#(obviously I know what pre/suffixes are)

[sodacowboy]

GOD I Wish I was better at understanding languages and how they work because I’d fucking love to invent one like that sounds so fun

[littleshysheep-at-da]

ooooAAAAAAAAUGHHHH.

oka's whole thing is so tragic. do u have anyheacanons for herand /or poti

I do not know what the “ooooAAAUGHH” is in response to but I feel like I agree 🤔 lol.

TBF Oka was quite literally born into the hands of one of the MOST manipulative man (Potimis) EVER. So I don’t think anyone who knows the full circumstances could really blame her but I know she’ll probably never stop blaming herself.

I like to think at some point Kyouya apologizes to Oka for what he said when they first met because he felt it was hypocritical and unfair. Which I think Kyouya is the type to not apologize for all the things he’s had to do for war, not because he doesn’t feel awful about it, but sort of because he’s resolved himself and apologizing would feel insincere and unfair (let me make this about Kyouya lmaooo my bias is so strong can you tell). But I feel like he would apologize to miss Oka for what he said to her and I also think Katia would jump in with her own form of not quite apologizing for her actions (because she was right to doubt Oka but not because of Oka herself but because of Potimis lying to her), but apologizing that she had to be put in such a position. Also Katia also is a bit of the tough love and would probably try to reason with Oka that she shouldn’t have to feel responsible for all her students just because they have a connection from their lives (as a way to sort of to try and lessen Oka’s guilt over everything). But yeah I think a lot of the reincarnations would apologize to her and try to do right by her own once they learn her full circumstances.

I would honestly be really interested on what Oka’s thought on Shiro are though? Like? To Shiro Oka is quite her savior who she owes a life debt but idk if Oka even remotely remember her at all. Like afterwards do you think she’s just like “the classroom Spider? What.” 😭 I think she would want to speak to Shiro about it which would,,, go as well as anyone (aside from Ariel) who tries to hold a conversation with her. I think once Oka knows who Shiro is she would try to include her with the other reincarnations (which has the vibe of a mother trying to get her child to socialize… sorry I love found family parent child structure sooooo much with KumoDesu lol I should make my Headcanon family tree…) it has… mixed results.

Also ngl I still find it SO FUNNY that no one taught Mera suffixs so he thinks the San (which is translated to Miss in English) is part of her name.

I genuinely call Potimis Elf H*tler cause… ngl the similarities are there. Thought they were the “superior race”, blond hair blue eyed (which obviously this one isn’t an evil trait and I feel I should specify that it’s just funny to me), actually really unhealthy themselves… y’know it’s there.

I also think Potimis sort of captures KumoDesu’s pacing when you think about it. Like the pacing of KumoDesu is REALLY GOOD, Kumoko struggles enough to make things feel intense so then when she gets overpowered it just feels so deserved. And I think seeing how fast Potimis goes from big deal to nothing that difficult to deal with is really interesting because it doesn’t feel rushed at all despite how fast that change happens? Like it’s interesting to think about that at a certain point Kumoko is sooo OP nothing is a problem of strength but more of tactics you make sure things play out the way she wants.

Also for Potimis I really think Ariel’s words to him sum it up (paraphrasing here) “was a life running from death really worth it?” Because yeah he spent so much time afraid of the inevitable did he ever really live? It’s kinda a good statement on how worrying does not prepare you for tomorrow only takes away from today.

At this point you might be able to tell the difference based on format but even if I don’t already have stuff Written down (most of what I have Pre-Written is Ship Based) I come up with stuff pretty quick! I have many thoughts! Way more than I remember to actually Write lol!

I’ll probably just start signing these Asks with this but: Again my Obligatory Thank You for Asking for my Opinion!!!!! I LOVE KUMODESU WITH MY WHOLE SOUL!!!!

[sparatus]

WBW HOEASS (affectionate)

You write the mariners union yes? Yes. I know they have a few swears that could make a pirate blush — so, what are some rude sayings, names, gestures, etc in Tiirtias (and elsewhere)

HIIII pretend it's not saturday--

so!! tiirtis are pretty famously grouchy and isolationist, so they have. kind of a lot of rude things to say about everyone, especially tourists and cipritinians, lol. there's also an old rift between the seafarers and the landbound, which stems from pre-republic times and has gotten better with time (and a common enemy in the mainlanders, thanks to the war) but still winks at you from language remnants now and again.

one of the most important distinctions for non-natives to know is the difference between zadeū and zadeuuzūt: the former means "foreigner" and is a generally neutral word, while the latter means "invader" and is very, very negative. your buddy from basic visiting for the holidays because he can't make it home himself is zadeū and will be greeted warmly and given the benefit of the doubt. a tourist wandering around being obnoxious and treating the place like a quaint little backwoods time capsule is zadeuuzūt and will be shunned, cursed at, and potentially chased off at gunpoint if they act stupid in the wrong district. the distinction came about after the great war, when cipritinians started arriving on tiirti shores to establish trade routes within the new empire and sort out how governance would work. the native, freshly-conquered tiirtis weren't impressed with the smug attitudes some of them had, and stuck with referring to all mainlanders zadeuuzūt despite the war being over, since it obviously still felt like they were being invaded and insult added to injury. over time, as a balance was struck and understanding reached, "good" mainlanders who were respectful of tiirti traditions and culture were allowed to be referred to as zadeū instead, to mark to other native speakers that this one was okay to work with and wouldn't be rude. zadeuuzūt, on the other hand, remains a highly charged word, as it tells other native speakers pretty clearly that that non-native isn't to be trusted and doesn't respect them as a unique culture.

beyond that, we also have xän, which refers to a boarlike animal native to the mainland and considered an invasive species in tiirtias. they were introduced to the island with good intentions during the republic era, hoping to bring in a new source of meat via a very hardy species that can survive just about any conditions - unfortunately, it backfired, as the xäni became infamous for destroying any area they touch. while some farms do still raise them for meat to take some of the burden off the dazduus herds, if found in the wild they are mercilessly culled and the carcasses sold to butcher shops in the city. the meat is good, but they became associated with their seemingly unending hunger and destruction, and as such became a derogatory symbol of capitalism when turians made first contact with aliens and the volus introduced them to the system. seeing only grief in a system many turians on the whole (not just the tiirtis) viewed as not in their community-driven society's best interest, the tiirtis likened those who followed the foreign system to their hated invasive pests, and it stuck. (capitalism also being a "hated invasive pest" also contributed to the new meaning of the word, of course.)

some other fun terms that have less uhhh need for explanation?

gamosmaze or gamo, just means "fuck." the shortened form is for quick grumbling, the long one for when you're really pissed. when conjugating into adjectives or nouns, gamo is used, because tiirtiak really likes its suffixes and words can get really long, so abbreviations are pretty common, lol.

dide, meaning "shit", can be used as both a noun and a verb

pretty much any word can be given a much more negative connotation and turned into a curse with the suffix "-ze," with either an "a" or a glottal stop between it and the end of the word if it ends in a consonant. alliance translators incorrectly equivocated "ze" to "hell," but that concept doesn't exist in tiiri spirituality. it's just the derogatory suffix! dazduusaze (dazduus being a shithead), bevenaze (stupid fucking half-rotted boat), you can even add it onto existing cuss words to emphasize how really pissed off you are like gamosmaze'ze or dideze!

tveux and sarnuux, said with derogatory subvocals, are a little funny because they're effectively just "waterlogged" and "filthy" but said like cuss words. tveux is old derogatory slang for the seafaring clans, sarnuux for the landbound herder clans, and they're mostly used lightly in the modern day but they do sometimes show up in heated fights between the mariners' union and the ranchers' guild over whose problems need government help first.

saying somebody's boat has holes or they've "hit the Wall" (meaning the great wall that surrounds the city, including a retractable section through the bay) a few too many times implies they're too rock-stupid to be trusted. these are fightin' words.

"shatha bait" is self-explanatory. you're so dumb you'll just fucking sit out in the open for a shatha to eat you.

"rock-claw" is slang for the gaevig to the south, their nearest neighbors. the gaevig evolved to climb trees and sheer rock faces, including the sea-cliffs along the coast closest to tiirtias, so that was early tiirti sailors' first impression of them. "rock-claw" is fairly friendly, but the alternative "zixu'äxu" ("broken tooth," implying they ate the rocks) is decidedly not.

okay i'm sure there's more i'm forgetting about but those are the fun and important ones!! sorry for the text wall oops

[guzhuangheaven]

Hello! I've seen many posts here on traditional clothing, but also on other topics, so I hope this is an appropriate question to ask. Could you please explain about different diminutives and terms of endearment in Chinese, like Xiao- (小), A-/Ah- (阿), -Er (兒), Lao (老), Lang (郎), and -Ge/-Jie/-Di/-Mei (哥/姐/弟/妹) (between non-biological relatives)? When would you use these, what is the difference between them and why would you use one over another, and how do you know which part of the name to pair?

The easy bit to tackle is the ge/jie/di/mei which when used socially are just an indicator of your relative age to the person you are addressing. So you would call a social acquaintance/friend who is slightly older than you ge/xiong or jie, and someone slightly younger than you di or mei. Ge/xiong and jie can also be used for someone around the same age as you as a sign of respect. I would say these honorifics imply a more informal relationship, but it is not such a close relationship that allows a more intimate diminutive or nickname like Lao X. If on an English-speaking scale of formality between calling someone Mr/Miss X, their name, or calling them dude or bro or some other affectionate insulting nickname, you’re somewhere in the middle. It’s basically the equivalent to being on a first name basis with someone, it’s just that the cultural values requires an honorific like ge/jie/di/mei to clarify the social relationship.

Regarding other terms like xiao/ah/er/lao/lang, it’s important to be aware that there are no hard set rules about how to use any of them. Most of the time diminutives of names evolve organically through social interactions. There isn’t any rule that X name has to be paired with xiao or er, any more than there are rules that a person named Robert can only be nicknamed Rob instead of Bob or whatever. Whether you’re called Rob or Bob or Bobby, or whether only your mum calls you Bobby and everyone else calls you Rob, entirely depends on whatever arbitrary reason you chose that name as your preferred name or what those around you decided to call you.

That said, of course there are certain connotations to be read when certain diminutives are used in certain contexts.

Diminutives like xiao and er are often given to children by older generations of their family, and can stick around until adulthood. If you’re a man, and unless your name is actually Xiao X, if you are still called xiao and er into adulthood, this is likely because these diminutives were childhood nicknames that stuck around, and would only be used by those very close to you anyway. An example of this is in Nirvana in Fire, where you have people from Lin Shu’s childhood calling him Xiao Shu because that was his family nickname when he was young. It’s probably also meant to emphasise that Lin Shu as an identity is perpetually stuck at age 19. In any case, cute diminutives like xiao and er may be used for a grown man by members from older generations of his family such as parents or grandparents, but would unlikely be used between peers or those from the same generation. Between peers, grown men would be more likely to use each other’s courtesy names rather than diminutives.

Xiao and er can be more often used between those of the same generation/peers as diminutives for women but even then, it often also implies a close relationship. Of course, I would say the spectrum of formality for addressing women is a lot narrower than men, as historically women would have more limited avenues of social interaction. You’re probably working with two extremes of “very formal title” and “intimate nickname/diminutive” with very little in between. Between two women, it’s probably easier to move into using the intimate nickname. But for a man to address a woman he is unrelated to with a diminutive such as xiao and er would probably imply they have either known each other all their lives or otherwise have a very intimate relationship. The exception would only be if everyone called her by those diminutives and there’s no other more formal option.

Ah is usually used to tack on to the given name of people who have a one-character given name, and you don’t want to call them by their full surname + given name, because that would be too formal. It can be used as a diminutive for people who have two-character given names as well, but I think that’s less usual.

I would equate lao to something like the modern English dude or bro, in that it has that back-slapping male vibe to it. As a nickname, it certainly is more often used between men and paired with the surname or the numbering position you hold within your family.

(Not to be confused with lao when used as a term of respect for older people, which is another story.)

Lang is an interesting one, because it can be very social or very intimate depending on the context. I personally tend to associate lang with a certain period around the Tang and Song dynasties, though I’m sure it was used in other times as well. Lang can be paired with your surname and/or your numbering within the family and used by people when talking about you or to you, simply to denote that you are a male member of that family. So for example, in The Story of Ming Lan, Gu Ting Ye is often referred to socially as Gu Er Lang, which basically is just a way to indicate that the person is referring to the second son of the Gu family without saying his full name (which is rude) or calling him by some more formal title (which might sound stuffy in a close social context and/or not quite appropriate if the person talking is a social/generational superior). So there’s nothing special about someone like the emperor or Gu Ting Ye’s stepmother calling him Er Lang, because it’s just a mode of address.  But at the same time, there’s a whole plot point of Gu Ting Ye trying to get Ming Lan to call him Er Lang after they are married, because between a couple, lang is a much more intimate term of endearment.  

In terms which part of the name you would pair with any/all of these pre/suffixes, that also highly depends on your name. If you share a generational name with your brothers/sisters/cousins, usually your diminutive would most likely be paired with the other name that is unique to you. Alternatively, some people’s diminutive name might derive from the first character of their given name, others might be from the second character, simply because whichever character it is flows better with the diminutive term, or because it’s just randomly chosen. Since if you have a two-character name, both are your names it doesn’t really matter which you turn into a diminutive.

These are just some points that come to mind, but again, these terms can be extremely fluid, so there are no rules about how they must be used, which also means that their usage is often open to interpretation. A term of endearment might also become special because only X person uses it, not because the name per se is special. If everyone calls you Tonks and there’s that one person who’s allowed to call you Dora then obviously you have a different relationship with that person.  -H

[catboy-jaebeom]

not to be a nerd on main about this, but we should stop transcribing 형 / 누나 and 오빠* / 언니 as bro / sis. linguistically they have very different connotations and it's kinda driving me up a wall as someone who's very invested and interested in languages, like, I do realize that especially casual watchers of like kdramas, who just started getting into them after Netflix or whomever added a bunch of them to their library, don't really care and that's totally fine with me! it's a considerably small thing, and if you just wanna watch something without diving into the language or culture or anything, then you're totally free to, that's valid, honestly

just. that's not what those words mean, connotation-wise and every time I read "bro!" or "sis!" in Netflix's or even YT's subtitles I die a bit inside.

obviously I'm not Korean and if anyone who speaks the language well / lives in Korea and is well familiar with when those are used, wants to weigh in, feel absolutely free to!

but to break it down briefly, those are honorifics attached to a person's name if they're older than you, but not, like, significantly. older students, older colleagues at work if you're a bit more friendly with them, friends, and ( your actual ) siblings. they are normal and do not immediately imply you view the other person as a sort of sibling from another parent.

yes, they do basically translate to "older brother" / "older sister", but transcribing it with "bro" and "sis" respectively has an entirely different impact than what they are actually supposed to infer. it's a polite suffix, that can in certain situations also imply trust or a more intimate relationship, because otherwise ( especially outside of a school context ) you'd use 씨 ( shee ) after their name. just that nobody especially in a school context does that because they use 형 ( hyeong / hyung ) / 누나 ( noona ) and 오빠* ( oppa ) / 언니 ( eonnie / unnie ) — former is used by males and latter by females, both times to address an older 'brother' / an older 'sister' respectively — either alone or after their name.

the companion piece is adding 아 or 야 (-a for names with a consonant at the end or -ya for those with a vowel ) to the names of people younger than you ( or those you're close with ) — and for example in All Of Us Are Dead they do that all the time and it's not transcribed by cutesy-fying their names is it now. they just put their names into the subtitles and move on.

I personally think it'd be much better to simply use you in any other sentence and if some character yells 형! across the room in distress, to transcribe it with the other character's name for emphasis. that's for me personally the closest, connotation-wise.

or, you know, have hyeong / noona / eunnie / oppa* in the transcript / subtitles in italics and explain it with some translator annotation the first time it appears alone. but that's generally an issue with subtitles on such platforms I feel. they remove words when creating the subtitles and leave out such nuances because gods forbid they'd force casual viewers to pause the show to read the annotations akskdkf. either way,

tl;dr they don't use teen slang in kdramas all the time even if the subtitles would have you believe otherwise and it's probably a problem that stems from companies thinking they can't "bother" their customers with having to pause to read, but I think that's simply taking away important context to a depicted story and I'd really like it to stop, thank you.

*oppa is a bit special because it is also used as a sort of term of endearment by women towards their boyfriends, or like, when they flirt with them pre-relationship, so it can also imply a romantic interest, be mindful of that. but I'd assume then it'd be transcribed with some sort of babe or honey or something.

[oakleaf--bearer]

hiya! was looking through your blog and saw you posted a while back about the influence of latin in the rqg world after dragons happened - it's something i've thought a lot about so i was just wondering if you have any particular thoughts on it that you'd be willing to share !! have a good day!

!!!!!!

i absolutely would be willing to share!!!!

so i'm an archaeologist and while my interest is not rome, i do know a fair amount about roman britain, particularly the roman influences on our language and place names, as well as the spread of culture across europe in the irl post roman world. i am gonna be talking a bit more about britain bc that's what i know most about, but a lot of this is true for most of europe (though if someone knows more about roman europe then i would be fascinated to hear about it!!)

irl, we know that britain was a roman country. we still have roman buildings, roman names, pre-roman britain never fully recovered from the colonisation, heroes like arthur are very obviously post-roman in nature. however, in rqg how far would that influence go? we know that characters (at least to our ears) speak modern english, a language with a lot of latin roots (english isn't a latinate language, it's germanic, so an argument could be made for that being the cause, but we still get a lot of what we say from latin) (also places with the suffix caster/chester/cester were sites of roman forts (coming from the latin 'castrum'). in addition to this, plus a more obvious one for rqg bc they spend a lot of time in london, 'london' comes from the roman 'londinium')

HOWEVER

rqg britain couldn't have been a roman country to the same extent as irl britain. irl, the romans were in britain for 400 years before they left, giving plenty of time for latin to become a common language. they invaded in 43 AD.

in rqg, rome was destroyed by dragons during the reign of nero. nero died in 68 AD, giving the romans less than 25 years in britain before rome was flattened by dragonfire. they couldn't have had the same influence on english as a language because they simply didn't have the time

HOWEVER PT 2

we know that people survived the dragoning, and we know that there was refugees who moved away. my hypothesis for how latin became so influential? how seemingly so little of roman culture survived but the language does? refugees fleeing roman italy. people escaping the dragons and the ruins of rome (ruins that were quite literally the most inhospitable place on earth). these people spread across europe, taking nothing with them

except their language

[mallowstep]

📖 (foxstride)

ask thingy

@foxstride

okay i mentioned this to you on discord but i didn't go into it but. okay. okay. the au where mistyfoot is hawk, moth, and tadpole's mother. this has been just. it's been chewing on my brain and i don't know when i'm going to write it so since u gave me a blank canvas, i'm going to ramble about it for as long as i can.

cw: implied/referenced sexual assault; brief suicidal ideation; standard tigerclan content (abuse, child abuse, starvation, dehumanization, etc.); referenced force feeding

okay oh my gosh okay. this has. so obviously i've been thinking about riverclan lately. a lot. it's rcam. anyway. i don't want. i'm trying to get to the point and not loop around aimlessly for two hundred words but okay but okay. anyway.

i've been thinking of all the different ways i can deeply traumatize misty, storm, and feather. and maybe stone. maybe i'll let stone live at some point. that'd be fun.

right so i've been thinking of that and my ideas are all over the place. i'm going to let primrosepaw live at some point. at one point i'm going to have stormpaw, and maybe primrosepaw or reedpaw (and...what's the other one? is it perchpaw or pikepaw? whatever) the point is i'll have some collection of stormpaw and some or all of mistyfoot's kits escape but not misty and feather so we can do survivor's guilt and.

anyway so i was writing the excerpt for the primrosepaw is definitely there au (it's kind of not Tethered because most of these aren't mutually incompatible like that au could be any of the others), and tigerstar has that dialogue about kits yeah?

so when i was writing it, i was thinking about just. he's trying to dehumanize all of them, right? that's his goal with that line. he's separating mistyfoot from her kits, trying to erase the meaning of their relationships. that's like. that's what i was considering when i was writing it.

buuuuuuut. y'know. my brain is chewing on it. and it just. hm. Hm. what if. what If tadpole, moth, and hawk were misty and tiger kits. hm. hmm. hm.

and so i am just instantly. very on board with this. there's so much potential.

so i Think the point of canon divergence is the rescue attempt. i haven't decided if stormpaw is successfully rescued or not. featherpaw doesn't for reasons i'm circling around to, but stormpaw may or may not. it certainly Matters in a broad sense but i haven't made up my mind, and i doubt i'm going to write Multiple aus about this. i mean i might u never know but it'd b like writing an alternate stolag: i mean i suppose i Could but it would feel weird.

okay almost burnt my dinner i said i'm very this has just been slowly rotting my brain out. i like Angst and it's been a while since i've written any.

okay there was fmtws but really that got me started. i'm not a fluff person. and y'all know that by now.

so Back On Topic. so Anyway after the rescue attempt fails/partially fails, tigerstar takes his anger out at the apprentices being Alive on featherpaw and she gets to. uh. help tigerclan practice fighting.

"Let me see her," Mudfur hissed. "No," Tigerstar said. "I've told you." Mudfur growled. Featherpaw dragged herself to her feet, and Mistyfoot glanced back at her. They would leave they would leave they would leave and then she could lie down again and try not to think. "You're not my leader," Mudfur said, and Featherpaw winced. Mistyfoot could see what was going on, but she was sitting still as a stone. Mudfur pressed into their — Mudfur pressed in, laying a wrapped bundle at Mistyfoot's feet. "Let me—" "No," Mistyfoot said. "Just go." Mudfur dipped his head. Tigerstar's steps moved away from them, but the shouts and arguments surrounding Mudfur were just buzzing noise in Featherpaw's head. She made out, "She's going to die," and she thought, that wouldn't be the worst thing.

thank You featherpaw. you will suffer for the au as a whole. anyway this takes place...i'm not Quite sure but mistyfoot does have a reason for not letting mudfur in. and that reason is she is in Denial about being pregnant.

if mudfur comes in he'll know (i have not forgotten that cats can smell unlike the erins), and mistyfoot is acting in denial. altho she rationalizes it to herself as being for mudfur's protection: runningnose is a medicine cat too, and so tigerstar could off mudfur without much effort.

(also i tend to mix up mudfur and mudclaw sometimes understand i am talking about the riverclan medicine cat, not the windclan deputy. i just mistype them sometimes.)

anyway so she has a legitimate reason (mudfur's continual survival, which is better for her and featherpaw longterm), and she does not want mudfur to know.

yeah.

all in all, this happens before the great battle. mistyfoot fights in it (again, denial), featherpaw and stormpaw are reunited (yes i think i made up my mind), (wait maybe stonefur lives too, and then both pairs of siblings reconnect, and stonefur is like "oh Shit" and. okay yes. maybe. i don't know.)

(there's a Lot. ohh maybe. wait best of both worlds okay. mistyfoot Thinks stonefur is dead. but stonefur doesn't get a proper burial but at the same time riverclan is Not going to go for their deputy on bonepile and even if they do go for it, they're not going to stripe his bones nor are they going to let a Physical Cat Corpse rot in camp. so when firestar and greystripe rescue stormpaw, stormpaw Insists they go back for his body, and then they realize he's Alive but obviously mistyfoot doesn't know.)

(there then i get the Best of both worlds. and stonefur and feathertail are in the Chronic Pain club.)

(also the thing w/ fighting is also what happens in "someday when the world is much brighter". not that Particular scene or in that Particular way, but it does happen. i mean almost exactly in that particular way. but that scene is from a different fic.)

anyway okay moving on i did add too much chili powder to my dinner but that's fine i'm still not over when someone refused to give me more harissa because "it's spicy" like yes i know i guarantee my mom makes it spicier.

back on topic sorry. i've been writing this as i do other things bc i have so much to say about this and i don't want to wait for tomorrow to share this because it's been just Rotting away my brain.

anyway so siblings reunite. it's...terse. it's complicated.

there's some parallels going on right? like because both featherpaw and stormpaw are basically in the mindset of looking after their mentors (which mistyfoot and stonefur feel Terrible about), everyone has survivor's guilt (i don't know what to call like, survivor's guilt when it's not actually survivor's guilt so if someone has a correct word please let me know) except for Maybe featherpaw.

featherpaw might be the Only one here who doesn't have survivor's guilt. i don't really want to explore the one way she could end up with it. that's past my comfort level at the moment.

but stormpaw and mistyfoot are the most physically healthy, and stormpaw and stonefur escaped.

stormpaw: i have not been hurt by this in any way

everyone around stormpaw: you have definitely been hurt by this

stormpaw: i have not been hurt by this in any way

stormpaw and featherpaw become warriors, leopardstar makes mistyfoot deputy (because stonefur is still recovering and also no longer wants the position. mistyfoot doesn't either but she's in denial and she doesn't want anyone else to have it. mistyfoot is visibly pregnant and still kind of in denial at this point. like it's been at least a moon and she is refusing to talk about it.)

right so i think stormpaw's name is going to be stormheart because i don't know it was always weird to me that stormfur and stonefur have the same suffix. like given Everything that's going on it feels weird to me. ig it'd actually be less weird in this, given that stonefur is still alive, but do you know How Close stonefur and stormfur are. they're one consonant cluster off. they're One consonant cluster off.

so leopardstar names him stormheart. feathertail can keep her name because it's pretty.

mistyfoot is a moon away from kitting. she refuses to talk about it. to anyone. whatsoever.

feathertail and stonefur decide to stage an intervention.

(they leave stormheart out not because he's not part of the found family, but because mistyfoot literally will not tolerate a single word about this. like a single word. like she will growl at you if you look at her stomach for too long.

so given the fairly high odds that mistyfoot gets violent, they keep stormheart out of it. she's the least likely to attack stonefur and feathertail.

stormheart finds out about this later and is like "do you guys realize if this went south you had absolutely 0 control over the situation. like what are you guys going to do. you incapable of doing anything to stop her if something goes wrong."

feathertail is like "yes. that's the point."

feathertail is both kind of right and also very internally messed up from being used for "training" when she wasn't allowed to fight back. feathertail also hates if you call her by just her prefix. she does not tell anyone this. misty is aware of this, and she tells stone and storm, and riverclan does eventually figure it out. plus it's not like feathertail is close enough to anyone else for them to call her "feather".

okay i'm getting off topic sorry i've been working on a tpb thing for swtwimb, and the one scene i have is cats making fun of her for not fighting back (again she is not allowed to they might kill her if she does), so they call her "featherkit" and that eventually gets brought down to feather and i'm rambling anyway On topic again.)

so stonefur and feathertail are like. "mistyfoot you are like. a half moon away from kitting. it is impairing your ability to do warrior duties. you need to like. acknowledge this."

anyway after a very terse conversation. after a veeery terse conversation, where mistyfoot is like. very close to just absolutely abandoning riverclan. they get her to admit that yes she is pregnant and yes she needs to stop doing warrior duties for the moment.

she wasn't exactly Healthy when she was pregnant because even tho tigerstar made a Point of making her like. eat enough to be healthy and also not violently attacking her. she had still been starved for...idk long enough for her ribs to show. i'm not sure what the exact timeline on this is yet.

also then After Tigerclan she did not eat as much as she should have because (a) denial and (b) she had been forcefed and so now she's. not doing that.

oh wow i've written long enough for my grammar checker to turn off again. that hasn't happened in ages.

all bets are off from here on out re grammar and spelling.

okay so mistyfoot isn't going to move into the nursery. i believe mosspelt has had a litter of 3 kits, or will have one as we see in asir, but mistyfoot isn't. she's not moving into it. stone, misty, storm, and feathertail share a den. no one else is allowed into it for Any Reason.

so anyway, they expand the den. riverclan as a whole might? i'm not sure who's good at weaving bc i don't have headcanons for this time period. probably not feathertail, but possibly stonefur. hm. anyway, they expand the den, mistyfoot will raise the kits in this den, everyone is on board with this.

mostly because it's this or mistyfoot like. runs away. which obviously no one wants. riverclan is on the side of...the four? riverclan is on the side of the four. even if they're not like, even though the four don't trust them, feathertail and misty especially (stone and storm tolerate it much better). but even tho things are complicated, riverclan is certainly going to do actions. they're certainly going to try to demonstrate their support.

okay so mistyfoot gives birth to her kits, and she is. not feeling good. about it. she's feeling terrible about it actually. she's feeling terrible about things. she doesn't want to name them.

usuuually in this situation, after the queens (collective) decided its in the best interest of the kits to be raised by someone other than their birth mother, the kits would be given to another queen.

but see. feathertail, stonefur, and stormheart are All attatched to these kits. deeply attatched to them. and mistyfoot is not willing to give them up either.

so mistyfoot isn't willing to give them up to another riverclan queen, and feathertail, stone, and storm all Want to raise them, and also don't want to give them to another queen.

the queens confer with mudfur that it is absolutely the worst possible thing they could do to forcibly remove the kits from mistyfoot. like that is the Worst option. they'd be lucky to get the kits alive, feathertail and mistyfoot are likely to abandon riverclan, and if misty and feathertail abandon riverclan, stone and storm will follow.

they're stuck in a standstill for a while. the four eventually do name them hawkkit, mothkit, and tadpolekit. the kits are about a moon old and ready to be weaned. mistyfoot is still extremely tense about the affair, but she's willing to part with them. she's able to recognize that's in the best interest of the kits, mosspelt's litter is about the same age, moving them into the nursery is going to give them a more normal upbringing, everyone is on the same page.

feathertail, who's having a lot of self worth issues, decides that moving into the nursery is her best bet for clan usefulness (which (a) feathertail you cannot keep up with kits and (b) the whole Place she's in is bad to begin with), moves in with them.

the kits decide feathertail is their mother now (they're old enough to understand that she didn't give birth to them, altho i haven't decided if they remember misty as their mother and if they're told any information re their birth parents depends exactly What kind of angst i want to write), and feathertail is. okay with this.

unlike asir, she's not blindsided with the tigerstar-is-their-father reveal, so she does have some issues with hawkkit reminding her of tigerstar, he's not really her Big Bad Trauma Nightmares. she has way more issues with the riverclan warriors directly involved in her abuse.

anyway, i don't know what happens tnp era stuff. i haven't gotten that far yet. maybe this will be another au where hawk and/or moth is a prophecy cat. i'm not sure. i haven't gotten farther than this.

but here you go i started writing this like an hour and a half ago and while i did stop to eat, i also just finally put everything i have for this au on one page and i hope and pray that will stave off the brainrot until i have a chance to actually write it.

[liskantope]

My strongly-felt hyphenating conventions that are strongly felt

Among all my strongly-felt-to-be-correct grammatical/punctuation conventions that I get irritated by in other people’s writing are a lot of issues with how other people use hyphens. I don’t know if there’s any actual basis for my strong convictions on the Correct and Incorrect Ways of Hyphenation, but they come somewhere from deep in my linguistic sensitivity gut.

One of these rules that comes up most commonly is that hyphens should be used connect certain types of phrases to make them into single modifiers of nouns but not when those same phrases are used in an adverbial way at the end of a clause, e.g. “I followed the instructions step by step” but “the step-by-step instructions”. I frequently see people using the opposite hyphen conventions in both of the phrases given above. These kinds of constructions appear often in mathematical writing and have been a minor source of tension with coauthors: I strongly prefer phrases like “we reduce the resulting subgroup mod p” and “the mod-p reduction of the resulting subgroup” with this hyphening convention while many other mathematical writers will put a hyphen in the former phrase and will leave a hyphen out of the latter, perhaps inconsistently.

A similar convention goes for often-hyphenated phrases (i.e. phrases that are often hyphenated) composed of an adverb modifiying an adjective (which is typically a past participle) where a hyphen should be used when the phrase is in attributive position but not when the phrase is in predicative position; for instance, “this is not a well-defined notion” versus “the concept is well defined”, phraseology that appears both in my mathematical and non-mathematical writing. That said, there are some such terms, such as long-winded and ill-mannered, which seem like they obviously have to be hyphenated in all contexts, so I’m somewhat feeling this out by ear I guess?

One puzzle that has bothered me for years is what to do when (as comes up often in my style of writing on this blog, for instance) I want to add a prefix (e.g. pre-, anti-) or suffix (e.g. -ish, -y) to a full phrase (which may even be a proper noun). The issue is that the prefix or suffix clearly needs a hyphen because it isn’t really supposed to look like an independent word, but then it would seem that my choices were either (1) to attach it to only the first/last word of the phrase, putting an awkward/unnatural-looking weight on that word, e.g. pre-War of the Roses or (2) to attach the affix to the phrase by hyphenating the entire phrase as well as the connected affix, which looks more annoying and compresses the phrase more than desired, e.g. pre-War-of-the-Roses. I think solution (1) tends to be seen more commonly, while for years I stuck stubbornly to solution (2) as the lesser of two evils. But this year I finally saw what should have been the obvious solution: don’t connect any words to each other with hyphens but just leave a hyphen on the affix with a space between it and the phrase, e.g. pre- War of the Roses. Skimming back through my last few months’ posts I see where I employed this several times, such as my use of “Scott Alexander -esque” here and “proto- Rebel Alliance” here.

[jennamoran]

On Ninuanni Names (19)

Earlier posts: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Interlude, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)

Hi all!

In recent months I’ve been doing a writeup of the naming conventions in the lands beyond the world, principally for the use of people playing Glitch or creating NPCs for Nobilis. We’ve covered almost all of it, but there are a couple of special topics remaining, and I wanted to go over the them tonight!

                            Diminutives

Traditionally a diminutive form of an Excrucian name—used in familiar contexts, among friends and family; rarely, as a pejorative—replaces the second element with one of the diminutive elements discussed below. This is an art and not a science:

To grasp exactly which diminutives go well with which primary elements, and when, and why, and when one should change (or add, or erase) the interstitial vowel, requires the kind of deep familiarity with the Ninuanni language which the players can acquire only by assertion: by deciding that the way they feel it should be done is obviously the actual and appropriate way to do it, correcting or not correcting and laughing or not laughing at the attempts of Creational NPCs to do the same.

If a player believes the correct diminutive of Genseric is Gensedin—assuming that their PC knows what they’re doing; that they’re not some special case—then the player is doubtlessly correct. If they think that Gensedin is the kind of diminutive only an American could possibly come up with, and that the diminutive of Genseric is obviously Gensla or Gensica, then that would be true instead. If players disagree, it becomes a matter for casual linguistic argument.

A number of these diminutive roots, as seen in earlier examples, have been integrated directly into names; this is an aberration stemming from the lack of an authoritative Ninuanni language Academy or name list. Occasionally a confused or pompous Excrucian will try to impute a “real” name onto someone with such a given name, e.g., calling an Aurica “Oeriel” or whatnot; other times, someone desperate for familiarity will drop the primary element entirely, turning an already-diminished name like “Jocelin” or “Dulcilla” into “Linely” or “L.” Ultimately, pre-diminished names are names like any other; the rule that Ninuanni know best how to form their diminutives, and that players act as their real-world representatives in this regard, remains in force.

Here’s what they are!

           -------

        DEFAULT DIMINUTIVE

Suffixes: -din

            The closest to a default and uninflected diminutive in Ninuanni culture is “-din.” It’s comparable to cutting off an English name and adding “-ie” or “-y.” It’s not that you can do that to every name, or even most names, and it’s not that it’s always kind of a base-level friendly diminutive if you do—but if you had to guess, blindly, in the dark, how to make a solid casual diminutive for an English name, grabbing the first non-vowel syllable and sticking an “-ie” or “-y” after it is probably what you’d do.

In Ninuan, with the primary root and “-din,” it is pretty much the same.

“-din” can be read much like “sweet” or “dear,” but specifically when used by the kind of people who can get away with using that to their friends—it’s not the nasty or the demeaning “dear,” it’s the thoughtlessly caring and inattentive one.

Actual names that use this diminutive don’t generally have luthes; if they do, standard form is to tweak the primary element’s luthe and then to go on an improvisational riff from there.

              -------

           FLOATING

Suffixes: -ia, -ias, -ius, -ja, -ya

                 This class of diminutives pretty much strip a name down to the unadorned, context-free version of the primary element. They leave it floating and unattached—it’s not just not adding anything, but very specifically putting a cap on the meaning right after the primary element completes.

The name becomes the primary element alone, stripped of all connections.

In some cases that’s the same thing as the primary element. For instance, the primary element of “Colias” means cold, so that’s what the whole name means. Just ... cold. You don’t need context for that. A physicist might argue but this isn’t physics, this is language:

If it’s cold, if it’s just cold, it’s ... cold.

In other cases, though, the meaning can actually change a little bit when it’s stripped of everything else.

For instance, “Galaias” is just grim. Stripped of everything else. Grim for no reason. Grim, because, grim. So sometimes it’s read as grim, but usually it’s understood as emo.

Similarly, “Aquincias” is just royal. Not royal because of any particular heritage or deed, not royal because it’s been earned or given, but also not as some kind of intrinsically false claim. So it could be read as royal, but it’s usually toned down a bit to big shot.

These aren’t the nicest or softest diminutives in the world, and they usually come across as a kind of rough teasing or an active denial of the secondary element of someone’s name—particularly “-ias” and “-ius,” which are unlikely to just slip off the tongue. Floating diminutives are not necessarily mean, though, either; rough teasing can be fine among good friends, and some secondary elements are better off elided.

Actual names that use this diminutive don’t generally have luthes; if they do, it’s by covertly borrowing a second element from somewhere else.

             -------

              LIGHT

Suffixes: -lin, -line, -llino, -llinus, -lona

This class of diminutives is light-hearted; they steal the gravity of the primary element, but don’t add anything more. They’re very pure, and generally inoffensive—almost as good a default as “-din,” and the kind of thing one can generally pair with a fist pump or high five.

For instance, Colias, cold, can turn into Collin, chilly. In an affectionate sort of way.

Athanaric, promised commander, can turn into Athanallino, destiny dude(tte)[1].

Most of these endings are fairly high-energy—one has to really lean into it deliberately to use -llino, -llinus, or -lona with most names—but the -lin diminutive can come up a lot in a sufficiently casual space.

Again, actual names that use this diminutive don’t have luthes, or do so only by borrowing a second element from somewhere else.

[1] (Or possibly unspecified.)

             -------

                 NOMINALIZING [(ONE)]

Suffixes: -in, -’in

            This class of diminutives, as previously discussed, converts the primary element into a noun, sometimes in a playfully indirect or poetic fashion. It doesn’t change that much if the primary element was already a noun, or was an adjective with a strong implicit noun of “the person with this name,” though.

Often, as noted, one can frame this as either nothing at all or the word ONE.

Thus, “Pepin” becomes “nascent one”—or seed.

“Ebrin” becomes “boar one”—or stubborn.

“Era’in,” a traditional nickname for Eraric, becomes “war one”—or oh warry one, optionally with a roll of one’s eyes.

Actual names that end with this diminutive don’t have a suffix luthe of their own—none of the diminutive suffixes do—but the nominalizing diminutive doesn’t occlude the luthe for the primary element; instead, if someone has an actual name that ends in one of these diminutives, they’ll tweak the phrasing and punctuation on the primary element’s luthe, and that becomes the entire thing. Pepin’s luthe, for instance, is just the luthe for “Pep-.”

                    -------

               PATRONIZING

Suffixes: -la, -las, -lash, -lios, -lla; -ely

                This class of diminutives is a little more patronizing, a little more ... adult-to-child, perhaps? than the default. They’re still suitable for use among friends and family, just with a caution tag attached—they can definitely be used as putdowns, so you need to either watch your tone or make sure you’re talking to someone who either won’t mind a putdown or knows you don’t intend one.

You might read the name as “little (primary element),” “(primary element)ling,” “(primary element)let” ... or just as “precious.”

There are a fair number of names that actually use these suffixes, mostly due to childhood names or nicknames that don’t get discarded—all it takes is one Senelas or Sansalas getting their name into legend while people are still calling them that for it suddenly to get hard for them to change it ... and then other people will start using that name, fairly often, as well. There’s still no luthe for these suffixes, though; one generally uses the luthe for different secondary elements on different days.

A classic example is “Sansalas”—little summer, which winds up mostly meaning summery.

              -------

              POSSESSIVE

Suffixes: -ca, -ica, -ikas, -ka

                  This class of diminutives is subtly, fondly possessive. For actual names that use this diminutive, the luthe and framing transfigure accordingly, but there are no agreed-upon rules for this—the player will have to adapt them on their own.

A classic example is “Alica”—my blessed.

A more complex example is “Aurica”—it could be read as my desert, but that’s a little weird, because who lovingly curls up with someone and says, “Oh, my desert, you desiccate the very veins of me?” It’s still desert with a kind of fond possessiveness, though, so it’s generally read as sandy. Like, “oh, you, you’ve got sand in your hair again, haven’t you.”

Or, “there you go, being a desert.”

... that kind of thing.

            -------

            SIMPLE

Suffixes: -us; -dus; (no second element)

           The last category of diminutives is effectively blank—it lets the name trail off after the primary element, literally or metaphorically. This can be a lot like the floating diminutive: there’s not much difference in meaning between Colias and Coldus, and in fact you can construct “Colius” either way—

But for a lot of names, it’s important to note that the simple diminutive lacks the explicit decontextualization of the floating roots and the explicit light-heartedness of the lighter ones. It’s just, casually not going any further, or possibly (with the “us” or “dus”) savoring that you’re in a social position to not have to go any further.

Thus, a name like Ebrimud can become Ebridus, Ebri, or Ebria—by the rule that lets you add a vowel “between” the two elements. It still means boar-strategy, at least, if the actual name is still Ebrimud, but the speaker is being really casual about it.

Actual names that use this diminutive may or may not have luthes; if they do, the standard form is to tweak the primary element’s luthe and then stop.

              -------

            Surnames

So, one final topic: surnames.

The way I figure it, surnames are a Creation thing. Maybe even an Earth thing. Not so much a thing of Ninuan.

So a lot of Excrucians have them, but there aren’t endless aeons of pre-Creation tradition. The pre-Creation tradition is, like, if there are two Orderics, they suck it up and figure out how to deal with it, like I do when multiple people with the same name visit my house and I can’t constantly remember their surnames, I’m not a phone book.

If absolutely necessary, like, if those two Orderics get married? Maybe one of them would switch to a “luthe-mate” name, that is, like, a name with the same luthe but different syllables, Ardery or whatever. Ardery is basically the same name as Orderic, after all, right? But still different enough to tell which one you mean.

That’s how things were handled; there’s no ancient tradition for surnames.

And because there’s no ancient tradition ... people basically just do whatever.

I figure that the norm is:

distorted versions of personal names created with the primary/secondary root system described in this series;

human surnames;

random Ninuanni words, for which—in the absence of a comprehensive lexicon—you can use the Gothic; or

references to late Roman-era Europe, its locations, and its tribes. 

       The reasoning behind the first three norms should be pretty obvious; the reasoning behind the last option is mostly “because that’s how I did it back in Nobilis 2,” although I came up with a Watsonian explanation for it to use in the book itself. ^_^

Anyway, I created some starting points for players to use here, some ideas to get all inspired by. I can’t figure out a better approach here than just sharing them, so, here, I will!

          Roots

Some suitable tribal names to serve as seed inspiration for an Excrucian surname concept include:

Aedi, Agrianes, Albocenses, Anartes, Ansamenses, Apuli, Astae,

Bessi, Biephes, Bisaltae, Bures, Brenae, Britolages, Buridavenses,

Carpi, Caucoenses, Cebrenii, Ciaginsi, Clariae, Coreli, Costoboces, Crobyzes, Crousi,

Dardani, Diobesi, Galabri,

Laeaeans, Kainoi, Melandit, Mygdones, Nipsaioi,

Obulenses, Odomanti, Odrysae, Ordes,

Paeoplae,Pieres, Potulatenses, Predasenses,

Rhadacenses, Saldenses, Scaugdae, Scyrmiadae, Serri, Sintians, Suci, Sycaeboae,

Teurisci, Thunatae, Tilataei, Tralles, Trixae, Trausi, Treres, and Tyrgetae.

           Some place names that might serve equally well include:

Abydos, Acidava, Acmonia, Abdera, Aedava, Aiz, Amutria, Apulon, Apsynthus, Argedava, Artanes,

Bergula, Bersobis, Bizye, Bregedava, Buridava, Cabassus, Caria, Carlomanesti, Carsidava,

Danedevae, Dausdava, Dierna, Dinogetia, Diospolis, Docidava, Doriscus, Druzipara, Egeta, Ergines,

Gatae, Genucla, Germisara, Gildava, Giridava, Istria, Itadava, Kypasis, Lom, Lygos,

Maedius, Malata, Marcodava, Motru, Murideva, Myrkinos, Nessebar, Netindava, Oescus, Orastie,

Pelendava, Perpericon, Quemdava, Ramidava, Raqmu, Recidava, Remesiana,

Salmydessus, Scaidava, Selymbria, Serdica, Seugma, Sintica, Sirmium, Strymon,

Taurun, Teichos, Tibiscum, Vistula, Zargidava, Zidava, Zikideva, and Ziridava

             Some relevant Gothic words—which can be massaged into euphonious form, and then asserted as Ninuanni—include:

Afhameis, Aftumists, Aggwitha, Agis, Aglitha, Airus, Aljah, Amslo,

Anastodeins, Andalaus, Andanahti, Andasets, Andeis, Andhaitan, Aqizi, Audags, Autheis,

Bairgahei, Bairhtein, Bisatjan, Biswaran, Brasa, Brinno, Daur, Dauthus, Draums,

Fauho, Faurhah, Fraistubni, Fralusts, Framatheis, Fraweit, Gafilh, Gahailnan,

Gahlaiba, Gais, Gamunds, Gamaudeins, Gasmeitands, Gatewiths,

Gauks, Gaurs, Gibla, Groneis, Gultheins, Gund, Hairus, Halba, Harjis, Hidre,

Hunsl, Hurus, Inilo, Kas, Krana, Kunnan, Letan, Liteins, Liuth,

Malo, Manleika, Mikilei, Milhma, Miltja, Mithwitan, Nabagais, Natilo,

Niwaiht, Nu, Praufetes, Qius, Ragineis, Rauths, Rinnan, Rinno, Riqis,

Riurei, Sarwa, Skeireins, Skura, Sparwa, Triggwa, Ungatewiths, Uslet, Ussateins,

Waihjo, Waurms, Winno, Withra, Woths, and Wulfs.

         As a rule, one should not expect meaning to be preserved in the Gothic to Ninuanni transition; except where there is an obvious English meaning, or an obvious reference to one of the personal name elements, the “original” meaning of a Gothic-derivation surname will be whatever the player decides that it should be. This is all the more true after a player customizes the name to fit the character, the other portions of their character’s name, and their tastes. Thus, having chosen the personal name Alica, a player might adapt Ragineis to Ragneis, creating the name “Alica Ragneis.” Another player in the group might combine Ebrimud with Gladwin as, simply, “Ebrimud Gladwin.” A third might opt to be Alica’s luthe-mate, Allaikas, trimming the “oi” off of “Kainoi” to create “Allaikas Kain.” They didn’t have to stop with such a small change, though—they could have used Kainoi as a jumping-off point for their imagination, ending up with “Allaikas Ganley,” and it would have, in the end, been just as valid:

It’s a surname; there are no particular rules.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this series on Ninuanni naming. ^_^

[thesinglesjukebox]

TAYLOR SWIFT - BEAUTIFUL GHOSTS

[3.50]

Taylor takes a chonce...

Thomas Inskeep: Where we learn that Swift has ambitions of writing relentlessly overblown, ridiculously florid Broadway songs just like her co-writer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. And god, her keening vocal on this makes me want to punch someone. [0]

Alfred Soto: Her voice is not her strongest element, a fact this farrago overlooks. By comparison her accent on "London Boys" is a Meryl Streep Oscar stroke. [2]

Katherine St Asaph: I don't mind Taylor Swift being on this, in theory (in voice is a somewhat different proposition); Sarah Brightman was a dancer in Hot Gossip. Nor do I want to reassign this piece to Andrew Lloyd Webber's cat. I could even, begrudgingly, stop minding that Nile Rodgers worked on this, or that there's a gratuitous Phantom reference, or that the whole thing is a worse version of Jekyll and Hyde's "A New Life," when Cats already had the blueprint for "A New Life." But I do mind there being no structure, melodic, emotional, or otherwise. [3]

Katie Gill: The idea of adding in a song to CATS kind of misunderstands the structure of the musical. You see, CATS already has a big awards bait song, "Memory," which is musically is integrated into the show via a prelude at the end of act 1, other cats singing the tune at various point, and the prelude ending with a leitmotif often heard throughout the show. HOWEVER, now "Beautiful Ghosts" exists. It's positioned as a direct response to "Memory" and ALW loves his goddamn leitmotifs so logically it should sound like a response to "Memory", but it doesn't! It just sounds like a Taylor Swift song! Likewise, if this song is a direct response to "Memory" then one would think it would come AFTER "Memory" or the "Memory" prelude. However, "Memory" is the emotional climax of the show and the prelude is the Act 1 finisher, neither of which are a good time to add in a pop song to kill the plot. "Beautiful Ghosts" should really be positioned as a response to "Grizabella the Glamour Cat" because the transition between that song and the next one is an awkward spot in the musical that the pop song + a bit of dialogue could help smooth over. HOWEVER, if you position "Ghosts" as a response to "Grizabella" then it'll occur way too early in the film and also rob "Memory" of its lyrical impact. Part of the big impact of "Memory" is that you've had two goddamn hours of fiddle-dee-dee Jennyanydots whimsical nonsense and then WHAM, we go right into "touch me / it's so easy to leave me" which gives us the big, giant, emotional impact that "Memory" deserves and dammit, I don't have anywhere else to write about how this addition means that ALW fundamentally misunderstands his own musical so y'all are going to have to put up with me here. [4]

Jackie Powell: What makes this recording so charming is how practically imperfect it is. And I mean that as a compliment. The attempt at a British accent aside, Taylor Swift did her homework. And I'm not talking about T.S. Elliot, which I'll return to. This performance reminded me of Roland Barthes' "The Grain of the Voice," an essay that discusses how perfect vocals aren't what always sell a performance. The French philosopher and critic pontificates that a singer who is compelling has what he refers to as a "grain" or the "body in the voice." In other words, when Swift embraces her weaker while spectral head voice on the verses, cracks on the last line of the bridge and forces her belt on the last note of the entire song, she embraces Barthes' "Grain of the Voice" almost to a tee. Her belting is far from bodacious and like Jackson McHenry of Vulture, I question if this Andrew Lloyd Webber penned melody was really meant for Swift. But ALW did, in fact, need her. "If you can't get T.S. Eliot, get TS," she said while in the studio with Webber. "I'm here for you." And TS does study up on T.S. In "Beautiful Ghosts," Swift penned a lot of gerunds and descriptive nouns that have shapeshifted into gerunds. Or sometimes she just uses the suffix -ing more than twice the amount that Elliot employed it in his 1915 poem "Hysteria." In between all the "Chonces" being "Bawn into Noothing" and being "let intou," it's endearing to get a sense of Swift's acting chops via listening to her inflection, diction and even her ability to weld some dynamics that we don't often hear in her own catalog. But Swift was in between too many decisions. Was this supposed to be a pop version of a Broadway-style song? Was this supposed to be akin to Demi Lovato on "Let It Go?" (Maybe not, as we all know which version of the song is sung at karaoke.) But with all else being equal, Swift shalt have made a commitment to one of these two worlds: she's now clinging to pop but Broadway is now calling? She's straddling between these two islands and it doesn't work as well as she might have "waaanteed." [7]

Isabel Cole: Is it weird that I think I would like this better if it were more awful? Taylor Swift and Andrew Lloyd Webber are not similar artists, but they are two people who have between them made [checks spreadsheet] a million bajillion dollars by being wildly extra and unafraid of leaning the fuck in. Many of my favorite Taylorisms are fun because of their hyper-earnest theater kid melodrama (just think of the tremor with which she sings another girl in "Style"); many of my childhood memories involve belting "Memory" in my bedroom. But this is just so... dull. TS + ALW 4 CATS sounds like a nightmare of unhinged excess, but this could be any generic Best Song Oscar also-ran; the most interesting part is that she reuses the best line from "Fifteen." Worse, these artists who can write a hook that will be stuck in your head until the end of time somehow came together to write a melody so sprawlingly uninspiring I cannot hum it after several listens. There's nothing here even to make fun of beyond (objectively funny) Taylor's sporadic British affectations. Like, come on, guys: I'm not sure you can do better than this, but I know you have it in you to do worse. [2]

Alex Clifton: Cats didn't really need a new song (nor, frankly, did we need the new nightmare adaptation) and I'm mixed on Andrew Lloyd Webber at best, but this still hits my heart somewhere, especially with Swift's breathy delivery for the first half of the track. I am both surprised and annoyed to relate to a song sung by a cat. Points deducted for chooooooooooonces. [6]

Natasha Genet Avery: Let's dispense with the obvious: 1. That newfangled British accent is...something. 2. Playing into her favorite victimhood narrative, Swift's contribution to Cats *had* to one-up Grizabella ("At least you have something!". 3. This is blatant Oscar bait. Now onto the meat: Cats is a corny and embarrassing head-scratcher. Cats is why people don't trust musicals. I love Cats. To me, to anyone who has been in a musical, musicals are about unreasonable, outsized commitment--you peel off your self-protective shield of irony and spend dozens, if not hundreds of hours donning clown-school makeup and spandex, somersaulting across the stage and belting the praises of storybook animals. If you're entrusted with a big number, you practice and practice until your delivery is technically masterful, if not heavy-handed. Beat me to death with that vibrato. Fuck me up with those dynamics. Leave it allll on the stage. And so, when Taylor set out to out-emote "Memory", she agreed to take on 30 years of mockery, three key changes, Elaine Paige, 600+ professionally recorded covers, and countless school productions and karaoke renditions. A lot of people fault Taylor for being a try-hard (I've always found it sort of endearing), but here, she simply didn't try hard enough. Swift admitted that she wrote most of "Beautiful Ghosts" "immediately after hearing the song for the first time." Without T.S. Eliot's hand, Beautiful Ghosts" is empty, untouched by whimsy. Oh, and the singing: Swift is sorely out of her depth, and mostly opts for limp falsetto, culminating in a strained, awkward belt. We'll see what Francesca Hayward does with it, but for now "Beautiful Ghosts" should get booted from the clowder. [3]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: I consume music of all genres voraciously -- with the exception of musical soundtracks. This is for a number of reasons: 1) I haven't seen a lot of musicals, 2) for the ones I have seen, I tend to find the music and lyricism overwrought and boring, and 3) I would prefer to just listen to artists' original music outside the parameters set by some make believe world. I was worried that I would have a tough time trying to check my own bias in reviewing this song, but am now relieved and confident in asserting that "Beautiful Ghosts" is objectively bad. In an alternate reality, this could be a compelling country-lite track on Fearless or Red, or even a synth heavy ballad on 1989, but here, Taylor just sounds drowsy with a weird British accent, selling a metaphor that makes about as much sense as the utterly bizarre Cats movie trailer. [3]

Andy Hutchins: One tweet that has stuck with me is the one that correctly called Reputation — before its release, even! — the final boss of 2017. I think Cats might play a similar role for the final days of 2019 and the first month or so of 2020, even if its pitch is obviously to a smaller segment of the population than pre-Crisis Taylor reached. So how convenient it is that we have Taylor here, indulging her theater kid impulses with none other than Andrew fucking Lloyd fucking Webber co-writing, singing her heart out in the ingenue role she's clung to throughout her 20s for better and worse (which is, hilariously, not her role in the film itself!), pining for something wild for what feels like the 20th time. "Beautiful Ghosts" is as subtle as a hurricane, and churns powerfully, and Taylor almost hits that note at the end — the strings wouldn't swell if she'd hit it perfect, of course. It's good. Fine. Whatever. This sort of hopeful schmaltz is so safe, though, that it mostly makes me wish that Taylor were still willing to take excursions from beaten paths: That way lies "Style," even if you might have to double back from the doorsteps of "Look What You Made Me Do" or "End Game" on occasion. [5]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[t-baba]

Re-Introducing PHPUnit – Getting Started with TDD in PHP

There are a lot of PHPUnit posts on our site already (just check the tag), but it's been a while since we've actually introduced people to it, and the tool has evolved significantly since then.

This article aims to re-introduce the tool in a modern way, to a modern audience, in a modern PHP environment - if you're unfamiliar with PHPUnit or testing, this post is for you.

Here we assume you're familiar with object oriented PHP and are using PHP version 7 and above. To get an environment up and running which has PHP 7 pre-installed, and to be able to follow instructions in this post to the letter without getting tripped up, we suggest you use Homestead Improved. Note also that some command line usage will be expected, but you will be guided through it all. Don't be afraid of it - it's a tool more powerful than you can imagine.

If you're wondering why we're recommending everyone use a Vagrant box, I go in depth about this in Jump Start PHP Environment, but this introduction of Vagrant will explain things adequately as well.

What exactly is Test Driven Development?

Test Driven Development is the idea that you write code in such a way that you first write another bit of code the sole purpose of which is making sure that the originally intended code works, even if it's not written yet.

Checking if something is indeed what we expect it to be is called asserting in TDD-land. Remember this term.

For example, an assertion that 2+2=4 is correct. But if we assert that 2+3=4, the testing framework (like PHPUnit) will mark this assertion as false. This is called a "failed test". We tested is 2+3 is 4, and failed. Obviously, in your application you won't be testing for sums of scalar values - instead, there'll be variables which the language will replace with real values at run-time and assert that, but you get the idea.

What is PHPUnit?

PHPUnit is a collection of utilities (PHP classes and executable files) which makes not only writing tests easy (writing tests often entails writing more code than the application actually has - but it's worth it), but also allows you to see the output of the testing process in a nice graph which lets you know about code quality (e.g. maybe there's too many IFs in a class - that's marked as bad quality because changing one condition often requires rewriting as many tests as there are IFs), code coverage (how much of a given class or function has been covered by tests, and how much remains untested), and more.

In order not to bore you with too much text (too late?), let's actually put it to use and learn from examples.

The code we end up with at the end of this tutorial can be downloaded from Github.

Bootstrapping an Example Application

To drive the examples home, we'll build a simple command line package which lets users turn a JSON file into a PHP file. That PHP file will contain the JSON data as an associative PHP array. This is just a personal use case of mine - I use Diffbot a lot and the output there can be enormous - too large to manually inspect, so easier processing with PHP can come in very handy.

Henceforth, it is assumed that you are running a fully PHP 7 capable environment with Composer installed, and can follow along. If you've booted up Homestead Improved, please SSH into it now with vagrant ssh, and let's begin.

First, we'll go into the folder where our projects live. In the case of Homestead Improved, that's Code.

cd Code

Then, we'll create a new project based on PDS-Skeleton and install PHPUnit inside it with Composer.

git clone http://ift.tt/2gQr2Hf converter cd converter composer require phpunit/phpunit --dev

Notice that we used the --dev flag to only install PHPUnit as a dev dependency - meaning it's not needed in production, keeping our deployed project lightweight. Notice also that the fact that we started with PDS-Skeleton means our tests folder is already created for us, with two demo files which we'll be deleting.

Next, we need a front controller for our app - the file all requests are routed through. In converter/public, create index.php with the following contents:

<?php echo "Hello world";

You should be familiar with all the above contents. With our "Hello World" contents in place, let's make sure we can access this from the browser.

If you're using Homestead Improved, I hope you followed instructions and set up a virtual host or are accessing the app via the virtual machine's IP.

Let's delete the extra files now. Either do it manually, or run the following:

rm bin/* src/* docs/* tests/*

You may be wondering why we need the front controller with Hello World. We won't be using it in this tutorial, but later on as we test our app as humans, it'll come in handy. Regardless, it won't be part of the final package we deploy.

Suites and Configurations

We need a PHPUnit configuration file which tells PHPUnit where to find the tests, which preparation steps to take before testing, and how to test. In the root of the project, create the file phpunit.xml with the following content:

<phpunit bootstrap="tests/autoload.php"> <testsuites> <testsuite name="converter"> <directory suffix="Test.php">tests</directory> </testsuite> </testsuites> </phpunit>

phpunit.xml

A project can have several test suites, depending on context. For example, everything user-account-related could be grouped into a suite called "users", and this could have its own rules or a different folder for testing that functionality. In our case, the project is very small so a single suite is more than enough, targeting the tests directory. We defined the suffix argument - this means PHPUnit will only run those files that end with Test.php. Useful when we want some other files among tests as well, but don't want them to be run except when we call them from within actual Test files.

You can read about other such arguments here.

The bootstrap value tells PHPUnit which PHP file to load before testing. This is useful when configuring autoloading or project-wide testing variables, even a testing database, etc - all things that you don't want or need when in production mode. Let's create tests/autoload.php:

<?php require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';

tests/autoload.php

In this case, we're just loading Composer's default autoloader because PDS-Skeleton already has the Tests namespace configured for us in composer.json. If we replace template values in that file with our own, we end up with a composer.json that looks like this:

{ "name": "sitepoint/jsonconverter", "type": "standard", "description": "A converter from JSON files to PHP array files.", "homepage": "http://ift.tt/2gQr2Hf", "license": "MIT", "autoload": { "psr-4": { "SitePoint\\": "src/SitePoint" } }, "autoload-dev": { "psr-4": { "SitePoint\\": "tests/SitePoint" } }, "bin": ["bin/converter"], "require-dev": { "phpunit/phpunit": "^6.2" } }

After this, we run composer du (short for dump-autoload) to refresh the autoloading scripts.

composer du

The First Test

Remember, TDD is the art of making errors first, and then making changes to the code that gets them to stop being errors, not the other way around. With that in mind, let's create our first test.

<?php namespace SitePoint\Converter; use PHPUnit\Framework\TestCase; class ConverterTest extends TestCase { public function testHello() { $this->assertEquals('Hello', 'Hell' . 'o'); } }

tests/SitePoint/Converter/ConverterTest.php

It's best if the tests follow the same structure we expect our project to have. With that in mind, we give them the same namespaces and same directory tree layouts. Thus, our ConverterTest.php file is in tests, subfolder SitePoint, subfolder Converter.

The file we're extending is the most basic version of the Test class that PHPUnit offers. In most cases, it'll be enough. When not, it's perfectly fine to extend it further and then build on that. Remember - tests don't have to follow the rules of good software design, so deep inheritance and code repetition are fine - as long as they test what needs to be tested!

This example "test case" asserts that the string Hello is equal to the concatenation of Hell and o. If we run this suite with php vendor/bin/phpunit now, we'll get a positive result.

PHPUnit runs every method starting with test in a Test file unless told otherwise. This is why we didn't have to be explicit when running the test suite - it's all automatic.

Our current test is neither useful nor realistic, though. We used it merely to check if our setup works. Let's write a proper one now. Rewrite the ConverterTest.php file like so:

Continue reading %Re-Introducing PHPUnit – Getting Started with TDD in PHP%

by Bruno Skvorc via SitePoint http://ift.tt/2uRT2Cj

[mallowstep]

If Tadpole had lived Sasha wouldn’t have had run to Riverclan. The only reason she went was because one of her kits had died and she was like “I can’t let that happen again, they would be safer in a clan.” So Tadpole lives. Would this lead to Loner!Moth and Hawk/Tadpole with Sasha? Or what if he lived and Sasha didn’t find them? Three kits lots in twoleg place. Maybe they are found by the remnants of Bloodclan. Or maybe a cat with knowledge of the clans takes pity and brings them to Thunderclan or Windclan. Imagine Moth and Leafkit playing together. Imagine Hawkpaw and Tadpole (Frogpaw? Darkpaw?) fighting over Squirrelpaw’s attention.

dfsklj love all of u anons providing me crucial sasha backstory...i only know her from a shadow in riverclan. i did know that she wanted them in a clan for safety, did not really remember how that worked out w tadpole. it's been a while and i don't usually reread warriors books.

like i buy the kindle versions? because while i'm fine w/ pirating them the graphic novels especially i need the kindle version with their focus mode for graphic novels. i have a really hard time reading graphic novels the way they're "intended" to be read. i do it for ones i love, but it's hard.

uhh so anyway i think realistically it would lead to a loner au, which is why i initially was like "this is a boring au," because i figured they either didn't get up to much villainry or were just loners.

also i think i'd keep tadpolepaw? sure it's a bit wordy but i like it. it's cute. maybe he'd get the option to change it to frogpaw/frog-suffix? i think maybe. leopardstar doesn't seem like the type tho.

if a clan found them...windclan prob wouldn't bc iirc they don't share a border w/ the twoleg place? someone can feel free to lemme know if i'm wrong again i do not have that much knowledge of this, i only know it through how it affects mothwing (my beloved)

anyway!

okay first of all! people can't keep giving me cursed!au ideas by which i mean, i have a squirrelash au already and now? someone is suggesting a hawksquirrel au? whatever will i do w/ y'all?

(jkjkjk my true squirrelflight ship is squirrelflight/self-love, but i do actually really like squirrelash? obviously not canon ashfur, but the ashfur we thought he was pre-po3. bc well? that was the only ashfur i had for a long time i've talked about this before anyway off topic.)

right! i like the idea of them being thunderclan, but i also...uh, at least internally, i think mothwing being in riverclan is important for her character. and hawkfrost's. because of tadpole.

but then tadpole lives, so it's like...i don't know?

one thing is for sure: if they go to thunderclan, there's a medicine cat issue but wait! idea.

okay, so. mothpaw trains as a warrior. she is beautiful and strong, and replaces (or joins) sorreltail in leafpaw's beautiful she-cat crush.

(idk there's something distinctly adolescent and cute to me about the way young teens have all of these wild crushes on everyone. fuck, i had a crush on my colorguard instructor because...of no reason? i'm not even attracted to like? anyway.)

so then! when leafpaw gets taken, mothpaw becomes a medicine cat apprentice. someone has to, and she wants to and maybe, like, maybe leafpaw gets stuck w/ greystripe?

yeahh right. so then they're reunited much time later, and leafpaw has maybe started going by leaf at this point bc it's been like, a year or more, and she's been a loner longer than she was a clan cat. i don't know, i don't really know what happens in the greystripe graphic novel. or super edition. have i talked about my really weird mandela effect with greystripe's super edition?

anyway so yeah! mothwing is a med cat and i don't think i could resist the urge to name her mothpool...y'all don't even know how hard it was to stop myself from doing that in stoalg, i wanted to so bad, but it's literally the ship name, but i couldn't.

i don't think i'm strong enough to do it twice.

right anyway they're very gay and they become two gay wives taking care of the clan.

MEANWHILE.

tadpole and hawk are closer to, like, sorrelpaw, rainpaw, and sootpaw. like when leafpaw goes to the first gathering, mothwing's whole medicine cat drama comes up.

(i have a very clear memory of it because of the sheer number of times i've written a mothpool meet cute.)

so like! i don't know what they're up to? but hawk and bramble definitely have sons-of-tigerclaw drama that freaks firestar out. like a lot. like a lot a lot.

sandstorm: dear, they're not going to hurt you

firestar: but, i'm scared!

sandstorm: he's literally an apprentice

okay, maybe not that much. i'm being funny.

(also, fine, props to the beta editor for letting me use chat inside of a text post. i can do it in html which is markdown valid but you know fine.)

ahem. (the beta editor also doesn't let me preview so that's fucked.)

i do think! hawkfrost still deserves to be a villain. he's one of my favorite villains because he's just a bad guy.

(i haven't finished winds of change i'm a fast reader but i try to pace myself going through things no spoilers i've heard that he makes dad jokes tho? anyway until i finish it it's not canon on this blog.)

like, just like i like the fact that breezepelt is just an asshole! hawkfrost's actions far surpass what you could reasonably say is a response to circumstance.

i don't mean in a, "we can't justify his actions" way, i mean in a "there's not a rational argument that he would have done this if he wasn't just an evil guy."

right! but apparently tadpole is a protective big brother? is that correct? i have no fucking idea?

so tadpole. he's probably...he could be a prophecy cat? i like that a lot better than bramble. kick bramble out his arc finished in tpb anyway.

uhh yeah i don't know where to go with this i just riff off whatever y'all put in my inbox then save the tumblr posts to my "aus to write" folder

(hot tip! if you want to make sure i write an au, just put in an ask giving me a hypothetical about it bc once i start talking all my ideas get a little file where i put everything i want to one day write.)

<3