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Thank youuu, this is so helpful!

Terms of endearment?

Hi! So, I've been working on revamping this short story that I originally wrote about 2 years ago in which some of it takes place in Mesopotamia, and I've just realised that the language I used is probably either made up or from the wrong time period.

What I used before was ana libbu, which I thought would mean "my love/my heart", but I'm realising that doesn't even work with the possessive not being -ngu...

Do you know how someone would say "my love" in Sumerian? Or maybe some other terms of endearment, both for a romantic partner and friends or family members? Did they have an equivalent of "darling" or "sweetheart"?

Hope you can help :)

Hello!

First, I did some digging on “ana libbu”, which seems to be a small part of a set phrase shag ana libbu, meaning something like “into its heart” or “into its interior” - shag “heart”, ana “its/that one” and libbu “interior, inner organs”. I can’t find an association with romance or love, so not sure what your source was on that. If you wanted a literal translation of “my heart” it would be shagngu or shangu (as the g of shag often drops out before a consonant), written 𒊮𒈬 in cuneiform.

The term I have seen most often for “my love”, for a romantic partner, is kiang 𒆠𒉘 or kianga 𒆠𒉘𒀀, meaning “beloved”. It’s derived from the verb phrase ki ang “to love”. There’s no vocab distinction between romantic v nonromantic love in Sumerian, but they wrote much more often of romantic love, so I’d definitely use kiang in a romantic context.

For a nonromantic context, I’ve found the Sumerians often used what would be the “regular” term as a term of endearment. In the well-known Sumerian lullaby, the child is addressed simply as “child”, dumu. So for a spouse, you could say dam(ngu) “(my) spouse”, or for a sister, nin “sister” would suffice. A lot of Sumerian literature can read to modern eyes as surprisingly distant or abrasive, because they were a pretty direct people, and didn’t use separate terms in this way, but calling your relative by their relevant term could hold just as much endearment as “sweetheart” would to us.

Best of luck with your writing!

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People protect a woman who is burning her scarf

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A WIN FOR THE BISEXUALS

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I present: a screenshot from my Eurovision group chat (with Norwegians and Brits)

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I wrote a thing! And it got published!

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I’ve been working on this post on and off for the last few months. I always intended to post it during Pride Month, and hey, here we are. I’ve got a lot going on in my life right now, so this might be the last book rec post for quite a while.

When possible, I’m linking to the Queer SFF Book Database since it has information on trigger warnings and links to reviews by queer readers. When not in the database of 6/15/20, I’ll be linking to Goodreads. Links are all below the cut.

Do not recommend cis authors on this post. This post is for centering trans and nonbinary authors. Please note that trans people write all sorts of stories and protagonists, and these books don’t automatically have trans or queer protagonists. 

My master list of book rec posts is here, if you want to find more.

If you’re looking for a starting place on trans SFF, I strongly suggest the Transcendent anthology series as an overview. It’ll introduce you to a wide array of incredible stories from trans and nonbinary authors. 

This list does not cover all of the amazing trans and nonbinary authors writing science fiction and fantasy! There are many more, and please feel free to suggest them here.

If you see any exclusionists or TERFs on this post, let me know without engaging and I will block them ASAP. I would prefer to keep this post a safe, positive place for trans readers. 

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california wildfires surrounding coronavirus protocols sign. 2020 in an image.

photo by noah berger

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i’ve tried writing this post twice now and i am literally incapable of putting it into words but like,,the way platonic love is so overwhelming and so powerful like it’s Literally everywhere like my friends tagging me in dumb tiktoks that they think i’d like and spamming the comments of my posts saying nice things and fucking around in the drinks aisle of the supermarket with me and going to concerts for artists that they don’t even like that much because i asked because they know we can still have fun together no matter where we are and falling back into the same patterns even though we haven’t seen each other in 5 months and reading my favourite books because i keep mentioning them to them and watching terrible horror movies together because one of them said they liked it and texting me whenever they listen to a song i recommended to them and knowing my favourite flavour of the shitty drinks they sell in the school canteen and falling asleep together on facetime only to wake up at 3am and play minecraft and spending hours talking about what we want from the future and how we feel about kids and relationships and the thought of growing up and moving away but still talking about how we’d all go to each other’s weddings despite none of us knowing what could happen in the future but that doesn’t even matter because right now we all still have each other and yeah ok i could go years without being in a romantic relationship but i don’t think it would matter because platonic bonds are so Good for us and so powerful and once you get over the fear of losing them literally nothing else matters

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Classic Hollywood Bloopers

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I’ll add some of the advice I’ve gotten that also really helps:

Read your work out loud, even if it’s just to yourself. This will give you a better sense of the dialogue and whether or not it is something that people would actually say out loud.

Beware of “talking heads”. If you have a section where it’s purely dialogue, make sure to break it up with some action. Are they gesturing with their hands? Moving around? Maybe there’s a change in their tone of voice?

Apparently, adverbs are the devil. I’m not entirely sure about this one, but I do agree that you shouldn’t use too many of them. A specific verb often works better on its own than accompanied by an adverb. For example, “he moved quickly” could be replaced with “he hurried” or “he rushed”.

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

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Divergent is a bad book, but its accidental brilliance is that it completely mauled the YA dystopian genre by stripping it down to its barest bones for maximum marketability, utterly destroying the chances of YA dystopian literature’s long-term survival 

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A study in dragons

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as a bi girl, i’m fucking tired of hearing other wlw say that f/f relationships are inherently better, healthier, and more pure than m/f relationships. stop telling wlw that women are never abusive. stop telling bi girls that men cant love them the way women can. if you believe that love is love, fucking act like it.

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The “Older Than Dirt” page on TvTropes is my favorite page on the Internet

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this feels relevant