#maybe in some other future place

[sarasa-cat]

Hm. Readjusting placement of things on my computer desk for better ergonomics and ability to SEE my monitors without eye strain and discomfort when working on my graphics tablet as primary view/workspace.

And now I need to rework all the wiring.

But not today.

I suspect this whole week will be a game of micro adjustments.

[starbuck]

okay but the way Golden Jackal Song is about going to the closest thing to a home you have left and making out with your friend and being deliciously, deliriously happy

[serpentface]

Do you conlang? I was wondering if you had naming languages (or possibly even more developed ones) for pulling the words you use. I tried to search your blog but didn't find anything, wouldn't be surprised if the feature is just busted tho. Your worldbuilding is wonderful and I particularly enjoy the anthropological and linguistic elements.

Ok the thing is I had kind of decided I was not going to do any conlanging because I don't feel like I'm equipped to do a good job of it, like was fully like "I'm just going to do JUST enough that it doesn't fail an immediate sniff test and is more thoughtful than just keysmashing and putting in vowels". And then have kinda been conlanging anyway (though not to a very deep and serious extent. I maybe have like....an above average comprehension of how language construction works via willingness to research, but that's not saying much, also I can never remember the meanings of most linguistic terms like 'frictives' or etc off the top of my head. I'm just kinda raw dogging it with a vague conceptualization of what these things mean)

I do at least have a naming language for Wardi (and more basic rules for other established languages) but the rudimentary forms of it were devised with methods much shakier and less linguistically viable than even the most basic naming language schemes, and I only went back over it LONG after I had already made a bunch of words so there's some inconsistencies with consonant presence and usage. (This can at least be justified because it IS a language that would have a lot of loanwords and would be heavily influenced by other language groups- Burri being by far the most significant, Highland-Finnic and Yuroma-Lowlands also being large contributors)

The 'method' I used was:

-Skip basic construction elements and fully move into devising necessary name words, with at least a Vibe of what consonants are going to be common and how pronunciation works -Identify some roots out of the established words and their meanings. Establish an ongoing glossary of known roots/words. -Construct new words based in root words, or as obvious extensions/variants of established words. -Get really involved in how the literal meanings of some words might not translate properly to english, mostly use this to produce a glossary of in-universe slang. -Realize that I probably should have at least some very basic internal consistency at this point. -Google search tutorials on writing a naming language. -Reverse engineer a naming language out of established words, and ascribe all remaining inconsistencies to being loanwords or just the mysteries of life or whatever.

I do at least have some strongly established pronunciation rules and a sense of broad regional dialect/accents.

-'ai' words are almost always pronounced with a long 'aye' sound.

-There is no 'Z' or 'X' sound, a Wardi speaker pronouncing 'zebra' would go for 'tsee-brah', and would attempt 'xylophone' as 'ssye-lohp-hon'

-'V' sounds are nearly absent and occur only in loanwords, and tend to be pronounced with a 'W' sound. 'Virsum' is a Highland word (pronounced 'veer-soom') denoting ancestry, a Wardi speaker would go 'weer-sum'.

-'Ch' spellings almost always imply a soft 'chuh' sound when appearing after an E, I, or O (pelatoche= pel-ah-toh-chey), but a hard 'kh' sound after an A or U (odomache= oh-doh-mah-khe). When at the start of a word, it's usually a soft 'ch' unless followed by an 'i' sound (chin (dog) is pronounced with a hard K 'khiin', cholem (salt) is pronounced with a soft Ch 'cho-lehm')

-Western Wardin has strong Burri cultural and linguistic influence, and a distinct accent- one of the most pronounced differences is use of the ñ sound in 'nn' words. The western city of Ephennos is pronounced 'ey-fey-nyos' by most residents, the southeastern city of Erubinnos is pronounced 'eh-roo-been-nos' by most residents. Palo's surname 'Apolynnon' is pronounced 'A-puh-lee-nyon' in the Burri and western Wardi dialects (which is the 'proper' pronunciation, given that it's a Kos name), but will generally be spoken as 'Ah-poh-leen-non' in the south and east.

-R's are rolled in Highland-Finnic words. Rolling R's is common in far northern rural Wardi dialects but no others. Most urban Wardi speakers consider rolling R's sort of a hick thing, and often think it sounds stupid or at least uneducated. (Brakul's name should be pronounced with a brief rolled 'r', short 'ah' and long 'uul', but is generally being pronounced by his south-southeastern compatriots with a long unrolled 'Brah' sound).

Anyway not really a sturdy construction that will hold up to the scrutiny of someone well equipped for linguistics but not pure bullshit either.

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Our Lady Of Mysterious Ailments & The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle

books 2 & 3 in the Edinburgh Nights series

paranormal mystery set in a climate-ravaged future Scotland, plagued by ghosts and magic

follows a 15yo Black girl who’s finally gotten an in to learn scientific magic properly - but it turns out to be an unpaid internship, so she has to take more jobs delivering ghost messages and investigating mysteries to take care of her gran and little sister

in book 2 she’s investigating a strange illness centred on a magic school for boys

and in book 3 she’s attending a global magician conference held in a creepy castle - when someone’s murdered, and they’re locked in until she figures out the culprit

Zimbabwean magic, friendship, disabled characters, no romance (so far)

[begled]

Ughj thinking again about the similarities between intentionally splitting oneself in two (severing) and it happening involuntarily (through dissociation) obviously not the same thing really but when you get down to it theyre not entirely distinct. severing is literally choosing to completely dissociate from a specific part of your life and creating another part to handle certain obligations and im just thinking about that a lot lately. im failing to put it into words properly but theres something there yes

[sonknuxadow]

[drag0nalias0]

begging that i get to meet her again....

[lee-blogs]

Still packing stuff and now i'm looking for a box for this.

My dad and i made it a few years ago for halloween, probably 2015/16 if i'm remembering right. It's made from a lays can, a wipes container from his work, and paper maché. I don't remember what the wires and front metal bits are from, but the middle actually lights up! It has one of those long battery-powered emergancy lights in it and some colored tissue paper

[melverie]

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh today I've been constantly experiencing the urge to un-private today-in-the-devildom & start writing for it again

[rival-rook]

Ok time to say nice things about my partner.

This week I found out that I didn't get into any of the in-country vet schools I applied to and injured my hand in a very painful way (on top of my ongoing severe illness).

So after work on Monday, after I broke down crying while trying to make dinner, my partner ran me a hot Epsom salt bath with an added bath bomb, held a blunt to my lips and hand fed me peanut butter m&m's so I could soak and rest my hands, scrubbed every part of my body for me with the fancy soap, burned candles and played nice music, and put a hot towel on my neck. Once I was ready, they helped me out of the tub, dried me off, and trimmed up my neck after the hot towel treatment. Then they helped me rinse off again, then they massaged and moisturized my hands, then bundled me off to bed so I could fall asleep before my hand started hurting again. They made sure I didn't lift a finger for probably two hours.

It was so perfect. Not only was it physically nice, and a lovely way to spend time together after we both worked 12 hr shifts but it was so affirming of their love for me. They've had to wait on me hand and foot so much in the past three months, carrying me and catching me and bringing me food and water... It's been so much work for them and it's been difficult for me to accept. But them choosing to show their love in this way, even though it's been almost forced on them recently, means so much. They're not holding resentment, they are intentionally going above and beyond to make me feel comfortable and loved. It's the best feeling in the world and it makes me want to be a better person to deserve it. It's also just so nice to be loved in the same way that I love - I regularly do big baths and massages for them and I only dreamed of having that returned in previous relationships.

[arolesbianism]

Hello oni lore fans, I have been fighting for my life to solve a lil mystery and I decided to finally clean up one of the logs I copy and pasted from the code so I can hopefully find someone else who's seen it in game before. It's called "a seed is planted" and I'm pretty sure it was in the research notes section, but in the code it's placed alongside the story trait logs so I'm not 100% confident where it's supposed to be found. I first saw it in a save that I was using sandbox mode to hunt for lore with, and it stuck around for a lil while before disappearing, and then it randomly came back for a lil bit before all my lore logs got wiped with the recent update. I have no idea how I got it in the first place nor what made it disappear and come back, so I'm basically just wondering if anyone else has had this issue with this particular log (or any logs for that matter)

I have copy and pasted the log under the cut, although the formatting might be a bit off as this was cleaned up from a copy paste directly from the code itself

"A Seed is Planted"

[Voice Recognition Initialized]

[Subject Identified: B040]

[LOG BEGINS]

Three days ago, we completed our first non-fatal Duplicant trial of Nikola's comprehensive synapse microanalysis and mirroring process. Five hours from now, Subject #901 will make history as our first human test subject.

Even at the Vertex Institute, which is twice Gravitas's size, I could've spent half my career waiting for approval to advance to human trials for such an invasive process! But Director Stern is too invested in this work to let it stagnate.

My darling Bruce always said that when you're on the right path, the universe conspires to help you. He'd be so proud of the work we do here.

[LOG ENDS]

[LOG BEGINS]

My bio-printed multi-cerebral storage chambers (or "mega minds" as I've been calling them) are working! Just in time to save my job.

The Director's been getting increasingly impatient about our struggle to maintain the integrity of our growing datasets during extraction and processing. The other day, she held my report over a Bunsen burner until the flames reached her fingertips.

I can only imagine how much stress she's under.

The whole world is counting on us.

[LOG ENDS]

[LOG BEGINS]

On a hunch, I added dream content analysis to the data and...wow. Oneirology may be scientifically "fluffy", but integrating subconscious narratives has produced a new type of brainmap - one with more latent potential for complex processing.

If these results are replicable, we might be on the verge of unlocking the secret to creating synthetic life forms with the capacity to evolve beyond blindly following commands.

Nikola says that's irrelevant for our purposes. Surely Director Stern would disagree.

[LOG ENDS]

[LOG BEGINS]

Nikola gave me a dataset to plug into the mega minds. He wouldn't say where it came from, but even if he had...nothing could have prepared me for what it contained.

When he saw my face, he muttered something about how people should call me "Tremors," not "Nails" and sent me on my lunch break.

All I could think about was those poor souls.

Did they have souls?

...do we?

[LOG ENDS]

[LOG BEGINS]

It's done. My adjustments to the memory transfer protocol are hardcoded into the machine.

I finished just as Nikola stormed in.

I may be too much of a coward to stand up for those unfortunate creatures, but with these new parameters in place...someday, they might be able to stand up for themselves.

[LOG ENDS]

------------------

[hollow-vok]

Ohh im obssesed

[puthyflapps]

I have an intimate truth to share: I think Sunday would be a very cute name for a shoni baby who lives on a farm with her two moms. Sunday Shalifoe??? They could call her Sunny!! C’mon it writes itself!! And if she looked just like Shelby?? The material is there!! 😭😭😭

[tariah23]

My sister is doing so well at the spa where she works as an LMT at 😭…

[jarvis-cockhead]

Latest installment in my favourite local mystery:

For the past 5 or 6 years someone has been sporadically leaving laminated slips of paper on our road with (usually, but not always) typed names of 80s British celebrities such as Arthur Scargill (there were a lot of him) and Jeremy Beadle. we hadn't seen any for ages, until my mum sent us this the other day:

Have since learnt of Keith Moon's habit of blowing up toilets with explosives but who is doing this and why remains an absolute mystery