#technical geekery

[gaijin-fujin-resonance]

The Joy of Theremins

We interrupt our regular blogging to bring you a special report on our absolute favourite topic at G-F Resonance Towers: IMAI HISASHI’S THEREMIN!

Due to an extraordinary alignment of the kindness of longterm fans in Japan, and sheer blind luck, I was able to speak (though a translator) with what is known in the music journo business as Sources Close to Buck-Tick, hereon referred to as “SCBT”. (Please don’t ask how. I will not tell you. I’m very aware that words like ‘London’ and the name of the music magazine I used to write for can open a lot of doors that are not available to others.) I did independently confirm the veracity of this source, so I’m 99.9% sure they are who they say they are, and that they do know what they are talking about. However, for contractual reasons, I cannot name this source.

Note: neither SCBT nor our translator are native English speakers. I will use the words as they were conveyed to me, edited only for spelling. I’ll try to provide notes for context, or where I feel the technical aspects are unclear.

I had time for 3 questions, so I took my shot with these:

Why did Imai switch from the Big Briar to the Moog Theremini?

Did Imai find the Theremini easier to play tunes, because he seemed to become a lot more melodic with it  e.g. on BOOGIE-WOOGIE (I loved what he was doing with it, hence why I was disappointed when he stopped using it)

How does he find the latency on the Theremini? I've heard other theremin players complaining it's not as responsive as earlier models, is that just Old Folks Not Liking Change?

Technical context: from around 1997 until the early 2020s, Imai used a Big Briar Etherwave theremin live onstage. (Big Briar was the brand name that Bob Moog used during a copyright dispute.) This instrument provided the haunting, alien, outer-space tones that form the background of songs like MY FUCKIN’ VALENTINE, showcased best in the Sweet Strange Live Film:

In the early 2020s, Imai switched to the Moog Theremini. You can see Imai playing this model in live versions of Boogie-Woogie. As you can see, he’s able to generate far more melodic, solo style riffs from this instrument:

This model was designed to be easier to play, so it came with an in-built pitch corrector, functioning similar to the frets on a guitar. This means that the player does not have to maintain the exact position of the fingers to produce a note that is in tune. However, some older theremin players have complained that the new controller increases the latency - rather than playing the note in real time, there is a tiny, split second delay in the change of tone when you move your fingers to change notes.

My translator relayed my questions, and replied with this. (The “I” of this text is the translator. “He” sometimes refers to Imai, and sometimes to the opinions of {SCBT} - I will try to differentiate where unclear)

(Imai) switched from the briar to the mini mostly for aesthetic reasons, even though he could do more with the briar, it was too big and worked better for stage performances but he likes recording more with the mini. The delay in response time actually helped aid him to drag out notes To add to this I don't know if {SCBT} was referring to dragging out notes or having a cleaner finish to the notes (the words {SCBT} used could have meant either, Japanese can be vague and so can Imai), but he found the delay to be more beneficial to record with The mini is easier to play because it’s less bulky but the quality and technicality is less, which is what he really loved about the briar. His briar actually sustained some damage so he had to use the mini full time and it was frustrating at first but he really came to enjoy the process {SCBT} wants me to thank you for asking about it He mentioned it (the Briar) was built for him (…) language made it unclear when {SCBT} just said 'yes, built!' with no further elaboration but that was my take He said due to circumstances with the briar, he was unable to use it for recording at that time. I interpreted that as damage/repairs

Note from the Blogger: my interpretation, as a musician who has previously played around with theremins, is that “dragging out the notes” probably means “a cleaner finish.” This was the whole selling point of the Theremini’s pitch correction, that the individual notes could be more clearly distinguished.

About the Briar being ‘built’. Back in the mid-90s, Bob Moog originally released the technical specifications for building theremins on the internet, and sold kits of the components which had to be assembled at home. Later on, it became possible to buy pre-assembled theremins. (The Theremini, for example, comes fully assembled.) This ‘built’ comment makes sense with the timing too - Imai started using a theremin early enough that it sounds like his model had to be built from a kit.

tl:dr: Imai stopped using the Big Briar because it got damaged. Originally, he preferred the Big Briar because the Theremini had limitations. However, like many creative people, limitations actually spurred his creativity, and he came to use the Theremini full time.

[rideroftherange]

A little from column A and a little from column B…

Klaus and Gilgamesh Wulfenbach

Girl Genius

by Phil and Kaja Foglio

Airship

[lilderitter]

Who are human MC's biological parents?

King & Queen of Parnassus

So their parents were killed by bandits, means the bandits killed royalty

As always, the caveat that this is my understanding based on the lorekeeping I did on Blades when I was employed at PB, and PB has the final word on this stuff. Now. To geekery:

I think the thing to remember here is that Parnassus has been conquered for a longggggggg time at the start of Book 2. Like we're not talking about MC being like related to Anastasia Romanoff. We're talking like "I was related to Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire, so I'm royalty." Yes, technically you might be but you don't have the resources royalty does.

A (mostly) quick timeline of the state of Morellan human politics: So the Elven Empire falls approx. 2,000 years before MC leaves Riverbend for the first time. The fall of the Empire allowed their former human serfs to build their own settlements and fiefdoms because lateral violence and we sometimes replicate the systems that oppressed us le sigh.

About 500 years passes as this system settles into itself. There's 24 little city states all fighting for space and power. Then the Valleroses of Whitetower conquer (err, "unite") all those fiefdoms under their banner, leaving only one holdout: Parnassus, to the south.

Parnassus isn't a military power. They're basically a marine republic, and Baldur I (yes, Aerin's brother isn't the first of his name he just doesn't pay attention in school.) isn't nice enough to engage with the Parnassians on the seas where they have the advantage. So Kaleb Parnassus decides he'd rather rule on the seas anyway, and abandons Port Parnassus to live as a pirate king under the alias Kaleb Wylder.

Now, here's the trouble with pirate kings: they have to fight other pirates. And there are a lot of pirates on the Morellan coast, both orc and human. And there's a little less than 1500 years between Kaleb's time and MC's parents. That's a lot of time to lose wars, gamble your wealth away, and have other misfortune befall you without the infrastructure of established monarchy to absorb those losses. So when MC's parents were killed, they were likely just ordinary people. Maybe people with stories in their family about pirate kings, but Kaleb himself hid his surname because he feared assassination by the Valleroses. (Aurinae wasn't the first crafty spymaster but she was the best.)

But as they say, it's not where you came from that matters. It's who you decide to be.

The coup plan Mal was suggesting in Book 2 was based on the technicality that Kaleb Parnassus never formally abdicated, so Parnassus is technically under unlawful occupation. While the Valleroses are pretty much an absolute monarchy, they do have vassals they're supposed to keep happy in order to have things like taxes and a standing army. To Mal's mind, perhaps they could use a reminder that the current regime has gotten a little bit complacent. I mean they couldn't even kill one pirate all those years ago. And then there's the truth about Arlan (and eventually Aurinae once they learn it.). Don't you think it's time for a change?

(If you've read this far, truly thank you. Coming up with the human and orc origins was super fun but involved a LOT of research.)

[mysterybyte]

“Why watch a girl with a ‘stunt cock’ when you could be watching two girls?” – A Wise Perv

Did you ever notice Lottie’s silky alabaster skin develops a full-body flush when she gets really excited?  Now that’s HOT AND SEXY.

Following the Wise Perv’s advice, I was watching a preview from Viv Thomas of Freya Mayer with Lottie Magne.  I noticed halfway into riding Freya’s tongue, Lottie was wearing a full-body sex flush. Chest, arms, hips, thighs — when Lottie gets turned on, she gets turned on all over everywhere!

(Her flush doesn’t show up well in the still photo samples, but apply some contrast in Photoshop, and it becomes more visible.  Technical discussion below.)

Lottie Magne and Freya Mayer in “Cute Couple” (stills) / “Holiday Surprise” (video), at Viv Thomas.

Fair Warning: technical photo-geekery follows…

Processing:

The stills from this shoot have low color saturation and a little too much cyan in the color balance (more about that later.)  I first switched to 16-bit color, then fixed the basic color and contrast.  Next I increased the color saturation, then copied the green and blue color channels into two layers contained within a layer set, and used overlay blending mode for the set to boost the contrast in the red hues throughout the photo.  I’ll skip the finer details of tweaking the layer blends and just mention the final tweak using the shadow/highlight filter that brought the photo to what you see above.  (Original version is below, for comparison.)

Color in Portrait Photography:

First, a brief note about my own background.  I have a college degree in fine arts and for several decades have pursued an avocation in landscape and product photography.  In those specialties, either rich color or stark black-and-white (or sepia, or whatever) are the usual color selections.  Muted color generally doesn’t sell.

Photographers and videographers routinely dial down the color saturation when photographing people, to avoid skin tones that are too ruddy, or otherwise not natural and healthy-looking.  This minimizes color shifts caused by subtle variations in lighting, such as light reflecting off of a nearby colored wall or filtering through trees.  It can also work against the photographer when color is a key part of the subject of the photo.  For example, a redhead in a midnight blue dress looks very different when photographed in rich color versus in soft black-and-white, so it wouldn’t make sense to use an in-between color saturation setting.  It usually weakens the photo.

I have also noticed that many photographers’ color balance is often skewed toward cyan, but I have no idea why, unless they simply aren’t seeing it in their own work and correcting it.  Having the white balance skewed to cyan only looks good on blue and green subjects like plants and Smurfs.

Cameras are usually good at auto-adjusting white balance for warm/cool lighting, but they don’t seem to do so well at adjusting for cyan/magenta color balance.  If you’re a photographer, you’d be well advised to always double-check the cyan/magenta balance in your camera RAW editor when you process your images.  Mine usually needs ~6% magenta, and I’ve seen that most of the online gallery sites need a ~6% to ~12% magenta filter added to get rid of the cyan haze in their photos.  Of course, make these adjustments using a color-calibrated monitor and with the room darkened, or you risk messing up the color due to your eyes & brain compensating for room lighting.

Okay, if you made it this far, you deserve a treat!

[alpaca-clouds]

Mythologic Geekery: Ba'al

Given that I now have the theory that he might play into Nocturne - and the fact I wanted to speak about Abrahamitic and Semitic mythology this and next week either way... LET ME TALK BA'AL!

So, first things first: Ba'al originally was a title within several of the semitic languages, being best translated with "Lord". So several male gods used the honorific over the time. But within both Babylon and also the Canaanite culture the name became mostly associated with the god Hadad. (While the Phoenicians associated the name with El(ohim) - but I am gonna talk about Elohim next week and he is a bit different, because he never became a demon.)

Hadad was a good mainly of weather (especially storms) and of fertility, being associated with the harvest and agriculture in general. Statues of Hadad were also used in fertility rituals.

From Ba'al Hadad came Ba'al as a god on his own. And while he was usually not the head god of a pantheon, he very much fulfilled the same role as Zeus in the pantheon. Being association with weather and these things. Interesting enough he had also a reverse version of the same kinda myth like Persephone associated with him: According to this myth the hot and dry summer months were the time of the year he was forced to live in the underworld.

What happened, though, with the Hebrew culture was that YHW subsumed the same role within the pantheon that Ba'al originally fulfilled. So he basically took that role and on the longterm subplanted Ba'al. And when the Abrahamitic culture turned towards Monotheism around YHW, Ba'al first became one of the false idols. Those idols that the folks prayed to in the desert while Moses was on the mountain. (Also Ba'al was among the idols people in Mekka prayed too that Mohammed then worked against.)

So, when Judaism took of they used Ba'al to build out their demonology. Now, again, Ba'al is technically a title, but a lot of people do agree that the fact that the demon got called Ba'al Zebub (Lord of Flies) was for the reason that Ba'al was the god they were trying to subplant.

Now technically Ba'al Zebub also references another god (Ekron). Now, the role of Ba'al Zebub (or how you might more easily recognize the name: Beelzebub). Within early Judaist sources Ba'al Zebub is mostly associated with death and sickness. Hence also the name: Lord of Flies.

As mythology shifts over time, by the time of the Testament of Solomon Ba'al Zebub was called "the Prince of Demons", who also was said to once have been an angel who rebelled against God for which he was cast into hell. And yes, if you think about Luzifer here: This was probably the source for that. I will talk more about Luzifer next week.

And then came Christianity. While within the gospels Ba'al Zebub was still in the same role of "prince of demon", later Christian theology started to decide that he and Satan were the same character. Something that happened around the same time that Satan became seen as more and more "evil" (something he is not within the original Hebrew mythology). And the Christian theology turned Ba'al Zebub into Beelzebub, as which we still have him around to this day.

[malkaleh]

Actually when I think about Thomas Cromwell in OT3 verses relationships with all of his children I just it makes me so happy (Frain!Cromwell and Gregory seem very loving and close so I went with) like BEST DAD/LOVING GENTLE CONSORT PARENT.

(Not that Anne isn’t and not that Henry isn’t I just focusing on Thomas)

Gregory was…I mean also he had Liz but it was partly a thing that can happen with abuse survivors who become parents that he went ‘I refuse to hurt this tiny human EVER’ and also the influence of Gregory’s namesake in this case (an elderly priest who taught the youngest children to read and write and was so good to Thomas).

His two oldest daughters my heart.

Elizabeth is so lovely to me because yeah technically the first 2.5(ish) months of her life he wasn’t her dad but actually he was and she will fight you on that. They play chess together! They have language geekery with her mother! They almost certainly have a book club.

His namesake son Tommy! Thomas Cromwell is so proud of him and so supportive - like I think one thing I want to get across later is that he always wants Tommy to have a safe place for a hug and the assurance of just being able to be, because he knows Tommy puts huge pressure on himself.

GEORGE. They scheme! They snark! George jokingly cursing his dad for the curly hair gene. Judging courtiers!

Liam is hilarious to me because they are in so many ways the least alike and also Liam is So Attached (like as a baby he would not sleep unless Dad Thomas was holding him for a bit there). Liam I think feels like he falls short intellectually in his family and Thomas and his mother really help him with that.

MEG. Listen Meg is also not very like Thomas in some ways but he just, he is so soft with Meg. Turns a studied pretend I do not see to Meg’s brother(s) teaching her to fight.

Owen. “Owen we don’t murder people in obvious ways” :owen: ‘taking notes’

Ned. Ned is a giant teddy bear golden retriever of a human being and Thomas is like ‘okay giant second youngest child please remember people can be awful’

Pippa. Does worry about Pippa. She’s so quiet and so gentle and kind and he worries about her heart :(.

[winkle-pickers]

🥳, 💭, 🤖 (tried to pick ones that weren't done before lol)

Moon Moon my dear Moon ♡ (￣З￣)

🥳 Why did you start writing fanfic?

I was eleven and had so many feelings about Donkey Kong 64 that I wrote poetry for the first and only time in my life. My first ever entry to fan fiction DOT NET is a Donkey Kong 64 angst poem about how Funky Kong and the other shopkeeper NPCs probably get really lonely when Donkey Kong and friends are not in there buying coconut grenades.

💭 What inspires you and your writing?

Just being like, really, embarrassingly, earnestly authentic. That comes first for me before any technical, stylistic or thematic considerations.

Having done music in various professional contexts for so long, it's really hard to play in a totally unconstrained way where I'm not keeping a running tally of notes-to-self and things-to-improve and technical minutiae in my head. Which is fun, and I really genuinely enjoy the geekery of being a musician! But I also needed an artistic outlet where I could spew my feelings about everything absolutely everywhere with abandon 😂

So I guess I'm inspired by all the usual things, love and nature and trauma and thematic parallels and les blorbeaux, but when I express those things through writing words it's not nearly as structured, process-oriented, or revised as it would be if I was writing music about it.

🤖 Are non-fandom friends aware that you write fanfic?

Yes. I've told people this on first dates! It's a good litmus test. I would never give out my AO3 to just anyone per se, but my friends are all very aware and very supportive of how much time I spend dissecting spiky card game people in my head.

[katherine-villyard]

So, hey Katherine, how'd you lay out these books?

https://youtube.com/shorts/UZc1kxmAiH4?si=g8803F1C1f8tUDe- So hey, those are some good-looking books! who did your interior layout? That'd be me. ;) Large Print: Atticus. Straight-up Atticus. Flawless, no notes. Ebook: Atticus, but I really wanted to add more space between my centered "attributions" at the top of the chapter and couldn't figure out how to make it do it, so I edited the Atticus ebook in Sigil to add a blank line after each attribution. When my map came in, rather than do it again I used Sigil to add the map as well. I did websites for pay between 1995 and 2002 and the level of HTML and CSS in an epub is much simpler than that. Paperback and Hardcover: Scribus. I know! I had Atticus right there, and it's so much easier, but I control each individual line with Scribus. The downside being that I control each individual line with Scribus. ;) That said, the only real difference between hardcover and paperback interior is the ISBN. I already had a template and a flow from my previous book and had customized it in advance. I also had to google how to do full bleed for my map. :D But I really wanted that extra space between my attribution header and my paragraph. What do I recommend you use? If you're not a highly-technical control freak like me, to be honest I would likely use Atticus or Vellum. Especially if you're easily frustrated by computers. But if you valorize and fondly recall your feats of geekery, you might enjoy the time you spend laying your book out in Scribus. I really like the way my Scribus layout looks. Also, if you are dirt-broke and feel like you can't afford Atticus or Vellum, Scribus may be your pal. I think Atticus is cheap, but I have a day job in IT. Lots of people use InDesign but I think it's too expensive for me and how often I use it. All three books are cat-approved, so clearly I made the right choices. ;) Immortal Gifts releases February 4, 2025. Preorder at https://books2read.com/immortalgifts. Read the full article

[techtired]

Geekzilla Tio Geek: From Niche Interest to Global Phenomenon

Geekzilla Tio Geek is the best site to learn about technology, with tutorials on anything from basic concepts to advanced gadget design.  Are you someone who loves to tinker with new tech and discover what's out there? Welcome to Geekzilla Tio Geek, the world of geek culture as we know it. This is the place to be for everything related to comic books, video games, technology, and more. This blog post will take you on an exciting trip through the many geeky sites, no matter how much you know about them already. Find out what makes Geekzilla Tio Geek so unique by coming along! Geekzilla Tio Geek is a lively group that loves all things geeky. This website has a lot of information about both games and the newest technology. It's more than just a website; it's a place where geek culture fans like you can meet and hang out. Geekzilla Tio Geek has reviews, lessons, and events for the group. 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A geek vs a nerd: what distinguishes them? Intelligent and single-minded people driven by nonsocial interests are known as nerds. Conversely, a geek describes a technical specialist who is overly enthusiastic about a field of research. What defines you as a geek? Originally used to characterize non-mainstream persons, geek is a slang term. Today, though, people use it to refer to experts or someone consumed with a passion. Thus, a deep love of anything qualifies you as a geek. Read the full article

[weeinterpreter]

Zeus: Son, the world doesn't revolve around you.

Apollo: Well...

[somanyjacks]

I've been tagged in this several times now, but I regret to inform everyone that I'm not the type of musician to take anyone for a walk, or a stroll, or a perambulation of any sort. At most, I'm like a nervous museum docent who makes everyone save their questions till the end rather than risk losing their place in the memorized spiel.

I don't improvise, is what I'm saying.

However, I'm happy to recommend someone who can not only take you for a walk but a veritable strut: Don Byron.

[mythicalmodernity-blog]

I mean, I will say one thing for the current clusterfuck that is WoW lore right now.

It’s rather edifying that canonically, at this moment, the Loa are the least corruptive and deceitful divine force in-game (that we’ve met*).

*I guess the Earth mother and Elune could still be cool but as we haven’t actually chilled with them who the fuck knows

[paradoxcase]

Hey, who remembers when I used to post language geekery and made a whole conlang for the Homestuck trolls?  I know that was a literal decade ago. but I’m starting to think sort of semi-seriously about picking up an old worldbuilding project with some unwritten stories attached to it.  I dusted off a conlang that I actually still quite like and plan to do some more work on it.  So, I may start posting about this language here, and possibly may write a story that’s connected to the conculture it goes with.  Here is what I have of it so far.

The Doylist history of this conlang is that I was reading Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a very long time ago, and got to the part where there’s a paragraph where a bunch of time travel shenanigans are described in the most confusing way possible using some novel combinations of English modal verbs.  And I thought: I bet if time travellers existed in the real world, they would have a language that was specifically designed for making it easy to talk about time travel.  What would that language look like?  And I decided the best way to do it would be to mark tense on the nouns.  When all of your nouns can be different tenses, it’s easy to talk about things that are at different points in their personal timelines relative to you in the same sentence or as part of the same action.  This is also super useful for talking about other kinds of regular actions that don’t require everything involved to be colocated, and thus can span several temporal locations even without time travel.  For example, “I don’t like the way you used to be” is an action that involves a present tense participant and a past tense participant.  With a language that marks tense on the nouns, you could write this as “I-PRES don’t like you-PAST”, and it takes exactly as many words to say as “I don’t like you”, and the same is true for any combination of participants and tenses, some of which can get quite wordy in English.

The Watsonian history of this conlang is that it was created in-universe as a conlang by the all-female priesthood of a Goddess who had given them the power of time travel in order to get their society, the Cheanya, out of a tight spot where they would have all been killed by a neighboring culture.  (Or, that’s what they say happened, anyway.)  The priesthood carefully polices the use of time travel and the technology required to do it, but frequently use it themselves and can also use the technology to audio- and video-chat across times and timelines.  So, they needed an artificial language that wouldn’t change over time with which to talk to priestesses at other points in time, that they could use to talk about time travel.  The language, like the time travel technology, is a closely guarded secret of the priesthood.  It’s not a language anybody actually speaks natively, although it would have been based on the native language of the creator back when it was invented.  The country this takes place in is on a large island about 1/3 the size of Australia in the southern hemisphere, between two the two sides of a much larger continent that actually goes over the south pole and continues halfway up the other side of the world.  The language is called QuCheanya, which technically means “the people’s language” or “the Cheanya’s language”, but this is of course just a bit of propaganda since the vast majority of the Cheanya people do not actually speak it.

The language has 25 consonants and 14 vowels and diphthongs, but only allows CV syllables, which works out to exactly 350 possibly syllables, a couple hundred more than Japanese.  It has obstruents in four places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, velar, and uvular, and five series’ of such obstrunts: voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives, and voiceless affricates at all four PoAs, and palatalized voiceless stops and palatalized voiceless fricatives at the non-uvular PoAs.  It has bilabial, alveolar, and palatal nasals, alveolar and palatal laterals approximants, /r/, and /j/.  For vowels, it has a basic set of six monopthongs, which are the standard five vowels plus a phonemic schwa.  Then it has a series of four diphthongs ending in /i/, and a series of four diphthongs ending in /ə/.  Altogether this is:

with the romanization written on the right hand side.  Stress is always on the penult, if the word is four or more syllables long there will be a secondary stress on the preantepenult.  All of the voiceless obstruents are voiced intervocalically, which is where they are all of the time that they are not the first sound in the word, due to phonotactic constraints.

The writing system is a syllabary, which is the usual way that writing systems work in this part of the conworld.  Each character consists of a square frame which indicates by its shape the PoA of the onset of the syllable, to which can be attached diacritics indicating affrication and palatalization.  The interior of the character is not featurial.  The character can be followed by diacritics indicating a diphthong.  Some characters have possible variants.

The frames are written in red ink above - this is how writing is done traditionally, for official purposes.  There are different styles - you can make all of the frames red, just the ones at the beginnings of words, or just the ones at the beginnings of sentences.  Naturally, it’s a big pain in the ass and it’s not done unless this piece of writing is going to be kept around for a while.  However, since the language is basically proprietary property of the priesthood, it’s mostly used for official studies and research and documents done by the priestesses, and not so much used for everyday things like shopping lists anyway.

This is a largely head-last language with most of the morphology on the nouns.  It would probably be classified as SOV, although it’s more correct to say it is Topic-Focus-Verb.  Quantifiers and numbers precede adjectives precede nouns, adverbs (which are identical to adjectives except that they modify verbs) precede verbs, postpositions follow their objects.  The one head-first part of the language is that there are a few nominal compounds that are head-first, like for example QuCheanya as mentioned above.  However, these compounds are not very productive.

Nouns are marked for case, number, and tense. 

Tense is indicated by a single consonant: q for past tense, c for present tense, and p for future tense.  Tense strictly refers to the noun’s progress along its personal timeline, as opposed to the global world timeline.  The global world timeline is generally referenced using nouns referring to particular days/dates/times or just generally “past” or “future” in the locative case, however, there are special tenses that are used if an object is in the past or future of its timeline relative to the speaker, but is not in the past/future of the global timeline relative to the speaker.  Say, if you time travel into the past from a future point, you as you were before the time travel is in the past of your own personal timeline, but in the future of the global timeline.  So in this case you would, instead of using q to indicate past tense, use qqh to indicated “past displaced” tense, and in the reverse case would use pf to indicate “future displaced” tense.  The displaced tenses can also be used somewhat more laxly in most situations where an object or a person is considered to be in the “wrong” temporal position for what it should be due to time travel - this is naturally fairly subjective.

If the noun is the topic of the sentence, it always appears first in the sentence regardless of its role, obligatorily marks tense, and then has the topic ending -ei (singular) or -eya (plural) following the tense consonant.  For every other noun in the sentence, tense marking is optional, and leaving it off indicates that it has the same tense as the topic noun.  For non-topic nouns, the optional tense is a syllable consisting of the tense consonant followed by -a, which is followed by a case-and-number marking syllable, which is one of the following:

The nominative singular is unmarked.  Plurals always end in -a, nominatives ending in -e -i -o or -u add -a to form a diphthong, words ending in -ä change the -ä into an -a, words ending in diphthongs of the form -Vi transform into -Vya, and words already ending in -a do not change.  Nominative is for subjects, accusative for direct objects, dative for indirect objects.  Alienable genitive is marked on the possessor noun (which precedes the unmarked possessed noun) and is used for things that are alienably possessed, such as belongings and more abstract things such as thoughts and ideas.  Inalienable genitive is used for inalienably possessed things, such as body parts and family members.  Locative is used generally to mean “in/at/on” for both physical places and temporal “places”, and also with objects of postpositions indicating location in space or time, oblique is used with the objects of all other postpositions.

Pronouns are inflected for case and number.  If a tense needs to be used with a pronoun, the tense syllable (tense consonant plus -a) precedes the pronoun.

So “you” (singular) as the topic, in the present tense, would be written as “ca pfei”.

Verbs are generally invariant, although there are many verbs that are formed by prefixing a postposition onto the front of a verb to change its meaning, similar to how this happens in Latin with prepositions.

There are, however, two particles that can come after the verb in a sentence - an aspect-marking particle and a future relevance particle.  There are two possible aspect particles, sei, marking habitual aspect, and cä, marking perfective.  Unmarked sentences with no particle are by default in progressive aspect.  The future relevant particle is rui, which is actually identical in form to the postposition meaning “from”.  This is used to indicate that the action has relevance to a (relative) future time, and can be used in similar situations to English constructions like “I have finished eating”, which is different than “I finished eating” in that implies something about the present state of things, or “I will have finished eating” which is a future action that has relevance to a further future time.  It can also be used with present actions deemed relevant to the near future.

Verbs that take clauses as complements (think, want, say, know, etc.) are simply put after the clause, with no modification to the previous verb.  The two sentence ending particles mentioned above cannot, however, be used with a verb that is part of such a complement clause.  When the complementized verb is yai, the general placeholder verb that usually means “be”, “exist”, “do”, or “happen”, depending on context, yai is simply deleted.

I did some of the Conlang Test Sentences that were posted a long time ago on the Zompist BBoard in this language.  The full list of sentences is here: https://cofl.github.io/conlang/resources/mirror/conlang-syntax-test-cases.html - I will probably do more of these later as I continue to flesh out the conlang.  Here are the first 22, with interlinear glosses, to give you a practice demonstration of how the language works:

tira is an adjective/adverb that means “near”, but in a temporal sense.  With a future tense noun it means “soon”, with a past tense noun it means “recent/ly”, and with present tense it means “right now”.  It’s related to a similar adjective/adverb tile, which means “near”, but spacially.

sisiane is a partial reduplication of siane.  QuCheanya has some limited partial reduplication in closed-class word categories.

nyu- is a diminutive that is usually used to form words for baby animals.  Here in sentence 17, ninyu- is a partial reduplication of it to mean a little baby animal.

Here we have tira meaning “soon”, and qhoi taking a sentence complement (except the verb was yai, so it was deleted).

[biscuitgeekery]

10 Songs I like

Tagged by @time-travel-and-madness (hate you this is too difficult for me to choose you don’t understand)

ALRIGHT: (in no particular order)

1. Buzzcut Season by Lorde

2. Give Life Back to Music by Daft Punk (and any song from Random Access Memories)

3. Go Away and Foolish Father by Weezer

4. Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie

5. 19-2000, Re-Hash, and Double Bass by Gorillaz

6. Into Your Veins by Five Iron Frenzy

7. I Wanna Get Better by Bleachers

8. Seeing Stars by BØRNS

9. I Can Lift a Car by Walk the Moon

10. We Got the Power (feat. Jehnny Beth) by Gorillaz and Jehnny Beth

There are a bunch but yeah these 10 pretty much some up my taste in music.

uhhhhhh i tag @tiniest-hands-in-all-the-land @ghoulhanzo @the-nerdy-blogger @8kaz8 @superturtlepanda @onyeenhok @iftadwascool @the-yodelling-muffin @sylladextrous @hergnomieness

[alpaca-clouds]

Mythologic Geekery: Nyx

Alright, let me go on with the Greek gods and today we are going to do Nyx, who a lot of people wanted to know about as well. And with her we have another one where we actually do struggle to name the origin of her as a goddess.

Of course she is one of the primordial gods within the Greek mythology. So one of those, who within the mythology predated the olympian gods. She is the daughter of Chaos and the mother of a variety of other gods.

There is the very common theory, that the primordials were in fact gods that were prayed to within the general area of Greece before the Olympian gods became this big thing. But that is mostly just a theory. But we do know that in a lot of ways the mythology of the gods is actually related to the history of the religious developments at the time.

However, Nyx is also is interesting in terms of comparative mythology. Because this entire concept of "goddess of the night" is not really a common motive within Indo-European mythologies. Now, you might argue that technically the Edda also features Nótt, but... Well, let's just say that the poetic Edda is a complicated source - which is something we gotta talk about another day.

The one Indo-European mythology that has another night goddess comparative to Nyx is Nut within the Egyptian mythology. And with Athena I already talked about the theory, that outside of the Indo-European mythology there is also a theory that within Greek mythology there might be northern African influences. After all there was trade between the Bronze age cultures around the Meditterrean. So, that might be a possibility, that something has moved into the mythology from there.

[storysparked]

Reflect and take flight. ⚡️ - - - #stickerbomb #stickeraddict #stickercollection #stickercollector #techstuff #geekery #yinyang #yingyang #piday #paperplane #cuber #rubikscube #audioengineering #laptopstickers #laptopsticker #waterbottlestickers #jwt #jameswebb #jameswebbspacetelescope #storyspark #engineeringlovers #geekingout #topography #topographic #technical #holographic #creativetech #creativetechnology #artandtech #aerospace https://instagr.am/p/Ciu_rYqvWzF/