#and I'm questioning my english now

[ravendruid]

I'm a mod for one of the Fanology ambassadors who has been doing watch parties on Twitch and the amount of new critters that have been joining the streams for the past three weeks warms my heart.

When I started watching Critical Role there were barely any of us in her chat (like literally just me and her and then maybe a couple other critters here and there), and now there's so many new critters.

It started gradually at first, but it wasn't until TLOVM premiered that we started having a higher flow of critters and for the past few weeks we've been having more and more new people joining out of curiosity for the show.

I don't know, it just warms my heart to see more people enjoying Critical Role. T_T

[b4kuch1n]

hahaha wheee haha

[cuties-in-codices]

Where do you find these manuscripts? Is it like a website or do you find it randomly??

hey, thanks for the curiosity! lenghty answer below the cut :)

1)

medieval manuscripts are typically owned by libraries and showcased on the library's websites. so one thing i do is i randomly browse those digitized manuscript collections (like the collections of the bavarian state library or the bodleian libraries, to name just two), which everybody can do for free without any special access. some digital collections provide more useful tools than others (like search functions, filters, annotations on each manuscript). if they don't, the process of wading through numerous non-illustrated manuscripts before i find an illustrated one at all can be quite tedious.

2)

there are databases which help to navigate the vast sea of manuscripts. the one i couldn't live without personally use the most is called KdIH (Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters). it's a project which aims to list all illustrated medieval manuscripts written in german dialects. the KdIH provides descriptions of the contents of each manuscript (with a focus on the illustrations), and if there's a digital reproduction of a manuscript available anywhere, the KdIH usually links to it. the KdIH is an invaluable tool for me because of its focus on illustrated manuscripts, because of the informations it provides for each manuscript, and because of its useful search function (once you've gotten over the initial confusion of how to navigate the website). the downside is that it includes only german manuscripts, which is one of the main reasons for the over-representation of german manuscripts on my blog (sorry about that).

3)

another important database for german manuscripts in general (i.e. not just illustrated ones) is the handschriftencensus, which catalogues information regarding the entirety of german language manuscripts of the middle ages, and also links to the digital reproductions of each manuscript.

4)

then there are simply considerable snowball effects. if you do even just superficial research on any medieval topic at all (say, if you open the wikipedia article on alchemy), you will inevitably stumble upon mentions of specific illustrated manuscripts. the next step is to simply search for a digital copy of the manuscript in question (this part can sometimes be easier said than done, especially when you're coming from wikipedia). one thing to keep in mind is that a manuscript illustration seldom comes alone - so every hint to any illustration at all is a greatly valuable one (if you do what i do lol). there's always gonna be something interesting in any given illustrated manuscript. (sidenote: one very effective 'cheat code' would be to simply go through all manuscripts that other online hobbyist archivers of manuscript illustrations have gone through before - like @discardingimages on tumblr - but some kind of 'professional pride' detains me from doing so. that's just a kind of stubbornness though. like, i want to find my material more or less on my own, not just the images but also the manuscripts, and i apply arbitrary rules to my search as to what exactly that means.)

5)

whatever tool or strategy i use to find specific illustrated manuscripts-- in the end, one unavoidable step is to actually manually skim through the (digitized) manuscript. i usually have at least a quick look at every single illustrated page, and i download or screenshot everything that is interesting to me. this process can take up to an hour per manuscript.

---

in conclusion, i'd say that finding cool illuminated manuscripts is much simpler than i would have thought before i started this blog. there are so many of them out there and they're basically just 'hidden in plain side', it's really astounding. finding the manuscripts doesn't require special skills, just some basic experience with/knowledge of the tools available. the reason i'm able to post interesting images almost daily is just that i spend a lot of time doing all of this, going through manuscripts, curating this blog, etc. i find a lot of comfort in it, i learn a lot along the way, and i immensely enjoy people's engagement with my posts. so that's that :)

[essektheylyss]

It is really astounding how many times a person can see the word "unprecedented" and somehow still not lose their goddamn mind.

[coquelicoq]

just had the thought "after i exhaust the french fiction, poetry, and textbooks i own, i could read the french dictionary cover to cover" and got, like, GENUINELY excited about it.

[quasi-normalcy]

.

[e-adlirez]

Okay so this is a part 2 to @echoflare841's question because I quickly realized that this is gonna be one helluva mega post if I slapped it all into one post. You might wanna sit down for this one, and uh, if you wish to maintain your innocence and not develop a whole new infuriation towards Scholastic for being so damn slow with translations, then uh, this is your chance to leave and keep Pandora's box unopened, I'll see you when my brainrot allows me to actually do something ^^. Here's a little guy to take with you on your travels.

Still here? Aight, cool. Buckle up.

Scholastic currently has five of the Thea Stilton series translated to English for us to consume, and that's 36 books in the main series, 19 books (on paper) in the Mouseford series, 9 special editions, the Treasure Seekers trilogy, and four Classic Tales. (The graphic novels were released by Papercutz, a company independent of Scholastic.) Now, if we're gonna tally up EdiPiemme's arsenal of Thea Stilton books (and I do mean arsenal), one thing you're gonna have to remember is that Thea Stilton itself is a franchise, not a series. Yes, the Thea Sisters are the spotlight in most of these, but there are some series that fall under the Thea Stilton franchise that are rather different and simply are an extension of the Geronimo Stilton Literary Universe.

Anyway so with that, this is what EdiPiemme has in Thea Stilton books, as of 2023:

59 books in the main series (Avventura)

61 books in the Mouseford series (Vita al College)

12 special edition books, plus the Treasure Seekers trilogy

12 Classic Tales or Libri del Cuore (they did Jane Eyre ya'll as a ninth grade Jane Eyre fan I am surprised)

11 Heart Detective books (Detective del Cuore, basically the girls open up a hobbyist detective agency dedicated to the romantic, the infatuated, and the people who are too shy to confess to their crushes. They play part-detective, part-matchmaker in helping two people who have crushes on each other get together. I think. The detective agency tho I'm very certain on, it's the cutest thing they've done so far)

5 Secret Diaries, just some extra content in the form of a diary all five girls share. Stuff about their lives you don't get to see in adventures that much, and it's cute :D

5 Secrets of the Thea Sisters -- i-it's just five kids' activity books but Thea Sister-themed and also some lore

3 books in Sirene, which is a fantasy thing where the Thea Sisters find a magic link in Whale Island that leads to a mermaid kingdom :D if you felt clickbaited by the special editions because they don't actually have the girls become fairies or something, then Sirene actually has them turn into mermaids for their time in the Cobalt Kingdom :D

23 books in Incanto-- it's a KoF spinoff that follows a group of KoF princesses and princes trying to save it from uh big baddies :D

3 books in Three Girls in the Court of King Arthur, once again another spinoff that circles around three lady knights in King Arthur's court hoping to save the world from Morgana and her mysterious Silent Knight

3 Adventures Through Time, yes the girls get to travel back in time, but it's more magic than science and there's an emphasis on some historical girlbosses

6 Stars Academy books

2 books in The Roses and the Spades, which is a sequel to TGitCoKA

1 SuperSisters book, which is basically a superhero book for the Thea Sisters so they can kick ass and stop having villains roll nat20s in intimidation--

2 Cases in Progress, an ongoing series where the girls are investigating some funky cases detected by an algorithm Paulina's invented that searches the internet space for funky anomalies and weird shnit to investigate

1 book in Spectralia, where three hooman girls get Jumanji-ed into a board game and they gotta Jumanji their way outa there, I only learned about this just now while doing research and it's an interesting premise :3c

And I think that's it? There's one choose-your-adventure type thing where you get to investigate with the girls on a case relating to a crown, but that's about it I think. I dunno, EdiPiemme and the Thea Sisters' blog's catalogues have been a mess since they updated the visuals on both, so I unfortunately can't say for sure if I got all of them or if I missed one because my original sources missed them, but eh. Anyway uh, hope you have fun with this new knowledge :'D

[msdk-00]

i love my professor who is a medievalist and thus speaks how one might expect a medievalist would. we should all throw a Most Excellent in our emails more often.

[eddis-not-eeddis]

I have had a sword for a little less than 24 hours, and already I have driven off a man with it.

[per-the-jellicle-magician]

Out of all the things I could be discriminated against for at uni I would have never thought dyslexia would be the first one XD

[moinsbienquekaworu]

thank you so much!! okay so. past tense stuff. I'm confused why sometimes it's être+verb or avoir+verb, but other times you can use imperfect? it kind of seems to me like être/avoir+verb are for more recent things, but I'm not entirely sure. if that is the case, is there a specific time limit or is it just up to the speaker? thanks again!!

Conjugation my beloathed. (not against you, I just never liked learning conjugation)

Être/avoir + verb is called passé composé, it's a compound tense made with the auxiliary verb in the present simple + the past participle of the verb. It's used for an action that happened in the past and that is over now, but it doesn't necessarily denotes that we know when the action happened. It's tense that's used for narration informally (with the present tense), so like, talking to people.

Imparfait is a simple tense used for - the French wikipedia page phrases it as "the imparfait presents the action while it is happening, as it is being done or repeated in a past moment all the people in the exchange are aware of, even if implicitly". So it's in the past, but it implies we know which moment of the past, as opposed to passé composé where that's not necessary. The example they use is if you're talking about someone learning french, "il a appris le français" only says it happened in the past at some point, but know he knows how to speak French, but if you say "il apprenait le français", that only makes sense if you know when he was learning french.

The other difference between the two is that - this is a weird way to explain it, but using the imparfait gives this vibe of your POV being in the past? The wikipedia pages says that it's often used to contrast the past and the present, to discuss a past situation/action that is clearly over, with examples like "quand j'étudiais en France, je mangeais beaucoup de pain". And looking at that sentence, in English that'd be like, "when I was studying in France, I ate a lot of bread", your POV for that sentence is "when you were studying in France" (except french and English do tense agreement differently so in French we keep using the imparfait but in English once you've established which time you're talking about you switch to another tense). In that vibe scenario, passé composé has its POV in the present? I don't know if that makes sense. The way the wikipedia page puts it is that "presents the action as it is happening" part.

They also say that the imparfait is used for putting a past event in the background when combined with the passé composé or passé simple, with the time of the event in the imparfait being the reference for the time of the event in the passé composé or passé simple (so the event in the imparfait kind of sets the scene - "je mangeais quand j'ai entendu un cri"). When you're writing a story, there's the narration tense, for actions, and the scenery tense, for descriptions - the passé composé is a narration tense both out loud and in writing, the imparfait is a scenery tense, and obviously both of them are used when you're writing in the past.

So the passé composé isn't necessarily for things that happened more recently, it's more about that "knowing when the event happened" thing + in real life discussions the thing where imparfait kind of sets the scene. The writing thing with narration/scenery tenses (which - maybe that's a thing in English also? I'm assuming? never took an English creative writing class) is also applicable out loud, especially the passé composé + imparfait combo (as opposed to passé simple + imparfait, which is very literary, since we don't use the passé simple out loud). There isn't a time limit, but like in English, there's different tenses for when you're talking about events that happened in the past of the past - like, if you're talking about something happening yesterday, but in that story there's something that happened the week before (plus-que-parfait informally, for sentences like "I had eaten a full meal")

All of that is only for the indicative and not the subjunctive, and obviously if you want to check out a verb's conjugation your best friend is the Bescherelle conjugaison website, which is nicer to use and easier to access than a physical Bescherelle book. Hopefully that helped a little?? Looking at wikipedia pages and example sentences I was realising I am so so bad at explaining what's going on in this hell language. Conjugation is one of the hardest bits of french though! It doesn't get much worse than this shit. Maybe agreements?

Here's the Wikipedia graph about which tense to use and which one comes before which on a timeline, if that helps

[beaniebabs]

i don't wanna brag or anything but i finished my first college semester with 3 A's B)

[stuckfixated]

Reflecting on the poem What is Broken is What God Blesses by Jimmy Santiago Baca, I was struck by a sense of reverence for the gift of life, and a sort of wise acceptance that sometimes the most broken things can be the most meaningful and the most beautiful. This reminded me of a type of Japanese pottery called "kintsugi" (which translates to "golden joinery"). When something like a vase or a decorative plate breaks, they put it back together using lacquer dusted with powdered gold (sometimes also silver as well), and it is meant to emphasize the imperfections and to showcase beauty in the broken. Some lines from the poem that really stood out to me were "what is broken is baptized; the irreverent disbeliever" and "in our brokenness thrives life, thrives light, thrives the essence of our strength". The line "what is broken is baptized" is especially beautiful to me.

As for the connotations of the poem, I believe it has themes of resilience and fortitude; the strength to keep on going even when "broken" and weary. The poem is a celebration of life and of the average person; not just important, high-status people. The imagery the author uses is wonderful and really conveys his message clearly, taking care to acknowledge the hardship and plight that many face in everyday life. For compassion can be born from adversity, and resilience and victory from pain. It was an absolutely lovely poem, and I'm really grateful that we were assigned to read it.

With the poem Hope by Lisel Mueller, I saw many similarities, although this one focused more specifically on hope and the value in all living beings, and where that hope comes from rather than just themes of beauty and reverence for everyday life. It's true that both poems explore existence and musings of life; however, the imagery and tone used to do this differs a bit from poem to poem. Jimmy's poem emphasizes strength, blessings, and the beauty of brokenness, while Lisel's poem explores themes of the inherent value and potential of all living things. Everything from dandelions to mushroom gills, to dogs and children. These things strike a feeling of whimsy and awe, and leaves me feeling contemplative and wanting more. I should take a look at the author's other works as well!

[passionatememes]

what if i'm sosososososo tired. what then

[tsui-no-sora]

also like the questions were also repeated in English and answered in English. What is there to complain

Yeah like we literally saw Dream asking Quackity to please translate for everybody and he did it saying that "Okay for anybody that didn't understand" so it's not like you were getting left out if you didn't understand the literally only two questions in Spanish in the whole hours long panel

He also answered them all in English as well either way

And also the first girl who asked in Spanish literally had to do it because she was struggling a lot with her English as you know people who aren't born into an English country do

Honestly this idea that USA people have that everybody must speak their language and assimilate into their culture and their way of doing things and otherwise they are wrong and being selfish is so freaking annoying and high-key just racist

If a Latino wants to speak with a Latino in Spanish it's not our freaking issue if your white ass can't understand it

[griffsursparker]

got up with like two hours to spare before I have to leave for my exam because I need to study for said exam. and then spent an hour on tumblr instead