#adjectives or adverbs? idk

[whumpthisway]

considering I'm usually a big comfort fan, I'm having a fun time torturing this oc of mine. he's having a pretty bad day. oops.

[eustaceloser]

you’re fucking kidding me in german franziska just says dumm💀

[cominy-kiwami]

alright so for my understanding weve been in the past ever since the second chapter with clevinger and yossarian, and weve been working our way way the hell back to the present and now with the colonel cathcart and chaplain chapters we are in the "present" and yossarian has just exited the hospital trip he was on in chapter one.

the way that the chaplain chapter actually introduced yossarian and danby, along with the way it seemed to generally be a little less strong than what i had come to read from this book tells me that this was initially one of the first chapters and it got moved around, probably to accomodate the insane amount of non-chronological action that filled the first 200 pages of the book.

[lilislegacy]

if percy jackson was forced to come up with and perform a song in a life or death situation (idk it’s probably apollo’s fault somehow) i feel like the improvised lyrics would sound very similar to nick jonas’s “introducing me” from camp rock 2

the “i really like it when the moon looks like a toenail” and “i like to use the word dude as a noun or an adverb or an adjective” are really giving percy “idk im pulling this outta my ass” jackson

[dedalvs]

ive done a lot of translating to high valyrian in my day and id like to think im pretty good at it sometimes (the way ive spent literal hours researching how just one piece of grammar works to change a noun to an adverb or something is maybe insane)

anyway all that to say i usually know what to look for and how to apply it, but i am struggling with this new bit im trying to translate. “i disdain all glittering gold.”

ive replaced disdain with hate cause there doesnt seem to be a word for disdain in valyrian and hate is the closest approximation. same with glittering — replaced that with shine, and had to manually transform that to an adjective (jehikagon -> jehikere? dunno if its right)

so what i have now is “nyke buqan unir jehikere aeksion”

(im not as concerned with getting the word order right as i am with the rest of the grammar)

ive learned from a previous answer “nyke” is potentially (probably) unnecessary here, so that leaves it as “buqan unir jehikere aeksion,” but the unir there in the middle kinda makes it feel off and im not sure if maybe that also needs to be part of a compound word like valar or how to make it one if so because idk what part of valar is all and what part is men and how to fit aeksion into that equation.

i lost track of what my question was originally meant to be but i guess im wondering if im on the right track and if theres some guidance you may have to get me all the way there.

thank you for your time 🙏

Uhhhhhh... Not to be that dude, but...maybe be more concerned with that...?

I'm not sure if you know about this site, but my wiki is exhaustively updated with respect to High Valyrian, specifically. There's a team of people that work on High Valyrian and it's massive. For example, you could go to the entry for jehikagon and see that jehikere is wrong: it should be jehikare. And, of course, it has to agree with āeksion (note the long ā), so it should be jehikarior. To get the sense of repetitiveness (with "glittering"), you might add ā- to the front, so ājehikarior.

Now for "all", why not use the collective? This is how you get "All men must die", so it should work for "I distain all glittering gold". That would be āeksior. Of course, it would need to be in the accusative, so altogether it would be ājehikarior āeksȳndi. By adding the repetitive you kind of get the aliteration, too, since they both begin with ā.

Finally you have "disdain", for which buqagon serves. Aside from sound a little more posh, the difference between "disdain" and "hate" in English seems to be one of duration. The words "disdain" and "loathe" seem to emphasize that this is a character trait rather than a reaction. If you disdain something, you've given it some thought, have experience with it, and may use this as a way of describing or characterizing yourself. You can do this with "hate" as well, but it's a much more common word, and so can be used in other more basic ways, whereas "disdain" and "loathe" tend to only have specalized uses. To try to approximate this, you could use the frequentative with buqagon to imply a lengthy duration. That would give you jobuqan "I disdain". In fact, you could even use the aorist if you really wanted to imply that it was a description of yourself, i.e. jobuqin.

Now that you have the pieces, though, I really hate to say it, but the words must be in the right order. I mean, you can change the order of the noun and adjective, if you'd like, but you simply cannot put the verb first and think you've created a Valyrian sentence. It's not just "kind of" wrong: it's completely wrong. It'd be like suggesting "I him saw" is close enough in English because the forms are correct. It's not. It's wrong. This is not a minor part of the grammar you can ignore. High Valyrian is aggressively verb-final. The verb must be at the end.

All in all, that gives you:

Ājehikarior āeksȳndi jobuqin.

Hope that helps!

[sinni-ok-sessi]

accountability-posting, week 2!

this week, I kept on with the grammar book and read the chapters on adjectives and adverbs. Who would have thought there were so many things to say about adverbs? Nice to learn that there's more to go on than 'just vibes idk' when using 就 and 才, so that's hopefully my main learning point for the week.

Read another two chapters of 'romance of the three kingdoms for people who only know 600 characters', which, it's amazing how much better at reading you get if you actually do it regularly, who'd have thought. I feel like the du chinese adaptors want me to poor little meowmeow cao cao (he's so sad about his dad's death, but maybe doing some murder will make him feel better), but I refuse

During the week, I've been plodding along with my skritter cards, trying to learn a few from the hsk 5 deck or one of the chengyu decks each day. Down to <200 cards for the NiF manhua now!! Admittedly that's the course that's only half the vocab from vol.1 but...little steps. Maybe I will get round to reading vol.2 one of these days.

[himluv]

DA Review Series - The Stolen Throne by David Gaider

Since I finished my original fiction novel at the end of February, I've started replaying the Dragon Age games and the long process of re-reading all the Media Tie-Ins. I thought, since I'm doing all of this, I might as well share my thoughts along the way.

I'm following this list that I made last year, if you'd like to follow along :). Now, onto the review!

Title: The Stolen Throne Author: David Gaider Publication Year: 2009 In-World Year: ~8:96 Blessed to ~9:00 Dragon (there are discrepancies) Verdict: Skip. There isn't any real lore value here, and it's mostly just teen angst wrapped in sexism.

The Stolen Throne is a prequel to Dragon Age: Origins, which introduces us to teenaged Maric Theirin just after his mother has been assassinated. The book follows Maric and his friends over the course of about four years as they lead a rebellion to free Ferelden from Orlesian occupation. We also meet young Loghain MacTir and Rowan Guerrin – both important figures to the Ferelden we experience in DA:O.

Unfortunately, I don't have much good to say about this book. I first read it in 2011, and remember really liking it then. I was 21, and while a voracious reader, I was not a reader of much Fantasy at the time. I've grown a lot since then, and this book does not age well.

I tried to re-read it in 2020 and couldn't finish it. I tried again in 2023 and, again, abandoned it. But this year, while playing DA:O I was able to slog through it and FINALLY finish it.

So, why was it such a slog?

The writing is, uh, bad. Just, on a basic prose level, this feels like a rough draft. Adjectives and adverbs run rampant over this book. Descriptions are winding and don't always make sense. The amount of times I rolled my eyes while reading this book, y'all. It was a lot.

But, if the story had been good enough, I could have overlooked the bumbling execution. The problem is, the story isn't all that compelling. Yes, I expected the overthrowing of Thedas's most influential political force to be an exciting read. Instead, this book isn't so much about the politics of Thedas and the tolls of war, but about... love triangles? Quadrangles?

Without getting lost in the details, basically Maric is betrothed to Rowan, but Loghain loves Rowan. And Maric is in love with Katriel (which is a whole 'nother problematic can of worms) and cheats on Rowan. And Rowan... is upset about this, but I don't really know why because she doesn't love Maric. And she sleeps with Loghain, but also.... I don't think she loves him either? IDK, man. None of it made sense.

And that is the crux of this book. So little of the characters' motivations made sense. And so much of the book hinged on those supposed motivations and feelings. But they didn't make sense – at least, not to me.

Sadly, there wasn't much lore to be gained from this book, either. we learn a little about Maric and his mother Moira. A little about Loghain, but even what I did learn didn't make me more sympathetic to him. He's still a dick. In fact, the only characters I did like were Rowan and Katriel, both of whom are dead by the end of the book. Neither of whom had any real power over their own lives. In fact! When Katriel attempted to flex what little power she did have, Maric KILLED her. And he supposedly loved her??? No. Uh-huh. And Loghain basically goaded him into it, so they both suck.

The one good thing from this is I think it does make the Orelsian hate in DA:O more believable. When the Warden comes on the scene, it's only been ~30 years since Maric and Loghain ousted Orlais. People are still living and working who fought in these battles, who lived under occupation. So, that's some good context. Don't think we needed over 400 pages of misogyny to get it, though.

David Gaider wrote two more Dragon Age novels, so wish me luck. I think I'm going to need it...

[spikrock]

game shows people play

this is one of my favorite alice shirts tbh

the episodes alright,,, i would say its forgettable but it isnt for me at least and idk why. its like one of the first episodes i think about when i think of this show. i really would like to know why that is cus its definitely not one of my favorites or anything

i think i used to struggle with adverbs when i was a little kid. that or adjectives. one of those. maybe if id watched this episodeeee 🙄

[aromantisk-fagforening]

ok now I've done basic pronouns, nouns and verbs. Next up is adjectives and adverbs I guess.

I don't think prepositions can be called basic ever. They suck. Idk what I will do there, maybe I'll find a YouTube video for you all idk.

[sam-loves-seb]

weekly tag wednesday

thanks for the tag @michellemisfit @heymrspatel @dynamic-power !

Name: sam

Where in the world are you? just outside of boston, massachusetts

Do you have a favorite towel? i don't think i have a favorite bath towel, but i have a favorite beach towel. it's purple and blue and has butterflies on it.

Can you skip rocks? only a little bit

Tell me about a weird slang term from your area. idk i guess i'd have to go with "wicked" which is so cliché boston but i use it all the fucking time so maybe it's me that's the cliché. the best way i can describe it is to say that it sort of means "very" because you don't use it as an adjective, you use it as an adverb (you don't say "that run is wicked" you say "that run is wicked hard")

Favorite toast topping? butter

Thoughts on bread pudding? never had it

City or country living? city 'til i die. i was born and raised in a city, i currently live in a city. i will always be a city girl through and through

How do you cheer yourself up after a bad day? if it's a bad day (angry) i'll go for a run and that helps but if it's a bad day (sad) usually a long shower and then playing my switch for a while

Are you a pessimist or an optimist? optimist

Can I tag you in random stuff? always

tagging: @rereadanon @mmmichyyy @suchagallabitch @metalheadmickey @callivich @iansw0rld @gallawitchxx and anyone else who wants to play !

[lovergf]

best of luck in your phd program applications!!!! sadly i don't know the deal with master(')s but i do remember that Affect is an Action and Effect is the Everything Else (noun, adjective/adverb stem (effective/effectively)). i should never be hired to make mnemonics but this one helps me! godspeed my fellow soldier of academia 🫡

thank you comrade 🫡 idk why i’m so bad at remembering!! but that is actually so helpful ty! <3

[borealopelta]

10 questions for 10 writers

the beloved @arokel tagged me aaages ago and i'm finally doing it yayyy!

1. Is writing a hobby or a way of life?

a hobby i think. i do write a lot and it's a big part of my life but i wouldn't define myself as a writer you know? i'm just someone who writes :)

2. A journal full of notes or a clean completed manuscript?

journal full of notes!! i usually get tiny snippets of Disjointed Scenes stuck in my head and i recently realised that if i wrote them out i could. come back to them later if i wanted instead of forgetting them like a cool person. so i'm doing that in my notes app for now. but theoretically i'm all for a clean manuscript i'm literally incapable of writing a fic out of order aside from my little notes

3. Who or what inspired your writing?

honestly this question is stumping me a little. i don't know? i've been writing and telling stories from a very young age and i never had Big Inspirations. i do have people who influence my style (see the three authors i mention in question 8....holy shit to be able to write like that) but inspiration? idk i don't think i'm even getting what kind of inspiration this is asking about.

4. Which is worse: Someone you ‘idolize’ reading your first draft or listening to you sing?

Definitely singing. i don't mind people i look up to reading my stuff! even if it could be improved!! but singing for an audience is horrible :)

5. Has writing from someone else’s POV changed your perspective?

i'm a very emotional person and experience everything all the time except for when i shut off and stop feeling at all for a bit. the latter is a rare occurrence and i'm generally all about emotions so writing my favourite oc who operates on a Very low emotional spectrum was (is) a really interesting experience. i have to put a lot of thought into how bella sees the world but i Love the way his brain works so he's always worth the effort and i'm thankful to him for showing me something new

6. Tumblr, AO3, LiveJournal, or FFN?

no wattpad....how quickly forget our dark history. anyway yeah it's ao3!!! i Love the way ao3 works i did Not learn to navigate FFN well enough (not for lack of trying btw) to ever really use it

7. AO3 word count? And are you satisfied with it?

137,805. i'm a notorious fic deleter so it's not representative of the amount i've written over the years but. yeah! i'm happy with that. i obviously want to write more but word count is one of the stats i care least about

8. What movie/book gripped you irrevocably?

for books it's either the hungarian selection aka Verhovina madarai by Bodor Ádám and Termőtestek by Sepsi László - two novels i think about literally all the time - or Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Énard which i keep recommending to LITERALLY everyone because it's so beautiful. btw read tell them of battles kings and elephants by mathias énard it's so beautiful. for movies i guess dead poets society? aesthetically & also its message is so beautiful and i love a robin williams film

9. What’s the highest compliment you could ever be given, and have you been given it?

i don't know!!! any compliment makes me happy. but i love hearing that people came back to reread multiple times. like omg!! welcome back i'm so glad my sillies are in your brain

10. What defines your writing style?

i like to think my descriptions are pretty definitive, i loooooove stacking adjectives and adverbs and stuff with hyphens and commas and ands and other verbal connective tissue i love describing things in very specific ways and i think my writing also has a unique rhythm because of how hungarian works and how that translates to english. but that's just inside my brain idk!! my writing might be the most generic shit to everyone else :]

[alphacrone]

Answer the Questions and Tag 5 Fanfic Authors

thanks for the tag @pfirsichspritzer!

1 . How did you get into writing fanfiction?

ohhhh boy i don't really remember. it was either bc of harry potter or the bartimaeus trilogy, i got into reading it while waiting for books to come out and then i started writing stuff that would never be published. eventually i got really into twilight at 14-15 and created a ff.net account to start publishing and never looked back.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

oh lord ok i've had three ff.net accounts, a livejournal account, and an ao3 account over the span of 15-ish years. i'm gonna say a minimum of 10, likely more.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

i've been publishing for 15-ish years, but writing fic for much longer. at age like 12 or 13 i had my own hp fan site (my dad wanted me to learn html) that i technically posted fic to but i don't count that bc no one ever saw it.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

lately i've been writing more but usually i read more.

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

i don't quite understand what this is asking. if it's asking one manner in which i've improved, i could not tell you that. i'm TRYING to cut down on superfluous adverb/adjective usage, but i know i'm not successful in that yet. if it's asking one exercise or trick i've used to improve, the answer is by reading, always by reading.

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

london sewer systems, the diamagnetic properties of water, how nighttime and darkness affect the earth's magnetic field.

7. What’s your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

i LOVE when someone will pick out a line or paragraph that really resonated with them.

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

i don't quite understand this question. i write a lot of rare pairs? my l&co writing used to be for a pretty fringe fandom before the show came out?

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

anything with a lot of action. i struggle with pacing and the scenes tend to get choppy or awkward.

10. What is the easiest type?

introspection, emotion-heavy one-shots, or anything with lots of banter. i love writing dialogue.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

i tend to write on my computer, sometimes phone or in a journal. i use gdocs though i know i need to stop bc of ai scraping, so i'll go back to ms word or a similar word processor soon. either late at night or when i'm supposed to be working lol (shhh)

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

hmmm i've been wanting to do fic in the form of like epistolaries, video/podcast/radio transcripts, 2nd person narration, newpaper articles, mixed media, etc.etc.

13. What made you choose your username?

lol which one. my ao3 username comes from the song deeper well. i wish i could change it to alphacrone tho, it's easier to remember and i'd like more consistency.

tagging: @ghosthorse @injustspring @displayheartcode idk tag urselves

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Sorry for the really dumb question but does rád as used in “mám rád” mean anything literally? Like is there a direct translation?

"mám rád" means "i like", though a literal translation is pretty damn difficult to do, because (minor linguistic ramble incoming)

A closer, "full" equivalent to the English sentence "I like" would be "já mám rád", "já" being the subject/pronoun "I", however in Czech and many other Slavic languages the subject can be dropped, since the subject is already clear from "mám" aka "have" ("má" being the stem and "-m" is the suffix for first person singular, Slavic languages have a lot more morphology than English). "rád", meaning "like", or "glad", is actually an adjective and kind of a weird one too. It's used more like an adverb? You can't use it like, idk, "the happy man". So basically "mám rád X" means "I am glad to have X", though actual possession of X is not required. You don't need to have ice cream in your hand to say you like ice cream

This is probably very incorrect but i wrote this in a rush lol, czech studies majors feel free to correct me

[makerofmadness]

I remember seeing one post that was like "people joke about writer search histories being [insert screenshots of murder-related searches] but it's actually more like [insert screenshots of searches related to words for things]" and as a writer I can say: it's both

i have many times needed to look up words (especially adverb equivalents to certain adjectives) but at the same time right now my latest searches related to writing have been this:

(Idk if I really needed to censor the tracking data stuff but idk tech that much so I did it just in case it would've revealed anything important)

[alansbookdevblog]

as per how tolkien made fantasy

I've made a conlang for my urban fantasy story. I'm still working on the vocabulary and word order still kinda switches between SVO and SOV but I might end up making the word order like it is in german where the its SV1OV2 where V1 is the first verb and V2 is the second verb like in the sentence Ich habe butterbrot gegessen (lit. I have butter bread ate) or I can make it that if you do SOV its more passive than SVO or just make it flexible like in russian but have the primary word order be SVO

Anyways

This conlang is called Angelspeak or kauxam /kaɯ.ʃam/ in its language. Its an analytical minilang that uses cv or cvv where vv is a diphthong and has the ability to combine morphemes (which are in a single syllable) into more complex words with no more than three morphemes. I say that this is a minilang because the morphemes themselves can be used as individual words and I'm not going to have an enormous dictionary. Also minilangs are easier for me in general and more fun imo.

At first I was thinking of having a tonal system like in mandarin but I keep going back and forth whether to have a tonal system or not and if I do it would be more grammar based than the tones indicating that this is a completely different morpheme.

This conlang doesn't have an actual writing and the culture of the speakers of angelspeak (the angels) is purely on oral traditions. However, I've made a romanization system for this conlang which is used by mortals in this world to create sigils which are used as totems and a form of programing language for enchantments. It is said that angelspeak can move souls and lifeforce itself.

I'll update this post (maybe) with a chart of the vowels and the consonants later because I didn't make the chart in my excel sheet but for now I'll just do it like this

vowels

a - /a/

o - /o/

w - /ə/ or /w/ when its next to another vowel

y - /u/

u - /ʊ/

i - /i/ or ⟨ʲ⟩ when next to another vowel

e - /e/

consonants

r - /ɾ/

t - /t/

p - /p/

s - /s/

d - /d/

f - /ɸ/

g - /g/

h - /x/

j - /ʒ/

k - /k/

l - /l/

z - /z/

x - /ʃ/

c - /t͡s/

v - /β/

b - /b/

n - /n/

m - /m/

I did make a chart of which diphthongs are allowed phontactically. In red are diphthongs not allowed in angelspeak. Also, there is no such thing as long vowels in angelspeak which is what ww, yy, uu, ii, etc. are

And here are all of the allowed syllables. Each syllable is a morpheme and each morpheme are characterized by their function

Adjectives and adverbs are basically the same functionally its just one describes a noun and the other describes a verb. Also there is a potential where I would remove syllables with /z/ but keep /z/ for verbs (or I might remove z entirely idk) because I don't think these z's fit with the sound aesthetic I'm going for which is silky smooth. too buzzy imo

For verbs there's present tense, past tense, future tense, progressive, imperitive, and vocative. here's the cojugation using the word lam which means to eat. to make it a sentence, I'm using the first person pronoun pa

Pa lam - I eat

Pa lom - I ate

Pa lim - I will eat

Pa lym - I am eating

for the vocative and imperitive I'll use the second person pronoun py.

Py lwm! - you eat (in a commanding sense)

Py lem! - you should eat (also can be translated as please eat)

Right now I'm still working on vocabulary but I add vocabulary as I'm writing my story.

Here's an example of the language at work

Lw raf xoileo! Lw raf xexoileo! Xwacei?! Xwacei pe xoh pa?!

/lə raɸ ʃoi.leo/ /lə raɸ ʃe.ʃoi.leo/ /ʃwa.t͡sei/ /ʃwa.t͡sei pe ʃox pa/

this is (lit. weird logic)! this is (lit. wrong weird logic)! (lit. what reason)?! (lit. what reason) (third person pronoun) killed (first person pronoun)?!

This is illogical! This is absurd! Why?! Why did they kill me?!

in the context where this will occur in the story, pe refers to a man but pe can refer to anyone of any gender. For the sake of translation of this, I used singular they because this is taken out of context.

In the story, I will translate the angel speak by having either the context of what my protagonist is thinking for example

this is scary. coi.

or I'll do it like this

coi. scary.

hopefully you as the reader would understand the angelspeak this way.

Fuck I should read some of tolkien's work to see how he handles his conlangs in his stories (bc I only saw the movies) but I have such a large book backlog that idk if I can tackle reading either hobbit or LoR atm while I have like, uh, six books that I'm still reading. technically seven but the seventh book I haven't touched in years