#words across time

[wordacrosstime]

Bad Actors

[Bad Actors, by Mick Herron. 10 May 2022. Publisher - Soho Crime. 360 pages. ISBN-10: ‎1641293373. ISBN-13 - 978-1641293372. Weight - 1.18 pounds. Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1.17 x 8.52 inches. (publishing details thanks to Soho Crime)]

In 2010, writer Mick Herron published the first of his 8-book series centered on Slough House, an MI5 property that houses the discarded refuse of the British intelligence apparatus.  The slow horses (a play on the name of the facility) are embittered, disillusioned, and disgraced, but evidently not quite to the level of termination.  Instead, they labor on pointless, soul-crushing assignments for the Mother Ship of MI5, located at Regent’s Park in London (and prosaically dubbed The Park).

Heading up the slow horses is Jackson Lamb, himself a disgraced and hyper-cynical spy who, for reasons that are never made entirely clear, relishes his command position in this Purgatory of the intelligence community.  Lamb is ugly, foul-mouthed, misogynistic, anti-social in the extreme, and has repulsive personal and professional hygiene.  He claims to have total disregard (or possibly no regard whatsoever) for the people in his charge, whom he refers to as his joes.  But underneath the crass and off-putting demeanor lies a profound and singular intellect and an exceptionally keen understanding of the ways of the world, especially that part of the world dominated by intrigue, deception, treachery and violence.  And though he would never, ever admit it, he actually cares about his joes.  If anything is to happen to them, it had better be by his hand, or woe be unto the person or persons who got in the way.

The volume under review here, Bad Actors, is the eighth and final (?) book in the Slow Horses series.  In addition to Jackson Lamb, many of the usual suspects remain from the preceding seven installments:  Diana Taverner, the ruthless and rapacious First Desk at MI5; Roddy Ho, Slough House’s tech genius, a legend in his own mind only; Claude Whelan, who used to head up MI5; Catherine Standish, Lamb’s gal Friday and the bulwark standing between him and the chaos beneath him; and many more.

In this episode, a Downing Street superforecaster – someone who can predict, with startling accuracy, how policies will influence the electorate and advises the Prime Minister on same – has disappeared.  Claude Whelan has been assigned the job of finding her.  The trail leads back to The Park and Diana Taverner.  Just what is she up to?  Are her labyrinthine schemes for control of the Intelligence Service coming to a boil?  Or is something else at work?  Simultaneous to this domestic intrigue is the sudden arrival of Taverner’s opposite number in the Russian intelligence machine, who enters Britain under a false name and promptly loses his MI5 handlers.

Amid the tumult, the Slow Horses become involved in these machinations, for two reasons:  One, because they are terminally bored and eager to do something to set their personal records straight and perhaps – just perhaps – inveigle their way back into The Park, even though the history of Slough House suggests that this cannot happen; and Two, because Jackson Lamb hates Diana Taverner and The Park and loves to poke the hornet’s nest whenever and however he can.

Throughout this and the other seven Slough House novels, Mick Herron seamlessly interweaves caustic rhetoric with surprisingly poignant moments.  He plays off the Slow Horses against one another to varying degrees while Jackson Lamb lurks like a spider in his darkened corner of proceedings.  But when Lamb strikes, they all know to get out of his way (well, all but Roddy Ho who can’t seem to get out of his own way, much less anyone else’s) and let him do what he does best – whatever that is.  Lamb, both figuratively and literally, knows where the bodies are buried, and knows this not only within his own agency but with other intelligence services around the globe – including the Moscow directorate.  And though Slough House will never get their contributions acknowledged, even Lamb knows that sometimes the only solution to a sticky situation is a few Slow Horses – his joes.

Unlike many of his peers, Herron brings a decidedly literary quality to his writing.  Fans of John le Carré will find these novels great fun; they certainly move ahead more swiftly than, say, his Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Len Deighton's Funeral In Berlin.  There is a modern sensibility to these novels that will catch the interest of most readers of spy fiction and thrillers.  And if one can ignore Jackson Lamb’s foulness, one will be rewarding with some of the most sardonic humor to be found in modern fiction.  Herron’s writing pairs nicely with a chewy red wine and some spicy crisps of an evening.

Image credits from top : Cover with thanks to © publisher. Portrait of Mick Herron with thanks to photographer © Mikael Buck and Hachette

Kevin Gillette

Words Across Time

19 January 2024

wordsacrosstime

[valtsv]

anyone who thinks dostoevsky's writing is dry and humourless is missing out on passages like this

[torsamors]

On Seatbelts and Sunsets - Hanif Abdurraqib

[justarmor]

ok but having miles hold gwen up with his web in the exact same way as when tasm2 gwen died, AFTER THEY LITERALLY TALKED ABOUT GWEN SUFFERING A TERRIBLE FATE AFTER FALLING FOR SPIDERMAN!!! and then to reverse that later on with gwen being the one to web him Like That and miles being the one to cut the thread and let himself fall, i’m going insane

[somegrumpynerd]

I like the idea that Cross realised Killer was touchstarved (he didn't have the words for it but he noticed how much Killer would settle down from it) and started giving him very small basic affection. Pat on the back, hand on the shoulder, maybe a quick friendly hug, all things he probably learned through royal guard training and thinks of as normal friend/coworker stuff.

But as they both got more comfortable in the routine of it, Killer started instigating touches and he was not shy about it (like not just leaning into Cross's side during movie night, he looks like he's trying to get into Cross's jacket with him)

And that this more intense affection made Cross realise he might also be just a little bit touchstarved

Bonus:

[spider-phoenix]

NGL I love how the spiderverse fandom saw the ship potential and with our single collective braincell came up with the ship names on the spot and refused to change them.

No communication needed, no debate, we just knew what they'd be.

Punkflower, chaipunk, chaiflower

Yet for some reason , the Miles and Ganke ship name sucks. So I propose to the shared brain, riotflower.

Miles ship code is based on the song he was listening to in ITSV, Sunflower by Post Malone. So it only makes sense that Ganke's should be based on the song he listened to in that movie, Start a Riot by Duckworth and Shaboozey.

[frownyalfred]

I’m on the 1-2k chapter defense squad now. Y’all need to stop judging authors for writing short chapters.

The fact that they updated at all? For free?? And managed to write more than two words?? Readers can be a little more grateful.

5-10k weekly chapters are nice, but not routinely achievable for someone with a job/work or family/school etc.

[youhavethesun]

one thing about me is that i’ll EAT UP younger siblings as narrative foils of the protagonist’s innocence every damn time !! the desperate protection of this version of themselves that isn’t corrupted/damaged, a version of themselves that can still be saved.. AHHHHHHH

[paintpanic]

Res AU Joronia drawings. Character rambling and bonus doodles under cut.

This AU takes place a good while after the events of Triple Deluxe happened. Since then, Taranza's mostly recovered mentally from everything. He was able to move on from his grief and (somewhat) forgive himself. Now that Joronia's in his life again, seemingly back to her former self, some of those wounds he'd thought were fully healed have started to ache again. He still feels ultimately guilty for what happened to her.

He's thrilled that Joronia's been given a second chance at life, but is somewhat wary deep down. This feels to good to be true, that she's just back with seemingly no strings attached. The other shoe could drop any day now, and he could lose her all over again. Fearing this, he wants to make the most out of what could be a short time to be together again with his friend.

Joronia senses that there's a distance between the two of them now that wasn't there before. It shouldn't be surprising; he's probably still hurt from what she did. Other people definitely are. She's determined, though, to work hard to make it up to everyone she's hurt, and to prove to them (and herself) that she's not really like that, that she's capable of being better.

The Mirror's influence twisted her mind and her perception of reality. It made her feel like she was inadequate, and that everyone else were enemies to be subjugated. Now, she's supposed to be normal and better, but she still feels like there's something wrong with her head. She still doesn't feel good enough, and it still feels like everyone hates her. It's hard to trust herself. She's not sure if it's some lingering effect of the Mirror, or if there's just something inherently wrong with her now. She's scared.

She's afraid that something will happen, that she'll revert to how she was as Queen, and that she'll hurt Taranza again. Someone who'd always helped her, who'd stuck with her even when she was absolutely horrible to him, and who's kindness she's relying on again now, staying at his home as she worked on getting her life back together. She's a burden on him, and she always has been. She hates it.

Still, her deepest, most selfish wish is that they could be real friends again.

---

These two need to have a long, honest discussion about their feelings toward each other and themselves. Both of them are absolutely terrified about that prospect, though, because they each think that the other secretly resents them to some degree. If they actually talked through it, they'd quickly realize that they both want the same thing.

[bread-wizards]

The Crown Keeper and Fearne&Orym reunion is going to be very interesting because you have Fearne, who hesitated to take the shard because of the impact seeing dark!Fearne had on her, possibly seeing Opal again.. like this. She gets a front row seat to one of her very good friends heading down that path of corruption that she herself was scared of.

Then you have the Crown Keepers just seeing the toll these last few months have had on Orym and Fearne. I wonder if there would be any guilt from Dorian, knowing he left and came back to such a drastic change.

That Orym did get the answers he was looking for and he is crumbling under the weight of them. That Fearne has had to experience so much more loss and anger in these last few months than she had in over 100 years and she still doesn't know what to do with some of these feelings.

[balleater]

something i've already posted about in the past but am thinking about again because of the conversations in this episode is that i still truly do not understand bells hells'(well, particularly ashton's) view on what is going to happen if the information about aeor gets sent out to the people of exandria. obviously, i'm not an average person living in that world and am instead a viewer of the media with fairly extensive knowledge of the lore, so i could definitely just be missing what the impact would actually be! but the insistence that it would be a world shattering revelation that completely turns everyone against the odds just... doesn't make sense to me?

unless ludinus has a way of editing the information he presents and can take away the context, which would basically make the "footage" even more strange, what they're going to be seeing is... the gods saving themselves from people with the active ability to murder them all and having a rather humanizing crisis of what they should do about it? i guess the working with the betrayer gods part could be considered the controversial aspect of it, but overall, considering everything else that was destroyed in the calamity, aeor really was the one instance that was closest to being "justified". i don't think anyone who cares enough about the gods for this to cause any sort of big disruption of faith would have as big of a problem with it as they are assuming, nor do i really think it's something that would cause mass revolts against the gods in people who aren't devout.

[wordacrosstime]

Ingush Grammar

[Ingush Grammar. Johanna Nichols. First Edition: March 2011. University of California Press. Series: UC Publications in Linguistics. Pages: 830. Trim Size: 7 x 10 inches.  Illustrations: 1 map. Paperback. ISBN: 9780520098770]

Readers of my book reviews cannot help but notice my interest in – nay, my fascination with – linguistics and languages.  I am no stranger to Professor Nichols’s work: I read her award-winning treatise Linguistic Diversity in Time and Space a few years ago and was captivated by her command of language reconstruction principles.   Recently, it came to my attention that there might (in principle) be a call for persons to assist in national security-related activities who are fluent in, or at least familiar with, the Northeast Caucasian languages, especially Chechen and Dagestani.  The language discussed here, Ingush, is a closely-related language with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility with Chechen, Dagestani and Baltsi.  Since I couldn’t find a suitable book from which to learn Chechen, I thought I’d check this tidy little volume out.

“Tidy” is not the correct word for this work.  It tips the scales at almost 800 pages.  However, it is an undeniable tour-de-force of scholarship in the documenting of a comparatively obscure language. Prof. Nichols herself acknowledges that this tome is the culmination of about 30 years of work with Ingush, at least ten of which were spent in the homeland of the language itself, a region now known as Ingushetia in southern Russia adjacent to the Republic of Georgia and Chechnya.

The Northeast Caucasian languages are a small primary language family spoken almost exclusively in the region between the Republic of Georgia and the north end of the Caspian Sea.  Significant cities in this region are Ongusht (whence the name Ingush), Groznyy (the capital of Chechnya) and Makhachkala (the capital of Dagestan).   Though these languages share many features with Georgian (known as Kartuli to its speakers) and the similarly-named Northwest Caucasian languages (examples are Abkhazi and Cherkessian), they are not, in fact, related to them in any meaningful way.  This may seem surprising when one looks at a map of the region.  The area covered by these three language groups (Georgian is part of its own tiny language family called the Kartulian languages) is fairly small.  However, the area is peppered with mountain ranges that have carved it up geographically to a point where very ancient steppe peoples had settled in individual valleys and had no direct contact with even neighboring valleys for centuries. Little wonder, then, that language families developed independently from a still-more-ancient proto-language (as yet unidentified or classified).

Ingush, as alluded to in the previous paragraph, was named after a prominent community in its sprachbund, or speaking area.  Ingush people do not use this term, referring to their language as vai mott (our language) or, if speaking to non-Ingush speakers, vai neaxa mott (our people’s language).  Given that the homeland for this language has at least three well-defined geographic zones (alpine highlands, piedmont, and plains), it is not surprising that various dialects of Ingush have emerged.  All of these dialects are highly mutually intelligible, far from any objective criteria that would categorize them as distinct languages in their own right.

Nichols herself, in the introductory material, lists Ingush as one of the most morphologically complex languages in her experience, outstripping even daunting native American languages like Lakhota (a Siouan language of the northern Great Plains) and Halkomelem (a Salishan language from the Pacific Northwest in the USA).  Ingush has unusually large inventories of elements (phonemes, etc.), a high degree of inflectional synthesis in the verb (this is similar to some native American languages, especially the Athapaskan group) and a variety of categories of words, many of which do not have an analogue in English or any Indo-European language.  She comments that this might go some way toward explaining why this book took 30 years to produce!

Since the volume is so detailed, I will simply summarize my observations of its style and completeness.  I confess that I haven’t actually read the entire volume – I’ve probably read about 150 pages, or nearly 20% of it all told – but I have dipped into it in various places along its length to see what it was all about.  It is impossible for me to imagine that Prof Nichols missed anything; every conceivable component of Ingush seems to be covered here.  The book has 35 major sections, any one of which is worthy of at least a semester-long course of study (for the subject itself, not necessarily for Ingush per se).  Her writing tone and style strike an admirable balance between being very scholarly (it certainly is that) and yet being profoundly informative to a non-specialist like myself who is also not a trained linguist.

The best affirmation I can make of this book is that it is quite possibly the best template for any field linguist to follow when documenting and characterizing a language.  This is certainly true for someone working with an Endangered language, of which there are literally thousands still being spoken (some just barely) in the world today.  The level of commitment Prof Nichols has brought to bear on this work seems nothing short of miraculous.

This is definitely not a book for just anyone.  Like attempting to read all of Proust in the original French while not actually speaking French, a true appreciation of this book requires enormous patience and strong memory skills.  Prof Nichols refers to sections back and forth across the book, of necessity since linguistic elements do not exist in a vacuum.  That said, to truly appreciate the scope and even grandeur of this volume will command great mental agility and focus.  For anyone who is up to the challenge, I say, “Good luck – and enjoy!”  Even if you never speak Ingush or travel to that part of the world, this book will teach you something useful, edifying, and mind-expanding.

[Photo credits with thanks to : Book cover ©  2011 University of California Press / Portrait © 2012 Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin]

Kevin Gillette

Words Across Time

28 September 2022

wordsacrosstime

[venomous-qwille]

Dear 5+ asks I have had since last saturday which I wont be answering individually cause I don't want to put a target on your back:

Don't send me messages asking about GITM updates without reading my bajillion posts/ANs on the subject.

'not trying to be rude' - well you are being rude, actually, friend. receiving these messages doesnt make me feel good. In fact, it makes me feel very bad. If you spent half the effort it takes to write an ask actually reading the information I have already given people, rather than demanding a personalised answer, then we would all be a lot happier.

Another reminder, a bit louder for people in the back:

My chapters are now 12-15k words each for gitm, because of this I am now following a 3 weekly update schedule. I work full time and write for hours every evening. If that is not good enough for you, you can kindly fuck off.

peace & love, and all that

[valiantstarlights]

101 Dalmatians meet cute but with Hob and Dream. Dream's dog is a purebred named Jessamy (very calm, very regal), and Hob's dog is a mutt named Matthew (excitable and energetic).

Hob has only just recently adopted Matthew and is new in town. Dream's family has been in the area for generations. Dream is a famous author and Hob is a history professor.

Dream is just quietly reading a book and enjoying a rare sunny day out with Jessamy when this handsome man sits beside him on the bench, cheerful and friendly and making small talk. There are literally other unoccupied benches.

Dream is wary because he has had to deal with crazy stalker fans before, so he leaves with Jessamy. Matthew (still on his leash) runs after him because he smells better quality dog treats on his person, and drags Hob along.

We get the tangled leash scene, Dream's and Hob's legs getting tied together, their bodies pushed against the other. Jessamy's leash also gets tangled up with Matthew's, so the mess is a bit more difficult to undo.

Hob is apologizing and doing his best to untangle the leashes, except Matthew is hindering (and consequently undoing) his progress by jumping around, sniffing at Dream's coat pockets, left then right then back again.

Hob is like, "Sorry, I'm really sorry, he's just very excitable and--Matthew no--I'm trying to train him--stop jumping and giving me kisses ow fuck--"

Dream starts laughing.

And Hob stares at him, the two of them still tied up against each other, because Dream's face lights up, his eyes crinkled, his cheeks becoming rosy, and he has the most ridiculous laugh Hob has ever heard but it's also so endearing, that Hob just blurts out, "You're beautiful."

[muirmarie]

honestly the funniest thing is coming across ppl who are like "bones is so mean to spock 😡😡😡" like spock doesn't go out of his way to be just as big a cunt to mccoy??? it's their LOVE LANGUAGE!!! some of y'all didn't grow up watching tv shows with old broads and old queen-coded men being as cunty as possible to each other OUT OF LOVE. spock spends half his shift on the bridge coming up with mean things to say to his dr the moment mccoy flounce onto the bridge to flirt with jim (affectionate) and spock (derogatory and bloody, there will be no survivors except for them, THEY'RE having a BLAST).

listen when the cards are down they will be thoughtful and worried and touch each other SO gently and fight over who gets to die for each other. all of that is the floor they're standing on. they KNOW that. but GOSH in the meantime they're BOTH having an absolute blast bullying the shit out of each other, bless <3

[oceans-beloved]

Meme dump yayyy🥳✨️

(off to make more now muhahaha >:3)