#I do wish there was more linguistic stuff in that book

[prehistoric-chesterfield-sofa]

the way andy weir writes rocky's dialogue is so precious to me because I know he's probably just doing it to emphasize the fact that they speak different languages but the fact is that when rocky says something and Grace translates it as "thank" or "amaze" it is either because rocky both taught Grace the difference and is purposefully using baby talk and Grace likes it, or Grace is so psyched to be talking with an alien that his brain is just editing in different styles of grammar. love.

[thingsidrawgohere]

Alright. I'm calling it done before it kills me. This is Second Head. It's an Art Book containing instances of the phrase "second head" in fanfics found on AO3. I'll explain much, MUCH more in the cut.

So when I say 'art book', I mean this is an intrinsic piece. I have no motivations aside from personal amusement and interest in outcome. A lot of money was lost/transmuted into free frustration in this project and I have no claims, obviously. I will prolly be the only person alive to read this.

THAT SAID. I have noticed in my years reading fanfic, there's a few linguistic shibboleths that arise in authors who also have experience in the mines. I think there's not a soul alive who hadn't wandered across a 'ministrations' when reading Narutos oral sexing. There's- Hold on. Here's some pix.

There's an impulse, I think, to in-group even when performing a creative act. A feeling that there are certain ways one Should go about the act, by virtue of seeing it performed that way. Especially so when 'training' at the act is often just Doing. Double Dog Especially when the act is exclusively for oneself with very little oversight. Which is to say, we make what we see and we make what we think we should make. At least, at first.

Now, I've been noticing 'grew a second head' (to insinuate surprise) in fanfic for some time. I've never seen it used Outside of fanfic. That may speak to my own bad habits but it got me curious. So a friend and myself downloaded a mirror of AO3 from July of 2024. He did some code- Stuff to scan the mirror for "second head" and of the ~13 million works, ~70k (English) results were returned. That's a rounding error, honestly, but Far FAR more than I expected.

This book is 401 such examples that I personally selected for a variety of reasons. The number itself was arbitrarily chosen. Each page is separate fic, the roughly 300 words around our key phrase.

I don't think repetition or mirroring is a negative thing. I think it's quite charming. Nor do I think it's a sign of a 'bad' artist or 'bad' art. I think it's a signifier of personhood, of belonging, of enthusiasm. Of culture shared and wishing to share. I think it's real sweet. I always smile when I catch a 'grown a second head' in a work.

And it's really fucking funny when it's John Sherlock getting a sloppy toppy. Bless.

Edit: Fixed a very VERY funny error.

[tigirl-and-co]

Specks of Dust in Hallowed Halls

Part 2; Linguistics

Part 1, the introductory chapter, is here!

Now we get into the shippy stuff! And bonus points for anybody who recognizes the book I've chosen here

"Howlsong, who had fallen asleep at the outer edge of the canyon while he waited, led them silently back through the forest. Fritti, full of vague resentment and doom, had no conversation to offer, either. After a long stretch of unspeaking travel, Pouncequick finally broke the stillness.

"Just think, Tailchaser," he said, "we've actually been to see the Queen of Cats!""

You were curled up in a nook that you had unofficially claimed as your own somewhere in the human residence. Made more comfortable by a few blankets and pillows, you had chosen it for its out-of-the-way location and because Metroplex could both see the spot with a camera and use a nearby speaker to talk with you.

In your lap was your phone, currently accessing his personal communication line, which let him hear your voice.

Metroplex loved your voice. It was his favourite sound, the most wonderful melody he'd heard in all his unfathomable eons of existence. Every syllable, every stutter and stumble was permanently caught in his memory circuits, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

And when he learned you had a collection of books back on earth, he had practically begged you to import some to read to him. Not only was he desperate to hear your voice, Metroplex was also curious about you. What you liked to read, what the human culture you hailed from was like, what you thought about things...

So, you found yourself contacting a friend on earth to bring a few books to the supply ship every so often, and spending a bit of extra cash to get them shipped here and back. You didn't mind. It felt nice to be heard. To have your interests acknowledged and considered important.

And, quite honestly, you simply enjoyed hearing him speak. The deep rumble was both soothing and impossible to ignore, and his contemplative nature gave every statement the gravitas of some ancient philosopher comprehending the universe.

"So, Metty, what'd you think of that chapter?" you asked, keeping your own opinions out of it. You were just as interested in his thoughts as he was in yours.

A few moments of pause. "Hm... are human noble courts typically like that?"

You chuckled. Of course that's what he picked out- he'd borne witness to much more sophisticated councils time and time again. In fact, some other part of his processor was probably preoccupied with one now.

"Honestly? Never been. But if I walked in to one and it went like that, I wouldn't be surprised in the least. Fancy people looooooove making overly complex routines and rules and then not actually doing anything to help." You looked up into his camera and beamed at him. "But I get the feeling that sort of behaviour isn't unique to my species."

You felt as much as heard his merriment at that one. "No, it truly is not. Although I've found Cybertronians prefer bureaucracy to bloodlines."

You snuggled back into your nook, still making eye contact with the camera as you got ready for what was certain to be the nerdiest bout of flirting any human had ever partaken in outside of a lab. "Ah, humans most definitely get up to red tape and government nonsense too, but I'm afraid that compared to millions of years of rule-writing, ours would pale in comparison."

You smirked. "Although I'd like to see what would happen if somebody addressed Prime as 'Your Regal Softness.'"

Metroplex desperately wished he had finer control over his internal mechanisms so that he could embrace you right now. But he would have to settle for watching you curl up against his walls. "Knowing that mech, he would assume it was an actual title and wear it with pride."

You burst out laughing at the image, and how it didn't seem all that far-fetched. You both respected Optimus, but that didn't mean you couldn't be irreverent about him in private.

And as you chatted with the titan, book now just conversational fuel, you were struck by how easy it all was. The meandering levity, the way you each made both space and time for each other...

And how easy he was to love.

[strangelittlestories]

Let me tell you about the Truthspeaker.

It is well known that most fae are tricksters. They are creatures who do not lie per se, but who make truth light as chaos or heavy as a contract.

They distract you with the truth and while you are looking at it, they steal the ground from beneath your feet, the name from the craw of your soul, and the

They are like shitty close-up magicians, but the coin they produce from behind your ear is everything you ever valued. And the rabbit they vanish into their hat is reality itself.

They leave you untethered, unmoored, floating free in the summerlands while the path home unravels like a knot of handkerchiefs.

It is well known that fae do this. However, you should realise that 'it is well known' is also a clever illusion.

For while you *should* fear the fair folk, they are multi-faceted and manifold. There are some among them that you may still wish to seek out - for while they will *wreck you* quite thoroughly, sometimes a person must shipwreck themselves to reach their destination.

So let me tell you about the Truthspeaker.

I first heard rumours of them when on my quest year. It's become something of a tradition among aspiring urban esotericists to take a year out to gain practical magical experience. Druids venture into the fragmented urban wilds beneath their city. Mages seek out spells and traditions in rare local dialects and folklores. Seers get very high and follow whatever visions they may have to their inevitable horrible conclusions.

Meanwhile, I started out seeking a simple remedy for mild dimensional bifurcation. One of the alchemists I spoke to mentioned they sometimes sourced ingredients from the fae - in particular, they had a connect for ice cold truths that they thought may help me.

Sadly, I was hot on the trail of the Reality-phage by that point. And that whole situation … escalated.

When I emerged from that densely-woven five-year headfuck with a master's degree in Divine Linguistics and a fully fractured sense of self, I went panning for gold through my memories … and I recalled the Truthspeaker.

The path to faerie is an easy one to find, but a hard one to walk. Especially if you want anything that resembles yourself to emerge on the other side.

I had little enough of my self left, so I took precautions.

I conjured a worm out of earth and lichen. I took one of my memories - one I could not afford to lose - and I fed it to the imaginary creature. It was fat and wriggling, as if ready to burst with dreams.

I wrote my own personal rune on the worm's skin in white marker. The worm wrote *its* rune on me in slime.

I took it to a dried up canal behind a main road. I walked onto the footbridge that crossed it. I speared the worm on a hook, tried it to a silver thread and I dangled it from a fishing pole.

From the canal bed beneath, hungry mouths began to warp out of the concrete. I snagged the biggest and reeled it in. Arms aching with the effort, finally it breached the guardrail with a squeal of metal. Its grey teeth gnashed towards me.

I dived in.

After a small unknowable bubble of time, in which the concrete hydra and I argued over semantics, we finally reached an accord.

I rode in its mouth into the Summerlands.

Apologies, I was supposed to be telling you about the Truthspeaker.

Reaching them was complex, even with my fearsome new ride. (Honestly, riding in that thing's maw made me feel I was in that book about the sandworms, but a bit more 'Vore.)

I won't repeat the trials I had to go through, the spirits I had to beg, bribe or bludgeon ... if you ever seek them yourself, you will need to pay your own way.

But eventually I reached their grove.

It was a strange place. It had a mushroom arch, like many fae groves, but if you looked close you could see spots of rust growing on the caps of them. I peered closer and saw: there was an iron frame beneath the fungi.

I've heard it said that fungus make death into the stuff of life. Even given some faeries' affinity for mushrooms, I think it takes a very special fae to take that which is inimical to you and make of it your sustenance. (And to be quite so cottagecore about it.)

I passed beneath the arch and felt my magical protections torn away by long intangible fingers clawed in ferrous decay.

Inside, the grove sat beneath ... what is the opposite of a 'verdant' canopy? A dying canopy? A putrefying canopy?

No, it was canopy of tomorrows. A vast and dense web of mycelial strands that ate dank darkness and shunned the sun. The interlaced fungal strings shone with strands of copper and arced with electricity.

At the centre of this dwelling with something akin to a cottage, but vast and ballooning with bulbous growths. Cosy and grand. Homely but haunting.

From within its cavernous doorway emerged the Truthspeaker.

My eyes were drawn first to the crown that burst from beneath the skin of their head. Filigreed wires wove in and out of their temples, burning where they met flesh. From that burning emerged green shoots and flowering fungus in all the colours of autumn killings.

They were dressed in stars and pale cotton. Their eyes were caverns. Their lips were lined with morning frost, which crunched softly as they spoke.

"You have travelled a long road." their sweet, soft voice was echoed deeply by the creatures that squirmed in the earth around their feet.

"I have, honoured one." My voice shook.

"There is no honour here, child."

"Nonetheless, I come to honour you."

"You come to ask of me."

Inside myself, I felt my heart shrivel and rot away and a new heart build itself again from the mess.

"From where I stand, to ask favour is to show my throat. This is honour."

"You are a sophist." they snorted and a cloud of spores filled the air, glittering.

"That is the source of my power, honoured one." The spores settled on my robe and began to form a sparkling crystal city.

"You bear the blessing of the Once God."

"I, uh..." I found myself reaching for my phone to take a scrying selfie and resisted. "I had honestly forgotten it was there."

"As had the blessing. Such is the way of things with the God That Was But Was Not."

"There is much I have lost."

"You are not special in this regard."

"Are there ... any ways in which I *am* special?"

"I don't especially care to name them if there are."

"I..." I licked my lips and they tasted of earthy spices. "I would ask you to tell me one true thing, Truthspeaker."

"I have already told you several."

"I can offer fair exchange. I can serve you. I had knowledge and skill once, I am sure I can find them again."

"No. You never shall."

I blanched.

"Never?"

"They are mulch. New talents will grow. Or you will die. Such is the way of things." they looked me up and down with their hollow, everything eyes, "Tell me what truth you would have. I will find something to do with you after."

My mouth was dry. My lungs filled with thick honey-like dreck. My skin shone translucent. The crystal city on my robe spread and grew, went through two cataclysms, rebuilt itself, then began to spread across my back.

I forget the truth I had planned to ask for.

Instead I said:

"Do you like me?"

"I do not know yet." The Truthspeaker said. "But I am willing to find out."

That is how I met the Truthspeaker. Our first meeting, but not our last. But that is all the detail I will give you for now. If you want more then you will have to seek me out and ask me or win it from me or remind me of it.

But what was it that I wanted to tell you about the Truthspeaker? What did I learn? What might you learn from them?

Surely, I have already told you that?

No, I will say one thing more:

Sometimes the truth does not set you free. Sometimes it anchors you.

Because sometimes you don't need a trickster fae to untie you from reality. Sometimes you are already doing a perfectly adequate job of that yourself.

And when that happens, a truth you can rely on is like cold iron for the soul.

---

Enjoy my stories? Consider supporting me on Ko-Fi with a one-off or recurring donation https://ko-fi.com/strangelittlestories

[holdy-caulfield]

My small review on Star Trek book:

Doctor’s Orders by Diana Duane. With spoilers!

Genre: hard sci fi

Pages: 291

Key words: worldbuilding, alien culture, time, strategies, linguistics, first time in command, stressful situations

Highlights: McCoy is in character, Kirk mostly, battle, crew work, humor, worldbuilding

Downsides: reason why McCoy is in command (unrealistic, OOC for Kirk), Spock & McCoy interactions (too friendly for them), lack of tension.

Vibe/tone: nerdy, light-hearted

I really enjoy sci-fi as a whole genre, and the worldbuilding aspect is what has drawn me into Star Trek in the first place (second place was a video of Kirk and Spock). When it comes to fiction based on the franchise & fanfiction for me the most important aspect are canonical characters and their relationship.

I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about Diana Duane, so I was exited to get my hands on her books. Since McCoy is my favourite character, I decided to start with the book where he’s in a primal focus.

Also, the premise seemed great, as I was very curious how McCoy would behave as a commander of the ship, and I was particularly interested how he would handle Spock, as there were a few instances in the show where Spock and McCoy have been left without Kirk. The book cover showed Spock standing firmly next to our favourite doctor in the captain’s chair. Also, I thought that the idea itself is intriguing enough — what will be the difference in the decision making between a trained soldier and a doctor? The book even starts with a Hippocratic Oath.

This book does feel like an episode. It’s relatively short, the whole action takes place in a span of a few days, it has an idealistic nature, and a perfectly good ending. All characters are in fact in character, which is why Diane is often praised.

The dialogue and humor are good, you can even hear original voices and intonations, there’s a lot of strategic decisions during battle and I love watching/reading the whole crew working together as the whole.

The fact that McCoy is new to commanding, helps the reader to understand what’s going on better and his decisions, and it is easier to imagine how you’d feel in his shoes. The whole McCoy commanding aspect in my opinion was very in character.

The book however has a lot of focus on the planetary species and human characters getting to know them better, studying them and discussing them from a scientific perspective (so, the book puts science into science fiction). It was a curious read, but I think it is not exactly for those who came for action adventure. A bunch of scientists discussing species and linguistics is the bigger part of the book. I love this stuff as I said earlier, I personally could read all these discussions about interesting species and their culture forever, but I can imagine it can be boring for some (although IMO if you’re a ST fun you should expect this).

I quickly understood what’s going with them personally but there were some aspects which I didn’t quite understand or were not explained enough (so, why Ornae were building stuff? Maybe I’m forgetting something, but I don’t remember if they gave a clear answer). I also didn’t get why ;At would say yes in the end. It felt for me rather logical that they would say no. I didn’t feel that either Federation either the species would benefit in anything else then knowledge. Well, they could protect the planet, but… I thought ;At are a bit too powerful to really need this.

There are also Klingons. I thought it was a very nice touch that doctor managed to find a common ground using psychology. It was funny, but also believable.

Klingons however do not feel as a threat, well, not dangerous enough. Klingons’ motivation to be on the planet however for me personally seemed not really satisfactory for a reader. It made them even less threatening (while they of course shouldn’t be exactly threatening, I just wished for more… spice). I really did like the unexpected friendliness simply because McCoy is a professional medic and knows psychology, it’s very in character and canonical. I enjoyed the bits when he uses his profession to command and even as a moral compass.

My biggest issue was there was not enough tension. And it is primarily because of Spock.

It might be my own vision, but what I can judge from the show is that Spock and McCoy have a complicated relationship in the span of the series. Their philosophies opposite each other, while both characters are not so different as either McCoy or Spock would think (they both are very emphatic for example) so it creates this unique dynamic of a lot things being unsaid and truths ignored.

Most of the time when McCoy and Spock are left alone with each other, they start an argument and can say actually hurtful things to each other, also, it’s quite obvious to me that Spock likes McCoy, while McCoy’s reaction to him is not exactly unambiguous. There should be tension. It what makes it interesting.

In the book, McCoy and Spock are as friendly as could be. Of course there are a few funny moments, but for me there should be a lot more bickering, a lot more emotions involved around Kirk’s disappearance, and there could be just done more (for example, there could be a danger which would force them to leave the orbit, but McCoy wants to stay to find Jim, and Spock is there to try to make him understand the logics and the fact that he feels that Jim is alright… ).

Kirk is there to balance Spock and McCoy out. The idea of McCoy being forced to rely on Spock with whom he disagrees mostly, or Spock relying on emotional McCoy is such an interesting concept, so it’s a pity for me I didn’t get this explored in the book.

And Kirk isn’t in a real danger, which also makes it lack tension. But it’s probably my own issue, I like “damsel in distress” trope when it comes to strong characters like the Enterprise crew and the trio in particular.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read. Despite the lack of tension, there is good dialogue, realistic approach to the idea of a medical doctor being in command, the battle is great, worldbuilding is creative, and overall it is very TOS-y.

[ome-magical-ramblings]

An Updated index to my blog

(updated 24-10-2023) (updated 27-05-2024) I figured out people might have wanted a more of a "guide" or "index" to my blog that might be more preferable than just letting someone dig through my blog, I will be updating this blog overtime. I also offer tarot reading and magical spell/ritual service depending on consultation, divination, and figuring out your country's currencies and adjusting my rates and the task at hand, throwing that out of the way if you are thinking about that. I do magical service and readings for pay, you can contact me and ask me about it if you're wondering. Book Review: Greatness of Saturn, A Therapeutic Myth My free publications: Sandalphon: Archangel of Malkuth Sandalphon's spirit portrait by @desdemonasarchives Business and Money Psalms Magic for Traveling Long distance Kefizat Haderech/Tay Al Ard Virtue of Quranic VersesFour Wheels of The Enchiridion

Akshaya Tritiya and A Collecting of folklore Quranic benefits,

Prayers, rituals: Prayer for knowledge/studying(Occult/Mundane Knowledge) Dream Oracle Adam's Prayer Liber Resh PGM-based Qi Ball and Helios Rite Invocation of Light Hagith's Home Sweetening Ophiel's Mercury Retrograde Mitigation Ritual Stick Pad's Divination Affordable 7 days candle where you can't buy it Visualization Advice from Ophiel New Memory Improvement Spell from Grimoire of Pope Leo Prayer of Crowns Arabic Translation The Ladder and Spring for Scrying elemental Kingdoms Kerubic Prayers for 4 stations of the sun. Virtue and Spells to the see the Prophet(Mohammed) Setting Light into the Past, for Spells, Ancestors and Beyond. Magical usage of Prayer of Crowns Incense Series ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 ) More new stuff Offering and Salutations to the Teachers practice, outline, and technique. Contacting Ophiel with Pen and Paper.

Praying with Flowers and St Justina

Wish fulfilling power of Verse of Throne

Log and record of practice:

Signs of Witchcraft ( Part 1 , Part 2 )

Spirit Stealing Offerings

Radionics Magical experiments

Elelogap's Purification work

7 Weeks of Arbatel/Olypmic spirits work

Geometric Entities and 3d polygons-like nature spirits.

Daimon of Sodom's Apple ( Part 1 , Part 2 coming soon )

Hagith's Flower

Grimoire of Sixfold star's Series: The Method Elnafi( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , finale ) Rimori( Part 1 ) halting 44 days of Psalm 119

Scrying The Elemental Kingdoms Method ( Air , Earth , More Air , More Earth , Water! , FIRE ) Meeting Angalaparameshwari! Thoughts and contemplations:

In Praise of Mistakes and Mishaps

craft on oil/consecrated oil

Magical results and time scale.

Variance in magical languages and Pronunciation Circumambulation Magical Rings Closed Practices, Initiation, and gate-keeping practices. "the most powerfull exercise you did", Stacking prayers, and praying with spirits and entities. Concept of Werd/Daily Recitation or prayers.

ABLANATHANALBA's formula breakdown and experiment ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 ) At a Crossroad The power of the Cross The Crossing of Magical Currents Purification Practice Sincerity and Severity and advice for spirit communication. Being Hard on oneself and other. Sadness, Disappointment, and 3 of Swords God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity. The Golden Chain, lineages, egregores...and the open secret to initiation Linguistic Breakdown of Prayer of Crowns In Memory of Dr Leon Wright. By Letters, Words, and Names. Prophets, Mounts, and Open Secrets/ initiation To Be Silent and Pearl Clutching. Good Deeds, Virtues don't sell. Lineage of Spirits(A rope from spirits and a rope from people) Enjoy your Practice. Wisdom, Torah, Tear, Tarot. Shem Angels, Guardian angels, and Natal spirits.

Restitutionism: Praying For and with the Spirits.

Love Elemental-astrological Talismans

Chaldean Oracle 147, Gate of Man and Immortals, Cancer/Capricorn and Daniel in the bible. Retrospective: Practice from a length and at a length.

Previously public services: ( I might make more in the future, stay tuned ) St Expedite Work Ganesha's Working ( Part 1 , Part 2 ) St Cyprian and Aratron

[hughiecampbelle]

first and foremost, i wish you a speedy recovery! congrats with 10k <3

preferences: the boys series, any character you want. i usually gravitate towards men and morally questionable characters, but everything is up to you :)

1. physical: im 21, 5'5, slim, no tattoos, black short hair, i have glasses and i usually wear casual dark clothes, like really not flashy at all. really like going around with a backpack full of stuff for every occasion

2. personality: im agender asexual. basically im trying to logically analyze everything around me, so i end up being 'i told you so' person with negative eq. but really, im told im pretty kind to the people around me. i like interacting with my friends but i get tired quickly from it, so i self isolate a lot. i have a negative worldview. i'm prone to anger and control it poorly. i dont have grand goals in life, no ambitious, i dont strive for more because i dont care, im really only attached to life through the people whom i idolize and if anyone opposes me, my ideals and especially people special to me, i defend them relentlessly, im really only stubborn about them. and well, since my main interest is russian politics, i am really passionate towards russian opposition, so the hate towards the government, violence, dictatorship, censorship, apolitical people who dont care etc etc applies.

3. hobbies: consuming/analyzing new information on anything that interests me at the given moment; linguistics, computer games, drawing, writing, cooking, birdwatching, joking.

4. favorites: book – solaris by stanislaw lem; movie – tenet (2020); game – deus ex mankind divided; song – vertigo by edwin rosen. i like sci fi a lot

thanks in advance ☃️

You're the only person in Butcher's life who can tell him "I told you so". Coming from anyone else, it would set him off. He'd come back at them with quips and jokes and even some harsh words, but when you're the one saying it, all he can say is "I know, love". You're the one who keeps him (mostly) level headed

Despite the both of you being stubborn, you agree on a lot of things, especially when it comes to Vought/Homelander. The both of you would do anything to stop them. Anything. Your Russian opposition bleeds into an opposition towards Vought and Supes in general. It might not always be the best thing for everyone, but if it's the right way to take them down, you're willing to do it

Butcher loves that you like analyzing new information. You're the best on the team for catching things no one else did, seeing the smallest obscurities and inconsistencies in Vought's story. You're always finding something they could have missed. Your attention to detail is what's gotten them out of trouble on more than a few occasions

He appreciates your commitment to the people you love. He's been fighting this fight, first for Becca, then Ryan, now you. You're linked together through love and appreciation and understanding that you're committed to one another no matter what. Though he doesn't always feel deserving of it, you make sure he knows you'd never leave him. You'd never turn on him

Butcher was never really good with words, so he's pretty amazed by your writing. When he does try to talk things through, it all comes out wrong. It's jumbled and cynical and taken the wrong way. The fact that you can make your words malleable and work right and also sound pretty blows him away. Even his compliments come out wonky, but you've been together long enough to know what he's trying to say, what means

I hope you like it my love!!!! Xoxoxo💜💜💜💜💜

Want to request a ship?

[x0401x]

hey! i really want to work as a japanese translator, do you have any tips on starting out? also if you have any books, online courses or youtube channels related to this to recommend i'd be very thankful! thanks in advance, love your work!

Thank you! Okay, here’s my advice based on personal experience.

1. Translate as much as you can. You’ll only get good if you do it a lot. Translating doesn’t only depend on knowledge about the languages you will use. There’s countless sets of other skills that you’ll need to acquire, and you’ll only realize what they are if you translate a lot of different stuff.

2. Put your work out there. Your social media is your portfolio. Just make sure not to get copyright strikes. Go for the more obscure fandoms or things that have already been published online for everyone to see but haven’t been translated.

3. Do commissions if you’re up to it (but again, only post what’s safe to post).

I wish I had books or courses or channels to recommend, but honestly, I don’t. Then again, every translator has their own style, and I think the best thing to do is to find your own.

Also, I don’t know what language you want to translate Japanese into, but here’s some advice that I’ve received from people in the industry: English is saturated in that market. If you speak other languages, you have a better change at getting yourself a job. You have an even better chance of getting a stable position if you aim for editor instead. Still linguistics-based and needs translation skills, but you’ll probably be a full-time hired worker instead of a freelancer. This one is an advice that I got from one of my professors, who worked as an editor for Kodansha for 30 years. But if you feel that translation is your calling, and if you’re able to, the academic world is also an option.

There’s a lot to choose from, so don’t ever be discouraged! I wish you the best of luck, Anon!

[the-himawari]

A3! Usui Masumi - Translation [SR] Zero Gravity Linguist (1/2)

*Please read disclaimer on blog; default name set as Izumi

---

Izumi: The casting for your next performance has been decided! Have you already thought about what you’re going to do to prepare for your role, Masumi-kun?

Masumi: The character I play gets scouted to join the crew of a spaceship, so I'm going to do some research on stuff like space, the moon, and the stars. They should have books like that at the library. I’m planning to head there now.

Izumi: I see. I hope you find some nice books that help with your studies.

Masumi: Yeah. Thanks.

Izumi: Speaking of books about space, that reminds me of the sci-fi novel I borrowed from Chikage-san way back.

Masumi: A sci-fi novel?

Izumi: Don’t you remember? That book called “The End of the Universe” that Chikage-san bought during one of his business trips.*

Masumi: Right… the one that you borrowed from Chikage and lost sleep over reading.

Izumi: Ahaha. Yep, that’s the one. I wish you’d forget about that part though. The protagonist in that story is a researcher who’s shooting for the stars. It might have some slight similarities with your upcoming play.

Masumi: Will reading it help with my role study?

Izumi: I guess so. The mood might be helpful.

Masumi: I’ll give it a read if you say so.

Izumi: It’s a western book, but I doubt you’ll take as long as I did to get through it.

Masumi: …I’ll try my best to finish it as soon as I can so I can discuss my thoughts with you.

Izumi: Sure, good luck. By the way, will it be alright if you don’t head to the library soon? The library closes when it gets late.

Masumi: It’s this late already? *Sigh*. Time flies when I’m with you… I’ll leave now.

Izumi: Alright, see you. Take care!

-pause-

Masumi: …I’m home.

Tsuzuru: Welcome back. Where did you go?

Masumi: The library. I borrowed some books about space and the moon.

Tsuzur: Ah, I see. That explains that. Oh, this book… I got the same one and read it while I was writing the script. I recommend it since it’s quite organized and easy to follow.

Masumi: Okay, I’ll read it second.

Tsuzuru: Wait, why! The usual reply would be that you’re going to read it first.

Masumi: I already know what I’m going to read first.

Tsuzuru: …Oh, really? Which book is it?

Masumi: I don’t have it yet, so I’m going to go borrow it.

*leaves*

Tsuzuru: Borrow? From who…?

-pause-

*knock, knock*

Chikage: Come in.

-pause-

Masumi: Chikage. Do you have the novel “The End of the Universe”?

Chikage: I do. Why do you ask all of a sudden?

Masumi: Lend it to me if you have it.

Chikage: Sure. Ahh, could this be for your role study?

Masumi: Yeah. Director recommended it to me.

Chikage: I get it now. …Hold on a second. Oh, right. I have different books on space and the moon apart from this one. Should I fetch those too?

Masumi: If you’ll let me have them…

Chikage: No problem at all. In that case, I have two more… here you go. I’ve read them already, so you can return them any time.

Masumi: Got it. I’ll give them back together after I get through them all.

Chikage: …Good luck.

Masumi: …?

-pause-

Masumi: He got me…

Tsuzuru: What’s wrong?

Masumi: All the books I got from Chikage were western books…

Tsuzuru: Ahh, that guy really…

Masumi: He’s so mean. …I’m going to read them all on my own, mark my words.

---

*References Chikage’s SSR His Welcoming Territory story

| next

[whatifwekilledgodandwebothgirls]

!!Platos alcibiades 1 final reviews!! Enjoy my incoherent rambling

It was fine i GEUSS . not particularly life altering, like the symposium was , the symposium fucked me up , but it was nice . I tend to judge things based on either how many completely new concepts i hadnt considered before the intoduced me with or based on if it inspired me to think of something new . Alcibiades 1 did not offer a whole lot of new information , the stuff about souls cute and all , but the stuff about politics seemed very very( well not basic but ) base level knowlage. It was a nice introduction to the political opinions of philosophers , thats for sure , and it was a lovely introduction to socratic dialoge , like actuall dialoge and not the speeches, since the only plato ive read to completion has been the symposium which did not follow that formating and the rest ive studied do not include the lines of dialoge but exclusively the blocks of text . Reading this book very much reminded me of greek theater , where they woukd have this long monologes and then the little stihourgia( basically when the characters talk to eachother one sentence each ) thrown in there

The translation i got also was not the best , it did not include much analysis of the text , though to be fair its a fairly easy text and didnt need much explaining. One other thing that i particularly enjoyed very much because i notice it in my own translations, but know is stereotypically frowned upon is that the translator took some very spesific words whose meaning is obvious to anyone who speaks modern greek but have wierd endings or that dont conform with modern greeks grammativ rules , words that normally would take an entire sentence of modern greek to be translated , and just refused to translate them , instead keeping them intact in the modern greek text .i dont know if it makes sence but he would take the words καλλιστος γενόμενος which tranlates to " at the moment when you will become the best version of yourself " and just refused to do that tranlation because it is long .

Alright now on to the important stuff

(Trans : alc :you are doing good, socrates, not leaving

Soc: Show great vigor at being as pretty as you can be

Al : I will )

These are the words exchanged after the very infamous" i am the only lover youve ever taken that loves your soul and not your body" converation , but im talking about them first because i want to focus on the linguistic part of it all not the actual context .

The translation given doesnt do the text justice . First i cant to speak about how he says ευ ποιεις which litterally translates to "you are doing good " but it hold much more meaning that than . He is praising socrates actions , dubbing them morally good , with the use of ευ . He is admiting that socrates being his lover is a good thing

Now the second part could be interpreted as alcibiades saying that socrates is doing good by not leaving , but it coukd also be interpreted as " youre doing good . And dont leave " . Either way , to express that dont leave part acibiades uses opatic (in greek its called ευκτικη , eutici im taking googles word on the greek to english translation) which we can tell by the οι at the end of απελθοις . That particular type of the verb gives away the fact that this is alcibiades wishing , not ordering , since its mostly used for wishes or geusses for the future . He does not use imerative . He could have used imperative , the sound and the flow of the sentence would have been the same switched the meaning from " i wish you will stay " to " stay " with a ordering meaning . He could have done that , but he chose to wish that socrates doesnt leave , not order him not to leave , which drive me insane , this man , who had the world in his arms , still shyly refused to order socrates to remain .

The translation is also a bit lackluster with the whole προθυμου part . The actuall translation should be " you shoukd be willing for this , to be the prettiest " now what socrates ment by that beats me , it could have been ironical , it could have been something else entirely that escapes me honestly , im just gonna say that the word προθυμου is really awsome and it shows willingless and as much as vigor and hard work . It is what we used to say in the scouts , that we should always be πρόθυμοι always ready and always willing to give our 100%

( trans : if , then , someone becomes a lover of the body of alcibiades, he wouldnt be loving alcibiades, but one of his possesions. Al : that is true

Soc: whoever is a lover of your soul?

Al: according to the converstation, it must be true

Sic: he who loves your body , when its youth passes , gets up and leaves ?

Al: obviously

Soc: whoever though , loves your soul doesn't leave when it is heading towards improvement, ist it so ?

Alc: very good

Soc: i am then tge ine who doesnt leave but stays shen youve passed your lifes prime while the others have left )

Now to me , this is the very core of the text , and the very key to undertanding a great part of not only socratic dialoges in general , but alcibiades personality and athens politics

It is very important that socrates says he isnt going to leave alcibiades. Its important that he says it , that he makes it clear , we as readers undertand very very clearly that alcibiades is a man deeply loved by socrates , which is insane , since by the time the text was written alcibiades was a nutorius criminal and traitor. Alcibiades was at the time the text was written , a very very hated person , and a very problematic one , yet here we have , the father of philosophy, the poster boy for goodness , a person who is used often by plato to be an example of reason and of morality, saying he loves a man who will later become increadebly moraly corrupted

This testimony of socrates love is the ultimate example of matirial objects versus the world of ideas ( btw once youve had the plato cave alegory explained to you its very easy to understand plato , it almost always is relevant to a point its starting to annoy me ) . He loves alcibiades, the real alcibiades, the alcibiades that exists in the world of ideas , and he rejects alcibiades body , the matirial possesion . This is the back bone of any platonic text , it all boils down to this , objects vs ideas , and in the world of ideas , alcibiades, even alcibiades, even a man who the audience knew as corrupt and a cause of great harm for the city , is in his idealistic state. His soul is good because it exists in the idealistic world , that is the point of that little exchange , and he will be loved by socrates and at a moral hight ground as long as his soul stays intact , and on the other hand , his soul will stay intact as long as he is socrates lover . These two go hand in hand , its a knife that cuts both ways , he will be loved if he reached peak morality and he will reach peak morality if he is loved

Its also important philosophically that socrates rejects alcibiades body , and rejects objects in such a way . He is essentially saying that while alcibiades body will worsen with age , without anything anyone can do about it to stop it , unlike his body , alcibiades mind is totally in his own control , and he can chose to worsen or better his moral grounds . He can choose to take socrates as a lover , he is presented with the chance to be loved by socrates and it is a choice , unlike matirial corruption which is a result of time or forces beyond their control , moral corruption is based only in alcibiades choice not to be loved by socrates

Theres also a lot to be said about how alcibiades as a person not as a literary means would react to this , and what it would mean to him as a person , and how it changed his choices after that, but i will talk about it later .

( trans : so , my beloved alcibiades, the soul , if it means to know itself must look into a soul , and for the most part , the part of it where the souls virtiue is created , the wizdom , and wherever else it happens to bare resemblece with that? )

This again , shows the distinction between phisicality and philosophy , this time more centered around the twos relationship . Its also i think a great way to explain the whole socratic method .

Socrates is explaining here his distaste for physical contact , in his mind , spiritual enlightenmen is the true goal, which can only be found through dialoge , and through conversing with someone else . He is talking about finding knowlage through dialoge not to gain knowlage for the sake of it but so you can better understand your own self , saying this , espesially to a lover , especially to a lover who , through the simposium we know socrates had rejected physical multiple times , is not only in my opinion peak romanticism, but abselout concrete proof of socrates love for alcibiades . He is willing to walk alcibiades through it , to teach him , to help him grow , and in order to do that he will use the socratic method , which before we had seen portrayed as something very sterile but now it is being described as a bearing of the soul , as complete honesty and complete knowledge, he speaks about how we must use others as our mirrors , he wants to converse with alcibiades not to give him knowlage for the sake of it but as an expression of their love and a bonding of their souls . This , combined with the facts we know from the simposium and the general idial that in ancient greece most student teacher relationships were also romantic , solidifies the fact that to socrates , and to plato , and to philosophers in general , philosophy is a means to express their love for the world

I think its also important to say that there is a reason this very very intoductory text that basically hits all the major philosophical points is a discussion between lovers , and not between socrates and anyone else , it further proves the point that philosophy at its core is centered around curiosity yes , but also a love for the world , and a love for betterment .

( trans: i woukd like for you to continiue . I fear though , not out of lack of trust in your nature , but becayse i observe the citys power , that it will best both you and me )

Now if this was written maybe three or four decades later than it was , i would write those final words off as just some random way to close the text . HOWEVER . This was written long after alcibiades had his political peak. Long after the numerous war crimes . And i kept looking back at it . I kept questiong why plato would end it like that , why would he make socrates mention alcibiades has his complete trust , socrates is supposed to be super smart and super moral and all that stuff. Why would he put his trust in alcibiades?

Again , this ties in perfectly with the other part of the conversation where they talked about alcibiades body and what not . Again , alcibiades is portrayed as not being morally bad but as someone who has the potential to prosper , only if he makes the choice of staying with socrates . With those words a new lover is introduced, socrates competition in a way . Alcibiades will only prospect if he stays with socrates and his morality will crumble if he chooses the side of the people of athens .

This to me is the ultimate apologist behavior. Alcibiades is practically forgiven for the atrocious things hes done , and its all placed on the curroption of the people , its fhe peoples fault , its not alcibiades. Athens is portrayed as a corruptive lover, capable of seducing the boy and making him the power hungry war lord he turned out to be , this is the writers way to short of give socrates an exuse for loving alcibiades so much and also to prove that athens and the people in it trully have a tremendous power and trully are in their core , rotten and immoral.

For the texts final conclusion it is explained to us Alcibiades turned to be the way he is not out of inate lack of morality, but because his own powers , and socrates attempts, where bested by the worlds ability to ruin morality and ethics .

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 87: If I were an irrealis episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘If I were an irrealis episode’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about how languages express unreality. But first, thank you to everyone who celebrated our anniversary month with us.

Lauren: We always enjoy seeing what you recommend to people and thanking you for doing that. If you did that not on social media, in your own private media channels, thank you very much. You can share Lingthusiasm with anyone who needs more linguistics in their life throughout the year.

Gretchen: Our most recent bonus episode is a conversation about swearing in science fiction and fantasy with Ada Palmer and Jo Walton.

Lauren: I was so excited to hear you talk to two of our favourite authors. We’ve talked about Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning and the Terra Ignota series before. We’ve talked about Jo Walton’s Thessaly books. Getting to hear you talk to them about swearing in fantasy and in science fiction was a whole lot of fun.

Gretchen: This was so much fun. We also have several other bonus episodes about swearing more generally as well as a massive archive of bonus episodes if you’re looking for something to do, and you wish there were more Lingthusiasm episodes, or you just wanna help us keep making the show. Those are there. You can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to get access to our full archive of bonus episodes for yourself, or they make a great last-minute gift idea.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, what is real?

Gretchen: That’s a big philosophical question, Lauren, “What does it mean for something to be real?”

Lauren: Mm-hmm. But we could also answer it linguistically.

Gretchen: We could, indeed. Languages have lots of ways of talking about things that aren’t real. Sometimes, this itself can get tricky. If you want to start a fun discussion among your friends at the dinner table, try asking them things like, “Is a toy sword a real sword?”

Lauren: Hmm, I can totally see a context where you’re playing with toy swords – or maybe those big foam swords that people use in live-action role playing. In that context, it’s a real sword. You’re like, “Please don’t hit me with your sword,” or “I’m gonna practice my sword work.”

Gretchen: It is more of a real sword than a mimed sword or an entirely imaginary sword. It is real as in you can touch it, but it is not real as in it could cut people. One of my friends has a cheese plate that comes with these delightful small swords and daggers and axes that you can use to cut cheese with.

Lauren: Cute.

Gretchen: Which is great. This is, by some definitions, a “real” sword because you can cut things with it even if those things are cheese.

Lauren: Probably taken away from you as a weapon if you try to take it on an aeroplane.

Gretchen: Are we letting the airplane security people decide what a real sword is? The solution to all of our philosophical questions is just answered by airline security people.

Lauren: I’m taking a really weird range of stuff to the airport next time I travel just to check what is real. But then there are things that exist but not in this reality. So, Excalibur is a famous sword. But is it a real sword?

Gretchen: Right. Probably there’s a museum somewhere that has something that claims that it’s Excalibur. It certainly is a sword that has a bunch of cultural connotations with it – that has a level of reality that’s different than a magical sword that someone just makes up as a fantasy novel writer for their own novel but doesn’t have a broader cultural existence.

Lauren: I feel in some ways it’s more real than a foam sword or a cheese plate sword because it is more prototypically sword-like in my head. Could you imagine if Arthur went around with a cheese plate-sized sword or a foam sword? That’s the version of King Arthur I’m gonna rewrite.

Gretchen: I recently saw a production of Macbeth in which – so Macbeth has this famous speech which starts, “Is this a dagger that I see before me?”, and he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating or not. He’s about to kill the king, and he’s feeling guilty about it.

Lauren: He’s not sure if it’s just a cheese board.

Gretchen: Is it just a cheese dagger? In this production – which was also interesting because all of the characters were dressed up as goblins, but that’s a whole other thing.

Lauren: Uh, okay.

Gretchen: We’ll get to that in a sec.

Lauren: Sure.

Gretchen: The staging represented the dagger, at first, as a beam of light – like a tightly focused spotlight – in front of Macbeth, and everything else on the stage was all in red. There was this beam of white light. You’re saying, “Is this a dagger that I see before me?”, and you’re seeing this beam of light. In that context, the audience is supposed to be believing that Macbeth is hallucinating. Then the actor pulls out a prop dagger that I’m sure was probably not very sharp to subsequently be the murder weapon that he’s gonna go kill the king with. So, “Is this a real dagger? Is this an unreal dagger?” Different productions approach this question of “Is Macbeth seeing something real or not?” in different ways.

Lauren: The prop dagger is more of a real dagger than the beam of light dagger. And in the play, it stands in as a real dagger, but it’s less of a real dagger than a sharp one that might stab someone.

Gretchen: Right.

Lauren: I’m keeping track.

Gretchen: Exactly.

Lauren: Just to be clear – were they real goblins?

Gretchen: Well, [laughs] I certainly felt like I had just seen some goblins perform Macbeth. I had to keep reminding myself, like, no, they’ve just got costumes on because, man, those costumes were really great. The actors came out into the lobby and interacted with the audience before and after the show, so they felt –

Lauren: As goblins? In character?

Gretchen: As goblins in character.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: Sort of improvising. They felt like they were real goblins. Then I’ve had to explain this show to other people, and they’ve been like, “So, wait, were they humans in the play?” And I was like, “No, it’s complicated. It all made sense at the time, though, I promise.”

Lauren: Amazing. I do have a moment of caution because goblins aren’t real in our world, but also, goblins have been used by a bunch of 20th Century fantasy writers to stand in for, for example, Jewish people in not always the most sensitive or appropriate way. Is that something that was happening here? I say with caution.

Gretchen: No, thank goodness.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: One of the things you can do with something that has a cultural reality is the characters are very careful to say, “These other writers – you may have heard other things about goblins – they were all wrong. We’re the real goblins, and we’re gonna tell you the real story of goblins, which is not at all antisemitic” in the context of the actors wanting to do this play.

Lauren: Okay, so they were more real fake goblins than the fake fake goblins of fantasy.

Gretchen: Exactly. They were laying claim to being the real goblins and being like, “No, these other authors have said nasty things about this, but that’s not who we are.”

Lauren: Hilarious.

Gretchen: Which is something that you can do with something that has a cultural level of reality. “If I had a dog” is a hypothetical statement, but dogs are real.

Lauren: You could have a pet dog if you wanted to.

Gretchen: “If I had a dragon” is also a hypothetical statement, but it has a different level of hypothetical reality.

Lauren: You could put a little costume on a lizard, but yeah, you’re not getting a pet dragon of fire-breathing, winged fantasy fame.

Gretchen: Well, but maybe I have a dragon plush toy, which is a real dragon that I could have.

Lauren: True. Much easier to feed than a real dog or lizard.

Gretchen: My house insurance is a much bigger fan of me having a stuffed dragon. Those have a different level of reality compared to if I say, “If I have a frenumblinger” –

Lauren: If you have a what what?

Gretchen: Well, a “frenumblinger,” clearly, which is the creature that makes it not rain when you bring an umbrella.

Lauren: Ah. I absolutely always take an umbrella everywhere with me, but I didn’t realise I was appeasing this particular deity.

Gretchen: Well, if only you’d realised you were appeasing the frenumblinger – which is a creature that we made up that doesn’t have a cultural reality beyond this podcast.

Lauren: Dragons are more real than frenumblingers, even though both of them are not real.

Gretchen: Yeah. Reality itself is a continuum and depends on the context that you’re talking about.

Lauren: It’s so great that language lets us talk about things that aren’t here and aren’t real.

Gretchen: And that may or may not be real in the future.

Lauren: A lot of the time, we do this with words – like something being “not real” or “There might be dragons.”

Gretchen: Or “fake” or “toy” or things like that – “imaginary.”

Lauren: But languages can also use grammatical marking as part of a way of showing whether something’s real or not in the way that we do our grammar.

Gretchen: This is referred to with a delightful name, which is the “irrealis.” There are various kinds of irrealis markers that happen at a grammatical level in addition to all of the ways you can use words to talk about things that are imaginary or pretend or fake or constructed.

Lauren: There’s lots of different ways that we talk about the “slipperiness” of reality in language. We’re gonna talk about the grammatical structures of irrealis for the rest of this episode.

Gretchen: We’ve talked about stories and deliberately imaginary or fantastical contexts, but there’s also lots of places in everyday language where we wanna talk about things that haven’t happened and may never happen but might happen. We wanna talk about them.

Lauren: For example, “If it rains, I bring an umbrella,” regardless of whether I believe in frenumblinger.

Gretchen: That’s a relatively here and now if-then statement. We can also say, “If it rains, I will cancel the picnic,” which is something that’s even more hypothetical.

Lauren: Disappointing, but fair enough if we have to do that.

Gretchen: You can have more hypothetical conditional statements like “If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops, oh, what a rain that would be!”

Lauren: That sounds horrifying.

Gretchen: Wait, do you not know this children’s song?

Lauren: I do not know this children’s song. It sounds like the start of an apocalypse.

Gretchen: “If it had rained lemon drops and gum drops, the plants would’ve been crushed under the weight.”

Lauren: Not to mention us. I don’t think my umbrella’s gonna be much help here.

Gretchen: Not to mention the effects on the water table.

Lauren: Oh, gosh. This is an absolute ecological apocalypse here. How terrifying.

Gretchen: Conditionals can be used to talk about both relatively realistic hypothetical events – and also very fantastical ones.

Lauren: I’m gonna go listen to this song after this, but I am already scared of it.

Gretchen: You’ll be even more excited to learn that the second verse goes, “If all the snowflakes were candy bars and milkshakes.”

Lauren: How are we even gonna produce that many candy bars and that much milkshake?

Gretchen: “Oh, what a snow that would be!”

Lauren: Indeed.

Gretchen: My favourite type of conditionals are not candy bars and milkshakes, they are, in fact, biscuit conditionals.

Lauren: Delightful.

Gretchen: Going from one food to the next. So, this is a famous example from J. L. Austin, who has the statement, “There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them.”

Lauren: Oh, thanks, but where are biscuits if I don’t want them?

Gretchen: [Laughs] This is the thing because in these examples of “If it rains, I bring an umbrella,” if it doesn’t rain, maybe I don’t bring an umbrella, or maybe I bring one just in case to appease frenumblinger – compared to “There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them, and if you don’t want them, well, where are they?”

Lauren: There are lots of different relationships between the first half and the second half of a conditional. I do like that biscuit conditionals set you up for a really great mom joke there.

Gretchen: There’s a related xkcd comic which goes, “I’ll be in your city tomorrow if you want to hang out.”

Lauren: “But where will you be if I don’t want to hang out?” I do actually wanna hang out.

Gretchen: I wanna hang out, too. But yeah, this sort of “What happens with the other half of the ‘if’?” This is one of the tricky things about talking about hypothetical events that there are lots of different ways of getting into that hypothetical.

Lauren: Which is why the caption on the xkcd comic is “Why I try not to be pedantic about conditionals.”

Gretchen: Very important.

Lauren: A good motto to live by. A lot of conditionals are slippery when the hypothetical part is in the future, and that’s because the future is quite difficult. It is unknowable by its very nature because we have a linear progression of time. That means that the future and irrealis bump up against each other in really interesting ways.

Gretchen: Right. If you make a statement – a relatively unremarkable future-y statement – like, “I’m probably gonna go to the store tomorrow,” or “I want to bake a cake tonight,” these are fine. These express a future or a desired future, but if you make the past equivalent – so instead of “I’m probably going to the store tomorrow,” “I probably went to the store yesterday.”

Lauren: Are you okay?

Gretchen: Like, was I sleepwalking? Was I consuming a substance that made me forget things?

Lauren: Do you have amnesia?

Gretchen: That’s suddenly a much weirder statement. “I want to bake a cake tonight,” fine. “I wanted to bake a cake last night” is fine, but it implies that it didn’t actually happen. Like, “I wanted to bake the cake last night. In fact, I did bake one.” Okay. Well, why didn’t you just say, “I baked a cake last night?”

Lauren: For sure. In fact, this is where English “will” for future came from. Something like, “I will bake a cake” originally meant something much more like, “I want to bake a cake.”

Gretchen: You still get, I think, sometimes these older, tiny things like, “I know it’s gonna happen. I will it.” That’s the same “will” in origin. The wanting intensely is that future “will” – it became that future “will.”

Lauren: The way that “will” is turning into something much more grammatical in the English future is a nice example of how different languages will sometimes use words and sometimes use grammar for these less-real irrealis contexts.

Gretchen: English still has grammatical past – “I baked a cake last night” – which is different from “I bake a cake right now.” But in some languages, instead of having a past/non-past like we have in English, what you actually have is a realis/irrealis where you have one form of a verb to talk about things that have happened or that are currently happening – any version of it that’s real – and then you have another form that’s talking about any version of it that’s unreal, whether that’s future or hypothetical or that whole class of things. It also makes sense as a way of splitting the conceptual timeframe into things that I have evidence for actually happening and things that I don’t yet have evidence for.

Lauren: For example, Manam, which is an Austronesian language in Papua New Guinea, doesn’t have a tense distinction like past and present and future; it has a realis and an irrealis form. They’re all prefixes on the verb.

Gretchen: There’s one set of prefixes for realis, whether it’s like, “I’m doing this,” “You’re doing that,” “We’re doing this,” “They’re doing this,” and so on. And there’s one for irrealis, which is like, “I might,” or “I will,” or “We might,” or “They might,” or all of these groups of forms. Another example of a language that uses realis versus irrealis as a really important distinction is Terêna, which is a southern Arawak language spoken in southwestern Mato Grosso, Brazil. They have two different forms for every verb, which is “actual” and “potential” – basically realis and irrealis – that have different suffixes. You have things that are realis, which can be translated as stuff like, “He went,” or “when he went,” or “He will go,” which in this case is grouped with the realis.

Lauren: So, it’s definitely gonna happen.

Gretchen: The idea is it’s definitely gonna happen. Then, in the irrealis category you have things more like, “Let him go,” or “when he goes,” which is more hypothetical.

Lauren: What people segment up as realis and irrealis differs depending on the grammar of a language.

Gretchen: Exactly. In many cases, English uses just extra words like “will” or “want” or “let” or “if” to indicate that something is irrealis, but we do have a few verb forms that are also used for hypothetical events.

Lauren: One of my favourites involves both mid-20th-Century musicals and Gwen Stefani.

Gretchen: Great.

Lauren: In English, we have two different structures. We have “if I were a rich man.” That is a slightly different structure to “if I was a rich girl.”

Gretchen: Ah, so these are two relatively famous songs. “If I Were a Rich Man” comes from Fiddler on the Roof, which is a 1964 musical.

Lauren: And “If I Were a Rich Girl” is a Gwen Stefani song from 2004.

Gretchen: This immediately gives us these great dates for when these two forms were more popular – “if I were,” “if I was” – and then these two songs that are influenced by each other.

Lauren: This form that has “were,” instead of just the normal past tense “was,” is something known as the “subjunctive.”

Gretchen: Ah, the elusive subjunctive in English.

Lauren: It is elusive because it is changing into this regular past tense form as we see with Gwen Stefani’s “If I Was a Rich Girl.”

Gretchen: Right. Not everybody says the subjunctive in that context. It’s still optionally there. You have to do it in “if I were” or “if he were” because in all the other forms, “if you were,” “if they were,” “if we were,” it’s just the same as the past tense form. You have to use it with “I” or “he” or “she” – one of the forms that would use “was” in another context – to be able to see it show up, which is probably why it’s kind of fragile and disappearing.

Lauren: Yeah, I think so.

Gretchen: Can we try to do a little bit of antedating? Fiddler on the Roof comes out in 1964, but the title of the song “If I Were a Rich Man,” having now looked into it, was inspired by a monologue from 1902 by Sholem Aleichem, which was in Yiddish, and the title of that was, “Ven Ikh Bin Rothschild,” or literally, “If I Were a Rothschild.”

Lauren: So, I don’t have to speak Yiddish to know that they’re talking about the very rich American Rothschild family.

Gretchen: Yes. Something that I think is interesting grammatically about the title of this monologue, which is a great monologue because it all goes on about how he’s gonna build schools for all the poor children and stuff – it’s a great monologue – but is “ikh bin,” which is the same as the German form “Ich bin,” like “I am,” whereas the German subjunctive form in this context is “Ich wäre,” which is more like “I were.”

Lauren: Yiddish and German are related, but they’re already doing different things.

Gretchen: They’re already doing different things specifically with subjunctive. Yiddish is already following this trajectory that English is following where it’s getting closer to the more usual form for “I am.”

Lauren: And you’re just meant to know that it’s hypothetical because he’s not a Rothschild, and he’s not building schools.

Gretchen: Well, and you have this word “if,” yeah.

Lauren: I also did some antedating on Gwen Stefani’s version of “If I Was a Rich Girl,” which was on her debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. It turns out that it’s actually a cover of a 1993 song by Louchie Lou & Michie One, where they also sing “if I was a rich girl.” Already by the early ’90s in younger people’s speech you see the subjunctive slipping.

Gretchen: Who are Louchie Lou & Michie One?

Lauren: They’re a British female ragga/soul duo from London in the early ’90s and were linked to the film clip for this track because they’re clearly having a lot of fun with it.

Gretchen: They may have had their finger on the pulse of language change a bit sooner than Gwen Stefani in 2004.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: When I think about the connection between “If I Were a Rich Man” and “If I Was a Rich Girl,” I think of an a cappella mashup from the mid-2010s, which combines these two songs in a very fun music video from some very posh-looking British a cappella singers, which we can also link to because it reinforces – and I hadn’t really realised that “If I Was a Rich Girl” was actually playing on “If I Were a Rich Man,” and they’re using some of the same beats in the background of the song. I hadn’t realised there was a connection between those. I should say, when Gwen Stefani came out with that song, she’d already released some music, and she was already pretty wealthy. At the time, you got some newspaper commenters and so on who were saying like, “Isn’t it a bit disingenuous for you to be saying, ‘if I was a rich girl’? Because you are, in fact, a rich girl.”

Lauren: Yeah, but the lyric “if I were not the rich girl that I am so I can be an avatar for my unwealthy audience” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Gretchen: Gwen Stefani at the time explained that as she was talking about the time before she had found commercial success when she used to be broke – which, maybe, you know, okay.

Lauren: A different level of hypothetical there.

Gretchen: Two levels of hypotheticality.

Lauren: We’re seeing this really interesting development over the last century or so in English where the subjunctive is changing in English.

Gretchen: Sometimes people say that this is “losing the subjunctive,” but interestingly, in both cases, it’s a past form. “If I was” and “if I were” are both using the form that is associated with the past – “was” or “were” – to refer to an event that is very much not the past. In fact, it hasn’t happened.

Lauren: Ugh, this is why it’s so hard to learn it as a second language speaker.

Gretchen: The subjunctive is something that often comes up when people are learning languages like French, Spanish, Italian – in German, it’s called the “conjunctive,” but it’s the same thing, the conjunctive and the conditional – because these languages have more fully-fledged forms for the subjunctive that they use to express a range of meanings that English speakers know how to express but aren’t used to thinking as all of the same kind of thing. Sometimes, I think it must actually be really hard if someone speaks one of those languages first and is coming in and trying to learn English, and they’re like, “What do you mean I just have this one easy form that I use for all this stuff, and I have to learn, like, seven different ways of expressing it now?”

Lauren: [Laughs] For sure.

Gretchen: I think this must actually also be hard because English doesn’t have one unified subjunctive. We have a whole range of extra stuff. You can just use the subjunctive for all of them? That’s so easy!

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, you could be like me and whenever anyone talks about the subjunctive, in my head I just hear, “if I was-slash-were a rich man-slash-girl.”

Gretchen: I’m glad that you’re covering the full range of possible forms there with “was” and “were.” I remember feeling confused about this form in the classroom and trying to use the subjunctive where, a lot of the times, the context that you’re talking about things are very remote and seem kind of artificial. The thing that really made me feel more comfortable using the subjunctive and recognising it was just encountering it in the wild in a bunch of contexts where it was like, “Oh, yeah, this is what this has to mean.” There’s a particularly useful song for the French subjunctive, if you like, which is on a classic Celine Dion album from the 1990s.

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: The song is called, “Pour Que Tu M’aimes Encore,” which is the title which translates sort of like, “So That You Love Me Again.” The “you love” is subjunctive. It’s hypothetical. It’s not the case, otherwise you wouldn’t have a song to write, but it’s saying all the things that the speaker would do so that the other person loves them again.

Lauren: Really looking forward to the Celine Dion/Gwen Stefani mashup that really helps people learn the French and English subjunctive forms.

Gretchen: Sounds great.

Lauren: The subjunctive is one of a set of different ways that we can talk about whether things are real or not. They’re also a subset of irrealis categories that are about trying to make the reality that you want to happen. There’s a great list on Wikipedia to check out. I feel like this was written by a linguist who is like me and remembers that there are different types of irrealis categories but never remembers their formal names.

Gretchen: This is definitely one of those cases when it’s like, if you know Latin, you just name everything with Latin roots, and then it sounds fancier than “the wish subjunctive” and the “want-to-make-people-do-things subjunctive.”

Lauren: Yes. We are gonna use the fancy names here, but like me, you’re absolutely not obliged to remember them. You can just click on the Wikipedia link whenever you wanna think about –

Gretchen: Every single time.

Lauren: Yeah. Let’s both pick our favourite two of these categories.

Gretchen: But, Lauren, we’re both gonna pick the “hortative” because it’s so cool!

Lauren: It is, and I just used it with “let’s.”

Gretchen: You just used it. “Let’s” both pick our favourite two subjunctive forms. The hortative is something that exhorts – it urges. It’s often found with “let” in English. Something like “Let us love each other,” “Let it snow,” “Let there be light” – imploring, insisting, or encouraging by the speaker. Sometimes, a language will have a specific form potentially used for the hortative, or this will be one of the categories that something like a subjunctive or another irrealis form can be used for. What’s one of your favourites if you can’t have the hortative?

Lauren: Well, if I can’t have the hortative, I will go for the category where an event is hoped for, expected, or awaited, which is the “optative.”

Gretchen: The “optative.” I want to opt into this coming event. Do you have an example of the optative?

Lauren: Something like, “May I be loved” or “May they get what they deserve,” which sounds threatening or hopeful depending on the context.

Gretchen: Can you use something like a “if only”?

Lauren: In Russian, to do something like the optative it would be literally translated as something like, “if only” – “If only she came back” – to do that expected or hoped for thing.

Gretchen: We have a “may something happen,” “if only something happened,” maybe “I wish something had happened.”

Lauren: I love Abkhaz – which is the language that Sarah Dopierala works on; we interviewed her for a bonus – I love that it has two different optative forms, and they both do slightly different things. In Abkhaz, you have Optative 1, which is to curse and to bless, and then Optative 2 is to express a wish, a dream, or a desire. The first one would be something like – the form of greetings is literally “May you see something good,” which is a blessing.

Gretchen: That’s a lovely greeting, yes.

Lauren: It’s a lovely greeting. I quite like. Optative 2 would be something like, “I wish she’d drink the water.” You get these two different forms that give you an idea of different ways you can do an optative.

Gretchen: I mean, I guess technically – we did a whole episode about the imperative, so that’s things like, “Drink the water,” and “See something good,” “Come back” – that is technically a type of irrealis because if you’re commanding someone to do something, it hasn’t happened yet.

Lauren: Ooo, yeah, so now you can go back and look into the whole imperative episode as an irrealis episode.

Gretchen: In principle, we could’ve done an entire hortative episode and an entire optative episode, but we decided to think about the macro category for a while first.

Lauren: My final category is one for when you’re not necessarily sure about the thing that you’re talking about, so you can’t be entirely certain if it’s real or not. This feature shows up in Yolmo. I wrote about it for my thesis. I wrote about it for a whole year before saying it. It turns out that I hate to say the word “dubitative” – /d͡ʒubɪtɛɪtɪv/?

Gretchen: /dubɪdəˈtɪv/.

Lauren: /dubətɪv/. /dubɪdətɪv/.

Gretchen: “Indubitatatative.”

Lauren: I’m very happy to write it for a year, and then I gave a presentation, and I was just like, “Oh, this is a problem.” But it is a grammatical category in Yolmo, and I do have to talk about it because it’s one that crops up in a whole bunch of languages. In English, we use a word like, “might,” you know, “I might make a cake,” “He maybe made a cake.” We use lots of different words for showing a lack of certainty. In other languages, it’s part of the grammar. In Ojibwe, which is an Algonquian language in North America, there is a specific suffix. The difference between saying something like, “aakozi,” meaning, “He’s sick,” or “aakozidog,” which is something like, “He must be sick; I guess he’s sick; Maybe he’s sick.” Like, “I can’t see inside this person’s head. I’m not a doctor. I can’t say for certain whether they’re sick, but they look pretty miserable.” I find having a grammatical form for whether you’re certain about something is so handy.

Gretchen: Technically, if you’d like, I did look up how to say this word. Oxford says /dubɪtɛɪtɪv/, but you know, language is pluricentric. You can say it however you’d like.

Lauren: I’ve definitely heard all of those different pronunciations from different people over time. I guess I will just continue to be uncertain about the way it’s pronounced.

Gretchen: Would you say you have “doubt”? Would you say you’re /dubɪtɛɪtɪv/ or /dubɪdətɪv/ about how to say “dubitative”?

Lauren: I would definitely use a dubitative grammatical form about my certainty about pronouncing it if we had one in English.

Gretchen: Excellent. I think my final form that I’m excited about – because I’m not counting imperative because we did a whole episode about that – I want to talk about a form that you can use to express a desire or a wish of the participant. If you wanna say something like, “I wish she loved me” – you have desire – you can use a /dəzɪdɹ̩ətɪv/ – I think that’s the only way it’s said. There are languages from Japanese and Mongolian to Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European that all have desiderative forms of some sort.

Lauren: Aww. I like when a nice form crops up across a bunch of languages.

Gretchen: I think that that desire to try to impose order or predict what people are gonna say or what’s gonna be reality is part of what makes irrealis forms, like the subjunctive, complicated and confusing for people to learn is that they’re trying to talk about this whole class of events that haven’t happened yet and may or may not ever happen, which itself is confusing and chaotic to try to predict the future. It’s not the grammar’s fault that we’re using it to speculate about the unknowable.

Lauren: For sure.

Gretchen: One thing that we do know is that there is a fun etymology related to trying to impose order and predict the future of what people are gonna be like.

Lauren: I love a fun etymology story.

Gretchen: Have you ever wondered why the Greek Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac are both called “zodiacs” even though one is months and the other one is years?

Lauren: I have never thought about this before. Is it something to do with the fact that – I mean, they both have cycles of 12 animals, so they definitely have a lot in common even though they don’t work on the same 12 rotation cycle.

Gretchen: Well, interestingly, it has nothing to do with 12, but etymologically, they come from the Greek “zodiakos kyklos,” or “zodiac circle,” which is literally a circle of little animals.

Lauren: Oh, “zo” as in “zoo.”

Gretchen: Yeah!

Lauren: But “diak” just is the diminutive “little”? Oh, that that is very cute.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s “little animals.”

Lauren: How adorable.

Gretchen: There’re lots of tools that people use to make sense of the uncertainty or unknowability of reality in the future. Some of those tools are grammatical tools. Some of those tools are –

Lauren: Cute little animals.

Gretchen: Circles of little animals. Sometimes, that tool is etymology because people also use the origins of words to try to make sense of uncertainty even though etymology is also not destiny.

Lauren: We believe that so strongly that we made it into a sticker.

Gretchen: When you’re thinking about what’s real and what’s not real, when you’re wondering what’s knowable or unknowable, what’s certain or uncertain, the irrealis is a form that connects you through time and space to generations of other people who have also wondered what’s real.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all of the podcast platforms or go to lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them, including IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch like our new “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and stickers at lingthusiasm.com/merch. My social media and blog is Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @gretchenmcc on Bluesky, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk to other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus episodes include my excursion to linguistics summer camp, a.k.a. the LSA Linguistics Institute, a linguistics advice Q&A episode, and swearing in science fiction and fantasy. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[chronically-enthusiastic]

oh yeah i finished Babel!!!!!!

it was very good & i really liked it and all the Themes and all the linguistics stuff was sooooo interestingggggsnhasgnasasn words i love words!! i was wondering how she was going to end it because, you know they're running a revolution, and from a plot perspective they should win because robin is the protagonist, but it was all so well researched and otherwise Very Historically Accurate so was she going to change the entire opium wars part of this history??? and then the ending was like. wow. wow ok that happened. and i thought it was really interesting how So Much of society relied on silver to the point where it literally crumbled when it stopped working?? ough fascinating.

and i LOVED when the match-pairs were explained like YESSSSS tell me about those wordsssss hnnnrnrg i wish i spoke more than englishhhhh. and how it only worked when the person saying the words was someone who *really* understood what they meant, and how less common languages were more powerful because the words were more different, and the connections between english's borrowed words & colonialism oughh the THEMES. also when [redacted for spoilers reasons] dies and they all immediately go 'how do we hide the body?' instead of 'what happened????!?!?'

sjansjnask i really really liked ittttttttt thank you for reminding me it existed lol <3

ALSKDJFNLASDKJFNAKSDJF F;AJSDGQSL'KJG BABBBEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLL

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

*composes themself*

Oh yes, that book that I thought was mediocre /SARC

The linguistic stuff was INCREDIBLE I LOVED IT ASLKDJF!!!!!! I get what you mean about the plot!!! I normally know where it is going to go, but with Babel there were endless possibilities!!!!

I didnt realise that that actually happened in history?!?!?! Can I say I hate Britain (because of wanting to start a war - im assuming that that happened too?) ? We have such an awful history and aggh why did/do people think its okay to kill people for stupid reasons its awful......

IKR!!!! I feel like it has a lot of parallels with AI in today's society? And other mechanical/technological advancements.

THE LINGUISTICS OMG ALKSJDFHASDLKJFHAS;DJFLKJFHASLDKHFBADSLKHBFLADKHF

HNNGGGGGG

YES!!!! I love their dynamic and how they trust each other so much (Well...... mostly), and I love the 'how do we hide the body' trope! When I read the part where [REDACTED] dies I felt *emotions*. He was an awful person but [REDACTED] didnt deserve the emotional trauma of that........ And RAMY MY DARLING HNNGGGGGGGGGGG SO ANGRY ABOUT THAT DKLFSJSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I really wish there was a sequel though - I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WORLD!?!!! DID IT WORK?!?! HOW DID THEY REBUILD THE WORLD WITHOUT SILVER ETC??!?!?!?!??!?!

I'm so so so so glad you liked it - thank you for existing to share the joys and pain of this book with me <3

[jaimehwatson]

15 Questions

Stolen from @piratecaptainscaptainpirates because I love these!

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?

I named myself Jaime just because I liked the name and it felt right, but I later also realized it comes from the same linguistic root as my grandfather's name, Jacobus, so I like to think I'm sorta named after him too

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

This is kind of embarrassing but yesterday I was really looking forward to taking a nice warm shower on my lunch break (working from home) and then the hot water was off in the building with no warning and it was the last straw

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?

No and no plans to although I am looking forward to being a cool uncle to friends' kids in the future

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?

I'm learning karate! And I would love to get back into roller derby one day

DO YOU USE SARCASM?

Sometimes for comedic effect, despite the best efforts of my mother who would never let me watch any cartoons in which she thought the characters were too sarcastic when I was a kid

WHAT'S YOUR EYE COLOUR?

Brown!

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?

I like scary stuff and weird ambiguous endings!

ANY TALENTS?

I think I'm pretty good at writing and music

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

Ontario, Canada

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?

Writing, reading, music, video games, embroidery and other crafting stuff

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?

Not in my current apartment, but my childhood cat is still doing okay for his advanced age and living with my mom! Cat tax:

HOW TALL ARE YOU?

Around 5'10" I think

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?

When I was in school I loved English so much that I eventually did a PhD in it!

DREAM JOB?

I fantasize a lot about running a bookstore/café but I don't actually realistically want to deal with the financial side of running a small business. And I wish I could just be a writer full-time but that's also not happening any time in the near future. On a practical level I'm going to start taking college classes in the fall to learn to be a library technician so that's the more achievable dream at the moment!

Tagging @sybilius @trenko-heart @the-girl-with-the-algebra-book @scyllas-revenge if you feel like it!

[pinkanonhopes]

Hello!!! Welcome to 2023 🎉💐

Sending lots of love and flowers your way— did you know that daisies and sunflowers are part of the same family? In Victorian times, daisies represented innocence with the game of he-loves-me/he-loves-me-not. Earlier than that, though, they represented the idea of being above worldly matters, and that even the smallest flower has something to teach. The sunflower, apparently, was a symbol in the late 19th century’s Aesthetic Movement of “art for art’s sake”. It received some backlash for being perceived as superficial, which I think is silly and almost fitting as a symbol of accepting beauty as it is.

I hope this year treats you kindly <3 Do you have any little aspirations for this year (tiny and fun ones, like learning a new dance move or trying a food you’ve always wanted to)?

hiii!!!!! welcome to 2023 to you too!!!!!! <33

woah that's so fascinating. absolutely love that. i love those flowers even more now. 🌼🌻

i do!!!! i'd really like to read a book my mom lent me which is about linguistics. really cool. i just started it and never finished it. also, i was thinking today about maybe making a list of movies i'd like to watch and try and watch one or two every week. there's tons of stuff that i always tell myself i'm gonna watch and then i never do, but maybe i can try and incorporate a film or two in my weekly routine!!

what about you?? do you have any resolutions or things you'd like to do this year? <333 wish you the best!!!!!

[stellarcobweb]

things tht ive been feeling pulled to do/learn fr the spiral (this started with the intent of former sentence but then Things Happened and idk where that train of thought went. ended up rambling)

read house of leaves

learn the most complicated shorthand ever

make a cipher and use it religiously. make needlessly complicated

remake playlists

buy kaleidoscope

linguistics for some reason (language is bullshit. im learning toki pona and asl. i wish i

on the topic of toki pona ve been staring at different writing systems and im feelin particularly drawn to the . sitelen kule. that sounds so fun and so annoying /pos

retroactively associating my sudoku and nonogram obsession w spiral

i really like symbolism. edvard munch is my fav artist bc i feel like i can sink my teeth real hard into his art. also abstract art

............i think ihave dyscalculia and also general sleep cycle and time issues. i literally had an appointment in the middle of writing this that told me i spend like 35 mins under 90% oxygen and def have sleep apnea. wild. also time is bullshit. ALSO i have such insane issues differentiating right and left

sometimes my ability to speak english is just Fucked. hell language

i wish i could use the lunisolar calendar by default tbh. alternative calendar systems are my ideal. my memory is so fucked my brain decides on like. "it happen when i was 8 - when The Mental Illness started, when i was 13/14 - when i first started dating my ex, when i was 16 - when my dad died, or after i turned 21 - breakup w ex and also i can drink alcohol now". i wanna bust out new calendars and have new and exciting ways to figure time out. legit. i wanna b inherently confusing to everyone around me its The Ideal

astrology probably but tbh i also associate that w various others if going off of Smirke's labelling of fears

occasional urge to get into pottery and buy some really nice clay to play with. i wanna make mugs and bowls that i can use tbh. playing w Good Clay in art class literal years ago rewired my brain

want to stare at fractals (i misspelled that as frals for a sec n tbh. real)

my memory is hell. zero object/emotional permanence, real bad memory issues, sleeping is complicated and my sleep cycle relies on the stars aligning and fucks itself up super easy. also chronic delusions. most of this isnt that much of a bother tho tbh . the delusions upset me the most but thats moreso bc i hate being wrong and falling Out of delusions moreso than the delusions themselves. yes i am an angel no i cant explain why. yes sometimes i dont think im one however i am Wrong

bookbinding ....... making a leitner sounds fun. also i want to make an ARG - i CAN MAKE AN UNFICTION/IMMERSIVE FICTION/ARG BOOK. house of leaves style. i feel like itd end up being web/spiral/eye and possibly also /lonely or others tbh. just based on what i like writing about. poss /hunt as well. millioms.

web stuff i want/like doing (theres more here but the Spiral yoinked me into focusing on it instead so. shrug. unfinished)

want to learn to code. no idea what language yet

dolls. just realized i could combine this and spiral clay and make spiralweb dolls. (also techinically stranger too but tbh i dont see stranger and spiral as . all that separate . same w slaughter and hunt not being all that separate. based entirely on how i myself perceive them obvi. i should work on my conpantheon ...)

yarn. crochet, knitting

lace, crossstitch, embroidery. thread

sewing tbh. i get urge to grab various fabrics just as bad as i get w yarn and tbh its sometimes worse bc making plushies is my hobby

[hummiscellanea]

my initial thoughts on SNW S2E6 "Lost in Translation:"

i liked it! one of the better ones in season 2 so far. i have a lot of things to say about it

-yippee uhura-centric episode!

-the whole "that thing is actually alive!" plot is very star trek. personally i love this plot so i don't mind seeing it again! i think the hallucination aspect makes it unique enough. however, we consumers of sci-fi television will see it coming from a million kellicams away. since we're genre-savvy and the characters aren't, that has the unintentional consequence of making uhura look kinda dumb, since it took so so so long to get to the foregone conclusion of a reveal :(

-"lost in translation" made me so excited because yippee! translation! (i love linguistics) i really liked the part where uhura "translated" the aliens' message but it was very short. if it were up to me, that would take up more of the episode

-KIRK!!!! i don't know who had to sell their soul to achieve such good kirk characterization on strange new worlds of all shows, but a soul well spent!! he makes me so happy whenever he's on screen because that's him! that's James T. Kirk! (if only spock made me feel the same way...)

-really i will defend this hill. kirk is written (and acted!) SO well on this show!!!

-"but what about kirk slash spock???????" i'm hesitant to touch that with a ten foot pole. i have Opinions on this snw kirk/spock discourse but i won't discuss them here

-similarly spock and chapel. their scene was kinda weird??? and i'm also hesitant to touch this discourse so i'll leave it at that for now

-i think it's nice to revisit hemmer. like his death is still affecting the characters because of course it would!

-la'an my beloved <3 <3 <3 it was just one scene but <3 <3 <3

-chief kyle mention????????? (only the tos girlies care about that one. actually more likely only a very small subset of the tos girlies care about that one. but i do)

-pelia and una's subplot was good! stuff dealing with hierarchical/military discipline and the friction that can create when one adheres far more strictly than another? right up my alley! also pelia is awesome

-ok so this episode wants me to believe that Una is super strict and by-the-book and only cares about orders and regulations? actually laughed when pelia said that. NO ONE on this damn show cares about discipline! pike does not run a tight ship! it's a pet peeve of mine. i wish this were more than just an informed attribute because that would make me like una a lot more. imagine this: Pike, the laid-back captain, with his tight-laced Number One. what a great dynamic that would be! i mean it's kiiiiiiinda implied to be the dynamic but i'd like to see it

-the music in this episode was even better than usual. so so good. really good.

-also the refinery looked really cool

-i was really convinced that we wouldn't get a kirk and spock interaction in SNW.....i had hoped that we wouldn't......but alas, it has happened. right at the end. torn about the execution of this. on the one hand, it could have been worse. commiserating about sam is funny i guess. on the other hand this is an important moment, and it's almost unceremonious. then again if it had pomp and circumstance it would probably suck. so i'll go with "ok it could have been worse"

so yeah i had a lot of thoughts!