurate in any way.

The final page has something different, a geometric pattern in red. A six pages sample isn’t enough to know if it stands out in the books’ illustrations, but it does compared to the other ones we have. It could be purely for the pretty. Or not. It’s too abstract and symbolic and generic for me to hazard a guess. (If I was to, it kinda looks like cells)

Okay so that’s it for the basic observations. Now comes the real brainwank. Starting with the context. [Insert rant about context being key]

TLJ confirmed the Jedi originated on Ahch-to, which answers one question, but opens others - if this happened before the advent of space travel, it would most likely mean the early Jedi were indigenous to Ahch-to, i.e. a species that evolved locally, a cultural entity whose religious beliefs would later spread. If the Jedi started post-space travel, then it’s still possible they formed in relative isolation, but more likely that they either started out on a multicultural substrate and/or were in contact with other cultural entities. Very different origin stories.

We know there is a mythological or historical Prime Jedi. Probably a foundational figure, actual historicity but heavily mythologized. Could be the first (or recognized as such) to have used the Force, or the first to have explored it systematically and have explicited its rules, could be Space Jesus gathering disciples or Space Buddha of the balanced life

And how do the books fit in that? Were they written on Ahch-to? Later, after the Jedi started expanding? Do they predate the Sith Schism? We know they were foundational texts for the Jedi Order so they most likely do. We also know Luke recovered them during his quest for Force knowledge and brought them to Ahch-to. He does not seem to have actually read them in depth, if we believe Ghost Yoda, so the lessons he gives Rey are unlikely to be very representative of the books’ contents. That’s pretty much it.

Looking at the scripts and the bindings, they’re varied enough that they could come from different geographical and historical contexts. But then again it’s possible the texts themselves come from the same source and that the books Luke recovered are translated copies.

Another question would be: what are these texts, actually? Religious treatises? Religious cosmology? Histories of the early Jedi and their philosophies? A life of the Prime Jedi? Observations on the nature of the Force? Etc.

So back to the concept art pages we do have - they represents six pages of a much longer text, so it’s a small sample, and there’s no way to know how representative of the full book it is, even less of the full corpus of works in the Tree Library.

But due to the illustrations, and because this is fiction so I can just wildly speculate, I think this specific book could be some kind of a cosmological treatise, hinting to the influence the observation of the rules behind the movements of astronomical bodies could have had on the formation of the early Jedi’s beliefs.

Bear with me. TL:DR, religious and scientific thought weren’t always (generally accepted as) different realms of knowledge and rationality. Historically, they have the same roots, observation of the natural world and its cycles - observation taught us what to expect from the world, allowed early cultural groups and societies to find order and predictability in it. The divine comes in to explain the rules behind these cycles, because knowing what to expect is one thing, but we also need to know why, to make sense of the rules.

See: a fuckton of myths, early astronomy and astronomy being the same thing, alchemy and chemistry, thunderstones, the atomists and the presocratics, lbr literally anything before the Advent of Modern (Culturally Western) Rationality

Back to the GFFA, because otherwise I’m going to keep rambling, and the Jedi. And most importantly, the Force, i.e. what’s behind the rules in the GFFA. The Jedi never had a God Is Dead moment, because why would they? The modern Jedi Order was certainly not anti-science, and their understanding of the Force and its role in the natural world probably changed over time, but they would never have had reason to reassess its existence.

I’m losing the point - the art in the concept art pages, imo, illustrate observations of natural cycles, definitely lunations, maybe other space stuff. Chances are the Jedi would not only see the Force as the root mechanism behind it all, but also, at least in their early days, believe these observable, external manifestations of the cosmic rules held deeper meaning relative to the nature of the Force.

As a final note because I think I’m mostly done with the bullet points, the lunations and the waxing and waning moons that make up most of the imagery in the concept art pages (and the fact that Ahch-to has two moons maybe but I’m not going there today) could point to that type of waxing-waning cycle being important in early Jedi thought, even mean that their view of the balance between light and dark followed that cycle.

#star wars #meta #THE BOOKS THE BOOKS THE BOOKS #the force #tag later #anyway this is brainwank of the highest order #to be updated when i get the artbook most likely

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rahabs · 7 years

Text

Glory Be

“Dance with me. Rule with me. Stay by my side, and only mine, as I will stay by yours,” Spain whispered fiercely, feeling his husband’s hands move to cradle his head, cold lips meeting his forehead like a benediction.

I’m alive, and have officially started my Masters in medieval history. To celebrate, and because I’ve been feeling like Death run over the past few days, have a terrible SpAus fic that was originally an outtake from a larger (and much better written) historical longfic that I’ve been absently piecing together for years. I may not write as many fics as quickly as I used to, but I’ve long since resigned myself to being in Hetalia for as long as my love of history endures.

READ IT ON ( AO3 ) OR ( FF.NET )

OR UNDER THE CUT.

note: for best results, read on AO3.

Austria’s hands were smaller than his.

It was something Spain had known since the beginning—one of the first things he’d noticed when he’d taken Austria’s hand all those years ago and slid on the ring that would bind them inexorably to one another—but always came back to, marvelling at the difference, knowing that, despite the slender, delicate look of them, Austria’s hands were capable of bearing great weights, and clutching at tremendous burdens.

He wouldn’t have guessed that at first, not truly. They all had war in their pasts, blood on their hands, but Austria, young and frightened for all that he’d tried to hide it behind a mask of cold determination, hadn’t looked as though he’d spent his early childhood with his body encased in armour, a sword in his hands, for all that Spain had felt the calluses on his pale hands, and for all that Austria’s elevation to archduchy had proven that there was more to him than what met the eye.

Now, as the music bade Austria to turn to him once more, the room warm and full with the sound of laughter and the movement of bodies, he thought he knew the man at his side better than anyone else.

And he liked, craved, what he saw; the potential inherent in such a union, in such a partner.

The things we can do, he thought as Austria’s hand rested in his own, the calluses still there, and if Spain looked hard enough, he almost thought he could see the blood of the Turks staining the lily-white skin.

“Dance with me,” he breathed as Austria turned his face towards him, the marks of the Spanish court shallowly etched into the careful, but still incomplete, mask he wore as his expression.

“Dance with me,” Spain repeated again, and Austria raised an eyebrow as they were swept up by the music.

“I am dancing with you, schatz,” he said dryly as their hands met, German sounding strange alongside the Spanish words, feet moving in the intricate patterns of the pavaniglia. Spain grinned widely at the term, knowing how rare they were from the nation he had called husband these past decades, and his hand squeezed Austria’s lightly.

“No,” Spain said, his grin softening as he watched the light play across Austria’s face, their hands releasing so that they faced one another before they turned away, moving with the other dancers to face one another on the diagonal. Austria’s footsteps were graceful and sure now, but Spain could remember a time when that grace had been conscious and forced, not second nature like it was surely becoming. He matched Austria with confidence, flashing another grin. They glided closer before drifting away again, awash in a sea of expertly crafted skirts and careful finery. Spain turned once, and when he looked back Austria was there and they began the steps forward, teasing and light. Another turn and more distance, but then the music changed its pace as they slid together, Austria executing a graceful turn of his own before their hands met again, Spain pulling Austria perhaps closer than was strictly appropriate.

“I meant only with me,” he said, lowering his head so Austria could hear him over the music. “Dance with me forever, hold my hand in yours, and together Europe will not be able to stand against us. They tremble even now,” he said, the words soft but full of dark promise, even as he dismissed the formidable fight France and the others were always putting up against him while England switched his allegiances too often to keep track of.

Austria didn’t reply at first, his focus divided between Spain’s words and the remaining steps of the dance, but Spain knew, with the certainty of someone who had lived and grown with the still-young archduchy for decades and decades, that the red flush on his face wasn’t solely because of the heat generated by fine wine and dance. When the music finished Spain pressed a finger to Austria’s lips, lightly pulling him to the side, bending his head to rest against the other’s hair, concealing them in one of the many shadows of the court.

“Even now,” he whispered into Austria’s hair, “Europe looks on us warily. France, England, Portugal, they push at our defences and ally themselves with one another out of wariness, and yet they have not managed to take us down, for God has given us these lands, this fortune,” he finished fiercely, and if he closed his eyes he could almost see their empire stretching out before them, war and marriage and conquest and discovery bringing even more territories under his control. He could see this golden world where God’s light shined always, an empire of the true faith, the one faith, all in His name. This Spain could give in return for God’s grace, for delivering unto him all that was his, for allowing him to champion in His name, for no greater honour was there. The excitement coursed through him at the thought and he laughed, joyous and unabashed, letting his arms slip around Austria’s slim waist before he kissed him soundly, without shame, for nations were not men and women, not truly, and God would not punish him for the love he felt for Austria, for were they not His most devoted servants in all things? Had it not been God who had brought them together, who had bestowed upon them this fortune?

He felt Austria’s arms drape loosely around his neck, heard the barely audible intake of air, all these things that only Spain got to see because Austria was his, and not his like South Italy was his, or how the charming childlike Italy was Austria’s, their wards to rule over and protect. No, Austria was his equal in all things.

In the shadows of the Great Hall, shrouded by the bright tapestries that cast shadows in all the right places, Spain grinned. Austria’s eyes were heavy on him, languidly curious, and Spain pulled them into one of the adjoining passages before he could protest, their twin rings glinting in the vanishing light. There he pushed Austria lightly against one of the walls where the stone gave way to brilliant painted glass, and he easily lifted Austria towards the little alcove, seating him there with no protest. Austria’s legs wrapped loosely around the backs of Spain’s thighs as Spain leaned in for another kiss, his hands resting lightly on Spain’s shoulders, and he regarded Spain with an inscrutable expression before be reached up to brush a strand of Spain’s hair back. Spain grinned at that, and he leaned up with a small laugh, wordlessly demanding another kiss. He laughed as Austria tried to pretend he wasn’t smiling.

“Dance with me. Rule with me. Stay by my side, and only mine, as I will stay by yours,” he whispered fiercely, feeling his husband’s hands move to cradle his head, cold lips meeting his forehead like a benediction. “Only with me." There was a rush of possessiveness, his hands tightening their grip, but never hard enough to bruise. “Please.”

“Oh, Spain,” Austria said, voice unreadable, but face softening. He didn’t try to hide the small smile this time, eyes warm in a way they so rarely were, glinting with dangerous promise. “Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.”

“Amen,” Spain whispered, burying his head in the crook of Austria’s neck as the moonlight trickled in through the windows, bathing them in God’s approval. “Amen.”

notes

- Ad maiorem Dei gloriam (also written ad majorem Dei gloriam, but I learned Roman Latin and there was no “j” in the original Latin alphabet) is the shorthand version of the official motto of the Jesuits, meaning “for the greater glory of God.” Though it is the motto of the Jesuits, I’m having Austria use it in a more general sense. Still, to those who know the early history of the Jesuits and their geographical origin, it can be considered a little nod. - The pavaniglia was a sixteenth century dance and, according to Oxford Reference, "a subtype of the pavan and the galliard." I actually did watch a video in order to get a sense of the movements, and you can find it here. Alongside Spain's offhanded thought about the Turks, you can likely guess the general time period of this fic. - What language are they speaking? Primarily Spanish. Both of them are, quite obviously, fluent in many languages, but they switch depending on their geographical location, and I wrote Austria's schatz in German (instead of the English darling) to specifically highlight that he was switching from their conversational language to something else. Why schatz instead of liebling? Because it's such a mushy word that I could just hear Austria saying is as dryly as humanly possible. - The hints of religious blasphemy entirely my fault, I assure you. As for some of Spain's internal dialogue, I am firmly in the camp of human conventions not applying in their entirety to the countries, as they are concepts subject to the will of their people and monarchs. It's why they are canonically married at a time when, obviously, this would not be the norm. All this to say: I don't care if men kissing men openly was Bad Bad Not Very Good; it's done.

#APH Spain #APH Austria #SpAus #spaustria #Hetalia #Historical Hetalia #this is a right mess but i do not care because it's complete #and i have been unable to complete something for far too long.#otp: bella gerant alii #my fics #is that the correct use of the word benediction? i don't care about that either.

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askmicrowaveayem · 7 years

Text

Boink! The Gaster Brothers Pt. 15

[Previous]

[Archive] [Cast]

Dings grinned and eyed the blaster. “Okay.” “It’s changed a lot since I remember.” --

Rage nodded back, smirking up at his brother. “It’s been doing that. I haven’t been changing it--it just grows on its own.”

He spoke about it like a proud parent.

His face fell slightly though, realizing he’d… never actually intentionally shown his blaster to his brother.

“That’s pretty cool.” Dings smiled, helmet resting in his lap. “I’ve still never run into magic quite like yours, y’know. Not with runes or anything.” Having never gotten a really good look at it until now didn’t seem to bother him.

He nodded slowly, looking back down at his blaster. “Yeah, that’s what your… what mom said, too. When she told me to keep persuing magic.”

He looked at his blaster fondly, hand on top of its crown, and chuckled.

“Ugly, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.” Dings said honestly, but looking at Dings… well… he was a three-eyed, carved up skeleton. He clearly didn’t have the same concept of ‘ugly’ as the average person.

He hadn’t even given carving himself into a magical weapon much of a second thought.

Rage snorted, but didn’t argue with him.

“...is the simplest thing for you to summon still a broken bone?”

“Without runes?” Dings asked.

Rage nodded.

“Yeah. Nothing more than that. Just bones.” Dings shrugged, not thinking it a very big deal. That was why he had his runes.

“That’s what my blaster is,” he said, looking back down at it again. “The attack that resonates most with you. That’s what this ugly thing is.”

If one’s magic was a reflection of their soul, then Rage’s soul was a lumpy, misshapen thing with teeth.

His brother’s was a broken bone.

And their mother’s had been as small and sharp as a knife.

He wondered sometimes what their father’s would have been, but--

Maybe that said enough about their father.

That he didn’t have that sort of attack to show off.

Dings blinked and then summoned the attack he was most comfortable with, a long bone snapped off at the end and sharpened to a point. He stared at it, turned it around a few times in his hands.

“... Mine is boring.”

“Yours fits in and makes fucking sense,” Gaster said, huffing. “You should’ve seen this bastard at first. It was just a bowl with teeth.”

Dings looked slightly weirded out. “What the hell? When was this?”

He grinned a bit. “Remember that first magic lesson we ever took together? Mom had me stay after because I was so bad at it I’d tired myself out in exercises?”

“Oh yeah.” Dings thought back and then laughed, nudging him gently.

“Weakass. Your stamina has gotten better at least.”

Rage rolled his eyes and snorted. “Hey. I hadn’t been allowed to use my magic in my entire fucking life. I did great, considering!”

Dings just laughed, although it tapered off into a sigh. “... I wonder what mom and dad are up to.”

It was the first time he had really thought about them in six years.

Rage looked down as well, letting the blaster dissolve after a long moment.

“...I’m sure they’re fine. Nothing could take them down.”

Dings smiled, “... Yeah.”

… He was suddenly aware of how much he had changed. He remembered being a 15 year old boy leaving his mom and dad scared and helpless and now…

His hands gripped his helmet and put it over his head.

Rage looked up, surprised. “Dings?”

“It’s nothing.” He said, voice suddenly more hollow and emotionless thanks to the helmet. He pushed himself to a stand, “You ready to head out again?”

After a moment, Rage let it go.

He nodded and stood alongside his brother.

“Yeah. I’m ready. Grab Grillby and let’s go.”

Dings went to fetch their friend and off they went again, Rage leading their direction whenever they came to a fork in the road or a branch off the pathway they were taking.

Dings had learned how to read first and read with more verve, but Rage would always be better at reading maps.

He took them north, heading towards one of the larger, more permanent monster camps.

He had records to check.

Dings followed him without question. He could read the signs a little better but Rage was definitely better at navigation and reading maps. After learning where they were heading he did have to ask though; “Why are we heading there?”

“They’ll have records of assignments and changes in assignments there,” Rage said simply, eyes forward. “Right before the ambush, we gained a handful of new monsters in our group. I need to know which of them survived and where they were sent.”

“... Think they sold you out?” Dings asked after a moment.

Rage nodded, scowling.

“We shouldn’t have been caught so off guard,” he said, voice falling threateningly. “We’d been ambushed before, and it never went that badly. We were used to fighting humans. But they knew exactly when to hit us. Exactly what the worst time would be. And none of my group would’ve sold us out. It had to be one of the new ones.”

He turned to face his brother. “I want to know why they kept me alive.”

Dings met his brother’s gaze, two white pinpricks in the eyes of his helmet focusing on him.

He nodded.

He smiled.

“I guess they probably won’t let us just walk in, though.”

“That’s fine. I can find where the records are. Then we sneak in.” Dings said simply.

Rage nodded.

“All right. Let me know when you can see them.”

When they did finally reach the camp Dings crept as close as he could before removing his helmet. He took a breath before one of his arms shook and his eyes widened, the black sockets going dark for a moment before then lighting up with tons of tiny white dots, each one shaking as he looked around the camp from his position in the bushes. He didn’t mind if Rage or Grillby saw this time. --

Grillby was left behind, guarding the randezvous point they’d set up.

Rage watched, though. Watched his little brother’s eyes shift and change and multiply.

Watched his arm tremble.

Wondered if it hurt.

He wouldn’t let him do this anymore if it hurt.

After a few minutes he found it. “Wooden building to the north side. It has the biggest windows. Records kept inside two wooden chests on the south wall inside. Anything else you need before…?” He didn’t finish his sentence.

Rage shook his head. “Put your helmet back on and let’s go.”

He stood from the bushes slowly, creeping towards the perimeter of the compound.

As his brother stood he reached up to stop him for a moment. “Wait.”

He couldn’t move that fast after using his magic quite so intensely. He needed a moment.

This wasn’t something he used in the middle of battle, not quite like that. Perception with the third eye was one thing, but giving himself so many was something else entirely. It was dizzying and he needed to pull them all back in.

All the lights faded and he sat there for a moment, everything dark. Blind.

Slowly the three original dots came back into view, two appearing in his right eye before the one slid up the crack and nestled into its spot inside the hole of his skull. “Okay.” He put his helmet back on.

Rage paused, turning around and looking worriedly at his brother for a moment as he recovered himself.

“...sorry. All good?”

“Yeah.” Dings said, standing up to follow his brother. If had been uncomfortable then he didn’t show it, but he couldn’t deny it was a process that he needed to recover from.

… His brother still didn’t know he was blind without his runes.

He wasn’t sure if he would tell him.

Rage gave him another few moments to fully regain himself before pressing forward, oblivious to his brother’s internal conflict, infiltrating the camp quietly and heading directly to the wooden building his brother indicated, dodging out of sight any time a monster was nearby.

His little brother followed him closely. He wasn’t quite as fast or as silent, so sometimes he would hang back until he was sure he could cover the distance between one thing to another without being spotted. Either way he still stayed as close as he could, slipping from one spot of cover to the next. The building was empty for now and with no guards, so getting inside would be easy as long as they weren’t seen.

He slipped inside without being seen and held the door for his brother, pulling it quietly shut as he made it in.

Stand watch? He signed before moving towards the chests and beginning to sort through the information inside.

Dings nodded and positioned himself against the door, removing his helmet so he could see a little better what lay beyond without having to push himself to see any further. One eye stayed focused on outside while the other two watched his brother scramble about, riffling through the papers. He tried to keep any pride he felt swallowed at watching how smoothly he was using his new arms now.

He wasn’t the best at reading, but he knew what he was looking for, and that would be enough.

Rather than memorizing the paper when he found the names he was looking for, he pulled them out of the trunk entirely, stuffing it in his bag and moving towards his brother.

‘Clear?’

His Wingdings was still shaky, but concentration and practice was really, finally paying off.

Dings put up a palm, waiting for another moment as his third eye tracked something unseen on the other side of the door. Then he shoved on his helmet and nodded, slowly opening the door to slip out and head to cover.

Rage followed, trusting his brother’s eyes and using his own instincts as a backup this time.

Soon enough, they were in the clear, back where Grillby was set up and watching their supplies deep in the woods.

Dings only spoke once they were back. “Find what you wanted?”

Rage nodded, “I think so,” and pulled the stolen papers out of his bag, spreading them out in front of him, squinting to read.

Dings leaned over to read them too. Thanks to Rage learning to read and write along with him it had spurred his desire to learn the latin alphabet much more than he would have otherwise, and so he could read it easily.

He wouldn’t read it aloud to his brother unless asked though.

He frowned a bit, working to decipher the words before finally handing it to his brother.

“I’m looking for my battalion. About six months ago. We got transfers.”

Dings took it and scanned the words, shifting through the papers before eventually getting to his brother’s battalion.

“Here.” He pointed, voice reverberating through his helmet. “Those are the transfers.”

Rage nodded, finding the names and laying another page out beside the first. The list of casualties. The list of survivors.

He was still written down as presumed dead on this list. He ignored his name, moving down more and eventually tapping a handful of transfer names who had survived the massacre, their next assignments written beside them.

“These. It’s one of these.”

Dings nodded and took the list to begin reading out the name, then where they had been transferred.

He didn’t know if that would narrow it down for his brother at all even further or not, but it didn’t much matter. If Rage wanted to track down every single one of them, that was fine with him.

He frowned a little as he listened. “...does it say the leader of the human’s forces?”

He went quiet while shifting through them. Eventually he found the information they had managed to gather about the humans who had attacked them. It wasn’t much, but it did have some names. Dings held it over to his brother and tapped the name.

Rage nodded, staring at the name. Memorizing it.

“Him,” he said. “We’ll go after him, first. He’ll tell us who else we need to find.”

Dings merely nodded and handed the papers back to his brother for him to keep if he wanted.

Rage took them and folded them, shoving them back in his bag.

“...we’ll probably have to break into a human camp to find where he’s stationed currently,” he said after a long moment, glancing between Dings and Grillby.

Dings nodded again without hesitation, but then turned to Grillby. … He wondered how long he planned to stick around.

Grillby nodded as well, content to help the others continue for a while longer.

He was worried about them, and he certainly wasn’t about to let them march into a human camp all on their own. Especially not after what Rage had endured so recently at the hands of humans. They hadn’t even gotten him close enough to human soldiers to know what he’d do if exposed to them again.

That answered his question for the time being at least. He turned back to Rage. “Is there a human camp you have in mind?”

“The one Grillby burned might’ve moved by now, but it’s still probably our best bet to look in the area,” he said, careful to call it ‘the one Grillby burned’ rather than the place he’d been trapped for so long.

He wasn’t. Adverse to going, actually.

Especially not when he might be able to destroy it some himself, now.

Dings nodded and stood. “If it’s gone we can ask that nearby village if they knew where they might have gone.”

He nodded. “Right. Head out tomorrow at dawn?”

“Sounds good.” Dings said, removing his helmet to give himself a little more breathing room now that he knew they were finished with their mission and everything was safe. --

He nodded and began preparing for bed.

It was nice with Dings’ eyes out in the open. None of them had to sacrifice sleep in order to keep watch with his eyes enchanted as they were. He still worried, of course, but he saw the value of it.

Quietly, he lay on his brother’s bedroll, ready for the morning to already arrive.

Dings would stand for a little, just staring off in the direction of the human camp they had come from. He couldn’t see it fully, not really like he was now, but he could sort of make out what was going on just enough. Little feelings that didn’t make much significance.

Eventually though he turned and looked down at his brother in his bedroll and settled to sit beside him.

He never removed more than just his helmet.

He didn’t know how far his brother could see. Didn’t know how clear his visions might be. Didn’t know if he never took off his armor for expediency, or paranoia, or something else.

He never asked and never complained. He might’ve missed holding the babybones next to him at night, but he had his brother well enough with him.

He wouldn’t ever complain.

The roles seemed to have swapped, at least where night was involved. Dings would lay down beside his brother and might not have been the most comfortable thing to sleep against, but he would always pull Rage close while he closed his eyes.

He was bigger now even without the armor.

… That wasn’t to say he didn’t still enjoy a good bedtime story though.

His eye sockets would close, the third moving over to watch his brother.

He didn’t tell a story tonight. He let his back press against his brother’s armor and know he was there, letting himself be pulled close, and stare off into the night until he finally slept.

No, it wasn’t comfortable to sleep against. But it was his brother. It was the only thing that comforted him anymore.

He twitched in his sleep still, silent nightmares he’d learned to swallow up and not draw attention to.

But he slept.

Occasionally his twitching would wake Dings up, but not often. Sometimes it didn’t even need to for him to pull Rage a little closer, hold him a little tighter. When it did wake him up he would mumble a little to him while trying to fall back asleep himself. “I’m here.”

“You’re safe.”

He would always be around to make sure they got through the night in one piece. Not being able to close his third eye would attest to that.

The nightmares would either subside with time or the proximity and mumbles would soothe him.

Either way, they always eventually stopped.

(Rage wondered, sometimes, why Dings never seemed to have nightmares that woke him in the night, but wouldn’t ever ask. His brother was just stronger than that, he assumed, grateful.)

He woke the next morning, tired but determined, and began packing to retrace their steps back to the camp.

Dings had nightmares once upon a time.

That had stopped after his second accident. Nightmares lost their impact when you never fully lost consciousness, when you could always see around you, when you knew they were just nightmares. Whenever he did have them they never lasted long enough to get bad before he woke up more fully, would stare outward a bit at the sky, and then fall right back into a half-sleep. It had taken a long time to get used to. A full year, at the very least. The fatigue from lack of sleep had nearly killed him a few times in battle.

Now he was used to it.

Dings would help pack, put on his helmet, and start off with his brother and Grillby.

They traveled.

It had taken them a good few weeks to get so far away from the camp. To allow Rage to recover and practice using his arms.

The journey back was just as long, but Rage was determined to make it, and his health continued to improve despite the constant travel.

A few weeks later, they stood in the forest outside the remains of the human’s camp.

It hadn’t been burnt.

Merely rebuilt. And there were still many, many gaping holes in their defense in their scramble to recover.

Dings was grateful they hadn’t fled and a bit insulted at the same time. Did they not think Grillby was a big enough threat? That someone had broken into their prison and stolen their last remaining captive without being noticed wasn’t a bother? His eyes narrowed.

At least with them here he could get his revenge for what they had done to his brother. His brother could get his revenge.

A wave of nausea hit him as he looked out on the camp. Recognizing the buildings that remained. The still-standing prison that he’d rotted in for so long. The charred stump where the rabbit monster had been left to die of exposure.

He reached out and gripped his brother’s hand tightly, teeth clenched, determined to not give in to the vertigo overcoming him.

Dings quickly took the hand back and, knowing his brother couldn’t really feel with his new hands, reached up and squeezed his shoulder with the other. He repeated what he said sometimes in the dead of night during his nightmares; “I’m here. Don’t worry.”

He kept his mouth clenched tight but managed a slight nod, still staring out at the camp. Trying to pull his eyes away from the rune building.

With his free hand, he shakily signed, ‘papers?’

Dings dug into his brother’s bag and pulled them out. He nudged him, forced him to look away and down at the list.

Rage took the papers and folded them so he could see the name they were looking for. Double checking them.

With one hand still clutching his brother’s arm and the other with the papers, he was finally forced to speak.

“...can you see where they might be kept in the camp?”

“Description?” Dings asked, having to let go of his brother’s hand so he could remove his helmet, but quickly taking it again once it was resting beside him.

He gave the best guess at a description he could. Even pointing out buildings he knew the papers couldn’t be in, because they were lower soldier barracks, or mess halls, or weapon care, or--

God.

God, he knew too much about this camp.

Dings appreciated it being narrowed down. It was a lot less dizzying when you didn’t have to look literally everywhere.

He inhaled and the arm holding onto his brother’s hand shook as his eyes lit up.

Inside buildings that had been alluded to. Inside chests that were locked. Inside desks. He looked everywhere to try and find where the records were being kept, hoping that Grillby hadn’t managed to burn them somehow.

They were in a desk in one of the officer’s cabins.

An occupied officer’s cabin.

Dings looked around the room to see if there were any weapons inside or runes, then looked outside to see if there were any guards while relaying the information to his brother.

“Officer’s cabin closest to the South wall right inside the desk. He’s inside.”

Rage bristled.

“...think we can take him, too…?”

“With both of us? Definitely.” Dings said without hesitation. “The only weapon he keeps on him at all times looks to be a dagger. Left side on the thigh. His sword is beside him but it’s too big to wield indoors.”

“... He looks out of practice with it anyway. Promotions made him fat and lazy.”

He gave himself a better view of the area overhead, memorizing the patterns of the guards.

Rage, nodded, squeezing his eyes shut as Dings spoke, clearly remembering the man in his mind. “He doesn’t even do any of his own dirty work unless it makes him feel powerful,” he said.

“I’m more concerned about getting him out without the guards hearing us. Or. Keeping him around while we…”

He looked over the whole camp.

“...while we burn it again.”

He kept his eyes up while they tried to think of a plan, giving him more time to memorize each guard and the layout after they had started to rebuild.

“Do you want to drag him out, tie him up somewhere, then go back and burn it all down or… get what we can out of him inside, then burn him down along with it?”

He swallowed the nausea down as best he could.

“...kill the camp. Don’t let him escape. I want to take our time.”

Dings… smiled.

Yeah.

He did too.

“Once we get him out we can start assaulting from the outside?” He suggested. “Grillby and I can light it up along the edges, you can use your blasters to fire at anyone who comes out?”

He nodded, not about to tell his brother how similar that was to the strategy they’d used on the frontlines. Burn the villages. Kill them off first.

“We can pick off the guards and others first. Leave him for last. Let him know he’s all alone.”

He paused a moment.

“He can know what it’s like to survive a massacre.”

Dings nodded in agreement and let his eyes go out.

He squeezed his brother’s hand a little tighter as he recovered, even if he couldn’t feel it.

Rage couldn’t feel it, but he knew better what to expect this time, and waited patiently as his brother’s eyes returned to their normal state.

“...ready?”

Dings let go of his brother’s hand once his eyes were back and put on his helmet.

“Ready.”

He nodded and turned to Grillby.

He didn’t have to say anything before Grillby was moving down the hill, fire already beginning to rapidly spread.

He summoned two blasters, readying a small amount of food to shove in his mouth just in case.

“Let me know if he leaves the building. Don’t let me hit him.”

Rage fired.

Dings nodded and stood, ready to run forward and at least help cut down anyone who might be fleeing.

He reached out and grabbed Dings before he could run very close to the camp. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?!”

He fired again. Again.

Dings stopped and nearly fell back on his rear.

He stared at his brother.

“... We’ve been through this!” He said, annoyed but remembering how panicked he had been before. “I’ll be fine!”

“I’m not firing into a camp that you’re going to be in!” Rage shouted back, still firing. “You’re a close-range fighter! Learn when you’re not capable! Let me and Grillby thin them before you go in and make yourself a fucking target!”

Dings let out a very annoyed growl, but… held back. Clutched his attack in his hands.

Annoyed that his brother felt he was so incapable. Or maybe thought he was still the little kid he thought he was.

He knew his brother was strong. He knew his brother was brave.

He knew his brother was a short-range fighter, now.

He wasn’t letting a short-range fighter anywhere near this sort of battle. Not until the end. Not until extermination. Dings being in the battle meant there would be places Rage couldn’t fire, places Grillby wouldn’t be able to cut off.

That wasn’t allowed when they wanted to make this camp their battlefield.

Finally, the screams quieted somewhat.

There were too few left to scream.

He kept his blasters out, shoving the food in his mouth, and began to walk down the hill.

A bit of his anger had ebbed by the time the screams grew quiet. This had been the first time he had to sit out of a fight with his brother, even if he was literally sitting right beside him.

It annoyed the shit out of him. Made him feel useless. But he had kept an eye on the officer. Made sure he was still alive.

He walked down the hill beside his brother.

They reached the edge of the camp. Stepped over the smoldering remains of Grillby’s firewall.

A few humans still crawled through the rubble, wounded and whimpering.

He turned to his brother.

“They’re yours. I want the officer.”

Dings looked down at his brother and nodded, stepping away just enough to grab one of the whimpering humans and slit their throat with the sharp edge of his attack. His head rose and he looked around. “He’s hiding in the prison.”

It was the only place safe from magical blasts and magical fire.

He wanted to hurl.

He turned, forcing himself to walk towards the prison, knowing his arms would be useless when he entered the prison.

Not caring.

Knowing the way the prison would feel when he entered. No magic in the air. Just dust and heavy breath. Chains and cold and damp.

He let his arms slump, approaching the prison without a word.

Rage kicked in the door.

How dare he hide in here.

#undertale #RP log #BOINK!#mayem #the gaster brothers #rage #dings #grillby #wartime #murder

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matteorossini · 8 years

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12 Letters That Didn't Make the Alphabet

You know the alphabet. It’s one of the first things you’re taught in school. But did you know that they’re not teaching you all of the alphabet? There are quite a few letters we tossed aside as our language grew, and you probably never even knew they existed.

1. Thorn

Have you ever seen a place that calls itself “ye olde whatever”? As it happens, that’s not a “y”, or, at least, it wasn’t supposed to be. Originally, it was an entirely different letter called thorn, which derived from the Old English runic alphabet, Futhark.

Thorn, which was pronounced exactly like the "th" in its name, is actually still around today in Icelandic. We replaced it with “th” over time—thorn fell out of use because Gothic-style scripting made the letters y and thorn look practically identical. And, since French printing presses didn’t have thorn anyway, it just became common to replace it with a y. Hence naming things like, “Ye Olde Magazine of Interesting Facts” (just as an example, of course).

2. Wynn

Another holdover from the Futhark runic alphabet, wynn was adapted to the Latin alphabet because it didn’t have a letter that quite fit the “w” sound that was common in English. You could stick two u’s (technically v’s, since Latin didn’t have u either) together, like in equus, but that wasn’t exactly right.

Over time, though, the idea of sticking two u’s together actually became quite popular, enough so that they literally became stuck together and became the letter W (which, you’ll notice, is actually two V’s).

3. Yogh

Yogh stood for a sort of throaty noise that was common in Middle English words that sounded like the "ch" in "Bach" or Scottish "loch."

French scholars weren’t fans of our weird non-Latin letters and started replacing all instances of yogh with “gh” in their texts. When the throaty sound turned into "f" in Modern English, the "gh"s were left behind."

4. Ash

You’re probably familiar with this guy from old-fashioned Greek or Roman style text, especially the kind found in churches. It’s even still used stylistically in words today, like æther and æon.

What you may not know, however, is that at one time the ae grapheme (as it’s now known) was an honorary English letter back in the days of Old English. It still had the same pronunciation and everything, it was just considered to be part of the alphabet and called “æsc” or “ash” after the ash Futhark rune, for which it was used as a substitute when transcribing into Latin letters.

5. Eth

Eth is kind of like the little brother to thorn. Originating from Irish, it was meant to represent a slightly different pronunciation of the “th” sound, more like that in “thought” or “thing” as opposed to the one found in “this” or “them.” (The first is the voiceless dental fricative, the second is the voiced dental fricative).

Note that, depending on your regional accent, there may not be much of a difference (or any at all) in the two pronunciations anyway, but that’s Modern English. Back in the old days, the difference was much more distinct. As such, you’d often see texts with both eth and thorn depending on the required pronunciation. Before too long, however, people just began using thorn for both (and later “th”) and so eth slowly became unnecessary.

6. Ampersand

Today we just use it for stylistic purposes (and when we’ve run out of space in a text message or tweet), but the ampersand has had a long and storied history in English, and was actually frequently included as a 27th letter of the alphabet as recently as the 19th century.

In fact, it’s because of its placement in the alphabet that it gets its name. Originally, the character was simply called “and” or sometimes “et” (from the Latin word for and, which the ampersand is usually stylistically meant to resemble). However, when teaching children the alphabet, the & was often placed at the end, after Z, and recited as “and per se and,” meaning “and in and of itself” or “and standing on its own.”

So you’d have “w, x, y, z, and, per se, and.” Over time, the last bit morphed into “ampersand,” and it stuck even after we quit teaching it as part of the alphabet.

7. Insular G

This letter (referred to as “insular G” or “Irish G” because it didn’t have a fancy, official name) is sort of the grandfather of the Middle English version of yogh. Originally an Irish letter, it was used for the previously mentioned zhyah/jhah pronunciation that was later taken up by yogh, though for a time both were used.

It also stood alongside the modern G (or Carolingian G) for many centuries, as they represented separate sounds. The Carolingian G was used for hard G sounds, like growth or good, yogh was used for “ogh” sounds, like cough or tough, and insular g was used for words like measure or vision.

As Old English transformed into Middle English, insular G was combined with yogh and, as mentioned earlier, was slowly replaced with the now-standard “gh” by scribes, at which point insular G/yogh were no longer needed and the Carolingian G stood alone (though the insular G is still used in modern Irish).

8. “That”

Much like the way we have a symbol/letter for “and,” we also once had a similar situation with “that,” which was a letter thorn with a stroke at the top. It was originally just a shorthand, an amalgamation of thorn and T (so more like “tht”), but it eventually caught on and got somewhat popular in its own right (even outliving thorn itself), especially with religious institutions. There’s an excellent chance you can find this symbol somewhere around any given church to this day.

9. Ethel

Similar to Æ/ash/æsc above, the digraph for OE was once considered to be a letter as well, called ethel. It wasn’t named after someone’s dear, sweet grandmother, but the Furthark rune Odal, as œ was its equivalent in transcribing.

It was traditionally used in Latin loan words with a long e sound, such as subpœna or fœtus. Even federal was once spelled with an ethel. (Fœderal.) These days, we’ve just replaced it with a simple e.

10. Tironian “Ond”

Long before there were stenographers, a Roman by the name of Marcus Tullius Tiro (who was basically Roman writer Cicero’s P.A.) invented a shorthand system called Tironian notes. It was a fairly simple system that was easily expanded, so it remained in use by scribes for centuries after Tiro’s death.

One of the most useful symbols (and an ancestor to the ampersand) was the “et” symbol above—a simple way of tossing in an “and.” (And yes, it was sometimes drawn in a way that’s now a popular stylistic way of drawing the number 7.) When used by English scribes, it became known as “ond,” and they did something very clever with it. If they wanted to say “bond,” they’d write a B and directly follow it with a Tironian ond. For a modern equivalent, it’d be like if you wanted to say your oatmeal didn’t have much flavor and you wrote that it was “bl&.”

The trend grew popular beyond scribes practicing shorthand and it became common to see it on official documents and signage, but since it realistically had a pretty limited usage and could occasionally be confusing, it eventually faded away.

11. Long S

You may have seen this in old books or other documents, like the title page from Paradise Lost above. Sometimes the letter s will be replaced by a character that looks a bit like an f. This is what’s known as a “long s,” which was an early form of a lowercase s. And yet the modern lowercase s (then referred to as the “short s”) was still used according to a complicated set of rules (but most usually seen at the end of a word), which led to many words (especially plurals) using both. For example, ?uper?titous is how the word superstitious would have been printed.

It was purely a stylistic lettering, and didn’t change the pronunciation at all. It was also kind of silly and weird, since no other letters behaved that way, so around the beginning of the 19th century, the practice was largely abandoned and the modern lowercase s became king.

12. Eng

For this particular letter, we can actually point to its exact origin. It was invented by a scribe named Alexander Gill the Elder in the year 1619 and meant to represent a velar nasal, which is found at the end of words like king, ring, thing, etc.

Gill intended for the letter to take the place of ng entirely (thus bringing would become bri?i?), and while it did get used by some scribes and printers, it never really took off—the Carolingian G was pretty well-established at that time and the language was beginning to morph into Modern English, which streamlined the alphabet instead of adding more to it. Eng did manage live on in the International Phonetic Alphabet, however.

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babaleshy · 5 years

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Aaaand my adventures in learning Spanish with Duolingo has ended.

A few years ago, I joined Duolingo (via computer, not the app) to learn German, took a couple of lessons, then abandoned it. Last month, I rejoin to learn Spanish and I’m doing pretty well. But as I keep going on, I don’t get taught shit about the syntax. At all. So I’m getting confused as fuck because either there’s a glitch or I’m fucking up bad with the use of, for example, “usted.”

I decided that no, I don’t want to learn Spanish anymore. Let’s find out online what language I can learn on Duolingo that’s kind of close to Serbian (and before you say it: no, it isn’t Russian). Because of how geographically close they are, I figured Romanian, so I checked out a few web pages and Romanian is a Romance language, not a Slavic one, even though it has plenty of Slavic influence. I check the other languages and the closest I could find was Polish.

I also noticed something: there is not a single Balkan/Southern Slavic language offered. At all.

Another thing I noticed is that they took the clubs feature away. I cannot contact anybody at all, and any and all forums I try to access on the app are fucking locked. So this app is officially useless to me.

Now... I just might re-download this fucking thing again eventually just to try out Russian, but let’s be honest... I’m so fucking glad to not have my phone light up thanks to that green owl motherfucker because I wasn’t feeling well enough to focus for one goddamn day for lessons.

I’m back to wanting to learn Serbian, so I’m probably going to give it my best shot for a while on my own just to at least learn the Cyrillic alphabet so that when I go into Kent State, it won’t be so agonizingly hard for me to learn Russian.

This is such fucking bullshit and I blame the way America is.

Why?

Because my great grandparents hauled ass from Serbia to America. They learned some English, taught both languages to their kids (my grandparents, baba and deda), but my baba and deda did not teach their kids. Why? Because they wanted their kids to be as American as possible to fit in so they can have well-paying jobs and shit.

I don’t know about my uncle, but my tetta picked up quickly on how to speak it from classmates, church, and choir practice and became pretty fluent in it. My dad? Not only did he not really learn it except a handful of terms, but his father, my deda, tried to convince him to change his last name so he didn’t sound so foreign so my dad would have a better chance at getting other jobs. My dad, with the same mentality about the foreign-sounding name (he didn’t change his) in mind, tried to convince me to take up my husband’s last name. My husband’s last name is an Americanized version of its Polish origin because his grandfather or great grandfather was forced to Americanize it when he came to Ellis Island.

Slavs aren’t the only ones who went through this, be it forced by American customs or not. I’ve even heard of Native Americans catching shit because of their names.

In America, if your name sounds too foreign and not “American” enough, your application or resume may not even get looked at, depending on where you’re applying.

I kept my last name. My husband thought about changing his back to its original form, but he’s so used to writing his name the way it is that he didn’t bother.

My baba and deda Americanized my dad and his siblings so much that they didn’t bother telling any folklore from Serbia, little (if any) superstitions, mythical tales and stories, basically erasing much of the culture from the family except for the practice of Serbian Orthodoxy. I’m the one who found out about what a zduhač is and had to teach my dad what it was. (Seriously, check them out on wikipedia, they’re awesome mythological beings.) I’m the one who knows what a domovoi is before my dad did and had to teach it to him (and since I’m Pagan, I did some investigating and we actually have one who chilled with my baba and deda and lived in their china cabinet which we inherited; he’s very charming from what I gather so far).

Back to square one, and gearing up to start what I should’ve done: learning Serbian on my own. At least how to read it and say several useful phrases. I will be asking Thoth for some help, maybe the domovoi, and I’ll see if I can invoke my tetta’s spirit for some help, but I’m not sure if I want to. I don’t want to be a bother to her.

The language uses both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet, so it will help me out in reading the Cyrillic alphabet and give me a better start when finally learning Russian.

Wish me luck!

#personal #rant #fuck Americanization

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curiouserxandxcuriouser · 6 years

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The Rise and Fall of the Middle

Chapter 1: Show Your Work

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that is the great Puzzle”

Lewis Carroll

Almost all of us start the same place. The first years of school serve us as a marker for the future. We are collected, cataloged, and groomed for a life of education. Each day in early life is filled with the promise of more. There is always more to understand. The world is a vast collection of data that we will never fully grasp, but constantly manage to chip away at. Our ability to comprehend complex matters that started long before our own story are what I feel inherently make us human.

Take for example the alphabet. It is one of the very first teaching points, and yet we don't consider it's origins until much later in life. We do not teach young children that these weird symbols stem from an ancient Latin origin. Children do not question where the symbols come from. We accept from the earliest ages that these odd scribble holds value. They will provide us a key to countless door, and elevate us to a world we can't begin to fathom. The goals of each child might differ, but the end result is the same. Once you have learned this, more is waiting for you.

I can not speak for the current state of the school system, but in my experience creative approaches to solved problems were not acceptable. Math is a great example of this. I doubt I am the only person who was told to “show your work”. While in practice, this request would appear to prevent some from cheating, it can also stifle the ability to think critically. The downfall of the “show your work” system is, the answer may remain the same, but how you get there is more important. It would seem in the haste of reaching our end result, we have forgotten to cater to a growing mind. We force a narrow minded approach to a situation, that could in fact allow for a much more engaged approach.

Even now I can hear the chanting of “Don't reinvent the wheel!”. I can feel the pull of a dozen voices all saying “This is the way we do things.”. Despite this, I can not feel that a degree of value is missed. Let's take for a look at the process of learning. Why do we start with the alphabet?

The answer to this seems simple enough. It is a cornerstone. By decoding these twenty-six symbols, we have taken our first steps towards communicating in a second language. You read that correctly. While we may not think of written English and spoken English as separate languages, I would argue that they are. We are taught to sound out letters for spelling. Is this nothing more than translation? We are taught to recognize commonly used words like “cat” and “bat”. Is this not the same process for learning another language?

For a majority of children, speaking comes long before reading or writing. We learn speech by mimicking our parents and associating real world consequences with those words. It is not a huge leap to realize most of our first words were likely “no” as we explored something our parents might find dangerous. Even “dada” or “momma” are simple associations of the person in front of you continuously repeating and pointing at themselves. So now that we have figured out how to learn, let's dig deeper in to how it functions.

Learning at it's most core level, appears to me at least, to be a series of recognizing patterns. While repetition is the most common method of achieving this, as in the momma/dadda method, I can't speak at all to it's efficiency. We are, by nature, repetitive creatures. Most of us have a favorite restaurant we frequent, or a movie we watch on repeat. I am willing to bet, you even have a series you binge watch over and over. The down fall of this behavior seems to be when our pattern is disrupted. If your restaurant closes, how you you react? If your favorite series is no longer available to view, how do you feel? This interruption to our repetition ignites an emotional response in us.

When applied to the process of teaching and learning, we do not see a change. When you are taught your alphabet, it is done over days and weeks of repetition. When you are taught the summation of two plus two, it is done on flash cards, and repeated until you can parrot it back. The fault of this thinking comes from the child who counts on their fingers, or makes marks on a paper. This child has shown that they do not just accept two scribbles to equal another scribble. They have asked “why”. They may struggle to show their work by marking a 2 + 2 on paper, because they have thought about this critically. It is more than just symbols to them, there is a reason for the answer.

This child has recognized that there is a pattern in the education before them, and set out to find an answer. They will be celebrated in their early years. They might even be moved to a gifted class, because this child has recognized the essence of learning. They have taken the first steps to understanding that in questioning the origin of something, you gain a deeper understanding in it's functions.

And yet, what happens as the child grows? At what point do we turn the corner to “Do not reinvent the wheel.”, or “This is the way it is.”? At what point in our lives do we stop accepting that the “why” of life is the key to more, and start hammering away at the all definitive “Because I said so.”. At what point do we stop looking to grow, and improve on the topics and subjects at hand? When do we look at the answer and say that it is good enough? How do we reach a point where we stop looking at the problems of our world, and finalize on these solutions?

It is a lot to ask, and even more to answer. The state of our lives is a lulled and sleepy one. While we never stop learning, it is undeniable that we severely reduce our efforts. Whether through being told that the answer “just is” enough times, or just genuinely finding dissatisfaction with the answers at hand, almost all of us eventually slow our efforts to improve.

My youth was filled with promises of being able to accomplish anything. Even then I remember telling the teacher that they told every student that. Of course they protested. That was their job. I was told early on that I was special. I was moved to advanced classes because of my ability to think critically. They wanted to inspire a creative thinker, but only if that creative thinker followed the bounds and parameters that suck to their pattern. These advanced classes had an excess of one thing. They insisted you show your work.

Personal Notes:

**Let's take a break here. I decided that through this book, I am going to take some chances to better explain myself to you at key points. For example: I realize how dangerously close I am coming to a “color inside the lines” argument. I wanted to take this paragraph to explain that I am in no way arguing with the processes at hand. This is not some conspiracy about being trained how to think. The entire purpose of this chapter is to establish a premise for how a wide eyed “gifted” child can turn in to an insignificant adult. I am well aware that the examples provided in these paragraphs are open to speculation. They serve their purpose for demonstrating a mindset.**

When we review the patterns of learning, we can very easily make a connection to how showing your work will turn out. We have already seen this child start questioning why number work the way they do. It is well within reason that they will question why they need to show their work. The answer here will vary wildly, even when looking at the same child. I remember thinking that it was because teachers did not trust me. The next day I would assume it was because they wanted me to do it their way. By the end of this process, the damage was done. I had settled on not knowing the answer, and had a much more important question haunting me. “How do I show on paper that I just get it?”

It is fair to say, in retrospect, that I might have invested in my own hype. Maybe the other kids didn't get it. Maybe I was picking it up quicker. Who am I to say how smart I really am? The only person I can actively compare it to is myself, because if I have these detailed thoughts questioning everything, who is to say others don't? It's not as if they would vocalize it. I certainly didn't.

The second downfall of the show your work thinking, and the inevitable “How do I show on paper that I get it?” mindset, was a feeling of responsibility to have an answer. This led to a very nasty lying habit. If I didn't have an answer, I would simply make one up. If I knew something, but couldn't explain how, I had to come up with a reason. Of course the lying itself would grow to spiral out of control. I felt a need to be special. I had an urge to live up to who I was being told I was.

At one point the class was being asked about their pets at home. I spun some story about a goldfish I had that could jump through hoops on command. No one believed me. So I aspired to be a better liar. I had a need to be different. I felt a drive to be better than those around me. At that time it was more important to me to learn “why” people chose to believe a story, than it was to just be honest about my boring gold fish.

This kind of learning did not follow a typical pattern of repetition, at least out loud. It simply could not. The class laughing at my unbelievable goldfish story had hurt too much. It was too embarrassing. So the process of telling lies over and over until it made sense would not have worked. It would need to be approached through the method of observation.

It's obvious to see where this mindset was headed. I spent a lot of time in trouble. Finding believable lies was so much harder than telling the truth, but it was something I would learn to do. It was a challenge, and smart people never backed down from a challenge. If I could recognize a pattern of what people would find believable, I would be able to be the smartest person in the room. I would have the most amazing stories, about the most unbelievable things, and not be... well me.

I knew who I was. I was born to a poor family. I was the child of soon to be divorced parents. I lived in a house that had burned down, and with clothes that were donated by other kids. I was the kid who was always in trouble for one thing or another. I certainly was not special, but someone believed I was. If I could convince them of that, I could convince them of anything.

The stories I would come to tell through my next years in life got better, but never lost their unbelievably. The more I managed to convince people I was something else, the less time I had to spend being me. In point of fact, isn't that exactly what it meant to be whatever you wanted? If you could dream it you could be it, no matter the social, financial, or parental standing.

That is enough of about me. Let's return to the essence of learning. This example provides us a look at how quickly value can take root. It allows us to see how, for better or worse, when there is no structured learning system it still occurs and flourishes. Most importantly, it is a look a how a pattern formed, and produced a learning experience. It is a learning method that did follow a pattern, without the need for repetition. Although it is undeniable that repetition did make it better over time.

I feel it is also important to review the end line here. The Insignificant Adult who can't rise above their station is a theme I see among many of those around me. The idea that we are handed this lot in life, and the window to fix it has closed, leaves a lot to be questioned. When did we become this mundane monstrosity? At what point in this story did we stop being the hero challenging the world? What happened to cause so many of us to take a passenger roll in our own lives?

I believe the answer to this all comes back to the time the detachment of our social needs. As we grew, we had a sloppily structured calendar. We would wake up early to get to school, but then would spend countless hours interacting with peers. Most of us in a working family would spend more time with friends than with family. We would come home to untapped hours were we got to explore personal interests and dream big.

By comparison, as an adult, the social element is more and more removed. For most of us, we wake up to the same hour, of the same day, of the same week. We go to a job with coworkers, but adversely need to spend our time focus on the task at hand. We have limited interaction with the people around us. If you work some form of customer facing job, you are likely to slip in to a trance like state in an attempt to just make it through the day. You probably have a “work self” that you need to maintain. You use this persona to hide your interests, temper your expectations, and control your emotions.

All of this leads to a sense of helplessness. You want to reach out, but are afraid of the ramifications if you do. You want to connect, but are afraid that exposing yourself will lead to rejection, or worse might cost you your lifestyle. You want to explore your creative passions, but have a nagging feeling that you should be doing something else, like socializing. In summation, you just aren't getting enough living out of life.

If you are still reading by this point, you may be asking “Well what can I do to fix it?”. There are no easy answers here. Being an adult in today's world requires these things of you. Your creation of that “work self” was a necessity born from the environment you work in. If you work in an office, you fear the repercussions of being unprofessional. You know that stress levels are high, expectations are higher, and there is no room for you and your opinions. Despite what HR tells you. If you work retail, your “work self” was created in a mimicry of the lack of humanity you are shown. You shut off yourself because you will get yelled at, chewed out, and blamed for everything. Even when it comes to following the rules. If you were able to turn off that work self when you got home, maybe there would be a level of redemption.

So you make it home. Your inner sanctum. Your closed doors where you are able to be yourself. There are a few snags here. Now you have to socialize. You haven't gotten a chance all day to see a welcoming side of humanity that wasn't paid for. So you reach out to friends, or family, or social media in an attempt to feel some warmth from another person. The downside being that they have all had the same experience you have. So now you spend your time comparing battle scars, or worse dominate the conversation with how bad your day really was.

By the end of this encounter, that has likely drained away precious hours of your self exploration time. Has it helped you unwind? When you are done talking about your day, are you done thinking about it? Have you managed to move past the pitfalls, or do they haunt your thoughts and continue to come up? Do you dwell on conversations and interactions? I ask you, has this social encounter left you filled with hope and the power to carry out another day?

Some will say yes. This book is not being written for them. It is for those of you that have said no that I am writing this. This is for the twenty something who is wondering when they became the “adult”. This is written for the 30 something, who looks at their social media and wonders why everyone else seems to be adjusting just fine. For the person who clocks out, but can't leave work at work.

It is my hope, that through this book, I will help at least one person look at their life for what it truly is. That the one person will evaluate their situation, and realize that there is not a fantasy out there waiting, but that it is going to be okay. I am hoping that by the end of this, the macabre of normalcy will be seen for the beautiful world that we live in. That each person who reads this will realize that you are not helpless. You are still the hero of your own story. You just need to change the narrative. You have done a lot of work, so let's start by showing it.

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0akulture · 6 years

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Over the years, Oakland’s annual Art & Soul festival has had its ups and downs. This year’s offering, however, was one of the best in recent memory, with an outstanding all-local lineup which allowed homegrown talent to shine. It’s perhaps easy to take the event for granted, with its familiar array of vendor booths and food stands, bolstered by various stages for live music and dance. It’s not the edgiest summer event, but it is one of the most multi-generational, as well as one of the most venerable festivals in Oakland. While First Fridays, Friday Nights at OMCA, and Third Thursdays at Latham Square have become popular in recent years, when Art & Soul started, there wasn’t really much of a buzz around downtown as a cultural district. All that has changed as Oakland has come into its own and become more of a destination for the rest of the Bay Area.

It seemed fitting that this year’s highlight was a Sunday headlining set by hometown heroines the Pointer Sisters. The group is best known for a string of 80’s pop hits like “Jump,” “Neutron Dance,” “Automatic,” and “I’m So Excited,” but they started out a decade earlier with an intoxicating blend of vocal harmonies and versatile arrangements which ran the gamut from R&B to funk to jazz to country to rock to disco. It would have been cool to hear deep cuts like “Yes We Can Can,” “How Long,” and “Steam Heat,” but the hour-long set concentrated on their best-known material, with a cover of Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” thrown in for good measure. While the group is down to one original member—Ruth Pointer—it’s still a family affair, with the rest of the trio rounding out with Ruth’s daughter Issa and granddaughter Sadako. Now in her 70s, Ruth looked and sounded amazing, and she led the group through a dynamic live set which had the crowd feeling buzzing.

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At the end of the show, there was a special cheerleading performance and an appearance by Mayor Schaaf, who then announced the ”Mayor of West Oakland,” Councilmember Lynette McElhaney, who proceeded to award Ruth the key to the city. Ruth then gave a small speech bigging up the city, and shouting-out her high school, McClymonds. It was a real Oakland moment.

Earlier in the day, the main stage featured sets by Grammy-nominated Alphabet Rockers, R&B songstress Netta Brielle, and jazz-hopsters the Kev Choice Ensemble – a strong showing of local flavor whose sets complimented each other well. The music was in the vein of Black music, but had near-universal appeal. This was a marked change from past years which sometimes featured non-local rock acts (which may have been due to former sponsor KFOG). But this year, the co-sponsor was KBLX. As a result, the main stage performances felt more organically and authentically Oakland. While the festival hasn’t always booked all-local lineups, it’s a good look when it does. That’s because doing so allows the event to really be about celebrating and appreciating The Town—in effect, marketing Oakland itself as the main attraction.

It doesn’t hurt that there is plenty of talent bred right here to go around. The Kev Choice Ensemble is a perfect example. If you’ve never seen the KCE live before, you’re missing out on some really good music, as in, actual music played by real musicians. In terms of artistic sensibilities, Choice is a 10 out of 10, and his music bears a high level of aesthetic quality. The mix of jazz, funk, R&B, and hip-hop felt perfect to groove to on a Sunday afternoon. Lyrically, Choice eschews the materialism and self-serving braggadocio common with contemporary rap artists, focusing instead on socially-conscious messages, augmented by the backing vocals of Viveca Hawkins. Choice brought out special guests Sol Development, Netta Brielle, and Jennifer Johns—even more top-shelf local talent—which made the concert seem like an extended family affair.

The previous day, Oakulture managed to catch sets by Jazz Mafia featuring Deuce Eclipse , Ryan Nicole and Martin Luther, and headliner Lyrics Born. Both sets were super-tight. Luther absolutely killed covers of Parliament’s “Stay,” and The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and Eclipse ripped dos rap en Espanol numbers, “Ragga Cantor” and “Knock Knock,” which allowed the Mafia to show of their Latin jazz chops

Lyrics Born, meanwhile, continues to put on a hell of a live show. Now on his 10th album, the man has lots of catalog to pull from. Too much, in fact, for a one-hour set. Oakulture was hoping LB would pull out the 2003 gem “Bad Dreams,” but really couldn’t complain about material like “I Like It, I Love It,” “Chest Wide Open,” and the just-released single “Is It Worth It?” The crowd also heard the Latyrx classic “Lady Don’t Tek No,” which never gets old. Another highlight were the b-boy breaking moves of LB’s son, Teo—reppping the next generation of Bay flavor.

There was, as always, a lot going on at Art & Soul. In addition to the main stage, there were dedicated jazz and blues stages, and a turf dance competition. It’s pretty cool that turfin’ has become enshrined into the festival repertoire, as something which primarily appeals to youth. It’s also cool that hip-hop artists are being embraced—almost a decade after Hieroglyphics became the first rap act to play the festival. While rap isn’t always the most appropriate music choice at family-oriented events, rappers with positive lyrical content who play with live bands makes it a non-issue.

All in all, Art & Soul was an enjoyable and fun time which one hopes will continue to evolve into a world-class showcase for local music. There was also an underlying sense of the need to maintain cultural identity in the face of a rapidly-changing city. One of Choice’s songs, “Never Give You Up”—which personifies Oakland similar to how Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” personifies hip-hop—spoke directly to that. The song was later referenced by McElhaney. With that being said, having a place where Black cultural forms such as blues, jazz, hip-hop and turfin’ are all visible and audible, where food stands still sell BBQ, and local vendors sell t-shirts with slogans like “I (Heart) Being Black” reinforces Oakland’s longstanding identity against the onslaught of culture and population shift. Perhaps that makes Art & Soul the cultural equivalent of comfort food, but comfort food is comforting for a reason.

Art & Soul Turns 18 (Review/Photos et) Over the years, Oakland’s annual Art & Soul festival has had its ups and downs. This year’s offering, however, was one of the best in recent memory, with an outstanding all-local lineup which allowed homegrown talent to shine.

#2018 #Alphabet Rockers #Art & Soul #Deuce Eclipse #Kev Choice #Lyrics Born #Netta Brielle #Oakland Festivals #Ryan Nicole #the Pointer Sisters

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