#why are conlangs so fun

[bolithesenate]

YOU ARE BORED AND I AM IN YOUR ASKS.

What's the question you've been secretly hoping someone would ask you about one of your fics?? That thing only you know, that little detail, that easter egg, that thing that every writer has. ❤️

gosh i have so many little secrets but most of them will only get touched on in the future (in the mud fic, but also others)

usually it's related to the frankly absurd amounts of worldbuilding i've been doing for serenno specifically :P

but if i had to pick one thing that is very close to my heart its that the mandalorian spy on Coruscant in Meanwhile On Mandalore is Elan Sleazebaggano, aka the disgraced former med student that wanted to sell Obi-Wan deathsticks in canon.

there were only the vaguest of hints and its something that literally is just for me

[nomairuins]

also i admire dws refusal ever to engage with language barriers

[ach-sss-no]

For @qthewhatever and anyone else who is interested, here is an overview of Gollum's speech patterns, or:

Why Sméagol talks Like That, an introductory course

Note: I am discussing the books only. The movie adaptation of the character was changed a lot and I don't want to address adaptational changes in this post. All quotes are from The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Notex2: A lot of this post is just going to be my opinion. I don't want to assert my opinion as correct or factual, but it is going to slow the flow of this post down to a stuttering crawl if I stop to say 'imo' every other sentence. So I'd like to just say once, up front, that if I am not citing a source or a commonly agreed-on fact (such as 'hobbits have furry feets'), I'm giving my own interpretation of the books and am aware I may have things wrong, or that there may be multiple equally correct interpretations of the work. I belive there are always multiple takes that can be had on a complex work of literature, some of which can be equally correct, but not all of them are my takes. In the same vein, I understand that fictional characters are not living people, but it is easier and more efficient sometimes to talk about them as if they were. If I slip into doing that, it's just economy of language.

Now, to start off with, it's important to remember that Tolkien was a linguist who played with words for fun, and even without getting into the Conlangs Iceberg, a lot of LOTR and The Hobbit involve wordplay. The man loved words, he liked to interject poetry, he liked to stylize words in specific manners to convey extra layers of meaning (some of which is, to be honest, waaay over my head! medieval literature and epic poetry and etc. etc. I can tell when I'm reading it that it's a style shift and it's significant, but that's about it.) None of that is my take, he's an infamous Words Guy.

Therefore, if there's a specific word pattern used in his works and it's something extremely distinctive and impossible not to notice, it's there for a reason.

What I'm getting at is that sometimes a character has funky speech patterns just because a writer likes it or is trying to get characters not to blend in with each other in dialog, and in those cases, the style of dialog may not be worthy of this much analysis. But this is Tolkien and this:

"Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it's a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it'd make us, gollum!"

This doesn't happen by accident

So that's the writer: a guy who likes words. It is also relevant to discuss the history of the character.

(As an aside: Gollum was invented and introduced in The Hobbit. Gollum-as-Sméagol-a-character-with-a-history-and-name was not introduced until LOTR, and his introduction is significant enough that the story stops for a long stretch while Gandalf (a character known to be a sayer of significant things) narrates it to us.)

Sméagol comes from a rural and semi-feral community that lives by the river. He is from

a family of high repute, for it was large and wealthier than most, and it was ruled by a grandmother of the folk, stern and wise in old lore, such as they had. The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Sméagol. He was interested in roots and beginnings; he dived into deep pools; he burrowed under trees and growing plants; he tunnelled into green mounds; and he ceased to look up at the hill-tops, or the leaves on trees, or the flowers opening in the air: his head and his eyes were downward. - The Fellowship of the Ring, 'Shadow of the Past'

Invasive species behavior.

(Sometimes I remember this passage at random because I look at the ground for bugs a lot and I'll remember to look up at leaves on trees instead. Not important. moving on)

Sméagol was raised by said grandmother. He grew up "wealthier than most" and with a guardian who was "stern and wise" and the ruler of the community. So he's rich, probably well-educated as his people go, and closely related to/living in the household of an important authority figure, and he also seems to only have one friend, and in The Hobbit there's a mention that he only likes one game (riddles). He appears to be constantly seeking intellectual stimulation, and likes stories.

Sméagol was later ousted from his community and ended up completely isolated in a cave. I think it gets overlooked how much of an impact FIVE HUNDRED YEARS of isolation would have on a person. Tolkien points it out specifically in the prologue to LOTR:

But after ages alone in the dark Gollum's heart was black, and treachery was in it

But I usually hear Gollum's descent as a person spoken of only regarding the Ring. Consider how much damage it would do if you were to suddenly go from 'cushy life surrounded by a clan' to CAVE FOREVER LMAO. He'd be having some problems even without the Ring.

What does this have to do with saying 'we hates it my precious gollum gollum'

Everything!

Gollum has three different distinct modes of speaking: 1) we hates it my precious gollum gollum 2) Sméagol is hungry (and he has never done anything wrong ever) (gollum gollum) 3) "Indeed I was told to seek for the Precious; and I have searched and searched, of course I have." (gollum)

These different modes communicate different moods and intentions. They are all the same character.

They are all the same character.

They're all the same character, Mr. Jacks(ok. I'm not here to talk about that. I promised to be very, very good and not let the movies have this post)

We hates it my precious gollum gollum

Why does Gollum say 'my precious'?

He's referring to the Ring, which is the +1 Ring of Making You Call It 'My Precious'. Look, Bilbo does it too:

'Well, if you want my ring yourself, say so!' cried Bilbo. 'But you won't get it. I won't give my precious away, I tell you.' His hand strayed to the hilt of his small sword. - FOTR

He's also threatening gandalf the grey here because it's the +1 Ring of Stupid Life Choices.

But wait! When Gollum does it, there's an extra wrinkle:

And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat. That is how he got his name, though he always called himself 'my precious.' - The Hobbit

Gandalf says the Ring 'was eating up his mind.' Gollum seems to be calling himself and the Ring by the same name.

Why does Gollum refer to himself in the plural first person?

Well, in his original form as 'random silly threat in a cave', it's possible that Tolkien was making a bit of a joke by having his silly little villain use the royal we. I think it is objectively funny to have a random weirdo in a cave use the royal we (and Gollum is the kind of person who would do such a thing). But I think the finished version of the character is using 'we' to mean 'myself and the Ring'.

This is why I spent so much time on 'oh him lonely :'( ' in the beginning. Sméagol was used to having a family clan around him (even though he sounds unpopular!) He was forcibly ousted and left with only the Ring, which as an added wrinkle, has a slight will of its own and gives a sense of having low-grade life in it. This gives Sméagol at least three very strong motivations for talking to the Ring and obsessing over it, first off, it's magic and it's eating his soul. Second off, he's incredibly, painfully lonely, which can induce someone to personify an object and try to make friends with it.

Thirdly, Sméagol is more self-aware than he seems, and he is completely capable of realizing that his own choices have driven away all of his loved ones and also he killed his friend, and he did it in exchange for the Ring. So the part of him that realizes that stuff would by natural consequence be desperate to believe the Ring is a worthy exchange for his entire family, his home, and everything he ever knew or loved.

Just cave and Ring. Me and my bestie the Ring. It's our cave! Me and my precious. Ride or die. Me and Ring. It's OUR CAVE. It's OUR pile of dead orcs.

But... Why is Gollum so... theatrical about this mode of speech?

Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn't answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn't answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes! - The Hobbit

This is also the style of speech that uses obvious nonstandard grammar (we doesn't vs. we don't) and the pluralses, and the hissing. (The other modes of speech do this much less often. Almost never. Way less than I noticed before. i've definitely gotten this wrong before)

So why all of that? Well, he's bored. He's bored, he's lonely, and he's being written by a quirky linguist who thinks making up words is fun. I think Gollum is being extra on purpose. I have never sat in a cave by myself with no WiFi for five HUNDRED years, but I think it would be boring.

We know Gollum still enjoys riddles because when he has a hostage, he makes Bilbo play riddles. Gollum enjoys playing with words. Look, he made up a little traveling song about wanting to splash in puddles!

So, I think this is something he does on purpose to entertain and comfort himself, and although very habitual he is able to stop doing it when he wants to. Look at him correcting 'ours' to 'mine' when he's trying to communicate something he really cares about to Frodo:

The Precious was ours, it was mine I tell you. - The Two Towers

👌Mwah!

So, I think Gollum chose, at least partly, to take on this persona as a coping mechanism.

When does Gollum speak in the royal we?

When he's alone, and whenever he forgets to stop doing it.

One final note: canonically, the way the characters in LOTR first "met" Gollum was when Bilbo told them the Riddles in the Dark story (complete with vocal impression. becasue Pippin knows how to make the noise, remember?)

They probably thought Bilbo was, at the very least, exaggerating. Then Sam, Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn all get to find out he wasn't!

Sméagol is unproblematic. and hungry.

Why does Gollum speak in the third person?

'You know that, or you guess well enough, Sméagol,' he said. quietly and sternly. 'We are going to Mordor, of course. And you know the way there, I believe.' `Ach! sss! ' said Gollum, covering his ears with his hands, as if such frankness, and the open speaking of the names, hurt him.

names, plural

names including 'Sméagol' his own freaking name

Don't ask Sméagol. Poor, poor Sméagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he's lost now.' 'Perhaps we'll find him again, if you come with us,' said Frodo. 'No, no, never! He's lost his Precious,' said Gollum. - The Two Towers

Gollum starts referring to himself in the third person/as Sméagol after all this, and he seems to be doing it to try to ingratiate himself with Frodo, who starts their relationship by repeatedly addressing Gollum by his real name.

he was friendly, and indeed pitifully anxious to please. He would cackle with laughter and caper, if any jest was made, or even if Frodo spoke kindly to him, and weep if Frodo rebuked him. - The Two Towers

(just imagine you make a small, quiet joke of the sort Frodo usually makes and it's greeted with 'HAHA ;_;' and dancing around from gollum)

So he'll use third person when he's trying to be friendly

Nice hobbits, they sleep beautifully. Trust Sméagol now? Very, very good. - The Two Towers

Sméagol always helps, if they asks -- if they asks nicely. - The Two Towers

Or when being a little bit of a pill and trying to get away with it

'Yes, yes, and Sam stinks! ' answered Gollum. `Poor Sméagol smells it, but good Sméagol bears it. Helps nice master. - The Two Towers

Look at his social skills! Truly, this is a man who's lived alone for 500 years and has secret malicious intent.

When does Gollum speak in the third person?

When trying to be cute. (By implication, Gollum seems to have some inkling that the royal we is off-putting to people. I bet they made fun of him for it in Mordor.)

But there's also another little wrinkle to this- he seems to be dissociating a bit? I've noticed that repeatedly, Gollum will describe himself, announce his status [he's hungry], start off a personal narrative or descriptor with third-person language (which sounds a little dissociated), and then shift to "I" when his emotions get engaged.

It caught Sméagol there, long ago.' Gollum shuddered. 'But Sméagol has used his eyes since then, yes, yes: I've used eyes and feet and nose since then. - The Two Towers

The shift comes when he stops simply explaining events and begins to recall what it was like to 'use eyes and feet and nose' (he shudders, which shows emotion, and then after that, starts adding more details).

There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Sméagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. - The Two Towers

Again, the I shift happens when this gets more personal- going from 'Sméagol knows relevant information and here is how he knows it' to 'I had a life before the Ring'

Bonus round! I found a bit where he swaps between all three speaking styles.

'Who knows? Sméagol doesn't know,' answered Gollum. 'You cannot reach them, you cannot touch them. We tried once, yes, precious. I tried once; but you cannot reach them. Only shapes to see, perhaps, not to touch. No precious! All dead. - The Two Towers

Who knows? Sméagol doesn't know [explaining the Marshes, impersonal] We tried once, yes, precious. [ruminative, reminding himself, slipping into his old habit] I tried once; [now engaged in his memory, or perhaps catching the 'we' and correcting it.] Only shapes to see, perhaps, not to touch. No precious! [ruminative, mulling over the memory] All dead.

Then there's this- he's alone:

Dirty hobbits, nasty hobbits. Gone and left us, gollum; and Precious is gone. Only poor Sméagol all alone. - The Two Towers

I think he's picturing something like this

"I've used eyes and feet and nose since then."

I have a separate post focusing on Gollum's use of singular first-person, but the short answer is: When he's being very honest, in shock, and/or just not playing word games anymore.

But wait! There's more!

Bonus Round: gollum gollum gollum

SUPRISE! Gollum has a secret fourth speech pattern, which is: How he always talks regardless of whatever other things he is currently doing. This is the part, by the way, that elevates Gollum from 'oh he's quirky eurghgh' to 'oh, he's quirky and there is a master behind the scenes and how many copies did LOTR sell oh this is why. not everyone can do this, in fact, most people can't. This shitpost of a character is the equivalent of da vinci painting a trollface because he can and it's fun. It's supposed to be that way. it's art. EURHGUHGHG'

Behold!

Gollum speaks in long, rambling monologues and repeats himself. He often says things twice, especially if they are short phrases or particularly important ones.

`We are lost, lost,' said Gollum. 'No name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty. Only hungry; yes, we are hungry. A few little fishes, nasty bony little fishes, for a poor creature, and they say death. So wise they are; so just, so very just.' Dust and ashes, he can't eat that. He must starve. But Sméagol doesn't mind. Nice hobbits! Sméagol has promised. He will starve. He can't eat hobbits' food. He will starve. I did escape, all by my poor self. Indeed I was told to seek for the Precious; and I have searched and searched, of course I have. But not for the Black One. The Precious was ours, it was mine I tell you. I did escape. - The Two Towers

Sometimes he repeats things with little variations on them.

I found it, I did. Orcs don't use it, Orcs don't know it. Good master, wise master, nice master! - The Two Towers

(by the way, the thing that twigs my dialog ear most to 'he would not say that/where is my precious? :(' is, for some reason, this staccato speaking rhythm mixed with the long rambling. if i am playing a video game or something where gollum has a cameo, and he doesn't ramble and repeat short sentences, my brain says 'skinsuit gollum :(' because my brain sucks.)

Gollum uses vivid, visceral language that usually evokes an unpleasant mental image.

Then rest now, nice hobbits, under the shadow of the stones, close under the stones! [...] Soft and quick as shadows we must be! But Sméagol has used his eyes since then, yes, yes: I've used eyes and feet and nose since then. That is the road to the left. At once it begins to climb up, up, winding and climbing back towards the tall shadows. When it turns round the black rock, you'll see it, suddenly you'll see it above you, and you'll want to hide. The rocks and stones are like old bones all bare of meat. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping. - The Two Towers

Gollum sometimes speaks in sentence fragments, but usually sparingly.

There is one exception to this when he's super nuclear pissed at Frodo and just starts barking

'Come, Sméagol! ' said Frodo. We are in danger. Men will kill you, if they find you here. Come quickly, if you wish to escape death. Come to Master!' 'No!' said the voice. 'Not nice Master. Leaves poor Sméagol and goes with new friends. Master can wait. Sméagol hasn't finished.' There's no time,' said Frodo.Bring fish with you. Come! ' `No! Must finish fish.' 'Sméagol! ' said Frodo desperately [...] [Now he knows he's about to get arrested] 'Masster, masster!' he hissed. 'Wicked! Tricksy! False!' -The Two Towers (the waterfall scene)

This is notable because a whole row of sentence fragments is not how he usually talks. IT IS NOT HOW HE USUALLY TALKS.

Gollum makes noises.

Ach! sss! [...] We guessed, yes we guessed Ach! No! You try to choke poor Sméagol. I can't find it. Ach!

If it asks us, and we doesn't answer, then we does what it wants, eh? Yes, yes, master: give it back, eh? Sméagol will keep it safe;

Tie us up in the cold hard lands and leave us, gollum, gollum. Good master, good Sméagol, gollum, gollum! I am tired. I, we can't find it, gollum, gollum

The Noise™: It seems involuntary and caused by stress and occasionally, hunger or thoughts about food but then again he's always hungry

Finally, Gollum has a consistent personality, and motivations, and areas of interest, and all of that other character stuff, that comes through at all times, but that is probably off topic for this post.

Anyway. I am abruptly out of things to say. TY for reading

[elbiotipo]

So when it comes to distance in a fictional setting, is metric king? I wrote some fantasy post-apoc recently where the protagonist measured it in Oranges and Aevums (the latter being their own name), but more generally speaking is it worth it to hash out bespoke measurement systems for fictional cultures, do you think?

Oranges as a measurement unit sounds so funny, and a measurement based in... yourself makes surprising sense, given all the measurements based on body parts. Why not YOURSELF?

Well, I would think in a real post-apoc world metric would be king indeed, scientific and technologic instruments are in metric even in the US and you could always get a ruler from a school or scales from a grocery store, so eventually you could get back on track to reforming the metric system. It would be interesting, though, if every society during isolation had slightly different measurements for the same units because of faulty equipment (say, ohms or amperes or even grays) and they had to make a congress to clear things up.

Returning to your main question. My perspective here is the same as conlangs. It's very, very fun to have them, but it's not fun to force your audience to read them. When I write something set in a fantasy or science fiction setting, in my head I'm assuming the characters are speaking different languages and I DO explain them and even give examples of them, but the story itself is written, for both the reader's and the writer convenience, in a language we can understand (Spanish in my case, and then it can be translated). Same with units of measurement. I seldom use direct units of measurement like writing "the ship was 110.3 meters long" (in science fiction, it's often a trap as they force you to stay true to them), when more descriptive language can be used...

In any case, you could do, for the kind of immersion I love, say something like "she was 14 oranges* tall, rather small for her age" and do an asterisk like "*A.N. : 1.39 meters tall". This is very fun when used sparingly, because it gives the worldbuilding obessed reader something to play with, you can do the conversion yourself and learn more about the world, without interrupting the story. Some understandably dislike this approach, but I think that if you know what you're doing, you can hide some pretty deep lore behind it. In one of my favorite retro games, The Ur-Quan Masters, there is an alien race called the Slylandro who live in a gas giant. When they tell you their ancient history, they use their own system of measurment based on the rotation of their planet with its own names like Dranhasa and Dranh. The game actually provides you with the rotation time on "Earth" time, so some dedicated fans did the conversion, and found out the dates fit with major events in the game's past. I thought that was an awesome bit.

But I digress again. Does this mean you should not talk about measurements in your story? No, it can do for very fun plots and digressions, as well as make things more realistic and beliveable. A fantasy world sharing all the same measurement units can be as unplausible as everybody speaking "Common". Let's remember that the current metric system is a modern invention which took a long time to be adopted (and some, well one, country, still resists it). Just take a look at the many, many historical systems of measurement:

This was especially prominent in places like the Holy Roman Empire, where every statelet, county, principality, free city, prince-bishopric, duchy, archduchy, etc. may and most often did have different measurements from each other. Just take a look at how measurements varied from each German region, it's crazy. The systems of weight where particularily important. Before the introduction of standarized coinage, coins also varied not only between kingdoms, but between regions, and even towns, and coins made at different times with different alloys had different values. Rather than money in our modern sense, you could think of them as some kind of 'asset' that could vary in value depending on the circumstances. What's more, those values had to be checked by people who knew what they were working with. Silver and gold content could be weighed, ah, but you need good scales and weights, and someone who knows how to work them! And these people could easily rip you off, or you could lose value accidentally if those scales weren't done just right or fiddled with on purpose. In fact, this is where the word 'Mark' comes from.

It wasn't as easy to take say a 100 something bill and get the change in 1 something coins. There is a very interesting subplot in the anime Spice and Wolf where Lawrence, the trader character, has been paid in gold coins, and he has to trade them into lesser denominations. However, he has to be REAL careful so that nobody scams him given all I told you above. Even getting 'gold' coins was a gamble before modern coinage and banking (another long topic). How much of that is REALLY gold and not an alloy with silver or other metal? Who can you trust to tell you how much your coins are worth? Are they compatible between borders or even time, is this version worth as much as the others? Things that characters in fantasy who have just plundered a dragon's hoard almost never think about. Except in Spice and Wolf.

(here is a gif of Holo to break the wall of text)

This all of course, as again you can see in Spice and Wolf, can make trade very tedious and even unstable. This was one of the reasons why the metric system was so quickly adopted in Europe and then elsewhere; consistent units just allow for easier trade. Lots of other things involving measurement can have a major impact on your story. For one, you NEED consistent and accurate measurement to create even the most basic industrial and scientific equipment. You can wing it for a time like alchemists (and even they knew their measurements) but eventually, you need to measure things to understand them. To have working steam engines, steel production, chemical industries and more, you need to know your temperature is. If you want to do electricity, you need measurements for current, resistance and charge. If you're doing engineering, you need to have lenght, weight and volume very, very clear, or people will die. They don't necessarily need to be universal like the metric system (though it has lots of advantages, being coherent between units and decimal so it doesn't jump between different denominations) but they need to be standarized and measurable.

Most of the above, unless you're writing some kind of encyclopedia about a fictional scientific revolution (BASED BASED BASED) will not affect your characters directly. But IT IS worth keeping in mind for what kind of world your characters are living in. The standarization of measurement units always means SOMETHING in the state of your society, the strenght of the state and centralized authority, the state of scientific understanding (one could say that trying to measure the world was perhaps THE scientific revolution, "Man as a measure of all things"), the capability for industry and the standarization of coinage and trade.

Even if you don't have your characters interact directly with those things, they will interact with them. It's also, like I've said in the examples, fun to imagine characters having to learn or deal with different units of measurement, just as it is fun to imagine them learning new languages or cultural quirks. It's something I've done in the past, in my space opera setting, the worlds descended from the United States STILL use the imperial system, much to the frustration of the rest of the metric human sphere. There is also an alien character who has a hard time to learn human measurements, and that makes her melancholic about her past, as they can't intuitively see the now-extinct measurements she does. Again, man as a measure of all things... this does include other thinking beings...

There's more I could talk about here regarding time, but I did a post about that, though I'm not satisfied with it and will probably redo it in some time at the future. In any case, there's lot to talk about why every calendar in science fiction has 365 days and 24 hours.

As always, if you found this interesting and helpful, I would be very thankful if you gave a tip to my ko-fi! And feel free to ask about anything you'd like!

[openphrase123]

hey hi hi i've read everything of curtain call (except, obviously, what hasn't been posted yet) and i HAVE to ask you to share your lost country/skywatcher language thoughts so i can devour them immediately please.

hiiiiiiii so like 90% of the language worldbuilding i did for curtain call was like. very simple sentences and words since i didn't want to make an entire conlang for this fanfiction. what i have written in-fic would fall apart in two seconds if i tried to expand it to any of the lines outside of what i wrote. HOWEVER i have a lot of thoughts about how it WOULD work if it had the capacity to expand outward

putting under a readmore both for curtain call spoilers and because this is going to get long and insufferable for anyone except ME

also if you're not reading curtain call. this is still a fun little analysis about how siffrin's native language influences their behavior. you might have fun with it wheeeee just know that the actual language i'm talking about is not canon. i made it up.

disclaimer: i speak a couple of languages but my knowledge of languages is VERY limited to what i know. so you're going to see a lot of instances of me calling back to japanese or other english dialects. other languages exist and also have these features but i'm just not gonna say anything if i'm not sure of what i'm saying. if you are interested in these concepts in a more academic setting i am NOT the place to find that

second disclaimer: in curtain call, the name for qilaksut comes from greenlandic/kalaalisut which is an endangered indigenous language. this is an open invitation to go learn who, historically, lived in and supported the land you're living on. consider supporting them whatever way you can.

number ONE. dude is it that serious??

nah.

again, i built this for like ten sentences out of a 100k+ fic. so like. there's some inconsistencies, there's some weird stuff. and i know i could have just written all of the curtain call qilaksut in english but italicized, there would have been nothing wrong with that. but i did not because i thought it would be a good exercise in character exploration

because the language you speak has some measure of how you act and carry yourself in the world. (sorry elizabeth if you're reading this. i'm not going full noam chomsky i swear i don't believe in linguistic determinism i'm using this as a literary device) and since siffrin is the only speaker of the forgotten language we see (loop never engages with that in-game as much) and i was a little bit like. okay. why is he like that. how much of that is siffrin and how much of that is the home they don't know

in odile's friendquest she remarks that she only finds similarity in herself within vaugarde because vaugarde is so welcoming to travelers. however odile never went to vaugarde until she was an adult - siffrin presumably lived on the island until he was a teenager, and your personality is fairly Formed by then (at least enough for people to put iterations on it in adulthood) so as much as i could have gone the route of "siffrin it's okay that you don't see yourself in your past" i thought for the themes of this fic it made more sense to go "oh THAT'S why siffrin is Like That"

so as you're reading through this: yes i'm worldbuilding language. but MOSTLY as a siffrin character study. okay! okay.

number TWO. situational meanings.

so ✦‧₊ is "you" and ✧‧₊ is "me/i". but "hello" is ❇✧ which - hang on, isn't that the word for universe and me? no, actually, there's no pronoun suffix (‧₊ denotes when a person is being talked about) so in this context ✧ means "inside". which means ✦ means "outside" in some contexts.

(but harrie, why does "hello" mean "inside universe"?? well i imagine it's the difference between older medieval greetings and the modern "hi". languages morph and drift. this kind of just suggests that without me having to write an Entire Language Family Background. probably a shortening of some corny shit like "within the universe i find you" or whatever. semantic drift.)

and part of the reason i did that was for unicode constraints - there are only unicode characters that look like stars. but the other half is because in japanese and i THINK also in chinese each character has a few different meanings. take 本, in japanese. it has a lot of meanings on its own but let's look at it in situational context. 本棚 is bookshelf. 本物 means real. 本土 is mainland.

so in qilaksut i think these kinds of multi-use words are common. ERGO. why siffrin has trouble thinking of very situational words in vaugardian. if your native language is built up of tangential mnemonic connections, of course you're going to have trouble remembering the word kiln!!

number THREE. reduplication and repetition

take the phrase "✦‧₊ »»⟢" from ch10. in my head, » means "fast" and doubling it gives you "really fast". this happens in AAVE (e.g. "he's RICH rich") and japanese (there is an entire kanji expressly used as a repetition mark so that you don't have to draw complicated kanji twice, it's 々(noma) and as an example, person is 人 but people is 人々)

reduplication is slightly different from this but i think it shows up for words like »», where you're not literally saying the word twice but the vowels double themselves. kind of in a trilling way. i actually say this in inutile and not curtain call but i think the Siffrin Accent wavers a lot and feels like a twinkling star. because i think it's cute

alsooo repetition. wish craft. do u see the vision

number FOUR. pronouns and clusivity

i don't get into the he/she/they or any other third person pronouns in the fic because. well i think the lost country would go so hard on pronouns. there are child pronouns. adult pronouns. pronouns denoting somebody's job or status. hell loop is SO casual about offering to use the "royal we" i genuinely think pronoun usage in the lost country is more tied to interpersonal relationships than gender. but of course that plays a role too

because i think there's a huge amount of gender concoction you could brew in there. i think it would be really fun if siffrin uses he/they because in qilaksut siffrin is mainly referred to as the neutral pronoun mashed together with the masculine one. i think that would be fun.

and then for funsies. clusivity. i definitely think there is a difference between "we" (me+one other person, excluding you) and "we" (me+others+you) in qilaksut. would be fun if this is why siffrin automatically assumes they're getting excluded from things. "where is the vaugardian inclusive we and why has nobody said it to me???"

number FIVE. structure

i don't have a lot of Full Sentences in qilaksut in the fic but in general it follows the pattern place - > noun - > adjective - > verb. and you might be going "harrie, you weeb, that's japanese again" well. i didn't want it to be like french or english. and that's the one i know. so. shut up!!!!

"well why can't it be the same syntax as vaugardian then?" i'm glad you asked. i wanted it to feed again more into the idea that siffrin is more susceptible to getting "lost" in a conversation. hard to focus when your normal syntax anchors are not there!!

but at the same time. i write siffrin as a polyglot in curtain call. they're pretty equipped to learn and absorb new languages. once you learn a second language, in general, your third/fourth/fifth gets easier

number SIX. things i can't do in the fic except for once or twice because of unicode restrictions

well i could do it ONCE. with two sentences that are coming up in tomorrow's chapter: but i think in qilaksut writing, changing the rotation/orientation of the word also changes the meaning. slight spoilers for tomorrow's chapter but siffrin has two ways of saying "love you" for two different people - for odile, it's ❥✦‧₊ and for isabeau it's ❤✦‧₊

this isn't for any particular reason, i just think it's neat in the context of how i do names and titles for the rest of the fic. getting called different names based on your relationship to somebody, using altered terms of endearment for someone. two extra rotations of the heart could exist in theory so one of them is probably "loving your kid" and the other issss i dunno. maybe a closer platonic love nearer to a qpr or something. or what you use for your parents/guardians or your betters. i didn't think that far!!

also word opposites. ✷ doesn't have another version with just the lines, but that means "yes" and i think a hollowed out version of that would mean "no." obviously the ✦/✧ shift goes here too. and i think the inverse of ✪ (little) would mean big. but i couldn't find those in unicode so they do not exist in this fic oops

if you made it this far into the post. hi. thank you for reading :) that was probably a lot more than you were asking for. i won't apologize. anyway this post doesn't even TOUCH how i do name stuff in the fic but that also feeds into this. (and the name stuff was something i took out of an old dnd campaign anyway) (of which i have a DIFFERENT altered version for my original fiction but shhhh)

[yersina]

a linguist plays chants of sennaar (pt 5)

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4]

the home stretch!!

disclaimer: can't promise that i'll have any insights that a layperson wouldn't have, this is kinda just me thinking through the grammar of the language out loud haha.

this post covers the fifth and last language in chants of sennaar and will contain spoilers for both the language and the endgame! it also assumes you know what the symbols mean already.

i.... to be completely honest with you, i did not enjoy this language 😂 i think the experience of deciphering it got lost in favor of the storyline, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for everyone, but hey, i am the one going through each of these languages like a linguistic bloodhound here lol. because of that, i'm not as familiar with these words as i am with the other languages.

before we get into anything else, and also because i imagine that this will be a shorter post because the game itself tells you what patterns to look for, i do want to say that this language strikes me as being incredibly artificial. which is a good thing! it emulates the digital apocalypse vibe that exile gives. but a language that leans so heavily into being constructed and recombined and modulated so easily really gives me the impression that it was created and not organically developed. the only other irl example that comes to mind at the moment is korean hangeul, which was purposefully created by king sejong and is an alphabet, not a logography. like, this is a language that i would make for fun in high school (which is to say, it gives a kind of overly grammatically strict, awkwardly too regular vibe?).

it's kind of funny that this language is where i'm starting to get reminded of conlangs, especially when, well, everything in this game is a conlang. but if we take each of the radicals in this language as affixes/morphemes when they're being combined into one character, then this actually reminds me of a specific conlang (ithkuil, i think?) where you can convey incredibly complex ideas through very few words.

the language of the anchorites isn't quite this complex, but hopefully the comparison gets my point across?

i’m curious if only certain elements can be combined with each other or if there’s a certain order to them, but it’s hard to tell when there’s such limited evidence in the game. interestingly, i believe the anchorites’ language is the only one in this game that makes a distinction between “die” and “death/dead” by combining the noun with the verb “go”. not sure why the developers suddenly made that decision haha.

this language, like most in the game, is an SVO language, which we can see below:

but i think also they (the developers) were trying to convey more complex sentence structures than their language was designed to communicate??? so then you end up w smth like below:

which, if you translated literally, would actually be “you man i wait”. again, super interesting bc i think an actual, more accurate anchorite sentence should be “i wait you man”. they have a more complex sentence here bc of the predicate (“you’re the one”) and the dative (“for”), but really the sense that they’re trying to go for is “i was awaiting the one [who is you]”. i guess it’s possible that different grammatical cases are treated differently in this language, or that, like english, word order is occasionally variable (even tho that option seems iffy bc we haven’t really seen evidence of it before), but tbh i suspect that really it’s that the developers wrote the dialogue and then brute forced it into the anchorite language haha. no shade! (and also impossible to confirm either way lol) just kinda amusing and also it makes sense when it’s p obvious their focus shifted from the language to the story.

this trend continues throughout all of the anchorite dialogue (imo) and makes it kinda slow and awkward to read if you don’t have all of the characters translated. in my opinion, the way that the language functions in the last part of this game makes it pretty clear that the developers meant for you to rely on the given translations during this potion of the game, especially when the translation mechanic is mostly through the matching terminals in exile, rather than speaking with people.

annoyingly, the anchorites’ language is also the only one in the game that doesn’t have words for the other people/cultures in the game (demonyms), which also doesn’t give much to work off of in terms of cultural context, relationships, etc.

again, i’ve decided not to get into an in-depth orthographic analysis of this particular language bc the game itself introduces you to them. one that i noticed that wasn’t specifically addressed in-game is the similarity between “open” and “key”, which is something that i actually also noted before in the devotees’ language. i’m sure there are others, but i’m also sure you can find them yourself!

all in all, a strange ending to this game. if you’ve made it this far in all of my posts—thanks for hanging around! hope you were able to learn smth new :)

[innumerable-stars]

The Father Christmas Letters Promo Post

Summary: FCL is an edited version of a series of letters that Tolkien wrote to his young children in the run-up to Christmas, for an impressive number of years (1920 to 1943). It is an elaborate take on the tradition that Father Christmas is real and receives children’s letters. Tolkien writes his answers in the name, voice, and hand of Father Christmas, and later also adds contributions by FC’s chief friends and helpers to the correspondence, North Polar Bear and the elf Ilbereth. This elaborate game of make-believe keeps growing more complex over the years, gradually building up a story ‘verse of Father Christmas’s life and adventures at the North Pole. The edited originals are real hand-written letters received by the children, with envelopes, hand-drawn illustrations, and hand-drawn stamps. The letters also remain responses to actual messages from the children, although their letters are not included.

Why should I check out this canon? Many reasons! Father Christmas and his growing number of friends are charming and fun, and their adventures get increasingly elaborate and exciting. There is a peppering of Tolkienian jokes. The artwork and calligraphy are wonderful (they also get increasingly colourful and complex). If you are looking for insight into Tolkien’s mind, while he was writing The Hobbit and The Lord of Rings, there are all sorts of tantalizing links to the Legendarium and related bits of lore (which of course just are asking for even more fic crossover to happen!) If you are interested in Tolkien’s conlangs (and his linguistic interest in Finnish and in writing systems), there are bits of that, too! If you are looking for insight into the experiences of Tolkien and his children, there are all sorts of touching and heart-warming hints and clues. There are bits of light verse, too, if you like Tolkien’s poetry.

Where can I get this? There are multiple editions, often as hardcover, and the book has been translated into many languages. The book should be relatively easy to get in local libraries or second-hand. Something to be watched out for are the two main editions under different titles: “The Father Christmas Letters” is the original selection made by Baillie Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien’s wife, in 1976, especially with young readers in mind. “Letters from Father Christmas” is a more comprehensive selection published in 1999 and is especially aimed at Tolkien fans. There is an audiobook version available on Audible and some readings from the work on YouTube. Electronic versions are not so easily accessible, although the Internet Archive has copies borrowable by readers with disabilities. Selections from the artwork can be found online and in books on Tolkien’s art.

What fanworks already exist? The AO3 tag has 23 works, most of them rated General or Teens and categorized as Gen. Among them, there is quite a high number of crossovers, many of them with other Tolkien works, but also with a handful of non-Tolkien canons. As you would expect, with such a canon, some of the fic is epistolary or includes letters! Perhaps partly because the canon includes so much original artwork, there is not a great deal of fanart, but you can find some on Tumblr at the links below: https://www.tumblr.com/cycas/189739284354/merry-christmasinspired-by-letters-from-father?source=share https://www.tumblr.com/cycas/187421841269/the-elf-who-saved-christmas-story-art-special?source=share

[dedalvs]

Your opinion on this cursed conlang?

https://youtu.be/LAeeUwF-clw?si=IwN3-M_zbNQlEaOG

I want to take a moment to respond more seriously to this—not the video specifically, but things like it. The video is an amusing attempt to come up with a system of reading Chinese characters literally (so the strokes have actual phonetic realizations). It's intended as a joke, and presented in a style that is humorous. This is why it's called a "cursedlang" or cursed conlang.

I've seen non-conlang humorous posts on here and other places (like Reddit) that I've found quite amusing. They're called shitposts.

If I may be old for a minute, we had a different word for these things in my day:

JOKES

A joke is meant to be funny, and if it is, then it's good.

Shitposts and cursedlangs and things like them, though, are derided.

Why, if I may ask, the fuck?

Is there something wrong with fun? Is there something wrong with being funny? Are posts only good if they're serious? Or is this one of those "we show you we like a thing by telling you in kind of a mean way it sucks and saying you shouldn't have done it" types of things?

Like, seriously, I don't get it.

[aszles]

csm chapter 120 but in toki pona (first 10 pages)

alright hellooo!!!! this is my first published translation in 2024 i guess!

of course i'm marketing this towards english speakers since i'm not sure if there actually is a part of the csm fandom that speaks toki pona... i hope you'll stick around to see something a little fun and different!

so if you don't know what toki pona is, allow me to explain! ☝️🤓 toki pona is a conlang created by Sonja Lang where the main draw of it is that it has less than 200 words! it sounds like it may be tricky to speak with so few words, but it's surprisingly easy and very fun! i always recommend it to anyone who has a bit of time on their hands and wants to try something new.

here i was mostly trying out gimp for comic translations, and so i translated the first 10 pages of chapter 120! i chose this because... it's silly! also fun fact, the start of this chapter was one of the things that pushed me to read chainsaw man!

ok that's enough preface rambling, let's get on with it!

i think typically the first page should be full sized if it has to, but nayuta peace sign is just so cute..!

alright, if you wanna feel like you're on a date with asa then keep reading to find an english translation and translator's notes! if not... feel free to leave, i hope you eat something nice today! (omekapo!)

semi-literal translation:

yoru: woof! woof! woof!!

nayuta: HAHAHAHAHAHA!! yoru: woof woof! wooof!! denji: Nayuta! what did you do?! nayuta: i turned her into an animal. denji: why?!?! nayuta: because she [kissed] my thing! (here she basically says that yoru interacted with nayuta's thing using her mouth. it's a very vague statement)

denji: i'm not your thing! turn her into a human now!! nayuta: want food! can't! (technically she says "food desire! no ability!") nuh uh! denji: ah?! i'll make food. when you eat turn her into a human!! nayuta: 'kay!

denji: eat and turn her into a human. i'm not joking. nayuta: hey! this is my food! bad! bad!! nayuta: hey... do you really want her humanity? (sounds very weird in english but i'm not sure a better way to put it) denji: what?

nayuta: Denji. every woman tries to kill you, right? why is this animal different? denji: why...? i have a feeling. nayuta: hmmmm.... good. (this is being used as an affirmation similar to "alright" or "very well then") you won't die. okay. i'll turn her into a human.

nayuta: but, two things. if they're not good to you, then she'll be an animal forever. denji: what are they?! nayuta: number one. i can eat ice cream (cold sweet) all the time. denji: i want (it) too. nayuta: number two.

nayuta: don't be nice to her. denji: are you joking?! nayuta: uh, i'm (being) real. this is the best. she's bad to my nose. denji: your nose?

denji: is she like a wet animal? nayuta: weirdo, wet animals are good! anyways, don't be nice to her! i'll change her knowledge... so that to her you didn't come (today)! denji: you'll what?! then she'll hate me!

nayuta: not important. you won't talk to her. denji: ahhh...

denji: you're number one, nayuta...

tadaaaa! there we have it! now time for some translator notes, of which there are actually not a ton.

toki pona is surprisingly difficult to adapt for different kinds of characters. due to having no register, it's hard to make characters seem more punky or polite than normal, and to distinguish between adult and child characters. here particularly we have the issue that, while Nayuta is a child, she's also super smart! so making grammatical mistakes doesn't really seem in line for her character. the main action i took was doubling up "la" with her. this isn't incorrect, but there are more optimal ways to say things to avoid ambiguity. i thought that perhaps a kid wouldn't think ahead with their words as much as an adult would, and may end up with this quirk in their speech.

related to the last note, one possible way of making a character seem younger or less proper is having them use nimisin ("unofficial" community made words). it's a fun idea, but it's kinda inaccessible and also... i don't really know nimisin! guess i'm not hip enough >_<

the name Nayuta luckily fits with toki pona phonetics (with the y changed to a j)! Denji doesn't quite, so i opted for Tensi. this is the most direct tokiponisation of his name. it sounds a bit like tenshi! (angel in japanese)

just a little something. i went with humans being "jan" and devils "monsuta" (hybrids and fiends may be jan monsuta and monsuta jan respectively, or they could have nimisin) so.. why are these two using jan? well for Denji that's an easier question, as he is basically human-first and also had the name before he became a hybrid. (also there's no need to be so descriptive with a headnoun) as for Nayuta, she uses jan because she's sort of undercover. depending on the circumstances, or when referring to her with her real name (like saying Control Devil in english) she would be monsuta. some devils who gave themself a name use jan, while others such as Power use monsuta (because why would she call herself a human when devils are clearly superior?!)

suwi lete or lete suwi? that is the question. here i decided to go with suwi lete because i think the most appealing aspect to Nayuta is likely the sweetness!

i hope this was at least somewhat enjoyable! i wonder what i'll find to translate next >w> thank you so much for reading if you did! sina lukin la mi pilin pona a!

[venomouschocolate]

Why Do They Talk Like That: a stream of consciousness

Fantasy linguistics are so hard like where do you draw the line... I mean none of my characters are referencing major theistic religions or using real life loanwords or expletives but then there's quote-unquote fun stuff like "sadism" or "lunatic" or "sinister". i.e the Marquis de Sade does not exist in this world, but the concept of pleasure from cruelty does... Latin is not a language there, but I, personally, am writing in English, which has much of its etymology rooted in Latin (as well as pretty much every other language ever), even if there is no hate for left-handed people or indeed the left in this world, so "sinister" is inexplicable in itself now (odd how the left has historically been demonised and that it's also the socialist side of the political spectrum. not that odd really. thank you robert walpole?). The same with "lunatic": the moon is literally worshipped in some areas of my world, but it's still a term characters use, despite the moon having positive connotations.

Where Do You Draw The Line... I can't write in a conlang because a) I am not masochistic but b) I want my work to actually be read. You can imply different languages with accents and word choice and compound words, but ultimately I am writing in the same language for all (despite being bilingual, go me!) and ultimately that language is one that exists only in our world and not in the one that I've created.

While we're here, let's talk about swearing (cursing if you're american?) in fantasy settings. I don't mean "oh my god/s", that's arguably blasphemy and certainly not explicit; I don't mean "bloody" (not really explicit either) because frankly that does tend to fit a fantasy vibe with the type of characters likely to use it (considering the real world stereotypes and thus the archetypes an author will write using it). I mean expletives like "fuck", "bitch", "shit": STOP USING THEM. you absolute buffoons.

Recently I read a fantasy novel which included a whole magic system and several countries with absolute monarchies, etc, and they kept using expletives and it just did not work, and it never does. A step back: I believe that using expletives when writing in a real world setting (provided it's period-believable, of course) can work, and often (not always, not even mostly) works - I do it myself. However, believable expletives and exclamations and intensifiers can and sometimes do make or break worldbuilding, at least for me. The worldbuilding in the novel was fine, good even! But every time the (twenty-eight-year-old) mc used "fucking" or "bitch", I was immediately yanked out of the story and into reality. It was like reading a period piece (say, in the 19th-early 20th century) and seeing "bitch" in the expletive (slur) sense. I don't care whether it would be used: I don't BELIEVE that it would be.

Suspension of disbelief is everything, which (as a theatre kid...) is, I suspect, why musical films don't work: we're primed for a more true-to-life piece, whereas in a theatre, we're prepared to cast a lot more aside. We KNOW they're actors, we know bursting into song is unrealistic, but it's the stage! We believe it anyway. Seeing a fantasy character, particularly one that was meant to be a minor royal, consistently THINK in expletives (and not just exclaim them!) felt to me like watching Mean Girls The Musical The Movie. I did not believe the magic (which was a major plot point so it kind of sucked). I did not believe that the characters saying "bitch" and "fuck" would say those words, especially since those characters were almost exclusively limited to the middle-aged queen, an almost thirty-year-old established to be groomed into mild-mannered obedience, the former queen's guard and a (bastard) prince. I did not believe that the characters whose thoughts I was reading would think them, and thus I did not believe in the story.

If you're going to create a prose-based world intended to be separate from our own in terms of religion/history/sociopolitical structure/magic/etc, you NEED to think about the linguistics. I'm not saying think HARD or be super mega creative: in my sky-worship country, a common exclamation is "stars-be", short for "stars-be-dimmed", ditto "skies-be" and "skies-be-felled". My sun-based little sillies go "be-set" as in "sun-be-set"; the only country in a technological revolution (also the only country with guns): "I'm not wired that way"; "he's gearing for a fight"; "I was shooting for you". Furthermore, when explaining their culture in other languages, they struggle for words, because, for example, a train is a monolingual concept (one falters when about to describe someone as a "train wreck" and just goes "sorry"). It's not clever, it's not particularly original, but, in my opinion, it makes the language, and by extension the world, more believable.

While I'm mid-rant: there's a marked difference between characters of different class and upbringing. My more religious, self-righteous queen of skycountry says "my stars": she rules the country, she is a little crazy insane, she feels that she owns the sky, too. A less-educated character uses slang like "lunar", "feared", "heartfulness" where his posh boy counterpart says "insane", "afraid" and "empathy". And yes, I am totally neurodivergent, and I think about details, and I also study the development of the English language and want to continue to do so at university, so of course I am more drawn to it, but at the end of the day if you're writing prose then the words are really bloody important.

TLDR: worldbuilding is hard; do your high fantasy (or even low fantasy) characters NEED to say "fuck"?

[grey-gazania]

Self-rec time! What are your favorite five fics that you've written and why? After replying to this ask, feel free to pass on to five other writers to spread the love. 💗 — @emyn-arnens

My dear @emyn-arnens, you sent this to me weeks ago, and I saw it and then unfortunately forgot to answer it, because Real Life has been kicking my ass, so I want both to thank you for the ask and to apologize for how long this took me.

My 5 Favorite Fics (Which Are Not Necessarily My 5 Best Fics)

Loyalty (yes I know this is actually a series, not a fic, hush)

In some ways this series is the bane of my existence, and in other ways it's one of my favorite things I've ever started written. I began planning it in 2011, began posting it in 2015, and, uh, still haven't finished it, whoops, because I think I need to drastically restructure the whole thing before I can proceed. But I've had a lot of fun creating my conlang, and Tókhesh/Tavoreth is one of my favorite OCs I've ever come up with for any fandom, not just Tolkien. I also really wanted to give the Easterlings the chance to be well-developed people in a well-developed society, instead of just being a glorified plot device, and I like to think that I've succeeded.

Unconscious Arithmetic

This story is by now quite old, written in 2011, but it was both my first foray into writing Caranthir and my first attempt at writing in 1st person -- a style I've since found works particularly well for Caranthir, or at least for my version of him. It was also my second story featuring Parmacundë, though she had yet to earn that epessë at the time this story is set, and was the beginning of my plan to work her into the broader story of The Silmarillion. I think I conveyed a particularly vivid picture of how I imagine adolescent Caranthir and what kind of person he might risk befriending.

The Flight of Birds

I hold great affections for the Kidnap Family, as you have probably noticed, but damn, those poor twins must have been pretty messed up by the time they were returned to their parents' people. Transitions are hard even when you haven't began kidnapped and raised by the people who tried to murder your mother, and I thought it would be interesting to explore the turmoil the twins must have felt through Elrond's eyes. I feel like Elros often ends up getting treated as the conflicted twin, while Elrond is the one who is wise and serene, but I think Elrond should get the chance to be an angry adolescent full of turmoil, too.

Root and All

This story is a favorite less because of anything I've done with the characters and more because writing it was a trip down memory lane. I spent large swaths of my summers as a child at a camp in the NJ Highlands, where we spent a lot of time hiking in the woods and swamps and learning about the nature that surrounded us. My fondness for those hikes and that part of NJ was really the driving force behind this story. I first encountered and learned about both ghost pipe and water hemlock at summer camp, which are the two plants that anchor this story.

Darkness and Light

Bet you guys were starting to think we'd get through this list without any representatives from my Woman King AU, but fat chance! The Woman King AU is my life's work, and this is my favorite installment of it. It's short, but I think I did a very good job of portraying Ereiniel's grief and pain following Fingon's death. Fingon and the shadows he cast after his death were a massive influence on the woman Ereiniel grew into, the Gil-galad she became. In some ways the Woman King AU is just as much about Fingon and his wife as it is about Ereiniel, because their choices, successes, and failures echo down to their daughter and shape the woman she grows into.

[winterinhimring]

20 Questions for Writers

Thanks for the tag, @musewrangler! This looks fun.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

94.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

852,051. (Holy cow.)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

A lot! Tolkien, Star Wars, Marvel, and Hornblower are the ones I've written most for, but I've also written stories for the 1985 movie Silverado, and for The Three Musketeers, Dune, The Hunt for Red October, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Jat'ca'nara, The War of the Ring, Pirunir Sur'haaise, break my bonds and be bound to me (what. the. heck.), and Ba'slan Shev'la.

I will admit, I was not expecting all of those. The Star Wars ones (all the Mando'a titles) make sense, WOTR is my first and longest fic and also in the Tolkien fandom, but break my bonds is one of the RAREST of rare pairs and despite it being in the Star Wars fandom too, it's focussed on some comparatively minor characters, so I am...very surprised by that.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! Always. I love receiving comments so the least I can do is respond to them. Also, I nearly always have thoughts to share with my readers in response to their thoughts on my fic.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Unquestionably Cuyan'e. It's a character study of two very deeply broken men who have both lost everything, one at the hands of the other, and it earns its 'hurt no comfort' tag. The title means "Survivors" because they're both the last survivors of their families. It's very unusual for me to write a fic this painful without putting in a happy ending, but that story pretty much showed up to my brain written the way it is, and when that happens I write what I'm given.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That's much harder to answer than the last one! A significant majority of my fics have happy endings, or at least happier ones than canon. However, I'll have to go with Tegaanal, the climax of my Star Wars fix-it series, because it's such an earned happy ending and we watched the characters fight for it every step of the way.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

Nope! I review my comments on the first couple of fics of any series, until I have an idea of what my reader base is like, and that seems to ward off the weirdos.

9. Do you write smut?

Heck no. I don't need that in my head.

10. Do you write crossovers?

On occasion! Usually because the muses show up and start jumping on the table banging pans together until I write them something.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to the best of my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, but I HAVE had a piece of music inspired by a fic. I wrote a poem (in Mando'a and in English) for Partaylir, and the absolutely fantastic Siena_Alexandria actually wrote a tune for it and recorded the result. If you like Mandalorians, Mando'a, conlangs, or just good music, listen to it here! (Each chapter is a different version of the poem.)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

Yep, several! Mostly with @musewrangler.

14. What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

I don't really have one, as I don't tend to get all that deeply invested in ships. Characters, yes, but not specific ships. I guess I have a soft spot for Walon Vau/Shmi Skywalker, though, since it's a canoe I launched all by myself (see my boggled reaction to break my bonds and be bound to me being one of my most-kudosed fics above).

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

*grits teeth* I. Will. Finish. All. My. WIPs. (There's only one that is arguably in danger of abandonment, Of the History of the White Tree, and I'm going to come back to it as soon as I've reread the source material.)

16. What’s your writing strengths?

Hmm...I would say it's my character writing, above all else. Once I have a clear mental picture of what someone would or wouldn't do, I can basically drop him into situations and just let them play out and see what happens, pretty much trusting the character to respond the way he should. A lot of my fics consist of this, and the consensus from my readers has been that I do it well.

17. What’s your writing weaknesses?

Strong emotions, and people who are open with their emotions, are difficult for me to write. Whenever I write a scene that involves feelings and vulnerability, I have a holy terror of becoming kitschy. And people who actually show their emotions voluntarily by default are kind of a mystery to me, so I don't really write them because I don't understand them.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Fun to do when I know the language and/or enough of it to get by! I put in quite a lot of Mando'a for my Star Wars stories and I enjoy working within the constraints of its limited vocabulary because it forces me to pare down my usually verbose writing style into just the core of the meaning I intend to convey.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Tolkien! My first, most lasting, and perhaps dearest fandom.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

HOW CAN I PICK JUST ONE???? My favourite fic is nearly always the one I'm writing now, though, so right now it's So We Can Learn to Pick Ourselves Up, the latest instalment of what started as post-Endgame MCU fix-it and has now grown into a live-action Spider-man multiverse fix-it.

No-pressure tags for @ramblingsofachristiannerd, @hollers-and-holmes, @lady-merian, @ghosts-and-blue-sweaters, @thatonebasicfan, and anyone who'd like to jump on!

[2d-dreams]

Lineland

[ID: Lineland, a white line with Linelanders in it as shorter colored line segments inside of it. The Linelander on the far left is blue with both endpoints (eyes) as lighter blue, the one on the middle is light orange with darker endpoints, and the last and rightmost Linelander is pink with only one endpoint colored a darker pink. /End ID.]

Lineland. There isn't much to say beyond their singing, is there? How else could life persist? Well.. i have a few thoughts i've been thinking on Lineland and it's inhabitants. Not very complete or coherent, but fun bones to gnaw. Also some fun placeholder not-very-developed Lineland conlang words. I like using apostrophes in conlangs, sorry.

I'm allowed a bit of "its kinda magic" on some of these because, you know, 1d world.

Linelander dimorphism.

The 'females' aren't actually points. They're called points because they only have one eye (which qualifies as one point, in contrast to the 'male' that has two eyes/endpoints)

they can still look at both directions. They'll usually default to one side (the soprano to the left and the contralto to the right?) but can simply move their eye through their body

Lines are called "aauu'l" (front and behind face/two faces) and Points "aa'l" (front face/one face)

Color

Linelanders don't identify colors such as "green" "blue" etc. They instead see "front-color" (aa'ki) and "behind-color" (uu'ki)

All Linelanders are different colors but there's no way for them to know of colors beyond those that they see without trampling another Linelander or waiting for them to die to see what's beyond them and so on.

They don't see their own color even when their eyes are retracted inside of them - they can only see when their eye is exposed to air

Interactions of matter

Linelanders do eat! Where the food comes from, that's what I'm less sure of - likely the corpses of past Linelanders or other creatures of different lengths that coexist with them.

As said before, the eye of a Point can travel back and forth within the body.

Basically, an object can pass through another by swapping places with it - each cell swapping places with the other. This is easier when its a short thing trying to pass through, and also why it is pretty taboo to touch another Linelander outside of specific actions because passing through eachother is just a hassle because of said length.

Certain structures are harder to pass through (like it might take a bit longer for food to pass through the eye and then go really fast through the length of the stomach)

Linelanders always feed eachother (much like ants)

Miscellaneous things

The entire universe shrinks during their songs so that every Linelander alive is connecting with their neighbors at the same time, eye to eye (in the few seconds it takes, all Points take their eye from their front-side neighbor to their back-side neighbor), then it suddenly expands to give some constant space between all Linelanders (especially so that more can be born, even if they aren't even born near their parents)

That's why they can reproduce from so far away.

They sing by moving their eye (or eyes) through their bodies

[prima-materia-ttrpg]

It Begins / How do I introduce over six months of development in a single post?

Salutations, I'm a gay nerd and I wanted to make a fantasy ttrpg with a setting that panders to myself and anyone else who might have my taste so here we are :)

The ttrpg in question is Prima Materia, and I've been working on it for a while and making ok progress so I figure I should probably start a devblog (that's what this is) so I can finally start sharing it rather than keeping the entire project within my own circle of friends, never seeing the light of day beyond that. Particularly because I'm finally playtesting some aspects and want to actually release it into the wild someday so people can share and play it as they please.

Ah, so you've clicked the keep reading link? OHOHO you fool I shall unleash an infodump of epic proportions onto ye!

*checks notes*

Right I should probably introduce this project in more depth and explain how I got to this point, and why I'm working on it in the first place. A chronological account should suffice.

Back in the days of yore (2020) when I was getting into ttrpgs for what would become the third time I had first gotten into them (previous times don't count), I was trying to create a setting for DND so I could become a DM for the first time, fueled by the disappointment that every other game I'd been a player in ended after about 2 sessions max. Making an entire setting is of course not recommended for first time DMs, particularly ones that ever want to play the game, but of course this did not dissuade me for I am built different [incorrectly].

I built a tidally locked planet for that campaign, filled it with lore and towns and cities and an apocalypse that happened some time in the past. All was well, and the campaign lasted about a year before the holiday season came and caused it to dissipate. Reduced to atoms. By that point I had been homebrewing creatures and items for my homebrewed setting, including new playable species and subclasses. Homebrew is like a glue trap, and brother, I'm a dead rat.

After that campaign ended the OGL scandal hit (among many other things I won't go into depth about) and I saw the need to create for myself a place where I can always and forever write fun stuff to share with others, in a system that I have control over. After all, integrating the system and the setting, building them explicitly to serve each other, would allow for much more creativity.

That setting still exists on my hard drive, and while I do import some of my original work for it into Prima Materia's setting from time to time, it is dead and shall remain dead until such a time I can completely re-write it to make sense in Prima Materia. But it's so ingrained with DNDs lore that it honestly would be more like an homage to the original campaign I had with my friends.

So, I got to work. I started, of course, with watching a million videos on the subject of making a ttrpg and not actually writing anything down. But eventually, an eternity later, I was ready. I started doing some science-adjacent worldbuilding to build the initial planet for the setting, in which the initial setting would be. I created continents that looked mildly plausible, charted out ocean gyres, wind patterns, and finally climates. This continued for a while, and I made the playable species and started figuring out where on the continents they would have evolved so I could figure out what their cultures would eventually be in the modern day after 10,000 years of history.

In short, I had worldbuilder's disease; and while I did make some decent progress on mechanics like dice rolling, some combat, skills, attributes and stats, it started coming to a head when I convinced myself that I needed to make a minimum of five conlangs in order to name seven continents (and various cities).

Enter stage left, one of my friends who thinks my project is cool but recognizes that I am not getting much done. This friend, Spinz (who I hear has their own project coming down the pipeline by the way >w>), has become my Screamer of Tasks and is reminding me of the important things to focus on to actually make the ttrpg a reality some time in this millennium. Thanks to their help, I've been able to get to the stage where I am able to inflict my project onto my friends so that I may playtest mechanics and generally have an otherwise fun time with them.

So what actually is the setting? That seems like a lot of buildup and waffling.

True! I felt it was important to explain where the project is coming from. As for the setting itself, I don't think I can do better than the introduction I already wrote for it in the PDF. So here's that.

After several hundreds of trillions of years the last known natural stars in the universe began to die, heralding the end of the stelleriferous period and the start of a new age full of the neutron cores and black holes they left behind. But the gods this universe spawned would not let their mother die so soon. They created new stars fueled by their own Prima Materia, the building block from which all other substance comes; a pure marriage between matter, energy, time, and thought through which the manipulation and creation of physics itself is possible.

The gods created massive bodies for themselves in orbit around their stars. Some fell into a deep sleep, some are content to watch as the eons of time give way to the fruits of their labor. Others still engage in grandiose projects of a more personal nature. But they all continue the work which allows for life to once again evolve in the small pockets of the universe which now continue to defy entropy, a constant stream of Prima Materia flowing from their bodies into the stars that they orbit. Some day, they too will reach the stars.

But that's old news, and there are none left alive to remember it but the gods themselves. In the world of Prima Materia, you play as a relatively normal sapient creature in a smaller corner of reality that has much smaller problems to contend with. Brigands, societal clashes, ancient ruins, dragons, and the wayward extra-universal threat to the planet. Many societies have also been able to harness certain powers of now free-floating Prima Materia through a process often known as "Alchemy." Alchemy, an involved study which requires just as much craftsmanship as it does ingenuity, has opened up an entirely new science for societies to develop in this age of the universe.

Who will you be? What legends will be written in your name?

There are several playable species in the setting, all of which have various distinct cultures. Koura, which are basically giant lobsters; Sepia, which are basically giant Cuttlefish; Humans, which are basically giant chimpanzees; Entari, which are strange bird pterodactyl things with feathers (they're hard to explain but I will get art I promise); Xente, which are basically giant amoeba (ones that can change their shape to be humanoid of course, what even would be the point if they couldn't); Possum, which are basically... bipedal possums and Ternaki which are basically short technicolor space elves (They believe in God). All of these species will get their very own blog post of course, but this post is hugely long and I'm getting worried about people getting bored so that's all for now.

In the future blog posts won't be this long I promise (hopefully) and they'll be a lot more focused on one thing. This blog is meant to record the development process, write down a lot of worldbuilding that has lived only in my head for too long, and link to playtests.

If you made it this far, holy crap you read a lot of my shenanigans thank you for your time I am indebted to you, truly. The next post will be about Dice Mechanics. Bye.

P.S. If you want to ask questions about Prima Materia (or me) you can send me an ask on my main blog @girlcodedcreature

[koduflower2000]

man i love tumblr :3

w o a h /silly

asks and promises halted coz i'm not in the mood :(

maybe i'll try it sooner (or later) :)

now you might be thinking why i didn't get in touch with you guys. :/

i have the following reasons.

1. i was so busy with the university

2. everything was so stressful i wanted to pause myself

3. i had no fun doing anything outside tumblr

i was into conlanging recently in June (heh- you didn't guess i was super interested into conlanging)

nah, forget it. you might not understand what conlanging means to me. but i'll just give you the information you need. (or not)

Conlanging is the act of making constructed languages, or conlangs for short.

And that's what got me into while I was studying the Polish alphabet and their sounds.

So far, I've been making 2 languages. Plarrin, The Language of Accuracy, and Gqëbër, The Goober Language.

Plarrin was an experiment to see whether I can use the full Latin alphabet, while the other language, Goober (Gqëbër), has been an experiment to see whether I can use all the necessary sounds available on Earth, especially the voiced Q.

Now there's a lot more to be polished because the two conlangs are, for a lack of a better term, under construction, at the moment, but I can, however, provide some examples and a glossing for that as well.

Plarrin (Ze Plarin Mozhyk / The Plarrin Language)

Original quote from the Bee Movie script:

According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. The bee, of course, flies anyway. Because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.

Translation

Adulata jol il'aviacie statal, ak ne'ineno un bzys elo dzy enelo flufel. Ze bzys flufli in'komo. Kemu'dzy bzysal ne'lo'uqden homodal cho'donjo ne'in'en.

(no pronunciation clues because i'm lazy, but just know that j always has a "y" sound and y always has an unstressed "i" sound, like in the word, "pin")

Gqëbër (Gqëbër Ärgolyma / Original Goober)

Original quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"A designer knows he has acheived perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Translation:

"Lhinkutelen slates jen rhizëlolenui, pen ta nejynhua thax ne, nyn pen ta nejynhua othax."

(no phonetic transcriptions available, but j sounds like "y" and y sounds like a short "i", and also the x is a "kh" sound. rh is a french "r" sound. you see the ë right here? oh, it's the "uh" sound.)

[ranahan]

Amatakka phonology drafts

So I had a fun a conversation about Amatakka phonology with @adragonsfriend and I ended up throwing together a few quick and dirty tables to keep track of whether what I was saying even made any sense. And I thought why not throw them out here in case anyone else finds them interesting.

Before we get any further though, here’s @adragonsfriend’s document which has 100 times more thought put into it.

And for a fun comparison, here are some ideas of how I might approach putting together a phonology & IPA representation for Amatakka. Maybe some of you conlang enthusiasts will enjoy looking at how different end results two people can get from the same source material! As you can see, there are no correct answers in language construction—it’s as much an art as it’s a science.

Look at the Phonology-tab. And please ignore my notes elsewhere, they’re by no means an analysis of anything, just my attempts to figure out how the language is put together.

The big caveat emptor here is that I haven’t made any kind of a systematic study of Amatakka (an original language constructed by @fialleril—not me!). So what I have here are half a dozen different possible consonant and vowel inventories that I threw together based on some hypotheses I made from looking through the dictionary file put together by @booklindworm. The next step would be to make a systematic analysis and try out these different options, see which ones work the best, where they run into problems, and make adjustments or new hypotheses as needed. I make no guarantee of any “rules” here actually being true—they’re hypotheses about what the rules might be.

All of the consonant inventories happen to be very heavy on fricatives. I actually like that a lot, because it calls to mind the secrecy of the language, whispering, and the low-grade susurration of slaves talking with each other where the depur doesn’t hear them.

I made vowel inventories of different sizes to figure out how having more or less than the Roman alphabet’s 5 vowel sounds would work.

Some goals I had in mind when putting this together (which I’d attempt to achieve were I to develop this further):

Naturalistic phonology (i.e. make it make sense from a linguistic perspective)

Preserve the original characteristics and aesthetics of the language

And because most of the people who would likely continue working on it are not dedicated conlangers or linguists, the system should also:

Have as few rules as possible

Have as few irregularities and exceptions as possible

Have as intuitive spellings as possible (no unusual digraphs)

Any respellings should be intuitive alternatives to the spellings that have been published before (e.g. leia > leya or leyya) and shouldn’t be too numerous

Based on @adragonsfriend‘s comments, I started from the assumption that Amatakka is mainly a spoken language and that the spellings (especially of personal names) might be “Basic-ized”. So I did consider it acceptable to respell some words (e.g. Camie > Kami, Rasca > Raska) and insert some strategic vowels in a few words to simplify the phonotactics (in order to achieve both “preserve the original character” and “have as simple rules as possible”).

Edited to add: Forgot to add explicit permission, but if anyone finds anything useful here, feel free to grab it and make it your own.