#grandiloquence

[hedgehog-moss]

You are my hero for using the phrase 'perfidious Albion' in your tags. What is the French obsession with Alexandrine meter?

:) Well it's just that for a very long time France considered the 12-syllable verse known as the alexandrine to be the pinnacle of versification. For your poetry or play to be considered high literature it had to be in alexandrines (I was recently reading an English jstor article about translations of Shakespeare in the early 19th century and it went “[French translator] prefers to translate in verse, which means, of course, in alexandrines.” Of course!) We've moved on now and they’re out of style, but we’re still secretly fond of them I think. We were held hostage by alexandrines for so long a lot of French people still have a Stockholm-syndrome preference for their specific flow over other kinds of poetic metre.

They left a strong legacy in our language too—a lot of French sayings / proverbs are alexandrine verses because they’re excerpts from classical theatre and poetry (e.g. “A vaincre sans péril on triomphe sans gloire” from Corneille; “La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure” from La Fontaine; “Qui veut voyager loin ménage sa monture” from Racine; “Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop” from Destouches, “Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage” from Boileau...)

The alexandrine had a long golden age, from the Classicists to the Parnassians (mid-17th to late 19th century)—the Romantics in between were advocating for a kind of “free verse” but it still meant alexandrines and pretty rigid ones at that! (Victor Hugo’s “J’ai disloqué ce grand niais d’alexandrin” was subversive—but it’s still an alexandrine.) Their verse was only considered rebellious because it ignored some of the many rules that went into a perfect classical alexandrine (e.g. no overflow, 4 rests per line, rhyme purity must be respected when it comes to mute consonants, no liaison between the last word of an alexandrine and the first word of the next, the hemistiches of two successive alexandrines mustn’t rhyme, no prepositions or other tool words at the end of a hemistich, etc. etc.)

Then in the 19th century we liberated ourselves from the tyranny of the alexandrine after Verlaine shot them dead (insert Rimbaud joke) by doing things like placing the caesura on the 3rd syllable of a 5-syllable word (“WTF”—Racine) or ending an alexandrine in the middle of a word and treating the first half of the truncated word like a legit rhyme, which made all the Classicists roll over in their grave.

I really like alexandrines personally! I admit they can sound plodding after a while especially with classical rhymes, but they have such a soothing flow. I also love that they are often French at its Frenchest. By which I mean, there are some gorgeous alexandrines that are genuinely the French language at its best and most graceful, and then you have those that can’t help but highlight how absurd our syntax can get.

My favourite types of alexandrines are the ones with a diaeresis in each hemistich because saying them normally feels like walking down the street, while saying them as an alexandrine feels like doing a figure skating routine (e.g. in Racine, “La nation chérie a violé sa foi”); the ones with an AB-BA structure (“Et le fuyant sans cesse incessamment le suit”), the ones with a ternary structure (“Je suis le ténébreux, le veuf, l’inconsolé”, “Je renonce à la Grèce, à Sparte, à ton empire”) and the ones where 1 word sprawls over an entire hemistich (“Voluptueusement dans cette paix profonde...”).

The worst alexandrines imo are the ones that force you to acknowledge how many tiny grammatical bricks are involved in the building of a French sentence. Orally we tend to squish them together so we can forget about them but the merciless alexandrine will demand that you mortify yourself pronouncing all of them, e.g. “O nuit, qu’est-ce que c’est que ces guerriers livides ?” (thank you Victor Hugo for this ignominy) (<- here’s an alexandrine), or “Si ce que je te dis ne se dit pas ainsi”... “Ce que je te (...) ne se” is a horrible succession of words by poetical standards but wait I’ve got worse!

Tu m’as pris mon trésor et t’étonnes tout bas De ce que je ne te le redemande pas

“De ce que je ne te le”—see? French at its Frenchest.

[linkzac]

You haven't seen Grandiloquent smile this big in years, if ever. She's gone through so, so much. Enough to make you wonder if she's fit to be a governor.

First post about my main iwatex oc i think. her name is grandiloquent and her augment is eagle wings + talons. she is the suffererrrrr. in the worst ending for her she becomes governor. and that is this drawwing

version without shading cuz i love the outfit

[madou-dilou]

Viren and Soren : sacrifice for the realm

Both of them are bound to this notion more than any of the other characters.

Viren first refuses to die to save the king, because he knows his dark magic makes him too valuable. Sarai, the queen, died so he could perform it. Plus, dying for the king is the job of a soldier, not that of the High Mage.

But Soren, being a Crown guard, immediately agrees, so much that no one even thinks of asking him his opinion, not Viren, not Harrow, not even Claudia, not even the show. It's obvious.

Viren then agrees to die to save everyone including the king, and tells it to Soren, not Claudia, because he knows he will understand, not her.

When King Harrow dies despite their best efforts, Soren and Viren's paths eventually diverge. They have different definitions of "the right thing", of Harrow's legacy. To Viren, it's the realm. To Soren, it's the princes.

They think that they have no choice when Viren decides to have the boys murdered, and when Soren decides to kill Viren, stabbing him in the heart, to protect them.

Viren is so obsessed with sacrificing himself that he thinks it gives him the right to sacrifice everyone else, including Soren. Soren understands this, he understands Viren's position that one's own life is less valuable compared to the realm. Soren decided to be a Crownguard and is loyal to a fault.

The problem with Viren's attitude is that he gaslights Soren and completely devaluates Soren's sacrifice. And that is because he devaluates himself as well, thinking he's only worth as much as what he can do with dark magic.

That's why all though Viren is trying to protect and save Soren by casting on him the fire-proofing spell, Soren is afraid it's just yet another way of dehumanising him, and leaves Viren.

Before stabbing him through the heart, thinking he was about to kill the princes.

And then, in season 6, Viren is trying to make amends with Soren. He tells him he is so proud of his good heart. But it's too late. Soren rejects it, not believing him, because Viren used to gaslight him.

Then Viren is put in the position he thought he was in, in s1-3, where dark magic is the only thing keeping the innocent safe from the monstrous dragons.

Viren, now terrified of dehumanising people as he used to, is forced back into this way of thinking. And Soren, ever the Crown guard, immediately proposes himself as a sacrifice to fuel the spell he once ran away from. Viren has just praised his good heart, but Soren is taking it literally. Just like Viren had ordered him to, years ago, in that very same cell.

In season 5, Viren told Aaravos he would never sacrifice Soren, which made all of us laugh back then since he did it in season 3. But back then, it was for the realm. In season 5, Aaravos was asking Viren to kill his son so he could live. Which Viren can't possibly accept.

But now, Viren is horrified. Not even the safety of the realm is worth the death of his son.

"You do anything for your children. Not the other way around."

So he stabs himself in the heart.

I can't help but thinking the reason why Soren immediately offered himself was a symptom of a low-self esteem he got from Viren's abuse. And Viren realises it. That's why Viren uses himself instead.

Both have self-destructive tendancies : Soren is a crown guard, Viren is a dark mage. Soren is happy to be paralyzed because it means he can no longer do anything, least of all hurting the princes; he kills his dad; he lets himself be beaten up over and over by Elmer; he tells Viren to kill him as a sacrifice. Viren helps the queens of Duren, performs dark magic, destroying his own health, he wants to die to save Harrow, he commits treason against the realm, which sentenced him to death, he sells his soul to worse-than-death-Aaravos and lets him violating his boundaries over and over as he pleased in absolutely gross ways.

Soren's abusive upbringing probably had a hand in it. And we don't know what trauma Viren went through, but it most likely wasn't fun either.

Viren wrote this letter before he died so that Soren would understand that if Viren became a monster, it was not his fault. It is Viren and Viren alone who chose to become a monster by hitting Kppar then Lissa, causing her departure, then making Soren pay it all throughout his childhood. The letter was meant to release Soren from all guilt. Because when you get given the cold shoulder by your father all through your childhood, you’re confusingly thinking it must be your fault. And, as is well known, all children of a divorce think it’s their fault.

It’s a parallel to the letter that Harrow wrote to Callum just before he committed suicide. It also aimed to free him from the past and from the wrongs of the previous generation.

The problem is, reading this could just as well ("just as well", we see this as Kosmo is talking about the potential futures and the multiverse) make Soren feel worse.

Because this letter confirms that it was to save him that Viren destroyed the family, even if it was a choice that Viren made. Soren remembers that he was sick, his grandfather disappeared, his father saved him and his mother left, but he could never make the connection between all these events.

This letter means that the mere fact that Soren is alive was the first crack that eventually brought down the whole house.

Viren chose to burn the letter, because he hoped to spare his son such a burden. He chooses to die alone, misunderstood and reviled. No one will see the blood that he’s spilling on the floor.

Viren's corruption journey started with saving him as well, since it involved dehumanising Lissa by transforming her tears as a component. And now, at last, he closes it, stabs his own heart, saving Soren with the same spell he once ran away from.

All in service of the realm.

[bumblingbabooshka]

He truly can't let anyone have anything

[frc-ambaradan]

I think Panini should really take into consideration to accompany every issue of Topolino with a dictionary of the italian language.

Like, come on! I had to turn to the internet at least five times in the last two weeks just to understand what I was reading 'cause I never heard those words in my life before! 😅

But, just out of curiosity, I looked for those same words in an actual dictionary and no, I couldn't find 'em. I had to resort to my grandpa's dictionary from 1938 to find two of them!

So here's a tip: don't try reading Topolino unless you have a pre-war dictionary at hand. XD

☝️ This is actually the setting of every true reader of Topolino from the 30s to today... XD

[pastel-gothfriend]

this is a vent post, feel free to ignore it

wake up. deep breath. check your phone. no one messaged you. they never do. crawl back into bed. no one cares. realize you have to get it. numb the pain with action. find a moment of peace. check your phone. theres nothing. theres never anything. realize all over again that no one cares about you. realize you are no ones favorite. realize you are tertiary in everyones lives. realize no one would notice your absence. realize your worst fears came to pass. realize you need to cry.

but there is no time for tears. realize you can push the pain away for another day. another night. another hour. so you numb the pain with action.

wake up. deep breath.

[nocturnalazure]

Absolutely no one at all: ...

Me: HERE’S ANOTHER TRAILER TO MY STORY!!

[simian-sam]

[lunasilvis]

Ready to realize ambitions and drag in my dream future today 🙏 but first lazy coffee o'clock

[questing-wulfstan]

I think the original thesis was that one's art will inevitably lack the character and authenticity that compels and invests people if it's created precisely to cater to people's expectation, rather than what compels and invests the artist. Which I entirely agree with and genuinely see no legit counterargument to.

But that's what has somehow mutated into the 'you should make art for yourself and yourself alone, people's engagement is simply a nice bonus' thesis that regularly crosses my dash lately. And I get the sentiment behind it, I do !! Especially in a time, it seems, of people engaging less and less with fanworks. I however have much more reservations towards this statement, and would go as far as suggesting that it is counterproductive, in a time of people engaging less and less with fanworks.

Because, writing in this very case, but that goes for art in general, is meant to be shared. Art is about making connections, it’s a conversation. It’s saying ‘this is how I see the world, is this how you see it too ?’, and it expects a response. Stories were told long before they were written, and we started writing them to ensure they would be passed onto future generations, because we wanted to share them beyond our finitude. But to our peers that were there now, we kept telling stories because it’s not simply about transmission, it’s about reaction. Why would you tell the epics of great heroes if not to galvanise your audience ? Why would you elaborate horrors that chill your own bones if not to frighten your audience ? And why would you tell these stories if not to know whether they did galvanise or frighten your audience ? Why tell these stories if not for the comfort that your peers find courage, or fear in the same things that you do ?

Of course it’s an easy thing to overlook in our epoch where stories are most often recorded, in solitude, and then ‘consumed’ asynchronously, often also in solitude. Stories nowadays are written and read much more often than they are told and heard, and I see how we’ve come to disregard the need for response. However, something I have been formally taught as a librarian in that same epoch, is that people read because they seek something, and not for sole distraction. I believe people write for the same reason.

I can promise you as a writer that I make up stories for my own entertainment entirely. I wish you could see side by side the history of my first 5 years on AO3 and the monumental amount of potential fics I have elaborated in the same timespan. The act of writing was Difficult for me for various reasons during that time, so I never gave this myriad of stories a shape that allowed to share them on the internet. Because I was content enough vividly imagining these characters and situations; essentially, telling myself these stories. I believe other writers may need to tell themself their stories in a more tangible manner so they write them out, and then do so for themself solely.

However, if I have started to write regularly as of late, to compose and shape my stories into a form to convey to the best of my ability what my brain envisioned to a reader’s brain; if we writers put our stories out into the world for anyone to see, it’s because we want to share them, we want them read, we’re extending ourselves out to say ‘this is how I see the world too, this is how I feel too’. And we want to know that we aren’t alone in seeing the world as we do, in feeling as we do. We put our stories out instead of keeping them to ourselves because we want, and need response. As have all the storytellers that came before us.

So I honestly won’t suffer seeing another post on my dash telling writers that they need to write for themselves and disregard engagement because we do !! We write for ourselves !! But we share our writing publicly because we want, well, to *share* it. Because that’s an integral part of being human.

And if you are a reader who think that commenting on a fic is solely an ego boost for the writer and that a much-less-time-consuming kudos is ego boost enough, or that a story is between a writer and themself solely and that voicing your feelings about it is superfluous, I’m begging you to reconsider, your vision and what writers are truly offering.

[kaleidoskuls]

fuckin love the homestuck kids & their texting quirks and casual grandiloquence and unconventional speech patterns theyre the best

[multimuseticles]

"My dearest friend Amber, you have granted me the utmost happiness, so please indulge me as I express my gratitude. I have put my greatest effort into this, but I am yet to have mastered this manner of speaking. But know that I am always striving to be better, and to one day reach the pinnacle of grandiloquent speech."

[violenceviolette]

Le radeau de la méduse (1998), dir. Iradj Azimi

[thisismyanimus]

it seemed that searching three words allows you to find all posts containing those three words

with two words, it seemed that both words have to be in tags, or else it doesn't work. maybe unless the post is popular

but what if i write a really long tag? the maximum limit is 139 characters per tag

i did this experiment in this post

i concluded that if your search contains common words, for example "what write really", it only retrieves certain posts where those words are in the text

for uncommon/nonexisting words in the text of your post such as "brasput yabet mituarb", you can find your post by searching just 1 word

for two words in any of the tags, it retrieves the post, even if the words are common. for example "eat above"

[suga-parade]

well, we finished kuroko no basket, get ready

[preventthefuture]

Enough Coke to choke a giraffe.