#goingspare rambles

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ok so I'm trying some of the suggested Duolingo replacements and so far I've got to say Busuu is a Vast improvement on The Owl - actual explanations of grammar, idioms and manners/set phrases, videos of people saying the phrases so it feels like real people, a wide mix of testing exercises including true or false, translation mix-and-match, filling in gaps in conversations you've listened to etc. It also has short courses specifically tailored to what you're learning for, so for a holiday or business or living in the country etc. Plus there's a feature where you can help out people learning your native language by suggesting corrections to their exercises, which I haven't used yet but seems like a great idea.

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so one of the things you have to know about my grandpa is that he loved cars. Loved to go fast. Had a real need for speed. To this day the only driver that has ever made me carsick on a motorway. Used to own about 14 mini coopers in various stages of disrepair and keep them on other people's drives. Used to race those mini coopers for fun and quite possibly profit. These are fun facts that I knew growing up and that made driving anywhere with grandpa an Experience(TM). He was in no way a bad influence and I am a very dull boring and by-the-book driver as a result. Anyway.

The other thing you need to know about my grandpa is that he once got away with driving a car at 20+ miles an hour through a shopping arcade, like some kind of British viol-and-recorder-playing blues brother, because when the police asked him if he knew who was driving the car that day he just said No. So even though they had the registration number and knew that he owned the car, his lawyer said there was, and I quote "not one jot or tittle of evidence" connecting him to the crime, and the magistrate apparently said (definitely quoting here) "cheers bro I'll drink to that" and let him off scot free.

I learned this approximately five minutes ago from an absolutely hysterical newspaper clipping that my grandpa apparently treasured his whole life long, and left for us to find a full year and change after he died. A man's not dead while his crimes are still legendary ❤️

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Supposed to be reading for the podcast today but tomb of dragons is out??? Tomb of dragons is out?!?!?

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Oh god it just occurred to me - you know what would be more accurate?

MCS: you befriend Mei Changsu? Oh! Jail! Jail for Mei Changsu for a thousand years

Xiao Jingyan: (mentions that he considers Mei Changsu a friend)

Mei Changsu, eyes enormous: you befriend Mei Changsu? you befriend him like a real person with a life expectancy? oh! jail for Jingyan! jail for Jingyan for a thousand years!

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Finished another piece of original fiction (first draft only)! I'm really loving the process of writing short stories, it's so satisfying and fun to play around with all the mechanics in such an enclosed space. like, you get to a stop and you're like. huh. what happens next. well, if it were this kind of story this would happen. and if i was trying to say 'x' but not 'y' maybe this would. idk, it's making a lot of plot/mechanical stuff a lot clearer and more interesting to me. although i do then get haunted by all the if-then-elses not travelled...

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So I'm finally reading Petty Treasons which is incredible and in many places adorable (Cliopher is an unparalleled genius, says His Radiancy, he is the smartest man I have ever met, he is definitely humming the treasonous song cycle that is banned on pain of immediate death and which my youthful alter-ego wrote on purpose. it's a sign. (it is a sign. it is a sign of how Cliopher cannot mind his face or his manners to in some cases literally save his life)) but also Was That A Sharknado??? A Fucking SHARKNADO?!?!?!

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writing game: post the last sentence you wrote then tag someone for every word in the sentence - thanks @july-19th-club for the tag!

hmmmm according to the order of last-opened documents it's probably the (current) last sentence of my gungan religion nonsense, which is absolutely nothing without context:

"It is very very funny."

no-pressure-tagging @ereborne @missfangirll @tallangrycockatiel @sinni-ok-sessi @an-ruraiocht

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Latest bookbinding project complete!

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New fic alert! Fluid Dynamics, aka a snippet of my many many feelings about Gungans in general and Jar Jar Binks specifically, possibly the nichest of all my Star Wars interests...enjoy!

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Druids were invented by Big Caesar to sell more Gallic Wars

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Flicking through Brewers (as you do) (can't ever just look something up in Brewers, every entry your eye lights on sends you off on another tangent) and it has a whole page for forgeries, including:

The Rowley Poems. Certain poems written by Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770), and said by him to have been the work of a 15th-century priest of Bristol called Thomas Rowley (a fictitious character). Chatterton began to write them before he was fifteen and, after having been refused by Dodsley, they were published in 1769. Many prominent connoisseurs and litterateurs, including Horace Walpole [emphasis mine], were hoaxed.

And i just. Ok first Chatterton is an excellent name, I'm stealing it for something, and second. There's something beautiful about Horace Walpole, the man who invented the Gothic genre by infamously claiming that his book Castle of Otranto was a translation of a an ancient and recently rediscovered manuscript, and publishing it under the name of the fictitious translator, falling for somebody else doing the exact same thing.

Wait hold on let me check the publication date - no, Castle of Otranto is 1764. So he didn't get the idea from Chatterton, he just independently went, man, that would be funny, and then fell for someone else doing it five years later. History's incredible, man.

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See it's funny because actually the worst thing about trains in japan was the websites, they weren't that hard to use but you had to (as far as i could tell) use the individual company ones, which needed you to log in with a brand new account per company, which was a faff. Second worst thing is Tokyo Central Station, but every other station we used was pretty manageable, easy to understand and navigate etc. But the trains! The trains! Clean! Well lit! Mind-bogglingly fast! I think actually quite cheap considering the distances involved but I'm bad at currency conversion so who can say. The normal intra-city ones also pretty nice, a little more rundown but that's fair enough honestly. And when a disaster of the normal-operation-of-crosscountry proportions occurred, they would fix it! And then there would be another train! And there would be enough space on that train for all the people who thought maybe they were going to be trapped in Kyoto overnight and miss their flights! There would be empty seats even! None of this, we charge you 100 quid for a two hour journey and the train's so full you physically can't get on it and the next three are cancelled bullshit! Anyway.

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Five Ships In Five Fandoms

Thanking @tallangrycockatiel for the tag!

Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale, Teen Wolf

What can I say about them that hasn't been said a thousand times before by people more eloquent than I. A classic. The ultimate comfort ship.

Cyrano/Roxane/Christian, Cyrano De Bergerac

Cannot overstate the hold these three have on my heart! One of the most excruciating canon endings of all time. I can think about them endlessly. Just rotating them forever in my mind. The Cyrano/Christian kiss from the National Theatre 2022 production lives rent free in my brain. If I loved them less I might be able to talk about them more etc etc.

Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane, the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries

One of the slowest burns of all time. Starts with absolute clownery, the tragedy in the absurd of asking a woman on trial for the murder of her previous lover to marry you, continues with the spikiest most resentful discoveries of drift compatibility, the get-together comprises an entire book's worth of meditations on gratitude (the hatefulness thereof), inequality of gender class and intellect, whether intellectual honesty is more important than romantic loyalty (and/or one's continued ability to feed oneself), musical metaphors for relationship dynamics (anybody may have the harmony if they leave us the counterpoint!!!!!), and of course the massive continuity of ducks.

Cliopher Mdang/Fitzroy Angursell, Nine Worlds

OK actually maybe i take it back, strongest contender for slowest burn of all time??? In that these fuckers have been dancing around each other for something close to 1000 years (not a joke not an exaggeration time is fucky here). Although tbf. Tbqf&h. To be brutally Frank and Esme. I'm not sure I count those 1000 years in that we (the readers) were not actually there to witness that. But still. Where do I even start with these two.

That feeling when you've been installed as a puppet-god-king against your will for over a hundred years unable to choose your food or drink, experience sunlight, or touch another person (because if you do they will literally and immediately immolate because of magic curses) and although this would be cruel to do to anyone it is particularly cruel to do to you, nameless child and infamous anarchist poet revolutionary whose work shook the empire to its very foundations, and then you are finally sent a competent secretary who proceeds to steal your empire out from under you, dismantle it completely, institute universal basic income, universal housing, universal education, fix the post office, provide you with ships that fly?!?!, audit all of your government offices until every single speck of corruption is gone, end a world war and prevent there from every being another one, and all the while is humming your most treasonous song cycle under his breath for fully a thousand years. Oh and then he also journeys into myth and legend, through sky ocean to the house of the sun, essentially to barter fire from the gods, because he thinks he's not good enough for you.

Also such a wonderful nuanced portrayal of an ace/queerplatonic/this relationship-is-what-we-decide-it-is-but-the-most-important-thing-is-that-you're-it-for-me relationship. It's very queer. They're working it out as they go. It will break your heart and heal your heart. I cannot even.

Thara Celehar/Iana Pel-Thenhior, Cemeteries of Amalo

Another they are taking it so so slowly and I am all about it. There's a theme here somewhere I just know it. Sad wet cat detective man with life-destroying trauma talks to dead people, stray cats and this one guy who writes riot-causing opera and very gently invites him to dinner occasionally and helps him solve murder cases. We are two books in and they've only just a) held hands once and b) started using informal you to refer to each other. It's exquisite, I'm in hell.

No pressure tagging @ereborne @july-19th-club @morkaischosen @trans-cuchulainn and anyone else who's interested :)

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Why is the cat so determined to eat my fairy lights???

Genuinely she's like

Whyyyyyyyy

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Note to self: typing up all the tiny bits of fic in my notebooks courtesy of those "if you're seeing this write three sentences of your wip" posts is in fact extremely fun and very useful, I've worked my way out of at least three different narrative holes in the last hour and change and am excited about my work again!

In celebration have a snippet of the newly named "But First They Must Catch You", featuring many unhelpful rumours about the new Manda'lor, including but not limited to the fact that the easiest way to get him to do Proper Manda'lor Stuff is to catch him in a net or possibly a pit, and then ask nicely. Or be a crying child. One or the other.

Sabine shrugs. "That's what the message boards say."

"Wait," says Ezra, "wait. You guys have message boards? Mando message boards? Since when?"

"Since forever, Ezra, this isn't the Dark Ages."

This sounds wrong to Ezra, but he is not a historian.

They need a historian. Failing that, they need someone, really, really old.

"It was a tree," Fenn Rau says. Because he's a nerd. Even Ezra doesn't think he's old enough to remember when Mandalore had trees.

"Say more," says Sabine.

Fenn Rau looks at her like she's tap-danced over the last shred of his patience in full beskar'gam.

Ezra has missed Sabine.

"A tree. A large plant. You stuck a bit of flimsy to it with knives or pins or what have you."

"You don't know?" Ezra asks.

"It's not like I was there," Fenn Rau says. "We have the holonet now. It's not the Dark Ages."

Well, that's Ezra told.

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Waiting for a call from the Demon of Work and Pensions 😭