#trying not to speak German or English: a novel by c

[pumpkinpaix]

hello there, hope you're having a nice day <3

so i've been reading a lot of fics lately, uk for sanity's sake, and i've noticed that in most of them, lwj doesn't use contractions (eg., says do not instead of don't)?? and i think he doesn't in the novel either but i don't remember lol so i can't be sure but anyway that made me curious - does chinese have contractions as well? does he not use it bc it's informal?

hello there! I’m doing all right, i started to answer this ask while waiting for a jingyeast loaf to come out of the oven 😊 many thanks to @bookofstars for helping me look over/edit/correct this post!! :D

anyways! the answer to your questions are complicated (of course it is when is anything simple with me), so let’s see if I can break it down--you’re asking a) whether chinese has contractions, b) if it does, how does they change the tone of the sentence--is it similar to english or no?, and c) how does this all end up with lan wangji pretty much never using contractions in english fic/translation?

I’m gonna start by talking about how formality is (generally) expressed in each language, and hopefully, by the end of this post, all the questions will have been answered in one way or another. so: chinese and english express variations in formality/register differently, oftentimes in ways that run contrary to one another. I am, as always, neither a linguist nor an expert in chinese and english uhhh sociological grammar? for lack of a better word. I’m speaking from my own experience and knowledge :D

so with a character like lan wangji, it makes perfect sense in english to write his dialogue without contractions, as contractions are considered informal or colloquial. I don’t know if this has changed in recent years, but I was always taught in school to never use contractions in my academic papers.

However! not using contractions necessarily extends the length of the sentence: “do not” takes longer to say than “don’t”, “cannot” is longer than “can’t” etc. in english, formality is often correlated with sentence length: the longest way you can say something ends up sounding the most formal. for a very simplified example, take this progression from least formal to absurdly formal:

whatcha doin’?

what’re you doing?

what are you doing? [standard colloquial]

may I ask what you are doing?

might I inquire as to what you are doing?

excuse me, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

pardon my intrusion, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

please pardon my intrusion, but might inquire as to the nature of your current actions?

this is obviously a somewhat overwrought example, but you get the point. oftentimes, the longer, more complex, more indirect sentence constructions indicate a greater formality, often because there is a simultaneous decreasing of certainty. downplaying the speaker’s certainty can show deference (or weakness) in english, while certainty tends to show authority/confidence (or aggression/rudeness).

different words also carry different implications of formality—in the example, I switched “excuse me” to “pardon me” during one of the step ups. pardon (to me at least) feels like a more formal word than “excuse”. Similarly, “inquire” is more formal than “ask” etc. I suspect that at least some of what makes one word seem more formal than one of its synonyms has to do with etymology. many of english’s most formal/academic words come from latin (which also tends to have longer words generally!), while our personal/colloquial words tend to have germanic origins (inquire [latin] vs ask [germanic]).

you’ll also notice that changing a more direct sentence structure (“may I ask what”) to a more indirect one (“might I inquire as to”) also jumps a register. a lot of english is like this — you can complicate simple direct sentences by switching the way you use the verbs/how many auxiliaries you use etc.

THE POINT IS: with regards to english, more formal sentence structures are often (not always) longer and more indirect than informal ones. this leads us to a problem with a character like lan wangji.

lan wangji is canonically very taciturn. if he can express his meaning in two words rather than three, then he will. and chinese allows for this—in extreme ways. if you haven’t already read @hunxi-guilai’s post on linguistic register (in CQL only, but it’s applicable across the board), I would start there because haha! I certainly do Not have a degree in Classical Chinese lit and she does a great job. :D

you can see from the examples that hunxi chose that often, longer sentences tend to be more informal in chinese (not always, which I’ll circle back to at the end lol). Colloquial chinese makes use of helping particles to indicate tone and meaning, as is shown in wei wuxian’s dialogue. and, as hunxi explained, those particles are largely absent from lan wangji’s speech pattern. chinese isn’t built of “words” in the way English is—each character is less a word and more a morpheme—and the language allows for a lot of information to be encoded in one character. a single character can often stand for a phrase within a sentence without sacrificing either meaning or formality. lan wangji makes ample use of this in order to express himself in the fewest syllables possible.

so this obviously leads to an incongruity when trying to translate his dialogue or capture his voice in English: shorter sentences are usually more direct by nature, and directness/certainty is often construed as rudeness -- but it might seem strange to see lan wangji’s dialogue full of longer sentences while the narration explicitly says that he uses very short sentences. so what happens is that many english fic writers extrapolated this into creating an english speech pattern for lan wangji that reads oddly. they’ll have lan wangji speak in grammatically incoherent fragments that distill his intended thought because they’re trying to recreate his succinctness. unfortunately, English doesn’t have as much freedom as Chinese does in this way, and it results in lan wangji sounding as if he has some kind of linguistic impediment and/or as if he’s being unspeakably rude in certain situations. In reality, lan wangji’s speech is perfectly polite for a young member of the gentry (though he’s still terribly rude in other ways lol). he speaks in full, and honestly, quite eloquent sentences.

hunxi’s post already has a lot of examples, but I figure I’ll do one as well focused on the specifics of this post.

I’m going to use this exchange from chapter 63 between the twin jades because I think it’s a pretty simple way to illustrate what I’m talking about:

蓝曦臣道：“你亲眼所见？”

蓝忘机道：“���亲眼所见。”

蓝曦臣道：“你相信他？”

蓝忘机道：“信。”

[...] 蓝曦臣道：“那么金光瑶呢？”

蓝忘机道：“不可信。”

my translation:

Lan Xichen said, “You saw it with your own eyes?”

Lan Wangji said, “He saw it with his own eyes.”

Lan Xichen said, “You believe him?”

Lan Wangji said, “I believe him.”

[...] Lan Xichen said, “Then what about Jin Guangyao?”

Lan Wangji said, “He cannot be believed.”

you can see how much longer the (pretty literal) english translations are! every single line of dialogue is expanded because things that can be omitted in chinese cannot be omitted in english without losing grammatical coherency. i‘ll break a few of them down:

Lan Xichen’s first line:

你 (you) 亲眼 (with one’s own eyes) 所 (literary auxiliary) 见 (met/saw)？

idk but i love this line a lot lmao. it just has such an elegant feel to me, probably because I am an uncultured rube. anyways, you see here that he expressed his full thought in five characters.

if I were to rewrite this sentence into something much less formal/much more modern, I might have it become something like this:

你是自己看见的吗？

你 (you) 是 (to be) 自己 (oneself) 看见 (see) 的 (auxiliary) 吗 (interrogative particle)？

i suspect that this construction might even be somewhat childish? I’ve replaced every single formal part of the sentence with a more colloquial one. instead of 亲眼 i’ve used 自己, instead of 所见 i’ve used 看见的 and then also added an interrogative particle at the end for good measure (吗). To translate this, I would probably go with “Did you see it yourself?”

contained in this is also an example of how one character can represent a whole concept that can also be represented with two characters: 见 vs 看见. in this example, both mean “to see”. we’ll see it again in the next example as well:

in response to lan xichen’s, “you believe him?” --> 你 (you) 相信 (believe) 他 (him)? lan wangji answers with, “信” (believe).

chinese does not do yes or no questions in the same way that english does. there is no catch-all for yes or no, though there are general affirmative (是／有) and negative (不／没) characters. there are other affirmative/negative characters, but these are the ones that I believe are the most common and also the ones that you may see in response to yes or no questions on their own. (don’t quote me on that lol)

regardless, the way you respond to a yes or no question is often by repeating the verb phrase either in affirmative or negative. so here, when lan xichen asks if lan wangji believes wei wuxian, lan wangji responds “believe”. once again, you can see that one character can stand in for a concept that may also be expressed in two characters: 信 takes the place of 相信. lan wangji could have responded with “相信” just as well, but, true to his character, he didn’t because he didn’t need to. this is still a complete sentence. lan wangji has discarded the subject (I), the object (him), and also half the verb (相), and lost no meaning whatsoever. you can’t do this in english!

and onto the last exchange:

lan xichen: 那么 (then) 金光瑶 (jin guangyao) �� (what about)？

lan wangji: 不可 (cannot) 信 (believe)

you can actually see the contrast between the two brothers’ speech patterns even in this. lan xichen’s question is not quite as pared down as it could be. if it were wangji’s line instead, I would expect it to read simply “金光瑶呢？” which would just be “what about jin guangyao?” 那么 isn’t necessary to convey the core thought -- it’s just as how “then what about” is different than “what about”, but “then” is not necessary to the central question. if we wanted to keep the “then” aspect, you could still cut out 么 and it would be the same meaning as well.

a FINAL example of how something can be cut down just because I think examples are helpful:

“I don’t know” is usually given as 我不知道. (this is what nie huaisang says lol) It contains subject (我) and full verb (知道). you can pare this straight down to just 不知 and it would mean the same thing in the correct context. i think most of the characters do this at least once? it sounds more literary -- i don’t know that i would ever use it in everyday speech, but the fact remains that it’s a possibility. both could be translated as “I do not know” and it would be accurate.

ANYWAYS, getting all the way back to one of your original questions: does chinese have contractions? and the answer is like... kind of...?? but not really. there’s certainly slang/dialect variants that can be used in ways that are reminiscent of english contractions. the example I’m thinking of is the character 啥 (sha2) which can be used as slang in place of 什么 (shen2 me). (which means “what”)

so for a standard sentence of, 你在做什么? (what are you doing), you could shorten down to just 做啥? and the second construction is less formal than the first, but they mean the same thing.

other slang i can think of off the top of my head: 干嘛 (gan4 ma2) is also informal slang for “what are you doing”. and i think this is a regional thing, but you can also use 搞 (gao3) and 整 (zheng3) to mean “do” as well.

so in the same way that you can replace 什么 with 啥, you can replace 做 as well to get constructions like 搞啥 (gao3 sha2) and 整啥 (zheng3 sha2).

these are all different ways to say “what are you doing” lmao, and in this case, shorter is not, in fact, more formal.

woo! we made it to the end! I hope it was informative and helpful to you anon. :D

this is where I would normally throw my ko-fi, but instead, I’m actually going to link you to this fundraising post for an old fandom friend of mine. her house burned down mid-september and they could still use help if anyone can spare it! if this post would have moved you to buy me a ko-fi, please send that money to her family instead. :) rbs are also appreciated on the post itself. (* ´▽` *)

anyways, here’s the loaf jingyeast made :3 it was very tasty.

[meichenxi]

Huhu 😊 20, 29 and 31 please. You always have so much interesting stuff to say :D

Heyyy! Thanks Karo :D

20) Do you live in a region where there is a particular language or dialect? What one(s)? Can you speak it? Would you like to?

I have an INTERESTING family situation and move around a lot, so there’s a couple of different answers to this. My mother’s family is from North Uist and are all speakers of Gaelic. Not Irish, Scottish Gaelic - two related but different languages. I was actively discouraged from learning it as a child (which...I’ve definitely talked about in posts before) but I really, really want to learn it properly now I have more experience learning languages on my own. The difficulty is that the community is very defensive (I mean - understandably so) and so finding someone to speak Gaelic or include you in any way is difficult. I do have family there, but I’ve always been the ‘English’ girl, so they’re in no hurry to change that. 

My girlfriend speaks Irish very well, so I’ve actually decided to tackle that before I start on Gaelic, because a) she can help me and we can have conversation practice together, b) projects with friends are fun and free, and c) there are significantly more resources for Irish since it’s on the school curriculum than for Gaelic. I haven’t learnt a Celtic language apart from Old Irish before, so one will help the other a lot. 

Otherwise - my family speaks Scots, which I can understand but not speak very well. My father lives in Devon, and in the south of England generally there is, technically speaking, a movement to revive Cornish which could be very fun to get involved with. Cornish is a Celtic language too, but much more similar to Welsh and Breton than Manx, Gaelic or Irish, and definitely not mutually intelligible with the second group. It went extinct a couple of hundred years ago (a typical case - English speaking members of the clergy were shipped out, education was in English etc etc...) but there’s been a fairly impressive revival in circles of interest. I’d really love to learn that just for fun, but it can wait for now. Both Irish and Gaelic are further up the list than that!

29) What do you like learning the most? (vocabulary, grammar, writing skills, oral skills… Whatever you can think of!)

Grammar!! I love learning grammar. Grammar is wonderful. Grammar is the lifeblood of the gods. If I could just read grammars, I would. I can tell you literally everything about Japanese grammar (it’s just SO COOL) but can only say ‘I don’t speak Japanese’ ‘Yes, it’s very cold’ and ‘My name is Melissa and I don’t understand’. Same goes for lots of other languages. It’s by far the most fun part for me. I like learning tables, I like figuring out how head-final languages work. I detest vocab learning; vocabulary should just magically appear in my brain. 

31) What frequent mistakes do you make in your language learning? Any bad habits?

I used to be quite a perfectionist, especially when I was learning German. Now I'm much happier to make an idiot of myself, but I still sweat approximately enough to fill a football stadium every time I talk to a language teacher. My biggest mistakes now are definitely not spending enough time learning vocabulary, and trying to ‘jump ahead’ to the interesting parts when I’m not really there yet, not really ready. And then I get discouraged because I can’t understand any of the example sentences because I haven’t learnt basic vocabulary...

In languages that are quite similar to languages I already know, the main problem is that I don’t focus enough of the simple things. I make this mistake every single time. Just because I can understand a program or novel in Dutch doesn’t mean I don’t need to learn about basic plurals!!! It leads to a really irritating situation (which is entirely my own fault) where I get bored with the ‘basics’, except I need to learn them because I can’t form actual sentences without just accidentally speaking German...and I don’t want to take classes because I don’t want to be stuck with like ‘Where is the book? It’s on the table’. Which means I don’t get teaching at all. And therefore stay at a high level of comprehension, but very low level of active ability. 

Also, numbers. Related to the above. I HATE learning numbers in every language and often put it off as . I have read a whole book in Dutch but still can’t count to 100. 

What about you? 

[raeynbowboi]

Dating Disney: The Sword in the Stone

As per a request, I’ll be examining Disney’s 1963 film The Sword in the Stone, based on T.H. White’s tetralogy The Once And Future King. In particular, the first book titled The Sword in the Stone, written in 1938. In the novel, Merlyn ages backwards through time and teaches Wart by transforming him into various animals to prepare him for this future as king.

The Mytho-History of Arthurian England

(image courtesy of Legends Summarized: King Arthur)

So, to keep the history lesson as short and non-boring as possible, let me try to give you the diet bullet points version of early English history. So, England used to be called Albion, and Rome ruled it for a time, even building Hadrian’s Wall to keep the Picts in Scotland out of their territory. Eventually, the Romans pulled out of Albion, and England was ruled by quasi-Roman Britons. Then, with the Fall of Rome on September 4th, 476 AD the Medieval period officially began (yep, the Middle Ages is a Virgo) and England was later sacked and partially conquered by the Angles and Saxons sailing in from the Jutlands in Germania. The Britons were predominantly Celtic, while the Angles and Saxons were Germanic. The Angles and Saxons eventually overtook England, resulting in Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English) to become the official language of England. Don’t worry though, they got what was coming to them in 1066 when William the Conqueror came from Normandy, France, and kicked the Anglo-Saxons out of power and French-speaking rulers had power over England for the rest of the Medieval period. This is also why French names for things are the fancier or more classy words for something. Simple words came from Anglo-Saxon while “fancy” words used by the ruling class come from French. Which is why it’s more “fancy” to call yourself intelligent instead of smart.

So, how does this all pertain to Arthurian Myth? Well, the roots of Arthurian Legend supposedly come from Welsh folklore. One need only look at some key players’ names, such as Guinevere’s original name Gwenhwyfar. Arthur is also frequently referred to as King of the Britons, which is important to remember that the Britons did not refer to the land, but rather to the Celtic peoples living in England before the Anglo-Saxon incursion. So, as a mythos, Arthur has his roots in Welsh-speaking Celtic origins as a Pseudo-mythic king. This is actually not uncommon in Celtic culture, as Ireland has a long and proud history of High Kings of Ireland that very likely never existed, claiming to be ruled from 1514 BCE - 841 AD by legendary mythic kings of Ireland, with the first actual historical High King of Ireland not appearing until 846 AD with Máel Sechnaill I. Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, is supposedly descended from an important Roman family, and thus her marriage to Arthur could also be interpreted as the bond between the Britons and their status as quasi-Roman citizens.

The idea of Arthur as an actual living breathing person first appears in the Annales Cambriae, which states that in the year 72 (c. 516 AD) Arthur won the battle of Baddon, and in the year 93 (c. 537 AD) Arthur and Mordred fell in the Battle of Camlann and there was death in Britain and Ireland. The Annales Cambriae were written around the middle of the 900s AD, so they’re already about 400 years late to the party for being trustworthy eyewitnesses to any shenanigans involving Artie. Arthur’s mythos began to be fleshed out more by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae in the early 1100s, which lays a lot of the groundwork for Arthurian myth, introducing Guinevere, Merlin, and Caliburn, that would later be Frenchified into Excalibur. This is, however, not a book of Arthurian Legend so much as a largely fictitious account of all of the kings of England from Brutus, who settled England, up to Cadwaladr who ruled until 682 AD. This source is a large part of why people suspect Arthur might have been a real person, as he was essentially included in a textbook of England’s kings. There were later stories and updates to the tradition, but the last version came from Thomas Malory’s addition to the Arthurian Mythos in Le Morte d’Arthur at the end of the Medieval Period in 1485. Which also means that yes, Arthurian Legend actually spans the entire breadth of the Medieval Period. From the Fall of Rome in 476 to the end of the War of the Roses in 1485. Le Morte d’Arthur is the most famous version of Arthurian legend, and served as the major inspiration for T.H. White’s Once and Future King. The key feature we’re focused on is that like Le Morte d’Arthur, Arthur was taken from Uther and Igerna and raised by Sir Ector in the country-side until such a time that he pulled the Sword in the Stone, and was deemed the one true King of England.

So, if Arthur was based on a real person, he was probably a quasi-Roman Briton living in the 6th century, and fighting against the Scandinavian invaders. However, there’s also a reason for Arthur to not have existed. The Anglo-Normans who ruled England from 1066 onward had a very low opinion of England. It was rainy, dreary, and full of sheep. It’s speculated that Arthur was hoisted up as a real life legend of British history to effectively give England a more interesting and glorious history and make itself look and/or feel more important, and possibly even to promote nationalist pride. Whether he was a real man turned into a legend, or completely made up, he still is important to English history even to this day. However, as the Arthurian myth grew up, Arthur became more and more distant from his Celtic roots, and it’s not hard to say that the Arthur in the Disney Film is probably an Anglo-Norman, rather than a Celtic Briton. The technology and fashions are simply far too advanced for the 6th century.

Merlin

During his squirrel lesson, Merlin teaches Wart about the principles of gravity, referencing Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, first published in 1687. Upon meeting Wart, he also displays a Da Vinci flying contraption, and a wooden toy train engine. One might assume this is an anachronism, as Merlin also states while lecturing to Wart about his future “in these dark, uncertain medieval times”, and very firmly setting the film between 476 - 1485 AD. However, in the source material, Merlin ages backwards through time. And in other accounts of the Arthurian mythos, Merlin is gifted with a perfect knowledge of the past and future, making him essentially omniscient. The movie takes this a step further, as he not only sees into the future, but can travel through time as well. So, it’s perfectly valid for him to spout off knowledge and lessons that mankind would not discover for centuries afterward. We also see in Merlin’s possession a great number of books. This is important because in the medieval period, books were incredibly valuable, as they had to be written and copied by hand, and were so valuable that libraries chained them to the wall to keep them from being stolen. However, the sheer volume of his collection suggests that the printing press may have been invented, and thus, the film taking place after 1439. However, Merlin’s ability to travel through time makes his ownership of books hard to discern, as he could have easily brought those books back from later time periods.  

Fashion

We see Sir Ector wearing faulds under his cuirass. Faulds are strips of plate armor tied at the hip to protect the hip from harm, looking something akin to skirting. Faulds first appeared in 1370. Sir Kay is wearing a Great Helm, noted for its very bucket-like shape, worn from the late 12 to 14th centuries.

However, during the fish lesson, Merlin takes cover inside of what appears to be an Armet helmet, developed in the 15th century. Which means that either Merlin found a helmet from the future, or Kay is training in a century old helmet. Which is why you can’t just throw medieval stuff willy-nilly onto the screen. the Medieval Period covers 1,009 years.

Toward the end of the film, we see Sir Ector wearing a Bycocket, a unisex hunting hat preferred by the nobility of the 13th and 14th centuries.

Culture

We can see in Arthur’s throne room the Fleur-de-Lis, a symbol of French royalty. The symbol emerged as a symbol of French royalty in the late 13th century. In England, the Fleur-de-lis was used in the royal standard for the Plantagennet family, which ruled England from the Norman Invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066 until Henry Tudor won the War of the Roses in 1485. The Fleur-de-lis was used in the Plantagenet standard beginning in the 13th century.  Merlin also specifies teaching Wart English, Latin, and French. As the Plantagenet family were Anglo-Normans, they all spoke French, and all of the nobility also spoke French. Having Wart learn French would allow him to converse with his royal court, English with his subjects, and Latin with his faith. These three languages would be the most vital tools of an English king in this period to rule justly and to hear the voices of all of his subjects. Too bad the Plantagenets were notorious for not speaking a lick of English. Most of the nobility didn’t. The Peasants and the Aristocracy didn’t even speak the same language, making the gap between the classes wider. However, during the 13th century, the French language finally began to take a backseat to English among the royal court, and the Hundred Years War between England and France (1337-1453) bolstered nationalist pride for the English language among the ruling elite. By the end of the 15th century, English had finally become the mother tongue of the English nobility. So, young Wart living in the 13th or 14th century would certainly have a reason to learn English as an English King.

Conclusion

For the most part, like other Medieval-based movies from older Disney, they didn’t do enough research to really pin-point a clear time period. The movie sort of wants to be in this nebulous timeless part of England’s mytho-history, so I’m really left with guessing a time period based on the general clothing, look, and feel of the setting, which feels like it could be set at the same time or even slightly earlier than Sleeping Beauty. The most things seem to line up with a late 13th, early 14th century setting. So, I’ll conclude that we’re slightly ahead of the Italian Renaissance, as Arthur Plantagenet takes up the English Throne. In fact, this also aligns with the real life history of England. In 1377, Edward III died after his eldest son, causing a succession crisis that sparked the War of the Roses. Likewise, the Sword in the Stone was used in the film to prevent a war for succession after the King of England died without a known heir. The parallels line up nicely enough that since Disney tends to run on its own logic that the succession of King Arthur would likely be their alternate history solution to the War of the Roses. More still, after Edward III died, 12-year-old Boy King Richard II was chosen to succeed Edward III, and his uncles who had been passed over for the crown opposed his rule. Likewise, Wart is 12 in the film, becomes king, and Arthur did canonically have to fight dissenters who opposed his claim to the crown. So, Wart is, according to this movie, a very nice stand-in for Richard II of England. Both Arthur and Richard II were also eventually foisted from his throne by power-hungry relatives. In Arthur’s case, his nephew or illegitimate son Mordred tries to usurp his throne and both kill each other in the process. In Richard’s case, he was deposed by his cousin Henry IV in 1399. They even ruled for about the same amount of time, as Arthur became king canonically in 512 at the age of 15, and died in 537 at the age of 40. Arthur ruled for 25 years, and Richard ruled for 22. So that’s an admittedly uncanny series of parallels. So, Wart is the Disney Alternate History version of Richard II the Boy King of England. (reign 1377-1399) And to think, the same king helped inspire the sadistic boy king Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones.

Setting: England Kingdom: The Kingdom of England (927 - 1707 AD) House: House Pendragon/House Plantagenet (1066-1485) Era: the War of the Roses Period: The Late Middle Ages (1250 - 1500 AD) Year: 1377 AD Historic Counterpart: Richard II of England (1377-1399) Language: Middle English (1150-1500 AD)                        Anglo-Norman French (1066-1500 AD)                        Medieval Latin (927 - 15th century)

[small-reptile-cake]

Vigilante AU (updated/fixed)

Concept:

We live in a world of injustice, where powerful people get to overshadow and overrule others basic human rights, and those with true power conceal themselves under the shadows at the risk of being killed or outcasted from society. However, in a city where hate and panic flood the streets, a select team of special people are willing to put themselves out there and defend those who can no longer fight for themselves. Virgil Sinclaire(18)

Powers:

Telepathy

Can read and invade the minds of other people with unsettling, fear inducing thoughts.

His range of hearing is of up to three blocks.

His powers caused him to be mildly agoraphobic; he spent a great part of his life hearing the sick thoughts of strangers on the street and the thousands of times he could simply tell when he was about to get mugged, making him afraid of leaving the safety of his apartment.

Now he wears headphones most of the time to muffle the voices.

Always lived in the same tall building, the higher he is the less he has to hear.

Born and raised in New York.

Studies/Interests:

Highschool dropout. In between his phobia and the terrible influence from his peers, he decided the education system wasn't for him.

Wanted to be an english major.

Enjoys writing scary/realistic novels.

Affiliations

Lives with his aunt and cousin.

Was lured into a group of thieves disguised as anarchists/protesters who claimed to fight for “True justice”, and that they would protect him. Truly, they were just hiding their true intentions and using Virgil’s powers to cause harm out of pure self gratification.

When their motives were unveiled, he still rejected becoming a part of the Alliance

Now, he belongs to his own neutral alignment in which he will not condone giving aid to those who he feels don't deserve it and will absolutely turn to revenge if necessary, even through unconventional means.  

Is still willing to help the Alliance, or the “Light Ones” as he calls them.

Patton Kane (22)

Powers:

Healing

His healing can range from treating people (whether it be physically or emotionally) to fixing broken objects (Only if they’re visibly torn, like a broken key or a broken cup).

The risk of healing people’s emotions is that it’s only temporary, and Patton will absorb both positive and negative emotions from the individual.

He can’t fix something that’s been set on fire (A book or clothes) because it’s simply beyond his reach to reconstruct something that's been turned to dust.

Studies/Interests:

A gastronomy student.

Often attends to baking courses/seminars during the week.

Teaches kids with disabilities how to bake on the weekends.

Part of his tuition was paid by working as a babysitter and a store clerk. The rest was obtained from his parents

Was an animal hoarder back in college even though he didn’t have the space or time at the moment. There were stray cats, dogs, even a rat that lived in the same building and got caught in a trap one day. He healed it and brought it home because he didn’t want the owner to find it and kill it.

His family had to talk him out of it and he even went to therapy to deal with the guilt of having to give his babies up for adoption.

Now he only adopts people as his children.

Affiliations

Virgil activates his fatherly senses the most and constantly getting invited to eat at Patton’s

He’s always encouraging the vigilante to go out, then ultimately visiting whenever Virgil just doesn’t feel safe enough to go out.

He also loves playing video games together as long as they aren’t horror themed.

Went to highschool with Logan, he was a few years older but since their parents knew each other and Logan didn’t bother socializing with people in his grade, they became close.

They would both occasionally help their peers though small gestures, such as easing someone before a test, or getting someone out of a fever. It was when they met Roman that he dragged them onto greater things and eventually led to forming the alliance.

Logan Altman (20)

Powers:

Super speed

Is ironically always worried about wasting time

The best thing about his power is having more time to appreciate each moment and scene as it happens before his eyes, analyze it, then carry on.

Will stutter whenever he tries to speak at a normal pace. Roman had to help him practice his speech so it wouldn’t give away his identity during superhero duty.

Needs extra calories, and therefore is often found snacking on protein bars, fruit (and obviously Patton’s famous oatmeal-chocolate cookies)

Can be very hot headed and impatient at times.

Studies/Interests

Majors in chemical engineering, takes up astronomy in his spare time, as well as philosophy and english.

Wants to learn german and spanish.

Uses his super speed to be able to take all of his classes during the week, complete his chores in time and always have some spare minutes.

Keeps a schedule that he’s very loyal to or else he might take up more than he can handle and stress himself out (Again).

Despite being so diligent of his work, he always falls asleep in time, makes sure to have a healthy diet and gives himself some time to relax and contemplate.

Affiliations

Has been friends with Patton since elementary, their parents know each other. Their relationship was very stiff at first as the sensitive hero used to infuriate him by taking too long to do things and getting carried away all the time. This led to some outbursts that were always forgiven as long as Logan apologized afterwards.

One day he went too far while Patton was particularly sensitive, causing him to cry. He’s learnt to control himself since then.

He and Roman were classmates in fight grade when Roman moved in, by then he wasn’t friends with anybody else from his generation.

They started to hang out after a few very intense debates regarding the historical accuracy of a few medieval TV shows, and if it was acceptable to deviate from the obscure reality of those times.

Genuinely loves watching Roman perform classics on stage. The first time he saw him was during english class when they were to bring presentations to class, he performed a paragraph from one of Chèjov's tales.

Despite often treating him like an idiot, he recognizes Roman to be brilliant in his own field. And having him in class was always an amusing experience.

Thinks of Virgil’s occasional presence as comforting, but ultimately disagrees with his views on society.

Is constantly trying to convince Virgil to retake his studies, expressing concern for his future.

Roman Garcia(20)

Powers:

Morphing objects as he touches them

He can only change the shape of an object, not the material it’s made of (if he touches a metal chair and shapes it into a sword, it’ll still be made of metal)

It used to be very difficult for him to create things as he couldn’t focus hard enough on a single shape at the time and the images in his brain would get jumbled.

Later on he was diagnosed with ADHD. His family refused to medicate him and for many years he was forced to deal with it without knowing what it was and what to do about it. That, until he met a teacher that dealt with the same thing who was willing to educate him on he matter. From then on, he’s been learning to surpass it and perfect his technique.

Studies/Interests:

Drama school, also forms part of a few independent acting groups dedicated to performing musicals in small theatres.

Writes fantasy novels, as well as scripts for both theatre and film. He loves how different both formats are and the different things he can achieve with both

Can also write and listen in spanish, but is pronunciation is still too stiff to talk back.

Affiiliations:

Went to highschool with Logan, Patton was their senior.

Moved in to New York from Albuquerque with his little brother. Their entire family is from Venezuela.

Comes from divorced parents, had an abusive father growing up.

Doesn’t necessarily hate his brother, but is extremely weary of him growing into a villain since his powers are rarely ever used  for anything other than chaos.

Has a strong attachment to Patton due to the hero’s overbearing, fatherly attitude. Often rings him up at random times to just hang out and watch “Brooklyn 99″ together or learn new recipes. Whether they are in a bad mood or not, it’s always heartwarming to spend time with each other. He really hated Virgil at first for stealing Patton’s attention.

Is currently really fond of Virgil as he can understand the struggles of being forced to move apart from your family. He also really appreciates the vigilante’s willingness to listen

Devin C. Pierce (20)

Powers:

Shapeshifting

Uses his powers to his own advantage and to help those he cares about.

Doesn’t care about fighting evil or turning evil because good and bad are constructs and totally subjective.

Studies/Interests

Drama school

Takes up law as his second major, mostly influenced by watching fake trials on TV and watching legal dramas.

Totally didn’t show Remus “How to get away with murder”.

Affiliations

Met Roman on an improv night at a bar, they got a few good laughs by being absurd and original.

Roman doesnt know about his powers but they're still good friends. Is often asked to babysit Remus when Roman is out fighting crime.

Is constantly teasing Virgil because, in Devin’s words; he’s a “Hypocrite who thinks of himself morally superior to everyone”

Tells everyone the C in his name is for classy.

Remus Garcia (14)

Power:

Morphing objects as he touches them

His creations are always a lot more gruesome than Roman’s

They range from weapons, dick shaped statues, inedible food shaped objects to prank people and tiny versions of torture devices he saw in some horror game about the dark ages. They all decorate his room

Studies/Interests:

He also sculpts manually and enjoys painting. Most of his art is abstract. Only draws explicitly gorey scenes when he’s angry.

He learnt French in secret for years just to one day start pretending he didn’t know spanish anymore and piss everyone off.

Enjoys reading horror stories on the internet a lot. He even found Virgil’s blog while deep diving once, but he doesn’t know that.

Affiliations

Moved in with Roman because his parents were busy with work and couldn’t tend to his “needs” all the time

Constantly trying to get Roman to take him on his missions. Since Roman doesn't trust him not to kill anyone, it never happened.

Is old enough not to need a babysitter, is chaotic enough to need one and only Deceit can handle him.

Patton is greatly unsettled by him, but Remus loves when he comes over to cook for them. He tried to show him his sculptures once when he was younger and it didn’t go well at all.

He is constantly trolling Virgil whenever they’re around, thinking about disturbing things the moment he walks through the door.

[hanramm156]

Rammstein Family Game: Get to know me! (Warning: a long ramble)

I’m honored to be tagged by @cherrisplace​ and @momoredcrow​. ^^ It’s been a pleasure to read other people’s Rammstein memories and opinions, so here comes mine as well. Writing is one of those rare things that keep me sane during this crazy season, so I apologize this being super long. More rambling is probably coming when everything’s cancelled and I have nothing else to do.

Rules: There are no rules. Tag whoever you want. Don’t tag yourself. Tag yourself. You don’t have to answer all the questions. Do what you please. Have fun.

Created by: @vapor-stein

1. I’m curious: when did you discover Rammstein?

2004 properly, but I might have heard Du hast or other popular songs even earlier.

2. Tell me your story. How did you discover them?

As said, it was 2004 and I was watching some random Finnish music show. Back in the days, I watched a lot of music videos from the tv and recorded my favorite ones to VHS. One evening Rammstein’s Amerika came from the show and I was like “??? What on earth is this??? Sounds interesting…”. I wasn’t into metal music back then (I mostly listened to indiepop and alternative rock), but for whatever reason, I got hooked instantly to this German band’s dark, eerie sound. It was refreshing to hear something else than English and the video was also thrilling.

Rammstein had intruded my mind already, but the final straw was when I saw the Mein Teil video. I liked both the song and the video A LOT - so much that I even felt kinda “dirty” for liking something this dark. A 14-year-old me was constantly asking from myself that: “am I even allowed to like this kind of stuff this much?”. The backstory for the song was creepy, but so mesmerizing – like I had been introduced to the darkest corners of human mind: yes, this kind of stuff happens, and we shouldn’t close our eyes from it. So next, the only thing I could do was to buy Reise, reise album, listen to it on loop and sketch my German notebook full of Rammstein lyrics. Here’s a proof:

I have so many stories about my relationship to Rammstein that I might have to write them all down now when there’s a lot of time.

3. Favourite song?

This topic would be worth a novel itself, but here are some of my favorites:

Asche zu Asche – So badass, gives me such an energy every time – plus, not to forget the burning microphones and SILVER REESH!

Bück dich – Yes, it’s a horrible story once again in this song, but I can’t help but to admit that the song is freaking catchy and in a weird way, hot. Also, there’s a funny backstory when I was in 9th grade and we almost performed this song in our official graduation party with my boyfriend and a bunch of our friends (maybe good that the idea was abandoned in the end…). We had a vague clue what the song was about, but we just thought it was funny – also, our German teacher dressed always in leather and loved Rammstein (she played us Bestrafe mich during one class and I’ll always remember the awkward atmosphere) so we were thinking to dedicate the song to her for as our goodbye. XDD Seriously, why I have been so weird for all my life…

Sehnsucht – In most of the pop songs, longing is described by tender words and soft lyrics, but not in Rammstein’s case. I’ve had this weird feeling of “longing” all my life that I can’t describe properly. It’s kind of an inner emptiness, only arts and music can help to deal with it when it hits. I think Sehnsucht describes so realistically what is longing about in reality: it’s this angry pressure in your heart which you want to get out of your chest but can’t. In the end, you just want to scream your lungs out.

Mein Herz brennt – Powerful song that always gives me goosebumps. I can’t even explain why. Maybe the fact that “tough” men being emotional is my soft spot and Rammstein hits that spot hard.

Links 2-3-4 – I have always been kind of a rebel and I feel like when everyone else is going to the “right” I have to go to the left, to the unknown. My heart is longing for adventure, for the paths the others are not going. I dunno, but this is such a powerful song for me. When I hear it, I always just want to jump around. In Tampere concert I went totally nuts when Links started as the second song, lol. From that moment I felt like I was back home with my boys.

Mein Teil – No need for further explanations anymore.

Los – The harmonica solo!!! The dropped c tuning and the acoustic sounds!! I love it.

Amour – My favorite R+ ballad. I confess that I listen to this and think about the lyrics when I’m in the mood for writing something painfully romantic.

Weit weg – There’s this painful longing once again that always resonates to me. I listened this to a lot after the “after blues” of Ratina concert.

Tattoo – A song that I didn’t care about so much at first, but for whatever reason, it’s almost my favorite from the new album nowadays. It’s catchy as hell and I like the “rattling” guitar riffs.

4. Least favourite song? Come on. I know you have one.

Feuer frei – Too much Vin Diesel vibes. I also get a picture of drunken, middle-aged Finnish guys on a R+ gig who don’t care about to band, but just want to have a party of their life and get drunk, far away from their wives. (No offense to anyone, but as music is almost like a religion to me, I can’t help but to have a bit of disrespect for kind of people who just “consume” music.)

Pussy – Both musically and lyrically, so bad, but I get the point the guys tried to give with this nonsense.

5. Favourite album? & 6. Least favourite album? aka. I ramble about all the albums.

Tough one… as the rules were vague, I decided to have a short opinion about each of the albums.

Herzeleid – Summary: a bunch of guys, born and raised in DDR, are tired of everything so they get together and play aggressive songs - you can almost smell the testosterone miles away while you are listening to this album. I have to admit that I love this album even though it’s not musically super creative. It’s just raw men with raw feelings – and I have to say, it works for me.

Sehnsucht – I was creeped out of the album art as a teenager, lol. But yeah, musically improved from the former one and there are some classic songs that make Rammstein as they are nowadays. I listen to this often when I’m driving.

Mutter – The album that they had the most struggles with if I have understood correctly. The pain can be heard through the songs and it’s so honest and raw. I lost my friend in 2004 tragically and this album was one of the things that kept me sane back then. Especially the beginning of the album (MHB, Links, Sonne) hits me hard in the guts.

Reise, reise – The album that started all this hype in me, so it has a special place in my heart. I also liked how they tried something different to their usual sounds in this one, like orchestral and acoustic songs.

Rosenrot – To be honest, this album has always left me a bit “cold”, so I cannot even make a real opinion of it. There are some good moments though, like Mann gegen Mann that really speaks to me.

Untitled: This has been on the loop since last August and I was honestly surprised how good the album was. I hadn’t listened to Rammstein for a while, but when I got this album to my hands after the concert, holy shit it hit me. I like hearing the path the guys have gone: their new music is much more mature than the first angry albums. Also, I love Till’s poetry in this one, like Was ich liebe and Weit weg.

I think I answered the question #7 already, so I’ll skip to #8.

8. Unpopular opinion about a member? A scandal? Anything?

Even though I appreciate Till as an artist and a poet, I don’t find his appearance attractive. You can throw rotten tomatoes at me now, but this is just my opinion, no means to offend anyone. Maybe the reason is that my taste for men tends to go for androgynous side, so I am not drawn towards very masculine men.

I’m not interested in Lindemann project and I don’t like their music so much, but the tour looked entertaining though. I bet all the people who attended had a lot of fun.

How Richard pronounces English is extremely sexy to my ear, even though it clearly sounds like a German guy trying to sound American - still, it’s like honey to my ears. Stupid man who makes my knees weak with everything he does.

I hate to admit that I don’t like Ohne dich so much. I don’t know why. :(

9. Have you ever seen them live? Tell me what you felt.

Three times this far! Oh man, I could talk about for hours how the concerts have made me feel, but I try to be reasonable now.

Ruisrock, Turku, 2005 – My first time seeing them live – and going to a festival without any adult supervision, so it was a special experience overall – and they blew my mind. It was raining and thundering and we were completely soaked with my friends, but it was worth it!

Bonus for everyone who managed to read this far: teenage me waiting for Rammstein to start playing, looking so badass with my denim jacket and R+ logo drawn with eyeliner. :D

Hartwall Arena, Helsinki, 2012: We went to the show together with my boyfriend to celebrate Valentine’s day and holy shiiiiit it was awesome. Hands down one of the best evenings of my life. I was so hooked to Rammstein afterward that when we were at my bf’s family’s cottage, his brother had to tell me to stop blasting Herzeleid all the time in the kitchen. :’D

Ratina Stadium, Tampere, 2019: Aka. byebye my life, say hello to fics, listening to the band all over again, stupid memes and all the content this fandom creates. I fell in love again with Rammstein during this concert.

I have tickets for Düsseldorf and Tallinn, but now I can only wait and stress that will Corona ruin everything. In that case, I’ll weep alone and write fics about the tour 2020 that ended up never happening.

10. Do you play any instruments? If you do can you play any song by them?

Yeah, I play guitar and piano but nowadays I mostly sing. Rammstein songs are super easy to play with guitar and I recently learnt to play Tattoo and Sex. Have been practicing Engle on piano as well. Some songs I like to sing are Deutschland, Tattoo and Engel. The “speaking” parts are difficult though. ^^;

I’m not sure who I could tag to this who hasn’t done it already, but I’ll try my luck: @ah-its-too-much​ @soronya​ @einemelodie​ @xiaolianhuax​ @so-darya-darya​ @maximaembra​ @kvidasjuklingur​

[goldencurve]

Hi I wanted to get to know you better @GoldenCurve becuz I'm curious about you and I know it's known of my businesses so feel free to talk me to f*** off, but I wanted to ask like what is you're name? how old are you (also what year were you born in)? is there a picture of you that I can see of what you look like? (I understand that's hella creepy question but it's all out of curiosity) what is you're zodiac sign? I am asking about you becuz no one in the post dnt ever ask anything abut u

Anonymous said: I’ve noticed that no one (at least from what I’ve seen in post that are sent) ever ask anything about you and it’s like all they do is ask about “JGV” which is fine btw becuz I understand that’s what you post about mostly on here, but me on the other hand I want to get to know you which is why I’ll keep on asking questions about u if tht is alright

hahah yeeaaah thats completely cool. I do have a little about me page with a pic here, xxx, I’ve just went and updated it some more c;

I was born 15/12/1995 so I’m a Sagittarius. I’ve grown up in Denmark, but half of my family is from Greenland - I’ve never been there myself though nor do I speak the language :( . I’ve got an elder sister who just turned 26. We’ve lived together from 2014 right until now. I’ve just moved completely by myself last month, which sucks cause I don’t wanna grow up and do adult stuff 😭😭 But it’s great cause I finally get to continue my education :’) I am not the social type nor am I that chatty. I prefer my own company along with a few close friends. I fucking love pretty and cute things, and I tend to buy stuff just because of that and never actually use it lmao I obviously speak Danish and English fluently, while knowing quite a bit of German and Spanish - I understand them better than I speak them tho. And since I’m Scandinavian I automatically understand written Norwegian and Swedish - Try and speak it to me and I won’t understand shit, especially not swedish! fuck off with your damn ‘hjuu’ for 7 - wtf is that ?? lol so … I’m really into Chinese novels lately - BL of course lolol. One of my favorites is The Earth Is Online (地球上線). It’s sooo good. It is completed and it’s definitely one of those I wish I could erase from my memory so I could read it all over again, it’s really good and engaging too! On the topic of BL - It’s not BL, but it’s got so much fanservice and the art is fucking beautiful. If you haven’t read it, read Adekan (manga). The plot is fucking great, and there’s definitely queer baiting, but to the point where it’s kinda like “They obviously love each other??”, like it’d be so weird if they didn’t end up together or something - but nothing is confirmed yet, but it’s also still ongoing and it’s still worth the read anyways For another manhwa rec, go here → xxx 

I live right next to this big lake, so I got this gorgeous view every day (it. is. lovely.)

[witch-of-time-and-letters]

Fantasieherz, schöner Verstand. Pt XVIII Veröffentlichung.

Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics

As well as his fiction, Tolkien was also a leading author of academic literary criticism. His seminal 1936 lecture, later published as an article, revolutionized the treatment of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf by literary critics. The essay remains highly influential in the study of Old English literature to this day. Beowulf is one of the most significant influences upon Tolkien's later fiction, with major details of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings being adapted from the poem. The piece reveals many of the aspects of Beowulf which Tolkien found most inspiring, most prominently the role of monsters in literature, particularly that of the dragon which appears in the final third of the poem:

As for the poem, one dragon, however hot, does not make a summer, or a host; and a man might well exchange for one good dragon what he would not sell for a wilderness. And dragons, real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare.

Children's books and other short works

In addition to his mythopoeic compositions, Tolkien enjoyed inventing fantasy stories to entertain his children. He wrote annual Christmas letters from Father Christmasfor them, building up a series of short stories (later compiled and published as The Father Christmas Letters). Other works included Mr. Bliss and Roverandom (for children), and Leaf by Niggle (part of Tree and Leaf), The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham. Roverandom and Smith of Wootton Major, like The Hobbit, borrowed ideas from his legendarium.

The Hobbit

Tolkien never expected his stories to become popular, but by sheer accident a book called The Hobbit, which he had written some years before for his own children, came in 1936 to the attention of Susan Dagnall, an employee of the London publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, who persuaded Tolkien to submit it for publication. When it was published a year later, the book attracted adult readers as well as children, and it became popular enough for the publishers to ask Tolkien to produce a sequel.

The Lord of the Rings

The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic novel The Lord of the Rings (originally published in three volumes 1954–1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for The Lord of the Rings, during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend C. S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set against the background of The Silmarillion, but in a time long after it.

Tolkien at first intended The Lord of the Rings to be a children's tale in the style of The Hobbit, but it quickly grew darker and more serious in the writing.[159] Though a direct sequel to The Hobbit, it addressed an older audience, drawing on the immense backstory of Beleriand that Tolkien had constructed in previous years, and which eventually saw posthumous publication in The Silmarillion and other volumes. Tolkien's influence weighs heavily on the fantasy genre that grew up after the success of The Lord of the Rings.

The Lord of the Rings became immensely popular in the 1960s and has remained so ever since, ranking as one of the most popular works of fiction of the 20th century, judged by both sales and reader surveys. In the 2003 "Big Read" survey conducted by the BBC, The Lord of the Rings was found to be the UK's "Best-loved Novel". Australians voted The Lord of the Rings "My Favourite Book" in a 2004 survey conducted by the Australian ABC. In a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers, The Lord of the Rings was judged to be their favourite "book of the millennium". In 2002 Tolkien was voted the 92nd "greatest Briton" in a poll conducted by the BBC, and in 2004 he was voted 35th in the SABC3's Great South Africans, the only person to appear in both lists. His popularity is not limited to the English-speaking world: in a 2004 poll inspired by the UK's "Big Read" survey, about 250,000 Germans found The Lord of the Rings to be their favourite work of literature.

Posthumous publications

The Silmarillion

Tolkien wrote a brief "Sketch of the Mythology", which included the tales of Beren and Lúthien and of Túrin; and that sketch eventually evolved into the Quenta Silmarillion, an epic history that Tolkien started three times but never published. Tolkien desperately hoped to publish it along with The Lord of the Rings, but publishers (both Allen & Unwin and Collins) declined. Moreover, printing costs were very high in 1950s Britain, requiring The Lord of the Rings to be published in three volumes. The story of this continuous redrafting is told in the posthumous series The History of Middle-earth, edited by Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien. From around 1936, Tolkien began to extend this framework to include the tale of The Fall of Númenor, which was inspired by the legend of Atlantis.

Tolkien had appointed his son Christopher to be his literary executor, and he (with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, later a well-known fantasy author in his own right) organized some of this material into a single coherent volume, published as The Silmarillion in 1977. It received the Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel in 1978.

Unfinished Tales

and

The History of Middle-earth

In 1980, Christopher Tolkien published a collection of more fragmentary material, under the title Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth. In subsequent years (1983–1996), he published a large amount of the remaining unpublished materials, together with notes and extensive commentary, in a series of twelve volumes called The History of Middle-earth. They contain unfinished, abandoned, alternative, and outright contradictory accounts, since they were always a work in progress for Tolkien and he only rarely settled on a definitive version for any of the stories. There is not complete consistency between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the two most closely related works, because Tolkien never fully integrated all their traditions into each other. He commented in 1965, while editing The Hobbit for a third edition, that he would have preferred to completely rewrite the book because of the style of its prose.

Mr. Bliss

One of Tolkien's least-known short works is the children's storybook Mr. Bliss, published in 1982. It tells the story of Mr. Bliss and his first ride in his new motor-car. Many adventures follow: encounters with bears, angry neighbours, irate shopkeepers, and assorted collisions. The story was inspired by Tolkien's own vehicular mishaps with his first car, purchased in 1932. The bears were based on toy bears owned by Tolkien's sons. Tolkien was both author and illustrator of the book. He submitted it to his publishers as a balm to readers who were hungry for more from him after the success of The Hobbit. The lavish ink and coloured-pencil illustrations would have made production costs prohibitively expensive. Tolkien agreed to redraw the pictures in a simpler style, but then found he did not have time to do so. The book was published in 1982 as a facsimile of Tolkien's difficult-to-read illustrated manuscript, with a typeset transcription on each facing page.

The Children of Húrin

More recently, in 2007, The Children of Húrin was published by HarperCollins (in the UK and Canada) and Houghton Mifflin (in the US). The novel tells the story of Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor, children of Húrin Thalion. The material was compiled by Christopher Tolkien from The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, and unpublished manuscripts.

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, which was released worldwide on 5 May 2009 by HarperCollins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, retells the legend of Sigurd and the fall of the Niflungs from Germanic mythology. It is a narrative poem composed in alliterative verse and is modelled after the Old Norse poetry of the Elder Edda. Christopher Tolkien supplied copious notes and commentary upon his father's work.

According to Christopher Tolkien, it is no longer possible to trace the exact date of the work's composition. On the basis of circumstantial evidence, he suggests that it dates from the 1930s. In his foreword he wrote, "He scarcely ever (to my knowledge) referred to them. For my part, I cannot recall any conversation with him on the subject until very near the end of his life, when he spoke of them to me, and tried unsuccessfully to find them." In a 1967 letter to W. H. Auden, Tolkien wrote,

Thank you for your wonderful effort in translating and reorganising The Song of the Sibyl. In return again I hope to send you, if I can lay my hands on it (I hope it isn't lost), a thing I did many years ago when trying to learn the art of writing alliterative poetry: an attempt to unify the lays about the Völsungs from the Elder Edda, written in the old eight-line fornyrðislag stanza.

The Fall of Arthur

The Fall of Arthur, published on 23 May 2013, is a long narrative poem composed by Tolkien in the early-1930s. It is alliterative, extending to almost 1,000 lines imitating the Old English Beowulf metre in Modern English. Though inspired by high medieval Arthurian fiction, the historical setting of the poem is during the Post-Roman Migration Period, both in form (using Germanic verse) and in content, showing Arthur as a British warlord fighting the Saxon invasion, while it avoids the high medieval aspects of the Arthurian cycle (such as the Grail, and the courtly setting); the poem begins with a British "counter-invasion" to the Saxon lands (Arthur eastward in arms purposed).

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, published on 22 May 2014, is a prose translation of the early medieval epic poem Beowulf from Old English to modern English. Translated by Tolkien from 1920 to 1926, it was edited by his son Christopher. The translation is followed by over 200 pages of commentary on the poem; this commentary was the basis of Tolkien's acclaimed 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics".[171] The book also includes the previously unpublished "Sellic Spell" and two versions of "The Lay of Beowulf". The former is a fantasy piece on Beowulf's biographical background, while the latter is a poem on the Beowulf theme.

The Story of Kullervo

The Story of Kullervo, first published in Tolkien Studies in 2010 and reissued with additional material in 2015, is a retelling of a 19th-century Finnish poem. It was written in 1915 while Tolkien was studying at Oxford.

Beren and Lúthien

The Tale of Beren and Lúthien is one of the oldest and most often revised in Tolkien's legendarium. The story is one of three contained within The Silmarillion which Tolkien believed to warrant their own long-form narratives. It was published as a standalone book, edited by Christopher Tolkien, under the title Beren and Lúthien in 2017.

The Fall of Gondolin

The Fall of Gondolin is a tale of a beautiful, mysterious city destroyed by dark forces, which Tolkien called "the first real story" of Middle-earth, was published on 30 August 2018 as a standalone book, edited by Christopher Tolkien and illustrated by Alan Lee.

[prevodioci-blog]

Niehime To Kemono No Ou

Sunda offers secure and high-quality machine translation tools and services that help you translate between Finnish and English. The dispersed Jews had forgotten Hebrew, their ancestral language, and needed the Bible to be translated into Greek to be able to read it. This translation is known as the Septuagint”, a name that refers to the seventy translators who were commissioned to translate the Hebrew Bible in Alexandria, Egypt. Patricia Travers, 82, American violinist, died of cancer. Ron Fimrite, 79, American sports journalist (Sports Illustrated), pancreatic died of cancer. Users from different backgrounds translate and retrieve English to Spanish information by simply clicking on any document on their computers using Babylon software; Babylon has been voted by millions as the most convenient and user-friendly English to Spanish translation tool available on Blue Universe the market today. In English, some readers prefer the Authorized King James Version of the Bible to modern translations, and Shakespeare in the original of c. 1600 to modern translations. You pick your set of languages and you do a quick online test, proof of your capabilities. Thanks to our unique platform, English translators from all over the world come together. Like their ancestors, contemporary translators have substantially helped to shape the languages into which they have translated. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Toledo School of Translators (Escuela de Traductores de Toledo) became a meeting point for European scholars who - attracted by the high wages they were offered - traveled and settled down in Toledo, Spain, to translate major philosophical, religious, scientific and medical works from Arabic, Greek and Hebrew into Latin and Castilian.

Some common Spanish loanwords in English include albino, aficionado, alligator - an Anglicisation of el lagarto, ‘the lizard' - and avocado. Another great source is the website by Nancy Thuleen She is a German professor who published a large quantity of grammar exercises from A-Z as well as activities, vocabulary exercises, videos, reading and writing exercises, lyrics and exercises on German history and culture. According to Rushkoff, Gary Henderson Radzik, an engineer came about with this Gaia hypothesis when he pondered that: "Nature just decided, 'Okay, if I want to get conscious, I'm gonna need technology to do it because these people don't have clear Blue Universe prevodilacka agenicja enough minds to use telepathy. I actually removed the first translation I had for the haiku on morning glories, and ended up cobbling together my own "translation" from the work of others, because on reading the literal meaning I decided that he had added too much. I've tried many other online translators but none come close to Google's convenience and auto-language detection. Cons: When translating longer pieces of text, Google Translate cannot be trusted for accuracy. Having spent time learning Chinese, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and French, this has been the most helpful for easily learning Italian, and a similar approach would be for other languages.

SYSTRAN English translation software is dependable and used by millions of people worldwide. We've gotten about 1,500 words translated on a daily basis through their services. Translators who work remotely receive and submit their work electronically, and must sometimes deal with the pressure of deadlines and tight schedules. The purpose of translation apps is to provide you with fast and convenient translations-not to elaborate on the mechanics of the Japanese language. Gengo ensures quality English to Spanish translation at scale. I did this for Italy and found it a great help as not much English is spoken in Southern Italy so I went prepared for it. There's nothing worse than expecting the locals to speak your language Blue Universe in their own country, you need to make some effort. You can only translate from English do the other 3 languages, you do not yet have tasks to translate from other native language to English. At one time I was learning Spanish and loved to exercise my questionable skills on ham radio day to speak with South America, Mexico and even Spain. Well connected with the best translators through the European Union of Associations of Translation Companies. Betty Lou Keim, 71, American actress, died of lung cancer. Once Google tool bar is downloaded on your pc, then go to any foreign language site and put your mouse pointer on any word, you will see a small pop-up window will show the translation of that word in your own language.

In our translation courses, students work with Google Translator Toolkit, Memsource, and SDL Trados Studio as learning computer-assisted tools in their translation practice. Much dies and changes as we progress through time, but slang adds much to language and in the way people communicate. Times of Contempt (official English translation, literal translation: The Time of Disdain, early title was annouced as Times of Anger, original Polish Czas pogardy), written by Andrzej Sapkowski, first published in Poland in 1995, is the fourth book in the Witcher series and the second novel in the Witcher saga. Please use the comment section here as much as you want for questions, suggestions, or letting folks know about your personal experiences learning Spanish or dealing with English to Spanish translations. People in every country (including your own) are becoming "Westernized" like Americans because of the global communication methods such as satellite TV and international magazines where Americanism is prominently displayed as a rich lifestyle to desire when it is actually a starved and malnourished lifestyle of trying to fill one's life with material possessions and a party atmosphere to escape the reality that most Americans lack true love and true friendships.

Translator tool not only translate an entire uploaded file, but also can translate a website, Wikipedia articles and Google knoll documents. Use Google translate as a help with translating difficult passages or words from a foreign language into English, and not the other way around. I m interested to learn English language. At this point and time, we are using all these media and mediums, and they do affect us. If controlling one's mind means being robotic or zombie-like, I concede that point. He was hired as an associate professor in the new Institute of Interpreters and Translators (later renamed the Institute of Translation Studies) created https://blueuniveblueuniverse.rs/ in 1964 within the University of Amsterdam, and also wrote a number of influential articles about translation. Members can help one another find specific definitions and translations into Spanish on general medicine or any specific field, and share information with professionals specialized in medicine. Translated in english it means "Beware the wrath of a patient man". Translators must read the original language fluently. We have a basic online language translator that is machine-based that helps the user undertake free translation of any word, phrase, or sentence they may want to. This free online translator, however, is not fully accurate.

Demand also should be strong for translators of Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages; for the principal Asian languages including Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, and Korean; and for the indigenous languages from Mexico and Central America such as Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mayan languages. If some tourists were to visit South Africa, they must try and visit Santa Hospital next or the present hospitals that deal with TB to get a better picture of what I am talking about, as the reader is now informed, came around the time when Gold was found and Crown Mines and other mines were opened on the fringes of Johannesburg-and these man-made yellow mountains blueuniverse.rs of the extracted gold(which can still be recycled from that soil, although the government has stopped that practice)- today in South Africa. We specialize in high-volume and complex professional Italian translations, allowing us to have faster turnaround times and more competitive rates for large projects. Laura Chapman Hruska, 74, was an American lawyer, novelist, and co-founder and editor in chief of the Soho Press, died of cancer. The Spanish language is originated from the Vulgar Latin which was brought by the Romans during Punic Second War which started in 210 BC. Now, Spanish is spoken in almost 20 countries worldwide.

Knows not just Portuguese and Spanish, but 93 other languages as well. For professional , human translations in German get an instant free quote from our expert translators. But at this point and time we've been thoroughly enslaved by technology's technique, and made to self-iincacerate ourselves with, onto and within these techniques and technologies from what these companies offering these invisible Technologies and Techniques that they use to make people obey and then controlling them for gainful ends which we will be discussing specifically below, and generally throughout this hub. The elite class is responsible for the state Blue Universe agenicja za prevođenje of the African nation that we find ourselves in. Our children learn and copy from the habits we display and carry-on-when in their presence, and we send them to schools that do not reflect their people's values, cultures, customs, traditions, history and languages. The ‘official' (or for want of a less bureaucratic word, ‘recommended') Arabic translation of the Passport by Walid Nabhan is also on its way; the Arabic translation distributed in Zagreb was done by hand, spontaneously, by the mother of a student who came to the poetry workshops I gave in Saint-Claude, in the French Jura mountains, during the second week of May.

You can see all the languages available for translation by examining the available_ languages attribute. DHCTranslations is confident to say that we provide high-quality translations every time. Bo Griffin, 51, American radio and television personality, died of colorectal cancer. Gengo is a leading provider of professional English to Spanish translation. Another important reason to learn my language, is that Italian is the language that has a more direct derivation from the Latin, through the Italian vernacular of 1200-1300. Many of the Media Ecologists Guru resonate with the culture of Africans in south Africa. Notaries, even if fluent in the language the document has been translated to, cannot certify translations; it is not an authorized duty. Whenever you need a translation tool to communicate with friends, relatives or business partners, travel abroad, or learn languages, our Web Translation by ImTranslator is always here to assist you. For your personal convenient, if you visit a site with foreign language and only want to see word by word translation of that site. While the Internet is needed for all features, the here app offers in-depth word and sentence translations to and from the Italian language. SPATRAref , a generic reference to translated Spanish articles.

Chaucer translated the Roman de la Rose” from French, and Boethius's works from Latin. Sheldon Gilgore, 77, American physician, President of Pfizer (1971-1986) and Searle (1986-1995), died of pancreatic cancer. When McLuhan, who coined the term "Global Village," talks of"The Extensions Of Man," he is referring to how n individual or society creates or makes use something that extends the human body or mind in an innovative way. It is estimated that native English speakers can recognise around 3,000 Spanish words. 1) In this example, I am going to ask my device to help me translate French words to English. Bonus Feature - Learn and Master the pronunciation as English Arabic Translator has in built audio feature. Now you can learn Arabic or English language at your convenience, while driving, playing games, in class, while on travel, while commuting to work, with friends, etc. It would be a pleasure for me to teach you Persian,Dari , Pushtu and English languages Via Skype. She personally translates or reviews all translations done by Gaucha Translations. Friends, I recommend your to use to translate any numbers to Russian and English languages. Thanks for reading my list of translations, commenting in my article, and pinning and sharing my Hub. They provide a cheap translation for clients while giving a fair pay rate to its translators.

Although we translate birth certificate from Hindi to all Foreign languages but we mainly receive cases for translation of Birth certificate from Hindi to English, French, German, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, Czech, Arabic, etc. The Wampanoag were a Native American people living in the southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island area at the time of English settlement. Following that is a quick demonstration on how to translate the words in question to English. Translating Spanish needs localising even if the business is already operating in a Spanish-speaking market so that communication is not hindered. It is this activating dimension of popular free radio that most distinguishes it from the usual pacifying operations of the mass media and that also posed the greatest threat to the authorities; if people were just sitting at home listening to strange political broadcasts, or being urged to participate in conventional, organised political actions such as demonstrations that would be tolerable but once you start mobilising a massive and unpredictable political affectivity and subjectivation that is autonomous, self-referential and self-reinforcing, then this is a cause for panic on the part of the forces of social order, as was amply demonstrated in Bologna in 1977.

Free Language Translator is a useful translating utility powered by Google Translate which enables you to translate texts between more than 40 different languages - just as many as the Google service supports. People who don't know foreign languages are bound to use free translation services on the Internet, which basically provide draft translations, or have to refer to the professional French translator If you speak the French language , you will be able to easily translate French , communicate with people while traveling in the French speaking countries, help your kids doing French translation for the homework, and use the French language in your job. I will show in this article that a complete reliance on translation is often not needed and detrimental to the student when learning English. Old English, sometimes known as Anglo Saxon, is a precursor of the Modern English language. I'm also an English-Spanish translator and interpreter and earned my national medical interpreter certification through NBCMI in July 2015. In this case, you are already well on your way to becoming a Japanese translator. All our translations into Spanish are always carried out by 100% native Spanish translators, working in the mother tongue, and who are completely fluent in the source languages, i.e. English, French, German, Italian or Portuguese.

It's a fast-paced Italian world, and sometimes all you need is a quick English translation to get you up to speed. I know that for studying Ancient Near Eastern studies, eventually you would have to have a good command of French and German because a lot of the scholarly material is written in those languages. It is as funny as Mark Twain's translation and retranslation of his Jumping Frog, from English to French and back to English. Today, thousands of people from western countries such as USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and from most of European countries have already some Japanese Kanji symbols tattooed into their skin. As the mother tongue of 480 million people, Spanish is one of the world's most widely-spoken native languages. I have heard foreign-language speaking people talk about thinking in their native language before they translate. Veritas Language Solutions is going insolvent and I doubt any of the translators will receive money once higher ranking creditors have been paid. What I'm saying is, instead of trying to figure out which existing translation is most accurate, one can learn the languages, and of course the history, and do their own translation. Another thing, translating English to Arabic may have "corny" results i.e. the sentence may sound poetic with a deep meaning in English but very silly & childish in Arabic.

Zanos died of ovarian cancer just a couple of days of her 60th birthday. Our translation team has many experienced document translators who specialize in translating different types of documents including employee handbooks, contracts, leases, books, birth and death certificates, marriage certificates, divorce decrees, diplomas, transcripts, and any other Spanish document you may need translated. Interpreters and translators must have knowledge of medical terminology and of common medical terms in both languages. This is why, educators believe our kids understand computers and their programming languages better than the people who designed them. Below is an "opportunity" I received a couple of months ago from Wolfestone Translation (UK), click here which is encouraging translators to "post-edit" machine translations for GBP 0.015 per word. The democratic African National Congress (ANC) government was elected in 1994, after a half century of the nationalist government's racist policies under apartheid (the Afrikaans word for separateness”), which included political, legal, social and economic discrimination against black people. A virtual keyboard is offered for Russian, Ukrainian, English, German and French languages. So that, if Botha holler what he is purported to have been by the Sunday times article, it holds a whole stack of truths in it. If one understand Afrikaner history, the themes he hit on have been enforced and promoted or talked about by the Afrikaner people.

His argument, in a nutshell, is that technology forms a mass of people, and conditions their essential humanity by restricting their freedom and displacing their responsibility. Anthony is a French translator who is also fluent in Arabic. Start applying it to your everyday life like change your all devices language setting from English to Spanish, start watching Spanish TV shows and serials, start reading or listening news in Spanish language, start learning about your favorite topic or subject in Spanish it will be fun to learn your favorite subject in Spanish language and it will your added advantage to know your favorite topic in two languages. For exceptional Spanish translation services, look no further than TransPerfect Blue Universe prevodilacka agenicja Translations. Let us say this is not true, it is mentioned in the bible that "the book is given to him who is not learned saying read this, and he says i am not learned." Not in those exact words but in the same meaning, mohamed is the only prophet in history to not be learned after the prophecy was revealed, and anyone who reads the story of prophet muhammad pbuh will know that this is him who is prophesized. I fell in love with them all over again and its all because of you translators. When we received the copy, there was no context at all, just the slogan and this sentence: Is it possible to have a few words translated into Spanish by Monday?,” followed by a request that we also translate the word small.

To support my argument, I will present several examples of the current media environments and personal experience, particularly in relation to music and music industries since music is one of the important mass cultural forms, representing current trends of peoples' mind and thinking. Without his work in the 1950s and '60s, there would be no field of study that sought to explain how the nuances and great sweeps of human history are made possible by media of communication—how media determine the thoughts and actions of people and society, in a soft” way. We know about it because we were at least, up to the coming of the Social Networks, reading books, listen to all types of different genre and good music and that has kept us as a "Sane Society' in this day and age. Then, tickled by curiosity, he read it and at the same time compared it with the previous translations. So long as Man Mind has existed, from the crude forms of mass mobilization to contemporary Meida technological mind control, it has always been the desire and aim of those who are rich, and have time to fine-tune and fine-chissel their distorted and concocted strategy of mass control to set and determine the final outcome, social arrangements and reality. John Carl Warnecke, 91, American architect (John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame), died of complications of pancreatic cancer.

[gzbluedio]

Speaker On Shoulder?! Using Experience of Bluedio HS Neck-mounted Speaker

1. Preface and brand introduction

1）.Purchase

I like innovative gadgets, and always hunt these online. Then I found SONEY and Bose neck-mounted speaks. They looks interesting and I can’t wait to buy them until I saw the price, about 2000RMB ($283), a little expensive for me.

Recently I found another neck-mounted speaker, Bluedio HS wireless Bluetooth speaker, with the price only about 150RMB ( about $21). I thought that there’s no reason not to buy it at once. And I did so.

2). About the brand

I didn’t know much about this brand “Bluedio”, so I searched it online and found that it was originated from 2009 and already has a history of about 20 years until now. They got the brand in America, and then sold their audio equipment to home and abroad.

They mainly sell the products through platforms like Amazon, Aliexpress and ebay, etc. and get popular in many countries like German, America, Italy, etc, ranking at the first place among product category of Amazon market.

2.Product overview

Black packaging box, logo is set on top left corner, product photo in the middle and product name “Hurricane Speaker” on the bottom left.

On the back of the box, some product features are listed on the top, including excellent sound quality, remote call, voice assistant, charging battery, ergonomic design and mode switching.

And English introduction of product structure in the middle. I think they also should provide Chinese introduction.

At the bottom, there are some other information and contacts. For example, Weibo, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

In the box

A HS neck-mounted speaker, a Type-C charging cable, multi-language user manual.

3. Product outlook

The speaker is 232mm×176mm, a little larger than that I expected. It’s in black and shapes like an arch. The front touches frosted, feel good but it will easily be contaminated by your fingerprints.

The back is glossy and made of hard plastic. I think it’s better to add some soft cotton material to make it wear more comfortably.

Two speakers are set in both sides, with two passive speakers to enrich bass. This design makes left and right channel separated, strengthens surround sound effect and enables you to enjoy stereo.

In the right side of the speaker, we can see some keys. Multifunctional key (power on/off speaker), volume “-”key (switch to previous song), volume “+” key (switch to next song) and mode switching key.

Keys press well, but not so comfortable.

Beside these keys, we also can see a Type-C charging interface and TF card slot.

Type-C interface provides me much convenience in using, because my cellphone and Switch, etc all are Type-C interface. So one Type-C charging cable can meet all my demands, very convenient!

TF card slot also makes us feel free to listen to local lossless music. But now, most people prefer listen to online music or download music in their cellphones, not TF card. Maybe people who has poor network can try this.

But no silicone dust plugs are used in these interface, and the producer doesn’t mention whether the speaker is waterproof or not.

A raised brand logo “Bluedio” is set in the middle of the speaker.

4. Different modes

1). Bluetooth mode

Bluedio HS speaker adopts Bluetooth 5.0 and brings quick and stable Bluetooth connection. After connecting with cellphone successfully, speaker’s endurance will be showed on cellphone.

Compared with normal portable speakers, Bluedio HS has a more stereo and clearer sound, and you can evidently feel its surround sound effect by wearing it. Especially when you listen to rock music, you will feel like you are in scene , and the wonderful stereo surround sound makes you immerse in it.

I like listening to sound novels when I’m free. Sometimes I wear this speaker to listen to it when having a walk outside or staying at home. Nice experience!

2). TF card mode

The speaker supports inserting TF card and music of WAV, MP3 format. When playing local lossless music, you can have a clearer sound effect than that of online music. And it’s also nice to download some sound novels in TF card.

In my opinion, TF card mode is more suitable for the old who don’t know how to listen to online music and novels. So we can download some music and novels they like for them to give them some entertainment.

3). FM mode

I’m quite surprised that this speaker has FM feature! You can search channels among 87.5MHZ - 108MHZ. Although I seldom listen to FM now, I tried it and found some channels with clear sound quality.

4). When I use this speaker

Some people may think that this kind of speaker is useless in daily life, but actually not. For me, I often use it in the following scenes.

My husband loves playing games. Every time he plays games, I’ll feel noisy if he doesn’t use headphone and let the sound of game out. But in the same time, I’m also annoyed if he uses headphone, immerses himself in the game and doesn’t give response to me when I talk to him. But now, with this speaker, he can enjoy the games, he can hear me, too. Love it.

Recently I play a game called あつまれ どうぶつの森, but in some parts the game is a little bit boring. So I wear this speaker, playing the game and listening to music in the same time.

When having a walk with headphones or earbuds in your ears, you may can not hear clearly the traffic or surrounding sound, it’s definitely dangerous. But this speaker can make you listen to music and surrounding sound in the same time. With lower volume, it won’t disturb others around you either.

V. Wearing and operation

Lightweight body and ergonomic fit, make wearing more comfortable. And the neck-mounted design also free your hands.

But for some slim girls, its hard plastic may discomfort you. And I still think that it’s better to add some soft cotton material to make it wear more comfortably.

Simple key pressing control, very convenient.

1). Switch modes

Short press Mode key, you can switch to BT, TF and FM these three modes.

In FM mode, short press power key to search for channels automatically; short press volume key to change channels; long press volume key to adjust volume.

2). Control music

In BT/TF mode, press once mode key to play/pause music.

Long press volume -/+ key to switch to previous/next song.

3). Control calls

Press once mode key to answer phone call, press mode key again to hang up phone call. Long press mode key to reject phone call.

4). Others

After power on speaker, the speaker will automatically shut down in about 2 minutes if there’s no operation.

VI. Summary

Advantages:

Affordable and competitive price.

Support BT, TF card and FM three modes.

Surround sound effect.

Shortcomings:

Hard plastic material, a little bit not comfortable to wear.

No dust plugs are set in the TF card slot and charging jack.

Even though this speaker still needs some improvements, but I think you can try this.

[swipestream]

Cinema (The Right Geek): What I’m trying to say here is that I’m the audience for a female superhero like Captain Marvel. And yet – and yet! – I have no interest in seeing her new movie because her marketing campaign has been a trash fire of epic proportions. First of all, there’s the deeply stupid year-zero mentality.

  Writers (DMR Books): I first encountered Shea by way of the Cthulhu Mythos. I’d heard he was a good writer–this being in reference to his classic, Nifft the Lean–but I stumbled onto his Mythos novel, The Color Out of Time, first. The cover blurb made it sound cool, I was always in the market for good Mythos fiction, so I bought it.

  Fiction (Swords Sorcery Blogspot): For five blood-soaked chapters of C.S.Forester’s debut Horatio Hornblower novel, The Happy Return (1935) (Beat to Quarters in the US) the British frigate Lydia battles the Natividad, an old Spanish ship-of-the-line crewed by Nicaraguan rebels. For all of author Forester’s tremendous success at recreating the wooden world of King George’s navy during the Napoleonic Wars, it’s that battle, as presided over by the brooding Hornblower, that got me.

Fiction (Pulp Archivist): During a discussion of science fiction by C. S. Lewis, Kingsley Amis, and Brian Aldiss, published as “Unreal Estate”, attempts to define the genre. While I lean towards the German view of science fiction, that of any adventure of the future, I have to admit the Lewis has a point. There is something to the English and American traditions that demands something more, despite how popular futurist adventures can be.

  Writers (The Mixed DM): In addition to old-school roleplaying games, I enjoy reading fantasy and science fiction stories. Unfortunately, there is a lot of garbage out there, so finding the good stuff can be hard.

Luckily, there are some authors out there writing great fantasy and science fiction. One of the authors bringing us good fiction is Kit Sun Cheah.

When I saw that he was doing a Kickstarter for a trilogy of novels that had an OSR influence, I asked him for an interview about the novels. Without further ado, here is the interview.

  Fiction (Track of Words): For this instalment I spoke to veteran Black Library author James Swallow about The Buried Dagger, his latest Horus Heresy novel – the 54th and final book in the main-range series! As befits the book that closes off the Horus Heresy this is a somewhat longer interview than usual, so settle down with a mug of recaff and enjoy!

  Cinema (Akratic Wizardy): As noted at this blog previously, Amazon Prime is coming out with a television series set in Middle-earth. Rotten Tomatoes has posted an article that goes over everything that is known publicly about the series at this time (and also engages in a fair bit of fun speculation).

  Gaming (Rleyh Reviews): Although the publication of Behind Enemy Lines by FASA in 1982 was the first roleplaying set during World War II, it would not be until the year 2001, the sixtieth anniversary of the United States of America’s entry into that conflict, that the hobby industry really became interested in the period with Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc.’s Weird War II: Blood on the Rhineand Godlike: Superhero Roleplaying in a World on Fire, 1936-1946 from Arc Dream Publishing. Both though added an extra genre to World War II, horror and superheroes respectively, whereas Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS World War II line kept it purely historical for the most part…

  Gaming (OSR News): There’s another, different OSR sale at DTRPG right now. I picked up a bunch of random stuff.

Official GW3 Cleansing War of Garik Blackhand –  Gamma World module about his fight vs the cult of Mr. Clean. $4.99 and 38 pages, also available in print.

Polyhedron 26 and 27 – 99 cents each. Actually has something interesting, what’s happening in Gamma World on Mars (both issues).

  Anime (Rawly Nyanzi): I’ve heard so much about the films of Hayao Miyazaki, but I had only seen Spirited Away prior to this one (and that was a long time ago.) Out of curiosity, I decided to watch his 1997 movie Princess Mononoke, which I remember the media speaking highly of when I was a kid. At the end of it, I came away quite impressed. Before reading anyone else’s thoughts on the movie, I decided to get my own thoughts down.

    Fiction Review (Catholic Reads): Ready for the end of the world, battle mechs, and body swaps? This collection of short stories has it all.

Strange Matter is a collection of short stories from one of my favorite contemporary authors. Niemeier has a range of talent, covering various genres in this volume including sci-fi and horror. It ranges from the whimsical to the terrifying, to the thought provoking.

  Fiction (Western Genre Musings): This 1893 work of historical theorizing offered as “The Frontier Hypothesis” has been influential on many historians, authors, and those with a libertarian bent.

I wager those with an attraction to the Western genre will find much food for thought in Turner’s essay.

I am struck by much of significance within it that I offer several lengthy examples below.

    Weapons (Paul Bishop): TV Westerns also had a passion for celebrity guns. Like celebrity horses, these gimmick guns were given to TV’s Western heroes in another attempt to make each show stand out from the competition. Many of the hybrid six-guns and rifles used to establish law and order on Hollywood’s backlots and sound stages were made by Ed Stembridge’s Gun Room at Paramount Studios.

  T.V. (Red Shirts Always Die): Cosmic horror, which is also known as Lovecraftian Horror, exists at a gloomy intersection of science fiction and horror.  Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, a storyteller who himself is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Gene Roddenberry in some respects, cosmic horror depicts people facing abysmal existential dread.  The strange happenings and encounters with mysterious and horrific beings serve only to remind the characters that they are merely insignificant humans.

    published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[xavieralexander1980]

A Guideline to Reading My Work and Generally Blowhard Post About Poets, Activism, and Performance Art

(Written for Facebook were I post usually)

(Warning, I was drinking coffee and just started writing to clarify some things. It has turned out to be an EXTREMELY LONG post. You might want to visit later if you care and have the time):

--I stared into the sun one time for three or four hours. For a long while afterwards there was a floating blue and red dot or floater in my field of vision, but my eyes adjusted. It's kind of a miracle that I can see at all. I completely destroyed my macula. That is why you often see mistakes in punctuation. I think it is a comma when it is a period. I was delusional when I stared at the sun.

--I started writing poetry at 15 in 1995. In 2008, I branched out to poetry films in grad school, which you can see those films on my page, Caruso Films. That is a long time of writing only poetry.

--After reading David Foster Wallace in 2011, I branched out into nonfiction, memoir, and experimental essays. Some of those essays have been published in journals, such as "Sugar Mule" and "And/Or". However, it has only been 5 years of truly writing prose, so if you think my prose is weird or rough or shaky, it is because I am an amateur experimental essayist.

--In poetry and experimental writing, there has to be an entry point into the author's style. Every day if you are following any of this, I am experimenting. One thing I notice is that I try to be as clear as a fucking idiot who is grasping for words in my prose. I don't want you to think I am being condescending at all. Or that everything I write is somehow profound. Because it isn't usually: Being profound or not, after a while, I have learned, in writing is all the same. In learning the craft of writing, writers say that you have to "earn" interesting and profound points and ideas. There is no shortcut in earning something, as you know. It is all doing and work hours.

--Writers usually don't show the world their work hours. What you see is the finished, polished product. In a sense, I don't see my writing as "nonfiction" in any conventional sense. Since this is Facebook, and it is like town hall square in olden days, I have always intended it to be performance art. I am a great admirer of performance art, such as spoken word, magic, jesters, busking, impromptu comedy, jazz, or even ballet. I see poetry as my strength, prose my weakness. At least, that is my opinion. I don't want to impose that, though. I notice people actually prefer my little blogs and essays. I also notice people prefer brevity, but here's the thing about that: this is all published, and can be perused by anyone on earth later. I don't hide my profile or any status updates.

--As an activist, which much of my writing is political, and I would argue Facebook, as a public forum, is all political and social dynamic, I have always enjoyed independent and maverick art and statements, such as Neil Young or Lou Reed or Emerson or Thoreau or just about any poet in World Literature. While poets have come in groups like the Beats or Romantics or Dadaists (the first punk rock artists), within those groups, there have always been individual and political differences between poets, such as Ginsberg and Kerouac, or Byron and Wordsworth, or Marcel DuChamp and Tristan Tzara. I try to allude to poets and literature I admire, btw. Here is a compendium: (I sort of went hogwild. Skip for time sake.) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Welsh maverick and alcoholic prodigy, Dylan Thomas, my first love. To know more about his style and who he is, see Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne, both Protestant ministers.

2. I prefer World Literature. a. Russian poets: Brodsky, Mayakovsky, Mendlestam, Voznesensky, and Pushkin (Shakespeare of Russia). b. Germanic, Polish, Eastern European and Jewish: Goethe (Shakespeare of Germanic Literature), Paul Celan, Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska, Edmond Jabes are good starting points. c. Western European poets come in schools: French Symbolists (who invented free verse and influenced TS Eliot), Surrealists, Dadaists and Futurists (who opened poetry to all the arts), and British poets you know. d. Although not technically World Lit, American Southern Poets are not discussed near enough: John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren are like the Willie Nelsons and Johnny Cashes of the South.

3. American Schools and Poets I would recommend: John Cage (John Lennon and Yoko Ono), David Antin (who didn't write but spoke all of his poetry and recorded it), Language School, and Black Mountain School.

4. For Queer poets: Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, Jack Spicer, are the big guys. Lesbian poets: you should know are Sappho and Adrienne Rich. Just talk to your gay and lesbian friends about poets they like.

5. For Black and African lit, "Negritude" school, see amiri baraka and Aime Cesaire, who are, to me, very important for their poetic styles. Check out your local Spoken Word show. There are a million things going on.

6. I don't even know where to begin with Asian Literature. Haiku poet Basho and Korean poet Yi Sang are two big poets. In China, poetry was the literature of the scholar class. Prose wasn't invented until 1900 and it was considered pulp. I would refer you to my Professor Walter K. Lew for all Asian and Buddhist Literature. Lao Tzu is phenomenal, in so many ways. From religion to spirituality to poetry, it is all one and the same.

7. Spanish poets I like are Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda (His sonnets are the best love poems), Brazilian Poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and to know these poets, check out Federico Garcia Lorca from Spain. It doesn't hurt to know the first novelist Cervantes, who birthed the modern novel, Don Quixote. I like the 1940s translation by Samuel Putnam. Critic (Big Blowhard of English Lit) Harold Bloom considered Cervantes the only equal to Shakespeare, who both were writing at the same time (and didn't know about each other).

8. Middle Eastern and Persian poets: Rumi, Ghalib (who wrote ghazals, one of my favorite forms). I can't say I am too familiar with Contemporary Middle Eastern poets, but you come across them in literary journals. See the Koran, as well.

9. For Feminist poets, see Anne Sexton, HD, Gertrude Stein, Diane Wakowski, and Adrienne Rich, again, to name a few. Although not a poet, see Renaissance Italian writer, Christine de Pizan, and her fictional story, "The Book of the City of Ladies", which birthed Feminist Literature.

10. The Bible, Torah, Tao Te Ching, Koran, Gnostic Judaic and Christian Books, Bhagavad Gita , Vedas and Upanishads, and Homer, (Most Buddhist Literature was orally passed down but all we have is prose versions. Except certain Chinese Buddhist Schools: See Haiku and Renga forms): all of which is technically poetry. And that is a different entry point or lens into those important works. I think in this day of organized religion it is very important to remember that spiritual texts and myths were written as poetry, and translated into all languages. People have noted some of my religious views, but I do so from poetry.

(I don't know why I just gave you a compendium of poets and authors. I got excited and took a trip down memory lane. I prefer World Literature translations. I just have always gravitated toward them and learning about the world through their poets.)

In case you don't want to go through all of World Literature, here are anthologies I would recommend: 1. Norton Anthologies, of course. 2. Poems For the Millennium by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris (Most of the poets I mentioned can be found in the first two volumes and it is a great starting off point). -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--Personally, I have always enjoyed anthologies and literary journals over individual poets. I enjoy poems over poets, generally speaking. The best guide to literary journals is New Pages.com. Everything from experimental writing to traditional writing can be found there. The big thing now or in the last few years is "hybrid' writing, which is basically not identifying the style of writing and blending all the styles. So just to be obvious, my Facebook page could be quote hybrid. The other big thing is a more "personal style". To paraphrase Frank O Hara, why write a poem when you can just call your friend on the telephone?

--My father has told me a million times that he doesn't get my poetry. And my father is more intelligent than I am. He is a doctor. I really don't have an answer or explanation. I read poetry like I read an article in the Washington Post. I read poetry on the toilet. I try not to "comprehend" it. Sure there are different ways to analyze it, and there are scholars who do that all day long. I have done that and can do that. But the difference is kinda like hearing "Kind of Blue" and studying it. I just appreciate the album, I don't know Jazz Theory. Most of the time, I just feel or listen to poetry. School and scholarship is the time and place to scan, do close readings, and theorize poetry, in my opinion. I am not a scholar. I am not a critic. I am an artist. I create. Most of theory and criticism stifles me. And I would recommend both scholarship and theory for any artist, but I wouldn't bog myself too much, not until you are interested in it. There are people who have been doing that all their life. And so much more power to them.

--Last point: I have Bipolar Disorder. I have coped with this illness all my life. Mental illness is a debilitating illness in the sense of functioning in conventional society. You know someone who has a mental illness, beside me. And not much is truly understood about mental illness. David Foster Wallace hung himself due to chronic depression, and he is arguably the greatest nonfiction writer in the last twenty years. Dostoevsky suffered from fits of seizures in which he had profound revelations. Hemingway shot himself due to alcoholism and some underlying mental illness. Sylvia Plath committed suicide due to a mental illness and I believe it was un-diagnosed bipolar disorder (I could be wrong). Emily Dickinson suffered from agoraphobia and stayed home for most of her life. While I am not saying I am like those geniuses, and it is a misnomer to think that everyone with a mental illness is an artist or genius, I bring it up because artists I admire had mental illnesses. The point is to show that sometimes society is wrong about things, as you know. Blacks, immigrants, queer folk, women, veterans, homeless people, poor people, and virtually every marginalized group I can think of society has been wrong about. And many of these marginalized people are starting to come out of the closets and say, guess what, society doesn't quite get me. And they are doing so in art and argument.

"In conclusion," LOL, these are guidelines and entry points for readers. For the most part, I believe people don't care actually. But neither do I most of the time. I also have been drinking coffee this morning and I get rolling with thoughts, which explains the length of this post. LOL.

[perkoform]

book review

This excerpt is made of sentences found flipping through the book ‘The Grotesque In Art and Literature” by Wolfgang Kayser and translated from German to English by Ulrich Weisstein.

Also, these excerpts could be taken as a comment on Die Antwoord, as a performing group. *not from book

 Other scholars have pointed to the typically…bursting eggs, etc., and connected them with the pictorial language of the alchemists or certain heretic sects. Larousse also speaks of the deeper and more sinister meaning ascribed to the term in the age of Romanticism (with Shakespeare, Jean Paul, and E.T.A Hoffmann constituting the most important centers of influence).

*She’s all “boys, boys, boys!” Shakes Peer, Jon Pull, and Eat-A-Of-Man.

The narrator is aware of his human quality and, plainly hinting at the beginning of Tristram Shandy, interprets it as resulting from his ancestry. “I was several times expelled from churches, because I laughed there, and from brothels, because I was about to pray there.” If, initially, we are torn between a feeling of annoyance about the obsessive pedantry of the hero’s thinking and one of compassion for the human being in him, the sympathy prevails as we learn more about the rich mentality of A.E., whose oddity becomes less and less obtrusive. Since the inanimate objects are consistently and uniformly treacherous in trying to harm the individual wherever possible,

*Fok juli naairs. Okay people, they actually mean fuck her. Like, sexual.

they lose their ominous nature and, consequently, their demonism proper.

*From a ‘weel fan. yeh

The individual knows what he can expect from them and thus can be on his guard against their concerted actions…laughter occurs when the deliberate clash between the events themselves and their interpretation (“tragic”, “sublime”, “comic,” etc.) calls attention to itself as well as to the narrator. But even in the beginning the story is more than an anecdote about the malice of a button, for a principle unaccounted for by the demonology has come into play: the turbulent accumulation of incidents and the demonic nature of a mechanism which, once triggered, tumultuously unfolds itself and completely disintegrates a whole segment of reality. 27 – A. Paul Weber – The Rumour. 28 – A. Paul Weber – Detail from The Rumour…the more closely we approach the realm of the grotesque. From the opposite direction, the road to it is shortened if the narrator represents the world itself as being increasingly alienated. Illustrators tend to exaggerate this feature, and it would be a rewarding task to compare the various sets of illustrations to the above-mentioned novels (Chagall illustrated Dead Souls) with one another. In the case of Don Quixote…The history of the style which makes such a violent appearance in Rabelais and Fischart is not yet written. One can see how familiar Zeitblom is with the English Language, but one also realises that certain shifts in emphasis have occurred. Zeitblom does not reproduce the poem but gives a critical account of it as a conscious mediator (“Now the figure of a serpent arises”).

*That’s C-O-N-C-I-O-C!. Yolandi holding a cat in the film clip, SHOCKING.

Even where he translates literally he adds an explanatory phrase (“with desperate logic”) or smuggles additional words into the text (“therefore” and “thereupon”)…he replaces the vague and ominous quality of the “none” and “many” by personalised agents…when fear anguish, terror and violence are brought into play no emotional involvement can be expected, and the narrator aloofly interposes his own superiority. 9. Compare also W. von Wartburg’s entry in his etymological dictionary of the French language; P. Knaak’s “uber den Gebrauch des Wortes ‘grotesque’

#о�Wm