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maziijapanese · 5 months ago

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Discover the Best Resources for Learning Japanese

Learning Japanese can be a rewarding and enriching experience, but finding the right resources can make all the difference. Whether you're a beginner just starting out or an intermediate learner looking to deepen your knowledge, having access to the right materials and tools is essential. This guide will introduce you to some of the best resources available to help you on your journey to mastering Japanese.

1. Dive into Japanese Pop Culture

One of the most enjoyable ways to learn Japanese is through immersion in the country's rich pop culture. Watching movies, anime, reading manga, and listening to Japanese music allows you to learn the language naturally while staying entertained. Here are some specific recommendations to get you started:

Movies: Films like "Spirited Away," "Your Name," and "My Neighbor Totoro" are not only visually stunning but also offer rich language exposure. Watching these films with Japanese audio and subtitles can help you pick up new vocabulary, understand sentence structures, and appreciate the nuances of spoken Japanese.

Anime: Popular series such as "Naruto," "Attack on Titan," and "My Hero Academia" are excellent choices for improving your listening skills and comprehension. Anime often features casual, conversational Japanese, making it a great tool for learning how people speak in everyday situations.

Manga: For those who prefer reading, manga like "One Piece," "Demon Slayer," and "Tokyo Ghoul" provide engaging stories that can enhance your reading skills. Manga often includes furigana (small kana characters above kanji), making it accessible even if you're still learning kanji.

2. YouTube Videos

YouTube is a treasure trove of Japanese language learning content. From street interviews and tutorials by native speakers to personal vlogs, YouTube offers a plethora of opportunities to hear authentic speech. This can help you improve your listening skills, expand your vocabulary, and grasp sentence structures. Here are some channels to check out:

JapanesePod101: This channel offers lessons for all levels, covering grammar, vocabulary, and cultural tips. With its structured approach, JapanesePod101 can help you progress methodically while providing cultural insights that enrich your learning experience.

That Japanese Man Yuta: Yuta’s channel features street interviews and discussions about Japanese culture and language. These real-life conversations give you a glimpse into how Japanese is spoken in different contexts, helping you understand colloquial expressions and natural speech patterns.

KemushiChan ロレッタ: Loretta shares her personal experiences, language learning tips, and cultural insights as a native English speaker living in Japan. Her content is relatable and encouraging, making it an excellent resource for learners navigating the challenges of studying Japanese.

3. Video Games

If you enjoy gaming, why not play video games in Japanese? Many popular games offer Japanese language options, and experiencing them in their original language can enhance your reading and listening abilities. Whether you’re battling monsters in Honkai Impact or exploring the fantastical world of Genshin Impact, playing games in Japanese can make learning feel less like studying and more like an adventure. Additionally, exploring genres like otome games, which often involve character interactions and dialogue-heavy scenarios, can provide a fun and immersive way to practice your Japanese.

4. Utilize Learning Apps

Language learning apps have revolutionized the way people study languages, offering a more interactive and enjoyable approach to mastering Japanese. Whether you're a beginner or an advanced learner, there are apps tailored to your level that can help you improve your skills at your own pace.

Using these apps consistently can significantly boost your Japanese skills, as they allow you to learn in a way that’s both flexible and tailored to your individual needs. The combination of structured lessons, interactive exercises, and real-life practice makes these apps powerful tools in your language learning arsenal.

5. Study with Textbooks

Textbooks provide structured learning and comprehensive coverage of grammar, vocabulary, and kanji. They are essential for learners who prefer a more traditional approach to studying Japanese. Some highly recommended textbooks include:

Genki: Perfect for beginners, covering basic grammar, vocabulary, and kanji. The Genki series is widely regarded as one of the best resources for starting your Japanese journey, offering clear explanations, exercises, and audio materials to help you develop your language skills.

Minna no Nihongo: This textbook offers extensive practice in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It’s particularly popular among language schools in Japan and is known for its thorough approach to teaching Japanese, making it a great choice for learners aiming to build a strong foundation.

Tobira: Ideal for intermediate learners aiming to advance their skills. Tobira bridges the gap between beginner and advanced levels, introducing more complex grammar points and providing ample opportunities for reading and listening practice.

Conclusion

There are numerous engaging and effective resources available for learning Japanese. Whether you’re passionate about pop culture, gaming, using apps, or studying with textbooks, there’s something to suit every learning style. By exploring these resources, you can create a diverse and dynamic study plan that keeps you motivated and helps you make steady progress. So why not try something new today and take your Japanese skills to the next level?

#japanese #learn japanese #language #nihongo #japanese langblr #japanese language #nutcracker nihongo #japanese vocabulary #learning japanese #japanese studyblr

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retrowaving1 · 1 year ago

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Polish Versus Ukrainian Cuisine, Part 2

Holidays are coming! It's time to talk about some famous Christmas dishes from Poland and Ukraine. And, like with everything I do, I'll start from something that usually arrives at your table by the very end of the feast - desserts, more specifically, cakes! Gingerbread is a type of food which's smell alone can immerse you into the Christmas mood. Many dishes from all around the world might be classified as gingerbread, including, Polish Piernik and Ukrainian Medivnyk, but there are two things which all of them share, whether we are talking about cakes, cupcakes, cookies or actual bread: spices and honey. The rest of the recipe, as usual, depends on the cook and the culture in which it happens to be popular.

Piernik vs. Медівник (etymology, application in culture, the dough preparation)

Ah, I absolutely love the two! In the place where I was born, namely, in the Western Ukraine, these two cakes just merged and inspired plethora of mind-blowing recipes. My Polish great-grandmother from my mom's side, born and raised in Galicja (a geographic region including the East of the modern Poland and the West of the modern Ukraine), used to bake something that can only be characterised as a gingerbread, taking the best from both worlds, as it used elements of both Piernik and Medivnyk. My half-Ukrainian grandmother from my dad's side developed her own recipe, which uses artificial honey, giving the cake an interesting texture, colour and smell. My mom absolutely loves this gentle layered kind of gingerbread cake with custard or cream filling (the influence of the Soviet times, we'll come to that), sometimes with addition of fresh or dried fruit). Basically, every cook in the Eastern Europe has their own unique recipe that adds something new to the original concept of honey- and spice-based cakes.

However, if we take traditional Medivnyk and Piernik, we might notice a huge difference in every aspect concerning them. From the names, through preparation, to their purpose in cultural context, these two cakes are like sibling who had to grow up in different countries and developed on their own - similar yet so different. So, let's dive into details.

Etymology

Piernik is more similar to its English counterpart in terms of etymology. If gingerbread comes from the word "ginger", so we know that the recipe, among other spices, requires some ginger, Polish Piernik, having derived from old Polish "pierz" (modern "pieprz" - eng. pepper), means that you definitely need to include pepper in your cake.

When talking about Polish gingebread name I cannot possibly omit the fact that this term created those two colloquial expressions:

ja pierniczę - a soft version of the famous "ja pierd*lę" phrase in Polish usually said when one is very angry (the untranslatable expression of utter rage). Imagine that we would say "Gingerbread" instead of "F*ck" in English :D that's the vibe

co ma piernik do wiatraka? - literal translation is: "what does the gingerbread have to do with the windmill?". It's usually used when someone says something unrelated to the topic in order to prove their point - a marvelous phrase if you want to confuse someone unreasonable in the comments;)

Medivnyk differs from the two (and when we move on to the recipe description, you'll figure why), as it focuses on a different ingredient - "мед" (eng. honey). In some regions, it's also called "Medovyk", but I use the Western Ukrainian version of the name in this post as, according to a famous Ukrainian cook and food historian Marianna Dushar (Пані Стефа), Medivnyk is "one of the piers of Lviv's culinary heritage".

So the name is pretty much straightforward, but I'm also going to share a weird fact about Ukrainian language in order to make this description more interesting: the word "медівник" is also used in Ukrainian language to refer to all subspecies of Australian Friafbirds. You might like to google them - they don't look like cakes, at all.

There's also a word "miodownik" in Polish, which refers to some variations of Ukrainian gingerbread cakes, especially the ones with the filling. Funnily enough, in modern Poland, you might find the recipes for this type of cake using the name Snickers, too.

When served

Polish Piernik, just like gingerbread cookies and cakes from many other countries, is considered to be a traditional Christmas cake. As a Pole, I never even think about it as anything you could eat in any other time of the year. However, in 17th century, gingerbread cookies were sold in Pharmacies, as they were considered actual medicine. In my Polish family, even Medivnyk-inspired gingerbreads are baked before the Christmas, but, as far as I'm concerned, in Ukraine this cake is considered to be a wedding cake or, generally speaking, a type of baked goods served on very big ocassions. I found two possible explanations for such a difference in purpose:

The influence of the Jewish community in the Western Ukraine. As we have already established, Medivnyk was invented, probably, in the Western Ukraine, where there was a numerous Jewish community (Take the town of Turka in Lviv oblast, where my great-grandfather was from - in 1921 almost half of its population were Jews, while the rest of it were Ukrainians, Poles and other nationalities). Obviously, they didn't celebrate Christmas and instead used the cake on their wedding ceremonies, calling it "Chonek łejkech". There's a high chance Ukrainians just borrowed the tradition of serving this originally very much "Christmasy" treat on different big celebrations.

The influence of the Soviet Union. During the Soviet reign, many recipes from Ukraine became popularised (if I may use his term, as modern russia now pretends that even the famous borscht is their, so it looks more like stealing from the contemporary perspective) all around the Soviet Republics, and Medivnyk wasn't an exception. It's quite possible that during this time, as religion was prohibited in the USSR, the role of this cake slightly shifted to being a wedding celebration attribute.

The batter

There are some classic ingredients that you'll meet in all of the Pierniks: - Flour (wheat or rye) - Honey (usually linden or acacia) + carmelized sugar (white and/or brown) - Fat (butter, oil or both) - Eggs - Liquid (water, milk, buttermilk, cream - you name it) - Soda - LOTS of spices, such as ginger, cynamon, cloves, cardamom, anis, nutmeg, allspice and pepper

Some people tend to add such things as cocoa powder, plum or blackcurrant jam, instant or chicory coffee, tea and salt, but traditional "Staropolski" (eng. Old Polish) recipe omits it and usually just relies on traditional ingredients, but also on the method of preparation.

This year I learned that the "true" Polish Piernik batter has a very specific and interesting preparation, which, I think, differentiates it among other famous gingerbreads - the process of fermentation ("aging" gingerbread batter). Apparently, the batter for the true Old Polish Piernik traditionally has to be prepared right after St. Andrew's Day in order to "rest" and "mature" before Christmas. Such a fementation method ensures that the taste is strong and vivid. In modern Poland most home cooks tend to go for "quick" recipes, and I can't blame them.

Traditional Piernik should be kept in a humid place, as they might get firm if dried out. Similarly to fruitcake, it is recommended to soak it in some liquid (such as coffee or cream with vanilla and sugar) to keep it moist if you have dry air at your home.

The traditional recipe for a Medivnyk has some similar ingredients: - Wheat flour - Honey (usually buckwheat as it gives the cake some beautiful bronze colour and intense taste) and some sugar (brown or white) - Fat (butter or oil, or both) - Eggs - Liquid (usually something sour like kefir or sour cream) - Soda - Significantly less to no spices As the name suggests, honey is the hero of this type of cake, never the spices. In traditional recipes, you can meet some spices, usually the same combo as in Polish piernik, but aforementioned Mrs Dushar actually uses half a spoon of paprika in her Lviv version of Gingerbread cake. It's funny, but the more you go to the East of Ukraine, the less spices there are in the Medivnyk. The lack of spices can be explained, once again, with the Soviet Union influence, as there was a deficit for spices in the country at the time Ukraine was the USSR republic. Different cooks also add such things as nuts (usually walnuts), raisins or other dry fruit (with such addition, it's very similar to fruitcake in taste, if you ask me). Such practice can be met in Piernik preparation too, yet much less often than when we talk about traditional Medivnyk.

Depending on what kind of Medivnyk you want to cook, there are two ways of preparation:

Traditional Medivnyk requiring wet batter: The preparation of the batter is much simpler in the case of Medivnyk if we compare it to piernik, as it's basically the same, but you don't have to ferment it for around three weeks, usually, one night of rest is enough for it to get ready for baking. The texture of the baked cake is usually just as dense and, at the same time, soft as in the case of the traditional Piernik.

Layered Medivnyk requiring flatbread: In this case we go completely different direction - instead of wet batter we basically make a dough which is then baked into "корж", a type of Ukrainian flatbread made with honey, melted butter, eggs, soda, sugar and flour. This recipe often uses brighter kinds of honey and omits addition of spices, so the colour of the dough is usually bright yellow, and the taste is less intense. The texture of prepared flatbread is slightly crunchy (it kind of reminds me of sweeter and softer version of matzo with honey) but gets soft and gentle as it absorbs humidity after we spread the filling between the layered flatbread.

(unfortunately, I'm unable to add the information about the filling and icing to the post, as it's extremely long already, so I'm going to add this information (as well as some recipes) in the next post on the topic)

Polish Versus Ukrainian Cuisine, Part 1

I have to confess, I have a little sin on my consciousness, namely, I visit Instagram sometimes. In most cases I do that just to catch up with my friends and family, but, you know, as most of young people of my age I just end up scrolling a tiny bit (usually, right until the moment I feel the urge to vomit, as I genuinely hate this place).

Recently, I came across a very cozy video where a Korean home cook mixes a Polish Pierogi Ruskie recipe with some Korean toppings. The thing that confused me the most, though, was the most liked comment under this video left by a Ukrainian woman who claimed that Pierogi Ruskie is a Ukrainian dish and is, in fact, called Varenyky. It's easy to assume that this person has never made a single dumpling, varenyk or pieróg in her entire life, as she kept on claiming that Pierogi Ruskie can have a lot of different fillings and that Polish Pierogi don't have such a big choice of fillings as Ukrainian Varenyky do, so, clearly, this person had zero idea what Pierogi Ruskie actually are, but that's not the point.

This comment made me wonder how different are the two cuisines of those Eastern European countries. Having lived long years in both countries, I thought it would be interesting to study this topic a little bit, namely from the perspective of the difference between the staple dishes in two cuisines. After all, we actually are what we eat, especially on the global scale. Everyone knows Italy for their brilliant pizza and pasta, and everyone knows Japan for sushi and tempura, and even though food is not the only aspect of those cultures that made them famous around the world, it definitely adds up to create a full picture of their collective cultural identity.

So, in this post I'd like to share some personal observations that I made throughout my life about Polish and Ukrainian cuisine having lived significant portions of life in both countries, being ethnically related to both and being wholeheartedly fascinated by food.

Disclaimer!!! I'm not a food scientist or chef, nor am I a professional historian. All the notes down here are mostly based on my personal observations and some basic research. I did consult a professional cook and a baker whom I know personally as they happen to be my family members. I do recommend treating everything I share here with a grain of salt (hehe, because we gonna talk 'bout cookin', hehe, so use salt) and bear in mind that different cooks have different approaches to their recipes and your personal experience with Ukrainian and Polish food might differ from mine. That being said, I encourage you to share these experiences whether you are Ukrainian, Polish or anyone else, really. I do not accept such arguments as "Ruskie because Kyiv Rus!", though, as it's not about arguing in the first place, it's about diving into the heritage of those two countries and talking about the food.

Pierogi vs. Вареники

Let's start with them culprits. I think those two dishes are the most confusing ones because of their similarity. Gosh, both of them are dumplings from Eastern Europe shaped like a growing moon, aren't they?

The dough for both dishes varies from region to region, from cook to cook. In my experience, both recipes need three basic ingredients:

- liquid

- salt

- flour

The rest depends, really. You can change the four, you can change the liquid, replacing water with milk or kefir, you can add an egg. I personally go with my mother's recipe which is boiling hot water, egg, AP flour and salt.

Two of the striking differences are their size and shape. It seems like Ukrainian dumplings are usually smaller, flatter and quite translucent in comparison to Polish ones, which are big, sometimes even huge (check Pierogi Po Bieszczadzku, they are bigger than my fists, I kid you not), they have a very full body and the dough itself is thicker (the reason is not so much ingredients in the dough as is the method of forming/cutting the circles out of it). They also have a lot of different really funny regional names which very often also refer to the size, shape, filling or method of preparation, for instance, Dzyndzałki (Warmian small dumplings served in soup), Bulwanki (Eastern Polish holiday pierogi with variety of savoury fillings), Sasznie (A type of dumplings from Eastern Borderlands that use potato in the dough) or Sójki (Masovian baked pierogi made with yeast).

The fillings of both Pierogi and Varenyky basically might create their own multiverse. In both Poland and Ukraine, I found so many different combinations of fillings that it would be a waste of time to write about each one of them. However, Pierogi most often have savoury fillings (from meat through cheese and potatoes though different types of groats and the list goes on and on..), while Varenyky have a bigger variety of sweet fillings, including the classic cherry filling. Also, Ukrainians seem to be not very much into the meat filling. In my childhood, I had never eaten meat dumplings in Ukraine, however, at the time, pelmeni were quite a popular alternative. Ah, classic Soviet influence - replace your own with something russian )yuck.

As for the toppings, depending on what kind of filling you are dealing with, there are many alternatives for both dishes, including chives, fried bacon, sour cream, melted butter, caramel sauce (haven't seen this one in Ukraine, but noticed it being popular in Poland with sweet cottage cheese Pierogi) and many others. Both dishes are absolutely marvelous even without any additions.

Now, if anyone says that Pierogi Ruskie are called that way because they are Ukrainian, they are not entirely wrong. This type of pierogi was invented in Eastern Galicia (a geographical region in Western Ukraine which was also used to refer to the Eastern part of Poland; The name derives from its Polish name of territory - "Ruś Czerwona" ("Ruthenia Rubra" in Latin)), however there's a high chance it happened when it was the part of Austrian Empire, when majority of population in this region, especially in big cities including Lviv, were Polish. Either way, this dish is much more popular in modern Poland and has lots of different regional variations that you can meet across the whole country (see the Bryndzylki designed by Polish Highlanders), while it's basically non-existent in Ukraine and in the country they are often called "польські пироги" (literally "Polish Pierogi". Pierogi Ruskie are prepared with cheese, onion and potato filling, while in Ukraine you are more likely to come across some Varenyky with potato, onion and bacon filling.

Thank you very much for your attention, share your dumpling preferences and experiences in the comments or in the reblogs, share your recipes, go crazy, and let's discuss the food!!

My pierogi variation with cottage cheese and strawberry jam filling (not the most attractively shaped one, but very tasty - my significant other approved them):

#poland #ukraine #polska #ukraina #polish cuisine #polish culture #ukrainian cuisine #ukrainian culture #bakery #baking #gingerbread #christmas #piernik #медівник

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supercantaloupe · 4 years ago

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okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

#sasha reviews #sasha speaks #the unsleeping city #unsleeping city #long post #dimension 20 #gd i stayed up way too late to write this #tuc #the unsleeping city chapter 2 #the unsleeping city 2 #tuc2 #antisemitism

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tl-notes · 3 years ago

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Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon S2 Episode 10 Notes

I’m extremely not an expert in birds, but I tried to look these up to see if they were a species native to New York (since they’re similar to the sparrows we usually see around Kobayashi’s place). Apparently there are few similar-looking species in New York? My totally uninformed guess is that they may be house sparrows.

The sun sets in Japan relatively early (probably around 6:30pm when this episode takes place), which would make it entirely plausible that if she just flew east (with a slight northward angle) she’d find herself over New York in the early morning while most of the rest of the country is still dark.

These bumpy grey pads at the pedestrian part of the intersection here are known as (among other things) tactile paving; they’re to assist people who can’t fully rely on eyesight to get around.

Interestingly (imo), they were actually invented in Japan in the 60s (by a Miyake Seiichi), where today they’re extremely ubiquitous. They even show up later this episode!

They’re often referred to in Japan as 点字ブロック, tenji (Braille) blocks, and they tend to come in two types: the “dot” design, which indicates a place to stop (or an angle change, or more generally “caution”), and the “line” design which indicates you can safely keep going. They’re generally colored yellow in Japan, ideally making them stand out more to help people with impaired vision find them, and are mandated by law in most places public transport can be found (among others).

Not really a translation note, but “deer cola” felt especially funny in the context of all the horse medicine stuff.

I guess “[animal] [drink]” is a common branding device in-universe, given the crab beer Kobayashi’s always drinking.

Also not really a translation note, but the difference between how “hard” Kanna and Chloe are running to be at the same speed was a nice animation touch.

遊んだ遊んだ！ asonda asonda!

One feature of the Japanese language is a very heavy use of repetition. This includes “reduplication,” a linguistic term for creating words by repeating a root (e.g. a “boo-boo” in English or the dara-dara example below in Japanese), but also just like… saying the same word multiple times, as Chloe does here.

Typically this is done for emphasis or to help increase clarity: if you’ve worked in a Japanese office, you’ve likely heard someone in a phone conversation say desu desu in response to someone asking for confirmation.

This acceptance of repetition sort of extends beyond the obvious uses like this as well: for example, personal pronouns are much less common; instead (if the subject isn’t dropped) you’ll often just use the person’s name again. You’ll notice similar trends with other types of words as well.

Not to mention the ubiquity of things like otsukare.

This often ends up being a challenge for translators, because reusing words in English (when it’s not for an obvious reason) tends to stick out rather unflatteringly, even if they aren’t that close together.

(Like when I overuse “hence” in these notes.)

This “Christ” in the Japanese was “ったく” (short for 全く mattaku, but just used as a semi-generic exclamation). I mostly bring this up because it’s a good example of a word that doesn’t work out of its cultural context; e.g. it wouldn’t make any sense for a fantasy character to say “Christ,” but since this is an American speaker it works just fine (and helps distinguish that fact, even).

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but English uses a lot of “explicit reference” words like this, that can break immersion if put in the mouths of characters who wouldn’t have exposure to said reference—which can be annoyingly limiting when trying to write dialogue sometimes.

As a bit of a culture shock for a lot of Americans I’ve met, most Japanese homes tend to have wall mounted air conditioning units, like this one, that are only for heating/cooling the one room they’re in. (Many also have a “Dry” setting that makes them act kind of like a dehumidifier as well.) It’s common to not have them in every room, like bedrooms, however.

This is in contrast to the central air conditioning system used by a majority of homes in the US (though type/use of AC in the US varies a lot by region; less common in the north for example)—and places like the UK where apparently residential AC units of any kind are quite rare.

You may have noticed that the doors between rooms always seem closed in Kobayashi’s apartment. That’s not just to make the backgrounds simpler, it’s also a good habit to keep if you’re going to be running the AC!

“Kobayashi, are you お休み today?”

“Yeah, お休み.”

お休み o-yasumi, is a noun form of the 休む yasumu, to rest. The word has a variety of applications, as we see here. A day off work/school, i.e. a rest day? お休み. Want to say “good night” to someone before bed? Also お休み.

In this case, it’s not even necessarily clear it’s being said as a pun; as mentioned earlier, repetition is a common feature of the language, so despite the yawn there wouldn’t really be any reason for Kanna to think Kobayashi was about to go to nap or anything.

“Laze about” here is だらだら dara-dara, another phenomime (擬態語 gitaigo in Japanese)—one of those words that mimics the “sound” of an idea/concept/state, which don’t actually make a sound per se.

These phrases aren’t necessarily childish or anything (overuse of them can be, but you can find them even in news articles and political speeches for example). They are, however, used frequently by children, and by adults talking to children, as they’re very “easy” words: they’re expressive, they capture useful daily-life concepts, and they usually roll off the tongue. You’ll notice, for example, that Kanna uses them a lot.

Kanna has a very interesting way of talking actually, which I’ll touch on a bit more later.

Kobayashi’s “bean jam” here is あんみつ anmitsu, a traditional Japanese dessert (technically a spinoff of mitsumame). It typically is a mix of red beans (and/or red peas), agar (an algae-based gelatin equivalent), some fruit, some variety of rice flour product (shiratama in this case, similar to mochi), and a syrup (often black sugar based).

You can find it year-round, but it has a strong summer association and is even used as a summer season word. (It’s typically chilled and you can often get it with ice cream as an ingredient.)

It’s also sometimes paired with a green-tea flavored something as well (e.g. ice cream, agar, or syrup). The trinity of green tea, red beans (aka azuki), and shiratama makes what I like to think of as the “Japanese S’mores Flavor (for Adults)”. No I will not elaborate on this.

I will though point out the shaved ice flavor Kobayashi ordered later in the episode:

え？今スイカ様子あった？

A word of note here for language learners is 様子 yousu, which has a lot of definitions, but in cases like this where it’s attached to a noun or phrase means roughly “the appearance of __” or “an indication of ___” etc. In actual use, it typically means something that makes you think of whatever ___ is—or the lack of something that would make you think ___.

For example here, it’s like “Watermelon? Where’d that come from?” (since the TV was talking about a different dessert-y food entirely).

Or an unrelated example: “I think that guy is hiding something” → “Really? I haven’t seen any yousu of that.” In other words, it can be a lot like “sign,” as in “I’ve seen no sign of ___.”

These color-bordered envelopes (originally colored based on the flag of the country of origin) used to be the standard for air mail, domestic or international, though they haven’t been required for several decades.

That said, they’re still popular for that “ooh, international mail!” feel (at least in Japan) and you can buy them at most places that sell stuff like envelopes. As here, they’re often used in media to immediately convey that a letter came from outside Japan.

Kanna (and Kobayashi) says エアメール, lit. “air mail” in English, which is used colloquially for international mail specifically, rather than “mail sent by plane.”

They’re having what’s called 冷やしそうめん hiyashi soumen, chilled/cold soumen for lunch here. (Soumen being a thin wheat noodle; udon but thinner.) As Kanna says, it’s very easy to make!

Basically you just boil it, wash it in cold water, add ice, get some sort of sauce to dip it in, and you’re done! It’s a popular quick meal in summer, and much easier than the more involved nagashi soumen setups you may have seen elsewhere, where they slide the noodles down a chute for you to try to grab and eat. (It’s basically the same meal aside from that though.)

(You can of course add more to it, but as we see here, you don’t really have to.)

The type of tea here, for the curious, is 麦茶 mugicha, barley tea. Mugi is the general name for cereals/grains including wheat (komugi), barley (oomugi), rye (kuromugi or rye mugi), and oats (enbaku or oat mugi). It’s incredibly common in Japan (and much of East Asia), where it's the household summer drink.

It has no caffeine like many other teas, and has a bunch of various nutritional benefits, so it’s considered a good way to stay hydrated as you’re sweating buckets in the muggy Japanese summer weather.

帽子した？ boushi shita? した！ shita!

I thought this was a cute way of phrasing this question/answer, and a good example of the “parent and their young child” way these two talk.

The suru (past tense shita) verb used here is the ultimate in “generic verb,” and it basically doesn’t get any simpler grammar-wise to phrase something as “noun+suru” like Kobayashi does here (even the particles are dropped).

Kanna, for her part, doesn’t respond with a “yes” or etc, but instead just repeats back the verb itself in confirmation.

Just to note another one of those words like dara-dara: bura-bura, used for things like wandering around, doing something (or nothing) casually/aimlessly, or (with one bura) for something dangling/swinging in a more literal sense, like a spider, slack yo-yo, or wind chime.

These booklets are a common homework assignment for practicing kanji; you can see along the left side there it shows the stroke order, with the first block giving an example to trace over & showing where to start each stroke.

Each character is made up of radicals (e.g. “hot” above: 日 and 耂), which each have a standard way to write them. There’s 214 such radicals (though many are pretty niche; only about ~50 of them are needed to make most characters), and once you get a hang of them it makes learning new characters much easier (not too different from learning word spellings in English imo).

Kanna is repeating out loud the reading for the “hot” character as she writes it.

In addition to the above workbooks (which usually involve both kanji and math problems at Kanna’s grade), elementary school summer homework in Japan typically involves doing an illustrated diary (not a daily one necessarily) and some sort of research project about a subject of your choice. (Think kind of like a small science fair project).

The “research” project part is pretty expansive, and you can typically even do something more arts & craftsy for it.

Manhole covers in a lot of Japanese municipalities feature art representative of the area. For example, the city of Chofu, where the author of GeGeGe no Kitaro lived most of his life, has several with art of that series.

(Photo from https://www.gotokyo.org/jp/spot/1734/index.html)

I mentioned earlier that Kanna has an interesting way of speaking. Probably a better way to put it is that she has a pretty convincingly childish way of speaking (despite the monotone). That is, she uses simple grammar and “easy” words most of the time, but then throws out random big words and fancy idioms from time to time that make you go “...where did you learn that?”

In this case, the phrase she uses is 巷で人気 chimata de ninki. Chimata originally means like a fork (in the road), and since those are often places with lots of people passing through, it expanded to mean “the undefined place where people talk about ~stuff~.” So it’s used for “many people are saying~” or “word on the street is~” types of situations (or “talk of the town,” as here).

It’s kind of an “adult” word though; for example the character for it isn’t included in the jouyou kanji (the 2000+ that are taught in elementary through high school). Hence Kobayashi’s reaction here.

The word she uses for “protected” here is 死守 shishu. The word is the combination of the characters for “death” and “protect,” ~meaning to protect something even at risk to one’s life (to the death, as it were).

It's a word that you learn in third grade in the Japanese education system—the same grade Kanna is in!

Both of these types of signs are common sights in residential areas like this: depending on where you live, it can feel like there’s always some sort of construction project going on, and Japan’s many family/individually-owned businesses like this tend to be closed on various extra days during the summer (and certain other times) to allow for time off.

In this case, them being closed August 12th~16th implies they’re taking off for Obon (and probably leaving town to visit family).

The word Kobayashi uses here is 風物詩 fuubutsu-shi. Fuubutsu refers to something that makes up part of the “scenery” of a place or season, in a pretty broad sense. This shi typically means “poem.”

So fuubutsu-shi is originally a type of poem celebrating a season or a scene of natural beauty, that sort of thing. From that, it’s also now (more popularly) used to describe things that are representative of a season; the kind of stuff you say “it’s not winter until…” about, or “you know it’s summer when…” (It can also be used for places + seasons, like the ice sculptures of Hokkaido winters, or even summer Comiket in Tokyo.)

They’re very similar to the season words I’ve mentioned previously, though they’re far less strict about what counts as one. Here, Kobayashi’s could be referring to the whole package experience of “having to take cover and wait out a sudden heavy rain, despite it being mostly clear skies a few minutes ago,” which you could call fuubutsu-shi (summed up probably as like 夏の雨宿り etc.)

In contrast the relevant season word here would probably be yuudachi (or niwaka-ame), a word referring to the short, sudden bouts of rain that tend to fall (from cumulonimbus clouds, the makings of which are noticeable in the backgrounds before this) on summer evenings.

Feels like in season one she woulda eaten it. Three cheers for character growth!

The parentheticals there are just the “English” in hiragana/katakana.

Kobayashi’s comment (nihongo de ok, roughly “you can just use Japanese”) is an internet-born term people originally would use to reply to someone who said something that didn’t make any sense, had terrible grammar, or was so full of katakana loanwords it was hard to read etc.

Kanna says this line in English, and while I have no proof at all, my guess is that the specific choice of “wicked” was taken from the translation of “maji yabakune?” used in season one.

#maidragon #Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid #kobayashi-san chi no maid dragon #translation notes #anime

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coldtomyflash · 4 years ago

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I've seen your speech pattern analysis on Flash characters. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to create speech patterns for OC characters?

oh heck this is one of the coolest questions i’ve ever received.

i’m gonna try not to go overboard/overwhelming and just give a bit of advice, and then if you want more details please come back and follow up!

There’s a few things to think about up front with character voices / speech patterns. The biggest and most obvious is language and cultural background. The second is personality. The third is personal history. Fourth, briefly, is gender. And the final one I’d say is idiosyncrasies to avoid ‘same voice’.

Culture and Group Dynamics

Depending on the setting, there’s a decent chance you’ll be writing characters from different cultural backgrounds. Even if you’re focusing on a single culture, there will be subcultures. Even if you’re focusing on a single narrow group of people, there will be age and generational differences.

Think about where your character is from. If it’s a fantasy world, that’s still (and even more, in some ways) important. What country, what ethnicity, what mother tongue? Did they grow up urban or rural? High socio-economic status or working class? What sort of educational background and peer group did they have growing up (and presently) and how does that factor into their vocabulary and mannerisms, if at all.

All of these can influence how people talk. There are regional accents and different modes of speaking to signal your group membership. There is code-switching across groups, for those who have had to learn multiple linguistics codes to survive and thrive in society.

How much slang does this group and therefor this character use? What references (modern, outddated, topical, etc) do the rely on? What kind of references (pop culture, music, academic, etc)? What colloquialisms and proverbs do they say? Are these the same or different to their characters, even within the same culture, subculture, or group, and is it because they’re from a different place/sub-group or because of their idiosyncrasies?

You can use these to help your reader get to know more about your character’s background without having to spell it all out directly. Speech patterns and style are a great way to show instead of tell when it comes to details that are hard to drop in organically in other ways.

An important caveat: don’t write a bilingual character who switches languages in speech unless you’re ready to do a bit of research on that. In AATJS I did an absolutely horrific job of this because I was thinking more about fronting the fact that character was Italian rather than thinking through how people actually talk, and it came out exotifying and embarrassing. It’s important to make sure that the way you use language to bring in a character’s cultural and/or ethnic background feels authentic and manifests is a way that respects that language and its users. You can write a character with a complex cultural history without using multiple languages if you’re unprepared to do research and talk to bilingual speakers.

Personality

Probably the most salient thing in a writer’s mind when they’re trying to write character voices: is this the funny character? the serious one? the brainy one? etc.

Don’t overuse stereotypes and archetypes for creating speech patterns (or characters in general) if you’re trying to make a rounded, 3-dimensional character. Instead, go about three levels deeper.

Think about whether they’re introverted or extraverted, whether they are neurotypical or neurodivergent, whether they are introspective enough to express their own emotions clearly or whether they stumble when asked why they did a particular thing or feel a particular way (most people don’t or can’t clearly articulate exactly why they did something or how they feel, and come at things a bit sideways to circle around their motives and interior realities when pressed to make them external and concretely verbal).

Is this character calm, is their voice soothing, do they speak slowly? Are they excitable and loud and is their speech free-flowing? Are they angry? Do they swear? Do they use references for humour or are they more into puns? Do they laugh at their own jokes? Do they talk with their hands?

This character has social anxiety: how does that manifest in her speech? Does she clam up and get very quiet when she gets nervous, or does she go rapidfire and a little too loud (does she process by turning in or by distracting herself by turning outward)? Does she get very careful and deliberate in choosing her words (is she a bit high-strung?)? Ask yourself which fits best with the other elements of her personality and what you want the reader to know/interpret about her.

This character is incredibly smart and a bit awkward: how does that manifest in their speech? Do they tend to use 5-dollar words, or do they expend a lot of energy choosing their words more carefully (how considerate are they to their audience when speaking and does that influence their speech)? Do they stumble over their words and explaining things, or are they good at making points with clear language learned from a lifetime of tutoring and helping others?

This character is the bff, who tries hard to make sure everyone else is happy first: how does that manifest in his speech? How does he switch between his happy-mask versus his more authentic self, and what changes in tone, word-choice, and inflection come in when he does?

Personal History

I’m only drawing a distinction between this and personality (archetype, really) so that I can draw attention to ways to add simultaneously unique and shared layers to characters that are distinct but related to group dynamics.

Here’s sort of what I mean: the level of education of a mother (or primary caregiver) of an infant can determine that infant’s vocabulary size. While we can break down all the ‘why is that’ layers to this, the one I want to point is to the simple truth that the more education a person does, the more specialized language they end up learning over time. This doesn’t have to be formal education though -- the more you learn about something and the more you read and access new knowledges and perspective, the more and more words you learn, and then if you start using those words, they trickle down to those close to you.

So.

What’s your character’s educational background? Is it the same as their friends who you are also writing? Is the same as their family’s? How does this character’s family influence their speech? Are they formal, informal, warm, authoritative?

If you’re writing siblings, they’ll have some shared things! But also some very different ones! Me and my sister talk nothing alike in terms of vocabulary, but a lot alike in terms of mannerisms whenever we spend a bit of time together!

If your characters grew up around each other, they’ll have a lot of the same references. People from the same cities or regions will have things specific to that region, either due to sub-culture effects or because of local references.

The city of Calgary, Canada for instance has the Plus15 which are a connected pedway system between the buildings in downtown, so named because they are 15feet above the ground. Drive 3 hours north to the city of Edmonton, and you have an underground pedway just called the pedways, no special name. Go a few provinces east to Toronto and their underground pedway system downtown is called PATH. These are all known to locals and part of the vernacular, but are opaque to people outside those cities. And the whole idea of them is probably opaque to people who aren’t from super cold cities that don’t require building-connecting pedway systems for pedestrians to get around high-density areas like downtown (or university campuses) without going out into the cold.

Friends, families, and groups are like that too. In-jokes, shared histories, speaking in references. What are your characters’ relationships to each other and how does that history influence the way they approach talking to each other?

Gender

I don’t want to spend too much time on this one because ugh, gender. What even is it?

But like it or not, it has an impact on our speech patterns. There are cultural and societal norms in how men and women are likely to speak, and breaking those norms will be noticed regardless of whether you’re trans, enby, queer, or not. There are norms that people who are queer may fall into as well, sometimes without even noticing at first. A lot of these aren’t about word choice per se but instead about mannerisms and tone and body language, but some overlap or are specific to language.

Speaking in broad generalizations here, women use more emotional language and tend to speak with more hesitancies/qualifications. So more “i think, i feel” and less “it is”. More conversations that front emotions and dig deeper into those, with longer sentences to explain in detail. The obvious caveat is that personality matters more (i.e., is this a person who likes to talk about their emotions in detail or not) but it is something to consider because there will be general but subtle differences that you can use to help further distinguish your characters’ voices.

Sidenote: this can also be exacerbated by different cultural backgrounds and languages (a simple example is Japanese which has different words for “I” depending on your gender as well as your personality, familiarity with the other persons in the conversation, and situational appropriateness, so interesting ways that gender and social expectations intersect in language).

Anyway this isn’t typically a huge problem except that I’ve found that a lot of writers have a tendency to overgeneralize the speech patterns that fit with their ascribed gender due to early-life socialization, or conversely to overgeneralize patterns that fit with their gender identity (when not cis) either due to heavily identifying with their gender identity’s speech model (or sometimes possibly due to a knee-jerk sort of backlash). I say this as an enby who both struggles with it and notices it and tries to edit and correct for it.

I could get into all sorts of examples of ways this can lead to voice issues, but in general i think the point here is to make sure you’re writing any given character in view of that character’s personality and history, with gender only as a modifier for how some of these might come out in subtle ways but which can be important to help tell us about your character (and if you’re writing queer characters, it’s all the more important to consider how their relationship with gender and socialization might impact which speech models and styles they identify more with).

Idiosyncrasies

So, you’ve got a character. You’ve got their personality and history down. You know how they manifest in their speech. And you’re still getting some ‘same voice’ issues.

People really are unique snowflakes. Let that be reflected in their speech.

This person uses contractions differently than that one. This one says “ain’t” and that one says “isn’t.”

This person makes Simpsons references and that one doesn’t like Simpsons, and makes Brooklyn Nine Nine references instead. That other one doesn’t use referential humour much at all. This one loves old movies and hasn’t seen any of the new stuff so they make references all the time but no one ever notices.

This one loves the word “excoriate” and that one doesn’t even know what it means because what the hell, who uses the word excoriate?

This one talks about food a lot, it overlaps with their interests. This one uses metaphors. This one grunts in response. This one exclaims. This one says “like” and that one hates it. That one refers to themselves in third person. This other one uses reflective language an usual amount (e.g., “love me some candy”). This other one keeps misusing the word inconceivable and that one speaks almost without contractions but still comes off as more charming and humorous while correcting him.

I have an aunt who says “girl” or “girlfriend” a fuck-ton and she has been my whole life and I don’t know why because none of her sisters do, but she does and it annoys me so much the way she says it. I swear a lot when I’m feeling casual despite never ever doing it in a professional or even slightly-less-than-relaxed space, so the idiosyncrasy of comfort levels has a massive impact on my vocabulary in ways which, I promise, almost no one who meets me first in a professional space expect.

Let your characters be individuals and try to make them as unique as possible without overdoing it, or over-relying on a single verbal tendency or habit.

And ... that’s all I’ve got for now. Completely failed at being concise. I meant to give like 2-3 bullet points or examples for each, not paragraphs, but here we are. That’s one of my verbal tendencies: long flowing verbosity :)

Hope this helps!

#speech patterns #speech analysis #phyn writes #writing advice #writing #OC's #writing reference #didn't edit so apologies for typos i'm sure i'll come back at some point #Anonymous

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larrydrosalez · 4 years ago

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I like relaxed language and I like blackness. This anthology is a celebration of both.

tawk

Sometimes we’re afraid to talk. Yes, WE. This might be about black talkin, but this here is for you too Sandy-Sue and Jin-Woo. I know you’ve had those days when somethin forces you to speak or preach or teach something you’d be much better off talkin about. You scour your brain in search of synonyms you learned in an English class (some time ago) or for some phrase you picked up from your favorite politically active musician – all for nada – because, in your scavenger-hunt for eloquence, you end up with 1000 syllables that don’t say anything. Trust me, I know the feeling. (Deleting those Gs and forgoing those apostrophes a few lines up still has me wary of some impending doom. O_o) [imagine the courage it took to include an emoticon.]

It is this fear of writing the way I feel most comfortable expressing myself that convinced me that this anthology needed to be compiled. It needed to be compiled and needs to be delivered to every writer that thinks their words aren’t good enough and to every reader that thinks some writer’s metaphors are too big and meaning too small. I want this anthology to combat any notion that in poetry white high-language is right language and that slang is to be reserved for Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. This anthology, black-tawk, is intended to act as an examination of Black-American identity in contemporary poets through their specific use of colloquial vernacular, to be referred to as black-talk. These poems are compiled in order to reject “high language” (white-talk) as the only suitable means of intelligent and normative expression and that slave-talk is the only example of recognizable black expression. I seek to find a contemporary river of black voices that flow somewhere between a Mattie and a Michael Eric Dyson (and certainly above a Tyler Perry.)

So what does black-talk between a Mattie and a Dyson sound like? It sounds like black people you hear talking every day. There are no meanings lost in abstract metaphor, no need to keep a library assistant on call and there’s the occasional glimpse of slang. Nah, I ain’t only talkin ‘bout that talk you hurd on the corner’a 3rd and Main, because while that’s beautiful, this anthology hopes to reveal subtle currents of vernacular that black poets use to express blackness. Of course there’s more than a heap of uses of slang’s shining star - “ain’t,” but he’s joined by “nuff” and “betcha” and even “cd” (could.) And these are sometimes decorated by the absence of punctuation that lends itself to an exploration of space and caesura to create natural and lulling speech patterns that mimic the way black people talk. You won’t find Queen’s English here. Nothing like what Jamil (Robert Sims) in his poem “pre-sentence Report” (page____) refers to as “…nouns that // old Sigmund couldn’t EVEN spell.” Though in his poem Sims speaks of medical jargon, there are certainly poets that employ a sort of poetic jargon requires too much energy to decipher.

Not that deciphering is all bad, we wouldn’t want lazy readers, but when simplicity is forgone merely to sound poetic, the authenticity that makes poetry beautiful is lost. Stephanie Pruitt, a young poet from Nashville, could write novels about the process and love involved in getting her hair hot combed in the kitchen – but she doesn’t need to. Her haiku “Hair raising” (page _____) is beautiful in its ability to, concisely, resonate with black girls everywhere. “Hair burning in the kitchen” could easily become “kinky fibers laid straight by heated comb permeates the air in the place meals are made,” but it doesn’t need to. Now the form of haiku is innately simple but this same current of simplicity can be found throughout the anthology in various forms.

black

Sometimes we’re afraid to be black. Yes WE. This might be about black talkin but if you change black to “chino” or “country” this here is for you too Jose and Billy-Rae. It’s about black talkin because black talkin is what I know best. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been made to feel afraid to express my blackness (or asian-ness or mexican-ness.) If a university environment is any representation of the real world, and I fear it may be more forgiving of race, people don’t want black people to be black. Every scorned sagging pant, every kinky twist pressed to oblivion, every set of braids chopped off for a job where suits and ties are need can serve as a testament that black people aren’t allowed to be black.

Oh, but that’s not true, we have a black president! – right, having one black president negates the pressure every white professor ceo quarterback vice-president student government official city official member of congress employed contributing member of society member of congress places on black people to act white right.

…

I needed space to let that sit. The minority will always be made inferior when evaluated against the majority. Being black isn’t wrong, it’s just not being white. There are thousands of conversations to be had about blackness and black identity and defining what “black” is, but this is not a research paper and I am not an anthropological expert on the matter. So you ask, what does blackness have to do with this poetry anthology, and what does that contribute to life? Well, blackness is in the everyday things that black people do. There is no singular blackness. If you’re a black girl that gets a perm and a silky-smooth 32” Remy, you’re exuding blackness just as much as the sister pickin her afro every morning. If you’re a black boy with clean locks sitting proudly on the shoulder pads of your new Armani suit, you’re exuding blackness just as much as the scruffy brother in the newest Js and a tall-tee (although I personally detest tall-tees, that doesn’t negate the blackness found wearing it.)

Since poetry is a manifestation of expression based on personal experiences, black poets should be allowed to be black poets, right? No. An Essay by Evie Shockley entitled “All of the above: Multiple choice and African American Poetry” included in the introduction to the anthology “Rainbow Darkness,” edited by Keith Tuma, examines the reasons black authors are not allowed to be black authors. In short, he states (and I agree) that black authors (I would say all black artists) are subjected to “the poetics litmus test.” They must be judged based on political allegiances and racial “authenticity” rather than ability or talent. If a poet talks like Langston Hughes, they are authentically black, which is good, but they are a “black” poet not an “American” poet. According to Shockley, in order to receive the privileges “American” poets are afforded:

“An African American poet has had to avoid writing in styles or about subjects that are recognizably “black” in favor of “universal themes” and conventional aesthetics. Or she could slip in the back door by appearing willing to narrate ‘the black experience’ for white consumption in ways that do not fundamentally deconstruct white (liberal) understandings of race or directly advocate revolutionary social change.”

This provides a perfect explanation concerning why black poets are pressured away from talking black. Even I question whether or not I want to be “that black poet” every time my mind wants to pen a thought about kinky hair, “unique” names, or encounters with racism. Just as the fear of talking convinced me of the necessity of this anthology, the fear of being black doubly convinces me that there are people that need this.

black-tawk

I like relaxed language and I like blackness and this anthology is a celebration of both. These poets aren’t afraid to be black even when they’re not talking about black things. This collection includes poets just talkin and poets just being black and poets talkin about being black – none afraid to share their identity and the language they speak. Ntozake Shange isn’t afraid to write poems in a manner that is supposed to be talked. Sapphire sees the significance of what Claireece P. Jones has to say, and how she says it. Celes Tisdale saw the need for people to hear what inmates from Attica think. All of these voices have been gathered to fight the fear of being Black regular Mexican Asian poor Jamaican poorly-educated well-educated strange normal smart dumb black-tawking.

black-tawk is right. Don’t be shamed of it. These are your peers.

my tawk

And now that I’ve splattered you with my thoughts/rants about blackness and language and wooed you with my semi-intellectual prowess, I’d like to free myself of the black burden – a burden that has weighed heavy on my mind since I started compiling these poems. What is the black burden you ask? For me, it is the false interpretation that any black voice is THE black voice. To those reading in hopes of better understanding the black race based solely on the compilation of a 22-year-old-half-black-half-mexican-and-japanese-middle-class-college-guy I say: I am not THE black voice. I am not THE black voice. I am not THE black voice. I, like the poems selected for this anthology, do not represent the entire black race or encompass all Black-American identity. There is no anthology or single person that does. I, and these poems, do however represent a current of thought, a movement, towards talking. Towards tawking. Towards tawking black. black-tawk. Enjoy.

youtube

#thoughtsscatteredgrammarbent

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bigenderbefriender · 4 years ago

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It’s approaching midnight here in Oklahoma on November 2, 2020, and before election day begins in earnest, I wanted to write out a few of my thoughts. I don’t know how much analysis I’ll actually do; this is mostly a record of how I feel, how the world is, and how I perceive it. Maybe a year or two down the line, I’ll be able to look back on this and shore up some memories, though hopefully I won’t ever forget what I’ve seen over the past four years.

Let me start with this, then. No one knows what’s going to happen. The perennial discourse about the electoral college is in full swing, and as usual, Republicans are blocking it because they benefit massively from the rampant conservatism (racism) of rural states such as my own. All the news talks about these days is the election cycle and COVID; I can hardly blame them. It’s almost all I think about, too. That said, half of Oklahomans went without power this week due to a massive ice storm, including most of my social circle, and it didn’t even make a blip in the national news. Likewise, Hurricane Zeta tore a path through Louisiana then up the East Coast last week, and it only got a cursory mention, despite being the fifth such hurricane to make landfall in Louisiana this year. The destruction there is nigh incalculable.

Texas governor Greg Abbott has been in a campaign to suppress voters in urban areas in this election cycle, his most egregious success being to limit the number of polling places per county to one, meaning large cities that fall under one county must all vote at the same place. This will inevitably lead to a number of citizens being unable or unwilling to vote, predominantly in those large cities where lines will be several hours long, and the risk of COVID will be high. Texan Republicans have also tried to throw out drive-thru ballots on the order of 120,000 votes, but this was blocked by Andrew Hanon. The voter suppression is quite likely because for the first time in several elections, Texas is legitimately competitive this year. I don’t think it will flip to the Democratic Party, but if it does I would be quite happy.

Other states have also been engaging in voter suppression, but there are people working against it. Stacey Abrams, after her narrow defeat (1.4%) in the 2018 gubernatorial race in Georgia, has continued her commitment to ending voter suppression there, and she claims that she has done so quite successfully. I suppose that remains to be seen, but I am hopeful. Little news is coming out of places like North Carolina, though, and that’s scary, since voter suppression there is so prominent and so ugly. In addition, Trump has been calling on militias, whom I will not name so as to keep them away from this post, to enact stochastic violence against voters whom they believe will vote Democratic.

In truth, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Since the summer, Trump has been questioning the legitimacy of mail-in ballots, certainly in an attempt to provide precedent for his contesting of the election results. If they go in his favor, I’m sure he’ll love whatever the election says, but much like with Hillary Clinton, it looks like he’ll lose the popular election. Experts are predicting a “blue shift” over the course of the election cycle. That is, Republicans by and large are ignoring the threats of the coronavirus, which means they’re much more likely to vote in person on November 3. This means it will appear that Trump has won the election on Novemeber 3, but as mail-in ballots get counted, the electorate will begin to sway towards Biden. I may make a prediction here, though it is a grim one. I believe that Trump will try to call the election on November 3 proper, and he will use his newfound influence on the Supreme Court (aka his nominee and now justice Amy Coney Barrett) to halt the count of mail-in ballots that might prove him wrong. Many people say our democracy is in crisis, but quite honestly, I think this is a natural conclusion to the way that politics have been going since basically the Clinton era.

What I mean by that is to say that Trump’s presidency has done an excellent job of exposing long-lasting structural issues in American society, and Democrats have made #resist into an aesthetic to win their re-elections rather than actually leveraging the power they do have. I’d say it must be hard, against someone who’s as much of a political opportunist as Sen Maj Ldr Mitch McConnell (R-KY), but the truth is that all of these people are perfectly content to campaign on decorum rather than on fixing any of the actual issues facing the US.

It’s not all bad; Biden has been pushed quite a bit to the left by the growing progressive wing of the Democratic Party, organized in part by the Justice Democrats and represented by Sen Bernie Sanders (Ind. VT), Rep Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D NY), Rep Ilhan Omar (D MN), Rep Rashida Tlaib (D MI), and Rep Ayanna Pressley (D MA). The latter four are colloquially referred to as “The Squad,” and they fight alongside others for progressive policies out of the House of Representatives. I would hate to go through an entire post about my feelings on national politics without mentioning the few good things we do have going for us. In addition, voters have come out in record numbers this year. As of this morning NPR reported that four states have had more early voting than total voters in 2016. In a democracy, one of the major challenges is to stimulate citizen participation in government; citizens are certainly participating this year.

Also, this year has been a year that will be remembered for its social movements. The Black Lives Matter movement came back into full swing, and the role of the police is now a legitimate question in many people’s minds. Of course, this is a frustrating thing to talk about, too. The demands of Black Lives Matter as a movement are so simple, yet over and over again, police show that they are more dedicated to violence than to justice. In addition, white people across the country have shown that they are more dedicated to law and order than to making a country in which everyone can live. This seems odd to me, though I know that it is specifically racially motivated. It’s not like I’m just having this realization now; my grandparents are Party Republicans, and I couldn’t convince them to vote to kick Walmart out of their town, even when they know exactly how it’s screwed them. To ask them to empathize with a Black person, even a Black neighbor? Believe me, I’ve tried. Still, we did see (are seeing) a lot of good from the protests. Colorado basically ended qualified immunity, which means that police should be a lot more accountable for their actions in the future. We also saw several experiments in what a society could look like without policing. The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle was the most famous of these, though it fell apart in part due to its popularity. Others that did not have the spotlight on them did not fall apart so spectacularly (though I have to speculate that all of CHAZ’s sisters have been disbanded by now).

That said, there’s a lot to fear in the coming days. The only thing we know about this election is that we won’t know the result for days or even weeks after polling closes. Because of that, many fear that protests will break out across the country on election day. The protests themselves aren’t the bad thing, I think. What’s bad is that the protests will be the targets of white supremacist violence (if the protesters are pro-Biden) or the perpetrators thereof, especially now that Trump has condoned militia violence against citizens. Over the summer, Trump also used a secret police force (under the Department of Homeland Security, specifically Customs and Border Patrol) against protesters in Portland, Oregon to quell unrest. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work, since the protests were against police brutality. However, the system is now there for him to use, and CBP is only growing bigger by the day. If protests do break out in the weeks following the election, I have no doubt that CBP will be there throwing people into unmarked vans and jailing them without due process.

I have so much more to say. I haven’t even gotten into the border wall, or family separation, or the assassination of Iranian dignitaries, or attacks on abortion rights, or Mitch McConnell’s stalling of the Senate, or the individual stages of failure of the COVID-19 response and how I learned about them, or the use of said COVID-19 to grant ICE carte blanche to deport people without trial, or any of the myriad other political issues of which I’ve become aware over the past four years. I also haven’t even begun to write out my thoughts on my local politics or Oklahoma politics specifically (quite honestly, I think local politics will forever stay offline, seeing as though I’d really rather not give out too much identifying information here). But I think this post has gone on long enough. Perhaps I will write more on those other topics in the future. I am afraid for tomorrow, and I am afraid for the months and years to come. I do not wish to live in interesting times, but it seems I am cursed to do so. At least I can say I was a witness. It is now 12:40 AM, November 3, 2020. The election is in 6 hours, and I am scared.

#uspol #violence #political violence #police brutality #covid

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mystacoceti · 4 years ago

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William H. Gass’s forward to The Making of Americans

The computer on which I am writing these words has a function which allows me to examine the layout of the page I am readying for the printer. Since this look at my text is so wide-eyed I cannot read a line, only view the lineup, a magnifying glass which I can draw down out of its shy place in the corner is provided to enlarge and make comprehensible some chose bit. Because Steven Meyer deals so wonderfully with the development and general themes of The Making of Americans, I thought I might take a moment to microscope a single sentence, one which he quotes, since that is convenient, and since it would be my contention that almost any sentence would yield the same results.

It should no longer be necessary to argue Gertrude Stein’s importance or insist upon her artistry, but I would like to highlight some of the remarkable aspects of Gertrude Stein’s prose; aspects which, if the reader pays attention to them, will slow her pace, but perhaps quicken her sense of the journey. The passage begins: “A man in his living has many things inside him . . .” (149). If we listen to this line, we shall discover how a real artist proceeds. If we look at this line (not merely read it), we shall find out how important looking as well as listening are to the understanding and appreciation of prose.

In one sense Gertrude Stein’s style is very plain, and she uses a severely limited vocabulary, but she also insists upon a colorless, somewhat vague language which is almost always oddly phrased—just far enough out of the ordinary to disconcert. If we hear that “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” we know that the speaker is using this generalization to refer to himself (unless he is being ironic). Here the narrator is referring to David Hersland, and through him to the rest of us. Earlier the text has distinguished between home life, business life, midlife, and so on, but the categories have been expressed in a progressive way as “business living,” “middle living,” and “home living.” This usage is not customary. So the placement of the phrase “in his living” makes an otherwise straightforward sentence somewhat strange.

She does not write “A man through his living” because that would imply that a man’s way of life made him what he is. By emphasizing the preposition “in,” Stein suggests submergence and containment. A man’s living is larger than he is. “A man in his living has many things inside him . . .” Amanin, the music begins. The the is and the ms and the ns take over. a m an in h is l iv in g has man y th in gs in s id e h im.” The “in” in “living” and in “things” is not pronounced, but must be seen. The “man” in “man” changes to “men” in “many.” “A man in his living has men (ee th ings) inside him.” Both the look and the listen of the language matter. The “in” in “inside” and the “in” in “living” look alike but, in terms of sound, go their separate ways.

It is also typical of Gertrude Stein to employ quite colloquial expressions as technical terms “Does Merriweather have it in him to cross the country?” That is, does he have the gumption. Our selection continues (using a comma where a colon would normally be): “A man in his living has many things inside him, he has in him his important feeling of himself to himself inside him.” The schoolteacher would be expected to delete the the “in him,” because it is redundant, however this “in him” will be followed by ten more, as well as two that are submerged slightly in “inside him,” with the total number of “him”s reaching seventeen. One way or another the passage will beat away on im im im like a drum.

“A man in his living has many things inside him.” What things? “He has in him his important feelings of himself to himself inside him.” What’s that? “He has in him the kind of important feeling of himself to himself that makes his kind of man.” “In” looks its way out of “kind,” which sound the “I”—kEYEnduh. “Kinda” is the colloquial form. Meanwhile, against the in ims, and the narrow slit-shaped vowels, are increasingly placed the open os of “-port-” as well as the look-alike os of “of” and “to” with their uv oo music, and the rhyming of “come and “some” and “from,” as here: “this comes sometimes from a mixture in him of all the kinds of natures in him, this comes sometimes from the bottom nature in him, this comes sometimes from the natures in him that are in him that are sometime in him mixed up with the bottom nature in him.” You couldn’t spell “bot tom” better than it is.

We have shifted from “im” to “om”— that is, um, I’m. The function of “sometimes” (as common as “kinda”) changes, as the passage moves shrewdly from “himself” to “themselves.” “Sometimes in some men this other nature or natures in him are not mixed with the bottom nature in him at any time in his living.” The rhetoric has recaptured the opening formula. “Many of such men have the important feeling of themselves inside them coming from the other nature or natures in them not from the bottom nature of them.”

The sound shifts throughout follow and reinforce the sense. The sound connection slink the language into one melodic line, and the repetitions return us in the manner of the baroque to early elements over which we pass again like swifts in flight.

In this spindle diagram (so named because we can run our eye, the way one used to be able to thrust a knitting needle through holes punched in IBM cards, down common points of verbal return to see how the sentence revolves, eighteen “in”s and thirteen “him”s line up on the right side, and these “him”s are not the half of it, since four more can be found in the expression “important feeling of himself to himself,” giving “him” those seventeen appearances I mentioned, while “nature” has to be satisfied with eight, “sometimes” with five, and “bottom” four. the “his/this” combination is also frequent (eight).

We could easily draw up a phrase diagram, which wouldn’t split “in his living” and other grammatical combinations the way the spindle layout does, arranging the groups as the paragraph balances them throughout its length. assonance, consonance, rhyme, rhythm, repetition, phrase placement, the movement of singulars to plurals, the elaborate colloquial vagueness of reference, the careful distinctions which underlie the meaning, are used together to give emotional weight to the journey—in this case a short passage of analysis, but one which mimics the movement of life itself—a trip which trips over itself, aims at a target reflected in a mirror, returns, redoes, as habits do, when we shave ourselves, or powder our cheeks and comb our hair again, though one more day has passed, because life belongs to the progressive present, it is living, but living is “same after same,” it is variations on a theme, a deep theme, made of the mixtures of natures, it is a round, it is fugal, like the ring which Gertrude made to round her roses, and it gives rise to the feeling that, as automatic as habit is, as if it were in charge of each action, and therefore of most of life—our clamorous family of familiar, customary gestures, squalls and bites—it is nevertheless we who run the comb’s teeth through our hair, it is we who grimace in the glass, feeling always who we are despite the mechanics of our motions, the repetitions which sum a life: “Some can remember something of some such thing,” she writes; however just how does this feeling arise while scraping carrots, preparing dinner, kissing, as always, with puckered lips, so as not to get too intimate—the whore’s reserve—how does it happen that we feel we are present in a present our reruns make us absent from? shifting gears, poking in a purse, lighting up, the same creases from the same sheets in the same sleep wrinkling our bare back, so that we recognize even the rare as regular—that’s the danger—not even sighing when someone says: “your voice sounds better through the mail; and we continue simply to continue, continue to feel a sip’s a sip, the same as always, yet just this one, cool and pale, though another, cool and pale will follow, as we’ve always done, wine at five in a fine glass, because if it didn’t arise, if the feeling failed to materialize, we’d be good as dead, a phonograph, rounding on itself silently, making no music, though the needle wears and the grooves deepened and the table’s turning slows to let us know that something’s happened, something of notably no importance.

In the sentence which follows the one which Steven Meyer and I quote and comment on, another variation on the same words, another teasing of meaning out into the open, another singing of the nearly same song, occurs:

Many men has sometime in their living the important feeling of themselves to themselves inside them, some men have always this feeling inside them, most men have such a feeling more or less in them, perhaps all men and mostly all women have sometime in them a feeling of themselves to themselves inside them; this comes sometimes from a mixture in them of the kind of natures in them, this comes sometimes from the bottom nature of them, this comes sometimes from the natures in them that are mixed up with the bottom natures of them, sometimes in some of them the other nature or natures in them are not mixed with the bottom nature in them, many of such of them have the important feeling of themselves inside them coming from the other natures not from the bottom nature of them.

In the great dirge which concluded The Making of Americans, in the surge of life in the ending of it, the answer is given, and we can hear it: consciousness is like the music of the words, for in them, and in their pace, and in their arrangement, their rhetoric, their repetitions, the patterns they lay down, in their prolonged investigation of nuance, of the subtle differences in sameness, in the in of “in” itself, lies the wonderful, the saving rainbow of awareness, the presence of force and feeling; but what should anyone expect me to say, except to say “style”—style is consciousness, arising from relation, from the way this syllable connects with that, or cell with cell until the brain bursts into seeing, with sentences whose shape is their understanding, like one which declares, as Stein might, my knowing that I am going, though I go, is never gone, if my going, and my knowing, are strongly sung. She says:

Family living can be existing and any one can come to be a dead one and every one is then a dead one and there are then not any more being living. Any old one can come to be a dead one. Every old one can come to be a dead one. Any family being existing is one having some being then not having come to be a dead one. Any family living can be existing when not every one has come to be a dead one. Every one in a family living having come to be dead ones some are remembering something of some such thing. Some being living not having come to be dead ones can be ones being in a family living. Some being living and having come to be old ones can come then to be dead ones. Some being living and being in a family living and coming then to be old ones can come then to be dead ones. Any one can be certain that some can remember such a thing. Any family living can be one being existing and some can remember something of some such thing. (925)

A routine—a rite, a rigamarole—of this kind is a recognition, a recognition which is one of a kind, though every word is old and overused and one, each perception trite, and each sorrow common. Any and every one of us will die, but only a few, a small sum at any time, can remember—really remember—something of some such thing: when our organs no longer peal, when our words no longer rhyme.

#pearl diver #ooooooh this was brutal to type out #whole hog

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juvenilehousefinch · 5 years ago

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Birds, Bonapartes, Biological Nomenclature

The more that I learn about the Bonaparte clan, the more I realize that the family most famous for Napoleon I, the emperor and military genius, had connections to basically everything in the 1700s and 1800s. One shocking connection to me was that Tarrare (that hungry guy during the French Revolution who ate basically everything) worked under Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was married to a woman known as Rose Tascher de La Pagerie. After Alexandre de Beauharnais perished during the Reign of Terror, Rose remarried to a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte and adopted the name of Josephine.

Pictured above: the curl-crested aracari, photographed by Lonnie Huffman

Just as I never expected the Bonaparte clan to have a connection to the infamous hungry guy, I also never expected them to have a real impact on ornithology. It seems so out there, so disconnected from the politics and conquest that are usually associated with their name. While reading about birds in the past, I’ve frequently stumbled upon the name “Bonaparte” or “Beauharnais” (Josephine’s martial name by her first husband, and the last name of both of her children, who became instrumental in Napoleon’s securing of power throughout Europe)[1]. I always assumed that the names simply came from people wanting to honor monarchs that hailed from the Bonaparte-Beauharnais clan, as naming new species (well, new to western scientists) after monarchs was trendy during that time. One such example is the curl-crested aracari, whose scientific name is “pteroglossus beauharnaesii.” I mention this specific example because the curl-crested aracari is awesome and vastly underrated compared to better-known species in the Ramphastidae family, such as toco toucans.

I recently learned, however, that the Bonaparte family’s influence on ornithology is more than just symbolic! I decided to dig a little bit deeper into learning why the name “Bonaparte” appears so frequently in bird information, and I found out that Napoleon’s nephew and the son of his brother Lucien, Charles Lucien Bonaparte was a prominent ornithologist who was the authority on 165 genera, 203 species, and 262 subspecies. Learning about this was really cool for me because two of my primary passions in life are Napoleon and birding, and I find it really exciting that there’s this unexpected and kind of random intersection of the two.

According to the IOC World Bird List, among the species studied by Bonaparte are a subspecies of oriental turtle dove of Europe and Asia (Streptopelia orientalis erythrocephala), the blue-winged goose (Cyanochen cyanoptera) endemic to Ethiopia, and the Pel’s fishing owl (Scotopelia peli) endemic to Africa.

Pictured above: the blue-winged goose, photographed by Dick Daniels

Among Bonaparte’s notable contributions to ornithology is also his naming of the New World dove genus, Zenaida, after his wife. Bonaparte married Zénaïde Bonaparte, who was his cousin and the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, older brother of Napoleon and Lucien Bonaparte. This was incestuous and nasty, but what can you really expect from European nobility? The Zenaida genus notably includes the Zenaida dove (the type species) and the mourning dove. Mourning doves are common where I live, and from now on, whenever I hear its iconic call of “hoo hoo hoo,” I’ll think of the Bonaparte family.

Pictured above: The mourning dove. “Dove by Almaden Lake” by Don Debold

Bonaparte also was an early supporter of John James Audubon, who was then relatively unknown as a naturalist. I would also like to note that Audubon grew up in France[2], and used a fake passport to flee to the United States so that he wouldn’t be conscripted into the Napoleonic Wars. (I can only imagine what Bonaparte must have said if/when Audubon told him, “Yeah, I came to this country as a draft dodger because I didn’t want to die in all those wars that your uncle keeps dragging us into.”) Bonaparte recommended him for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (now a part of Drexel University) while living in Philadelphia, where he and his wife moved after getting married so that they could be with Joseph Bonaparte, who lived in exile in the city. Unfortunately, Audubon’s bid for membership because George Ord, an ornithologist and member of the academy, disliked his style of painting. Well, George Ord isn’t the one amongst them who has become basically synonymous with ornithology and bird conservation in the United States, so evidently, Audubon got the last laugh.

On a slightly different note, a fascinating aspect of biological nomenclature that I had never considered before learning about Bonaparte was the frequency at which people named species after their own political leaders, like the afore mentioned curl-crested aracari. Now that royalty and monarchies aren’t nearly as relevant to most people’s lives as they were during the time of the Bonapartes, the trend has evolved so that people name species to honor celebrities and other pop culture icons. (Though, whereas before famous people had birds named after them, now discovery of a terrestrial vertebrate animal is uncommon enough that people only get bugs and worms unless they’re lucky.) Take, for example, Aleiodes shakirae, Aleiodes gaga, and Aleiodes colberti, wasps that are named after Shakira, Lady Gaga, and Stephen Colbert, respectively. There’s even a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to listing the creatures whose scientific names take after the Harry Potter series. (There’s a whole dinosaur named Dracorex hogwartsia, which translates to “dragon king of Hogwarts”! I’m jealous! … Also, read another book, smh.)

Anyway, anyone who complains that people are making everything political these days clearly hasn’t read their history. One of Bonaparte’s notable contributions to ornithological nomenclature was his naming of Wilson’s bird-of-paradise, whose colloquial name comes from Alexander Wilson, a prominent American ornithologist who laid the foundation for ornithology in the United States. The scientific name for Wilson’s bird-of-paradise is “cicinnurus respublica,” with respublica commonly being translated as “public affair” or “commonwealth.” Bonaparte wanted to deviate from the tradition of naming species after royalty and royalty-adjacent people, and instead honor the concept of the republic. In my opinion, this is disdain for royalty was entirely performative, given that Bonaparte was a descendant of an imperial dynasty, was a prince himself, and was afforded his privilege in life by the fact that his uncle seized power in France, installed himself as the country’s leader, and eventually crowned himself emperor.

Pictured above: Wilson’s bird-of-paradise, photographed by Serhan Oksay

I’m always taken aback when I learn about just how connected the world was [for wealthy white men] before modern technology, and the influences that people from completely different geographical backgrounds could have on each other. It is important to acknowledge that so many of the naturalists from this time period were able to make such developments in their fields not because of their intrinsic talent as biologists and ornithologists, but also because of their immense connections and lucky circumstances that paved their way to success. Also, the “discovery” of many New World avian species wasn’t true “discovery” at all, because the indigenous people of the Americas had lived with those species for millennia. It was only “discovery” for westerners, who placed their mark of colonization on those species by naming them after rulers and other prominent western figures.

Although Bonaparte definitely had the passion to contribute so much to ornithology, he came from an incredibly powerful political dynasty that could bankroll his studies. He could travel wherever he wanted to and obtain any specimen that he wanted to obtain because of who his family was. Similarly, although Audubon certainly had a passion for birds and talent as an illustrator, he was only able to develop those skills through meeting the right people and having the generational wealth to do whatever he wanted in life. That’s not to say that every single ornithologist came from a position of wealth and power — the aforementioned Wilson, for example, was a weaver who lived in poverty in Scotland before emigrating to the United States and working as a schoolteacher. I don’t think that that makes the contributions of people like Bonaparte and Audubon less important or meaningful to the field (I’m also not an ornithologist so I don’t have that authority), but, as with most fields even today, it’s worth thinking about that the people who made these contributions reflect only the people with the access to the most resources.

NOTES: [1] Although Josephine is frequently referred to as “Josephine de Beauharnais,” she never actually went by that name during her lifetime. When she was married to Alexandre de Beauharnais, she went by Rose, and only adopted “Josephine” after having married Napoleon, because he liked the nickname. [2] Audubon was born in Haiti, where his father owned a plantation that he sold in 1789 when tensions began to rise between white slave-owning colonizers and enslaved people of African ancestry. The elder Audubon had a number of mixed-race children by a mistress who had ¼ African ancestry, but only the younger Audubon and his sister, who were both considered white, were moved to France alongside him.

#birds #birding #history #birdblr #napoleon #bonaparte #ornithology

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dhnegrcee · 4 years ago

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Blog Entry [Week 2] - Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag/ Manila: In the Claws of Light

Maynila sa kuko ng liwanag /Manila: In the Claws of Light was a Filipino Drama made in 1975 and directed by Lino Brocka based on the social-realist novel In the Claws of Brightness by Edgardo M. Reyes. It is considered not just by critics but also by many as one of the greatest films in Filipino cinema. Lino Brocka was well known for paving the way of creating a universally-oriented cinema from the Philippines. This film is one of his most representative forthright of social criticism and ruthless determinism among all of his films.

The exposition of the film showcases the shot on actual locations around the vicinity of Manila, to better capture the authenticity of the city in the year of 1970s. During the 1970s was also the time of discovering the film genre as a new medium of art. Scripts and characteristics in film came from popular theater and familiar local literature. Nationalistic films were also quite popular, although they were labeled as being too subversive. As the film progresses, I observed that the outline of the film has a simple story quite too simple, you might say; not much structure to it. But as I go along, it opens the mind of the viewers to a much deeper issue that actually existed in the 70’s and is still happening in today's time. The story is a concrete depiction of the ills of city life particularly in the city of Manila. In Manila, there are blue-collar workers risking their lives everyday to earn a decent living, but are subjected to unfair labor practices and remain uncertain of their safety and their future. Human trafficking exists, and women leave their provinces believing that fleeing to the city is their one chance at a better life, only to be driven into prostitution. It is a city filled with poverty and social injustice, where predators subsist on the blood and sweat of unwilling victims. People die and nobody notices; or maybe, nobody cares. I must say that to be able to adapt this on the movie screens and to reach it out to the Filipinos was such a breakthrough and also I’m amazed for the bravery of Director Lino Brocka who never hesitated to include his trademark homosexual theme in to the story. Because Brocka was also a homosexual himself. Despite that the film was released under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos. And due to his declaration of Martial Law, films were used as propaganda vehicles. President Ferdinand Marcos and his technocrats sought to regulate film making through the creation of the Board of Censors for Motion Pictures (BCMP). Prior to the start of filming, a finished script was required to be submitted to the Board and incorporate the "ideology" of the New Society Movement such as, a new sense of discipline, uprightness and love of country. Annual festivals were revived, and the Bomba films as well as political movies critical of the Marcos administration were banned. And as some of us claim that his era of reign was the ‘Golden Age’ of the Philippine economy. In other means, during his reign it was always perceived that Manila is a landmark political critique, pointed specifically towards the Marcos dictatorship and its so-called New Society, an enticing vision of a perfect Philippines. The project to construct this glittering utopia, whose default epicenter was decidedly Manila, found expression in the massive funds poured into crafting a facade of affluence. As the social realities films rose during that phase it was depicted as having been wiped out with the establishment of the New Society. In spite of the presence of censorship, this period paved way to the ascendancy of a new breed of directors.

All throughout the film I observed that symbolism was intentionally imposed and well executed. And as a viewer I did speculate on the symbolism, which is hinted at their names. Some comments from the viewer that Ligaya Paraiso represents Inang Bayan, the Filipino concept of the motherland. Her name, which literally reads "joyful paradise", is a reference to how Julio viewed his lover as an ideal paradise, and her given name is a nod to her newfound yet unwelcome occupation as a "lady of pleasure". Julio Madiaga himself is regarded as a symbol of the provincial Filipino every man, eking out a living in the hard conditions of the city. His surname is an archaic variant of matiyaga (patience), a trait obvious in his hope-filled and persistent search for Ligaya. Mrs. Cruz's surname simply means "cross", pointing to the heavy burden she places on the shoulders of the young girls she lures into prostitution. Since the character's name is later revealed to be an alias, it could also mean that the name was chosen, as Cruz is a common surname in the Philippines, representing how easily she could walk around the streets of Manila without detection. The name of the antagonist Ah Tek, meanwhile, is a play on the colloquial term atík, (cash or income) representing the greed and selfishness of the character. The city (Manila) itself is sometimes considered to be the main character instead of Julio and the others, while the film is also construed as a portrait of one man's corruption and eventual downfall.

Overall, even though it has been over 40 years since the film was released I think it would still remain as one of the greatest films ever produced in the Philippines. The film showed the underlying reality of Manila and it’s invisible citizens that were striving their ass off and most of them resorting to dangerous liaisons and means just to be able to keep their mouths fed. It was a painful reality that had really happened before. It opened my eyes to the harsh reality that the citizens could not be taken care of clearly by the said reigning administration that time. It was shown that those people who went through that phase took desperate measures to survive in a system that didn’t favor them. And I hope that every viewer that is able to see the film may take a two or a thing from the film.

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huntershowl-moving · 5 years ago

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HELLHOUND’S UNSEEN COWORKERS.

i’ve wanted to write about these folks for some time because if hellhound was the type of person to accept other people in her life (and if sanya didn’t work to isolate her from them), this would be the closest thing she has to a family. she interacts with this inner circle fairly frequently, as they all serve different needs for each other; if needed, she would vouch for them in a damn heartbeat. just don’t ask her if she cares about them (except leto, obvi) because she doesn’t want to think about that.

in the last three years since she’s been hellhound, she has greatly distanced herself from all of them except for sanya, with whom she still meets regularly and receives jobs from.

first, a summary of what exactly THE UNSEEN is:

everpresent, this crime syndicate has puppet strings in every tier of american society, as well as branches in the governments of other ‘developed’ countries. the reason for the name? nobody knows who is in the unseen and who isn’t (aside from its leader.) the waiter at your favorite restaurant? the officer who patrols your street? your mayor? half the people in the grocery store? even members of the unseen themselves generally don’t know who else is in it – at least, the lower-tier members. (the people named below are an exception.) many have only worked one contract for the organization and never been contacted by them again. many owe them a favor or two, to be collected in the future.

they profit from a number of criminal enterprises, having a hand in almost everything: assassination, private security, drugs, embezzling, theft and fencing, arms dealing, forgery... the list goes on. they're also behind a number of legitimate shell companies and businesses.

in mainverse, the unseen is a name spoken with fear, reverence, and a glance over the shoulder. in modernverse, to those who deal with them, the name is not spoken; to those who don’t, it’s an urban legend.

under the cut because long post.

SANYA TRISKEL - THE BOSS.

they’re just begging to be put first, aren’t they? sanya is the leader of the entire unseen, gold-eyed and un-aging. what they’re thinking at any given time is a mystery. hellhound can’t tell whether they actually care about her in their own way or they’ve invested enough in her that they see her as an incredibly valuable weapon (probably the latter, though.) they doted on her meticulously for an entire year after she lost her arms. their hand was directly involved in everything she learned to do with her prosthetics. if they told her to stop breathing or throw herself in a river? personal goals be damned, hellhound is devoted unhealthily to them, to enough of an extent that she would do it. sanya is a rich socialite who regularly schmoozes with elites and politicians, forging friendships and business partnerships with ease despite the fact that they are a nonbinary person of color (being feared does a lot in your favor, it turns out.) while it’s colloquially known that they lead the unseen, not only is it impossible to prove, their organization is so entrenched in law enforcement that it doesn’t fucking matter.

MORDAI MORETTI - THE POISONER.

mordai is a star in duskwall’s fighting ring culture. beautiful and deadly, she takes center stage, rarely defeated by anyone and respectful if she is. she and hellhound had a small flirtation back in the day – but nothing more than a few sidelong glances and exchanged words could develop before hellhound met aya. they have similarly stoic personalities, so they get along well enough to be able to hang around each other for extended periods of time or train together without getting snappy. she is honest and true – a good ally. she also has a wealth of knowledge on toxicology and crafts poisons for the unseen’s forces, having taught hellhound the basics on toxic flowers when she asked.

LETO AISA - THE FORGER.

there he is. my boy. hellhound’s twin brother, with whom she hasn’t spoken since everything happened to make her hellhound. he has been a skilled artist from a young age; even after he lost his hands and had to get prosthetics, his skill did not dip. despite the fact that he was still an incredibly skilled painter after that point, he was never satisfied with a pair of prosthetics. he always says they don’t work right, they hurt, they don’t feel like they function fully. his work for the unseen is reluctant. he holds great resentment toward sanya for what they have done to him and his sister, and he is concerned about the devotion they continue to foster in persephone. he is currently engaged to a very sweet and down to earth accountant named halwart.

GABRIELA “GABY” LUNA - THE SLIDE.

gaby is a newer addition to the sanctum, but an extremely valuable one. if you take a look around at the people assembled here, you’ll notice a distinct lack of social skills – infiltration was the one area they lacked up until sanya found the perfect candidate. gaby is bubbly, cheerful, and kind, but underneath the bubblegum veneer is a woman with a strong sense of self and a high level of proficiency in the art of spying. make no mistake – she is dangerous. gaby is very difficult to dislike; she melts into any environment with ease, allowing her to be an excellent asset in collecting secrets, planting things in heist locations before the job, and pairing with an assassin to distract targets. persephone is not immune to the gaby; they’re a little soft on her, though they’d never admit it. the two are solidly friendly, but persephone still holds her at arm’s length with the deepest issues.

TAVIN AILLEARD-AMERI - THE ENGINEER.

perhaps the closest relationship hellhound has with one of her coworkers outside of leto and gaby is with tavin. she is a notorious flirt and has been hitting on persephone for years – not that the assassin minds, as she knows (or believes) tavin isn’t serious. any time her arms need fixing up she goes to tavin, who has made and designed most, if not all, of her gear. she has a penchant for serial one night stands with whatever pretty woman she can pick up that day, but stays with none of them outside of short flings. she and her brother henri escaped to the unseen after henri murdered their parents. the two siblings no longer talk.

HENRI AILLEARD-AMERI - THE FENCE.

perhaps one of the unseen’s strangest, most off-putting, and least likable members, henri got his sister tavin into a world of trouble when he murdered their parents because he was mad at them for a trivial reason. he has no friends, a house stuffed full of oddities and trinkets that he has collected over the years, and a sense of humor that usually involves pushing people’s buttons on purpose. he fences stolen goods and trades in information, and those who come to him usually only do so if they absolutely need to. 0/10. his vibes are wack. hellhound hates going to see him more than most people.

DERYTH - THE BODYGUARD.

deryth is sanya’s personal guard. they are never seen in public or private without her by their side. not much is known about her, including by hellhound, but the two share a mutual understanding in their standing with sanya and the unseen – an unspoken one, an understanding of quiet looks and nods. all that’s really known about her is that she isn’t from akoros, she has no family here, and she is almost always calm, a very calculated fighter and a great guard because of that. there’s a reason she protects someone as influential as sanya.

TIERNEY SHEA - THE DEVIL.

one of the unseen’s most well-known employees outside of mordai, tierney – the loose cannon, known as ‘the devil’ to the city of duskwall – is volatile and unpredictable, with a threateningly muscular build, a barrel chest full of celtic tattoos, long, wild ringlets, and strength that allows him to tear grown men in two. tierney was born in ironhook prison. children of iron, they’re called. most don’t stay within the prison as they grow up, but tierney did, fighting and winning in its annual gladiator event brutenacht as an adolescent before being released out into the world. it is impossible to know what tierney is going to do next. sometimes he’ll be in a pub, happy as can be, and the next he’ll be massacring everyone inside – he causes chaos, pure and simple, and he’s (unsurprisingly) in frequent contact with hellhound. they have an... odd acquaintanceship. he’ll insult her, she’ll insult him back, they’ll drink together and be on their way, and then he’ll talk shit about her behind her back and they’ll get into a fistfight about it. it’s hard to tell whether tierney likes or hates them. he very much enjoys spreading rumors to their coworkers that persephone is not only sanya’s pet, but also in a more physically intimate relationship with them. hellhound doesn’t particularly give a shit what the others think about them, so they never cared what he said, until he started to talk about her disappearance and her estrangement with leto. then, things got Tense.

AJAL - THE HEALER.

ajal is the unseen inner circle’s doctor, and a damn good one at that. he’s kind, patient, and knows how to bring someone back from the brink of death ... the only issue is that due to the quirks of his voidblood, mushrooms grow all over his body. it unsettles people enough that he has never had a lover, despite being a deeply social person and a romantic at heart. he is good friends with most of the unseen’s circle, and at least neutral with the rest (certainly kept hellhound alive numerous times. she doesn’t talk to him much, though.) he also uses his mushrooms for healing tinctures, so just ... don’t think about it too hard, and it’ll be fine. otherwise, he is a very fine and warm fellow.

#>> HEADCANONS.#>> YOU MADE ME. ( sanya triskel )#>> MIDNIGHT DOVE. ( leto )#{ i don't have any tags for the others bc they dont come up but }

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fortheheavenssake · 5 years ago

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💜💜 PG MM Anon💜💜 Interpretation Collection- 6

Anon said:

You go PG!!! 😊😊😊🌸🌸🌹🐼🐼🐝🐝👍👍👍💖💖💖🌻🌻🌼🌼🌼😊😊😍😍💜💜🌹🌹🌹🌺🌺🌺💙💙💙🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌹🌹🌹❤❤❤👍👍👍👍 Violets 🌼

Anon said:

💗🌲🌞😺 hi Skippy this is for PG and JG🏡🌲🥰🥰🧚‍♀️👑👑🐱🐰🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🐥🌺🌹🌼🌸💐🐿

*********

43.

💜💜PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON💜💜

MM Anon

MM ANON … In their Teflon bubble …… roast grief and Yorkshire pud… 👪🥘🍺……PR’what PR…… “ we believe you Harry”……💩💩💩PA💩💩💩…… “All you’re effort to no avail lillibet”…… send in the gowns ⚖️💼…… thank God for the G grandchildren ……” I’m the Queen of the castle!!!” …… A little patience!!…… O’ no!! She’s coming next week. ……”I bloody hope not!!”

💜💜🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

In their Teflon bubble

The royals, the ones that are at Balmoral, HMTQ,PP and others are sheltered from media unless they want to access it. The horses, the outdoors and various beloved memories are a welcome respite although the issues, to put it mildly are still there and desperately needing to be dealt with.

Roast grief and Yorkshire pudding 👪🥘🍺

🤣🤣🤣 l laughed so hard when l read the news, oops PR article of PH, mm, amw taking a meal at the local😂😂😂, vegan eating roast beef 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣making point PH drinks several drinks but she only had water…fuel her PR of another pregnancy. Oh they had a cot and amw never stirred or made a sound🤣🤣🤣🤣THATS BECAUSE THIS DIDNT HAPPEN AND HE IS A RUBBER DOLL!!

PR what PR

PR has been off the charts, some seems to be done by LG , but lots of Megan name first in article s, you know it’s PR.

“ we believe you Harry”…

Those of us loyal and took time to watch the signals know and realize PH has been acting a role. We believe you Harry, you’re serving HMTQ!

💩💩💩PA💩💩💩

PA is in deep doo doo, he will have to be interviewed. The headline today was VRG singling him out! He is in deep trouble!

“All you’re effort to no avail lillibet”

This is most definitely PP talking, that’s the sweet name for the Queen. All of the work trying to deal with mm to no avail. Also past denials re PA. But this is mostly mm.

Send in the gowns ⚖️ 💼

In the UK system as in our, black robes are worn by the attorneys and the judge, white wigs also. This clearly means charges and cases to be filed in court imminently.

Thank God for the G grandchildren

These are our beloved Cambridge trio of little angels we all love so much. Such a welcoming distraction!!!

“I’m the Queen of the castle!”

And you’re the dirty rascal, anyone remember that?😁 There are definitely times when HMTQ has to put her foot down and rule/make the final decision. And she has decided as is described in this riddle.

A little patience

We need to be patient a little bit longer , softly softly…. remember from yesterday . Next week awaits…..

O ‘no she’s coming next week! I bloody hope not!!

Mm is coming to Balmoral next week, the second line is absolutely PP.

So we are asked to be patient just a bit longer. Next week, at Balmoral, there will be an intervention/confrontation. The charges will have been filed, per earlier in this riddle, l do believe this to be telling us that next week this will end!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

💜💜🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

Wonderful! Thank you so much dear PG! We love you! We love you too MM Anon!😊💜💜💜

Aug 28th, 2019

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44.

💜💜🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

Difficulty level off the charts. I feel like nothing here that l have done is even close to correct. I am so so sorry everyone, l just cannot figure out most of this properly. I am embarrassed to submit it 😞☹️ l submit this with a heavy heart due to the extreme difficulty of this riddle for me. Whatever you do PLEASE don’t laugh at me, l have always tried my best and today is no different.💜🙏🏻😊👋

MM ANON … under-Cover flight … she played a Dummy… the accounting doesn’t ADD up!!…… a questionable salary …… this engagement Rings of petulance … a net-flick opportunity …… “ she can’t act’ and she can’t f@#ing spell”. …… “but it’s him in the bloody photo”!!…… an old grey friend …… “ fix this for the family Ian”…… an Atlantic backhander …… “ once smitten, twice sly”… “don’t fret, I’ve buried it!

Under-Cover flight

Might mm fly to the U.S. very quietly, ie under-cover for the U.S. Open? Who else is Under-Cover watching her and all she does. Will she make the cover of newspapers by her appearance there? Oh wouldn’t she just love that.

She played a Dummy

A Dummy can be something fake meant to look real ie Archieficial. She has been using that fake baby for months. She doesn’t have to really play a Dummy as she isn’t that intelligent just look at her grammar etc.

The accounting doesn’t ADD up

Is this the Sussex Foundation? The cost of her clothes? All sorts of marching going on.

A questionable salary

Salary for SL and Natalie Campbell resigned from the Sussex Foundation. Also mm taking her percentage of items on their Instagram.

this engagement Rings of petulance

Petulance is childishness, sulkiness. Will she appear at Balmoral in this manner?

She also changes her engagement rings with her mood , on a whim. Nothing precious or to be cherished, it’s all fake.

a net-flick opportunity

Videos of various people,l read code names as isle, combover and liar along with a certain female, l read today being shopped around for paid viewers. This allegedly took place in the souther U.S. but who knows?

“she can’t act and she can’t f@#ing spell

ThisLittlePetal, Twitter is exactly this, We know she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag. But her grammar, spelling and attempts to use English colloquiums as she calls them, colloquialisms is the correct spelling and has totally different meaning that the other word. This is PP, l can hear his voice!

but it’s him in the bloody photo!!

This too is PP. riled up about the photo of PA, VRG and GM that is years old but once again is all over the media. Questions have now arisen questioning its authenticity.

an old grey friend

LG , continues to be close at hand, assisting in all aspects of this that he is able.

“fix this for the family Ian”

HMTQ asking for assistance to sort things out for her family.

Is she asking intelligence, MI5, MI6(SIS)to fix this, bring in the cleaners?

Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bondseries of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

While working for Britain’s Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels.

an Atlantic backhander

US Open, might she attend? Might that be a poor choice considering there are legal issues pending? Might she be compelled to remain there?

“once smitten, twice sly”

Once bitten twice shy, basically one learns after an experience that is bad not too do it again. However our Harry is sly and onto her, he has been all this time working on behalf on HMTQ,

“don’t fret, I’ve buried it”

PP? has hidden something very incriminating where it’s unreachable . The possible evidence of guilt or threats has been buried deep , unreachable by anyone except the one who hid it, l believe is PP.

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Dear PG! No one would laugh at you…and just people know….we only laugh with people here..not at them..(except Mm and gang). We appreciate you doing this riddle, although you found it difficult…..you still did a fantastic job! We thank you😊💜💜💜💜

Aug 29th, 2019

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MM Anon

As usual PG did a fantastic job. But can I add this

She played a Dummy

In association football, rugby league, rugby union and Australian rules football, a dummy or feint is a player deceiving the opposition into believing he is going to pass, shoot, move in a certain direction, or receive the ball and instead doing something entirely different, thus gaining an advantage.

🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

Thank you😊❤️❤️❤️❤️

22 notes

Aug 29th, 2019

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💜🙏🏻THANKS FROM PG 🙏🏻💜

💜💜🙏🏻💜💜Thank you everyone for your kind words about today’s and other riddles. I found today’s very hard but l am committed to any role l can be part of in helping our Queen and her family, l will do. Somedays, like today are more difficult but that’s all ok. God bless all of you Thank you 🐼💜🐼🙏🏻😊🐼💜, for allowing us into this space.💜💜💜💜GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you dear PG! You are the best🙏🏻💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

Aug 29th, 2019

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45.

MM Anon

💜💜🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

MM ANON ( Dedicated to all riddle busting anons). …… The Prince And the Show-girl and a duchess??…… he’s innocent until proven innocent …… 🎼if you leave me now I’ll take away the biggest part of you 🎼…… “ what!!! She didn’t sign a bloody pre-nup”…… “My client suggests a compromise” …… Tower Bridge is solid …… Westward “Hoe”……” dear boy ,everything’s bugged “… a sealed envelope. …👧👩🏼‍🏫🍎📚🎀…… a fall in fall

The Prince and the Showgirl and a duchess?

Great old movie, check it out, Marilyn Monroe. A traveling party of royals from central Europe arrives in England in 1911, as the host country prepares to celebrate the coronation of a new king. But when the visiting Regent , goes to a musical theater, his attraction to American performer makes it hard to stay focused. Soon, the female performer learns of a potential coup in the Regent’s home country, and it’s up to her to smooth things out – or watch as the nation hurtles toward instability.So is this the suggestion this is PC as potential Regent, MM as showgirl, and duchess, l say her because duchess is not capitalized, for any other Duchess it most definitely would be. However in this scenario she has no caring what happens to the monarchy. She is me me me, money money money.

🎼if you leave me now I’ll take away the biggest part of you 🎼……

Ooooo no baby please don’t go, l love this song. MM threats to PH ,no pre-nup, she will take everything in terms of finances etc.and quite possibly secrets and embarrassments as well be revealed.

He’s innocent until proven innocent

PA, family and friends are stalwart and stand firm. He has done no wrong.

What!!! She didn’t sign a bloody pre-nup?

OMG! No pre-nup for mm and PH . They may well have quite a payment to end the marriage, which l still have my doubts about annulment being the way to go. But l am not privy to information.

My client suggests a compromise

PA attorney suggesting a compromise on how, when and in what manner he may be interviewed by the F.B.I. or answer questions. President Trump had written questions submitted to him, which he answered in written form and returned. Might this be the way things will go?

Tower Bridge is solid

This is code name for HMTQ. Reassuring us that she is well and handling things. She is solid and committed to the course of action chosen.

Westward “hoe”

Used to be a hotel chain minus the letter e, abbreviation for hospitality. Sounds like our girl is definitely heading to the U.S. for the tennis and then what??? If she goes, l can pretty certainly say, she will not be allowed re-entry to the U.K. She is not a citizen, and l highly doubt she has applied for a longer VISA. No one tell her shhhhh🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫

Dear boy, everything’s bugged.

Soho, all places are bugged, wired, that’s how they catch people, blackmail them…this is someone talking to PH, likely PP, yet again the wise one. Any place where wealthy, Royal, celebrities politicians let their hair down so to speak, or have conversations there is surveillance absolutely.

A sealed envelope.

Contains secrets, photos? in exchange for $$£££££€€€€,who is presenting the envelope. Or is it a subpeona? Sealed envelopes containing a myriad of options of items inside.

👧👩🏼‍🏫🍎📚🎀

School resumes next week, and the pink bow refers especially to our beloved Princess Charlotte joining Prince George at Battersea. How exciting for her! She is growing up so fast!

A fall in the fall

A fall, l sooooooooooooo want Humpty Dumpty off the wall and gone to America. Please! Please! If l read this correctly that is what will happen

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

HMTQ, PP, PH and all are in my prayers

💜💜🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

Thank you so much dear PG. Sounds good! Much appreciated!😊💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Ask Skippy submission

Aug 30th, 2019

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46.

💜💜🙏🏻THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜💜

We remember today, in 1997, our beloved Diana, left us tragically 🙏🏻💜. My prayers for her boys🙏🏻🙏🏻💜

MM ANON

MM ANON … “bloody hell No!! Stick her in the lodge” …… A tabloid tirade …Sunday surprise??……”and the moral is?”…… sex lies and video tape ……… YOU CANNOT SHOW THIS!!!!!…… “tell Ann to talk to her”…… “ sooner or later “…… 🇬🇧🏰🎣🧘🏾‍♀️💅🏼…… the 4/10 or 12 bore Harry?……… “ private or public flight …… “ O b#&@cks more bad press”…… no cameras,no cameras!

“bloody hell No!! Stick her in the lodge”

This is our beloved, l say that word a lot don’t I?, but it’s true, our beloved PP!

No way, no how is she setting one grimy craggy toe into Balmoral? I say, put her in the barn!🤣

A tabloid tirade

Oh how predictable, a Markle distraction at its finest?? Can l use that word to describe it? Grandpa Markle comes out his shed to yammer at the world wanting to see Archie? Give him the website link to where Darren dolls are sold, he can look all he wants and even but his own. A loud distraction, a defensive distraction by the home team nearing the end of this game. She must be in dire straits to be using the grandpa card!

Sunday surprise!

I await this with bated breath, what’s coming tomorrow!! Pictures, videos, who knows. But we are very near the end game here my friends!😊

and the moral is?

Every story has a moral, sometimes good, sometimes very bad. Now we all know this whole ‘story’ or the life that we know of, of mm, and her past, but more importantly the last two years and the present has been, lies, obfuscation, manipulation, disrespect, vulgarity, l could go on and on. The moral is, rather the lesson is, karma. Life all comes back at you by your deeds, if not in this world, than God judges. I actually do pray for her soul, l want no one to not be redeemed. But we choose our behaviour and by those choices, there are consequences. We have seen the devastation on the face of Our Harry for a very long time now, the entire family, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, the 🇬🇧,Canada 🇨🇦and the Commonwealth. You reap what you sew/sow. As in sowing seeds. Justice awaits, if she goes to the 🎾, the U.S. Open, will there be men in suits waiting at the airport? IRS? If she goes and than tries to return to the U.K. will she be allowed entry? I think not, she is not a U.K. or. Commonwealth citizen, she has no job or Visa to work in the U.K. and she certainly has no family “that she never had”. She doesn’t think, consequences don’t affect her. Nothing bothers her, she has no conscience l now please understand, l am a Christian, it pains me to describe a human being this way, but l am also a realist which a lot of experience dealing with people with severe personality disorders. THEY DON’T CHANGE, EVER! , unless years of therapy, but the underlying personality is there.

sex, lies and videotape

We had this in a riddle awhile ago, at least, my answer was Steven Soderbergh film of the same title. We know that our girls’ life has been full of these things. I wonder if finally the videos will crawl from the depths and become public!

YOU CANNOT SHOW THIS!!!

Wow! 😮, how bad is the information/photos/videos that they uppercase exclamation marks indicate it’s VERY bad. Who is on the information, does it include important friends/family. I shudder at the thought. In revealing her truths, how much more damage will she continue to do. This sounds very dire!

“Tell Ann to talk to her”

The Princess Royal is such a sound individual, smart, elegant, amazing, dedicated to the Crown and her family. She is also tough as nails, very like her father , perhaps they think if she spoke with, the one who shall not be named, she might be able to get somewhere. I don’t know, they have all the information. I think she is never one to be reasonable, but l am on the outside and privy to nothing. So they must think, with whatever is the data, Princess Ann can get through to her.

Sooner or later

Sooner or later, this has to end, things will be made public, the law will come calling, people have turned their backs on her who were her ‘friends’, backers. By the way, where is her bestie of all besties MA? Where is he? He has literally vanished. Odd odd.

🇬🇧🏰🎣🧘🏾‍♀️💅🏼

While the country waits political issues, like Brexit, what will happen with BJ , DC etc, by the way, if you can see the film Brexit with Benedict Cumberbatch, l highly recommend it, not only because l love😍🥰BC, but he plays Dom Cummings so so well. It’s a great watch. But l digress, as l tend to do. While HMTQ and family are at Balmoral, fishing outdoors activities is she doing yoga and having her nails done? Is she going there at all??? Spending time with the family she never had oops never will have. Sorry, not sorry!

the 4/10 or 12 bore Harry?…

Bore, in weaponry, the interior of the barrel of a gun or firearm. In guns that have rifled barrels, e.g., rifles, pistols, machine guns, and artillery or naval guns, the diameter of the bore is termed the calibre. … The measurement of the bore in shotguns is expressed in terms of gauge.

The .410 bore or .410 gauge, is the second-smallest caliber of shotgun shell commonly available. A .410 bore shotgun loaded with shot shells is well suited for small game hunting . The .410 started off in the UK as a garden gun. The “12” 12-gauge “ means you can make 12 lead balls, each of equal diameter to the gun barrel, out of 1 pound of lead.

Now with that out of the way, sounds like if not there already, Harry will be at Balmoral for some hunting and these are probably the weapons he prefers that are on offer/available for him to use. Oh he needs a good long rest/ holiday, doing things he loves. Physical activities like hunting to get the accumulation of stress out of his body.

“Private or public flight”

Debate about how to get mm to come to a Balmoral? Certainly not PH, he flew commercial when he went to Italy for the Polo. Mind you, maybe they think he needs away from the public even the flight to Aberdeen. I have done that flight about four times, Aberdeen to London is like you’re up and you blink and you’re landing, it’s about an hour-ish, very short flight. So l certainly think most would not need private for such a short flight, but if they want her there for a confrontation/intervention type of meeting, a private flight might be an inducement to get her there. I wonder what’s all happening that we are not privy to!

“ O b#&@cks more bad press”

This is most definitely PP, angry about the Markle grandfather yammering away a wanting too see Archie, l can only imagine how this riles the BRF up. The lady thing they want/need is this guy crawling out of the woodwork again. Is this the never ending story? That was a great film, but this is not a film and it’s not great!

no cameras,no cameras!!

Again the Grand Dame of PR, wants no pictures taken as she goes to Balmoral, if she goes. I do not know how close l am. I just cannot see her going there. But there might be a very important reason to get her out of England!!

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

My thoughts and prayers are with you William and Harry.💜💜🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜

Thank you MM ANON 💜🙏🏻💜

Thank you so much dear PG! Much appreciate all you do!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Aug. 31

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47.

💜💜PG INTERPRETATION OF MM ANON💜💜

🎼 “and the clouds are grey” 🎼…

California dreaming on a winters day..ongoing PR of D and DOS looking for a mansion in L.A. oh she is delusional. I doubt California wants her.

It’s rainy today as HMTQ attended church, Princess Anne looked stunning. Her husband was also there, The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall. I was glad to see PC face and hands were not so red and swollen today. I worry he has some sort of autoimmune issue he struggles with. The issues the BRF are grey as well, not sunny and bright.

anticipation of street-parties

It’s a very British thing to do whenever a major royal event. Tables set up, everyone outside celebrating the wedding or the Jubilee etc Are we anticipating a street party once madam is gone? I sure think so!!! There will be dancing in the streets all over the world!

little black orphans, “apply in writing “

So she has given up on using a surrogate again, she wants to join the celebrity club of women that adopt third world children. She has an exception though, the orphans must be able to write and in English, l am not sure she knows other languages. Oh what a humanitarian she will be to adopt a BLACK child. Just fits her pathetic narrative. This truly angers me.

“playing bloody golf”

PA spent the last two weeks in Sotogrande, golfing a lot. I hear PP in this comment, disgust PA is on holiday memories golfing while this massive PR and potentially legal crisis looming overhead!

“ fly public, you’re joking,”

this is madame, refusing to fly public to Balmoral or anywhere! Still ever the narcissist!

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🎒🍎🏫

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George and Princess Charlotte will all arrive together at Battersea for the first day of school on September 5th. I can hardly wait for the photos!!

A waving poppet

Princess Charlotte loves to wave and interact with crowds. We will get the cutest waves when she starts school.

👩🏻‍🦳🙏🏻🧢🏃‍♀️

This emoji is tough. Someone with grey hair, were it HMTQ there would be a crown, someone is praying while, someone disguised themselves with a hat.and does a runner. Or does she plan to dye her, hair, put on hat and do a runner praying it works? I am sorry, this should be obvious but it’s not!

I know Betty, you can pick your friends “

This is a very close friend or lady in waiting, l am not certain, but in talking she is telling HMTQ the old line, you can pick your friends but you cannot pick your family. This is likely in discussions about PA, and the worry she has for her son.

… it’s the constitution, we’ve no choice …

They have to follow the constitution, how many times has Skippy said that. The “of the body “ law applies. It’s not a royal baby. They must act. They have no choice. Keeping the charge of a baby that isn’t PH in line of succession is treasonous.

…D&DOC and family 2020 commonwealth tour?

WOW, I know they, as a couple are doing an Asia tour in the fall, security must be a nightmare in that region 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻. How exciting would a tour of the entire family be. Oh heavens, l am twitterpadded at the thought😊😊😊🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻💜💜💜😁😁😁😁

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Thank you so much dear PG! You do such an amazing job! We love you!🙏🏻💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

Emojis

Grey hair lady…..Diana as she would be today

Praying hands

Blue cap

Jogger running

gstqaobc

BRILLIANT SEE, I SAID IT WAS OBVIOUS, SHE ALWAYS WORE HAT COMING OUT OF THE GYM IN HER SHORTS!! Thank you for seeing what l just couldn’t. But I KNEW IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS,, GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

Source: skippyv20

Sept. 1

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48.

Sept. 2

💜THANK YOU MM ANON💜

MM ANON …… “ love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs”…… heart of darkness …… which-doctor …… dis-ease with one another …… no photo-op worthy …… a phoney die-anna …… a controversial decision …… legal discord within …… thinly covered deception …… images of happy anger. ……🦟🦟👶💉🧸

“ love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs”…

MM ANON does love Shakespeare, this is from Romeo and Juliet.

Act 1 Scene 1

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;

Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears;

What is it else? A madness most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”

ROMEO

Yes, this is what love does. My sadness sits heavy in my chest, and you want to add your own sadness to mine so there’s even more. I have too much sadness already, and now you’re going to make me sadder by feeling sorry for you. Here’s what love is: a smoke made out of lovers’ sighs. When the smoke clears, love is a fire burning in your lover’s eyes. If you frustrate love, you get an ocean made out of lovers’ tears. What else is love? It’s a wise form of madness. It’s a sweet lozenge that you choke on. Goodbye, cousin.

Are there possibly feelings between PH and mm? Is the Stockholm syndrome rumours true?

Heart of darkness

Great book by Joseph Conrad. An Englishman becomes obsessed with an ivory trader. This is referring to PH love of Africa, perhaps some could call it obsession, he finds it very peaceful. I can’t imagine his inner conflict having to be on parade , so to speak, with mm, leads to another part of the riddle, images of happy anger.

which-doctor …

Play on words witch doctor is medicine person in many tribes around the world. Also which doctor will administer the necessary vaccines to amw and mm. Is she using some mumbo jumbo herbal stuff like she was thought to have been using whilst “pregnant “.

dis-ease with one another

Dis-ease is a play of words from disease to dis-ease, meaning PH and mm are not at ease one another. Let alone being together for an extended tour on behalf of HMTQ. There is also obvious dis-ease with every member of the BRF and mm.

no photo-op worthy

There will be no opportunity for photos on most of this ‘tour’. Even though it’s on behalf of HMTQ, it will be private🤨🙄

…… a phoney die-anna

Phoney PR mm has blighted us with regarding the late Princess Diana. Plans to go visit her grave with PH and amw. How she has yearned to know her, when in fact she has be stealthily researching her for years and her goal was and remains to be Diana 2.0

a controversial decision

Travelling to Africa with a baby, the public will go mad!!! More $$$$£££££££££€€€€€€ spent, on what? Givenchy that doesn’t fit? Faux-humanitarian makes me very angry and 😡🤢🤢🤮.

legal discord within

There is some legal disagreement in how to proceed. I believe this is regarding PA interview or questioning but the F.B.I.

thinly covered deception …

She, mm, is almost not covered in her deceptions. THATS ALL SHE DOES! Lie, obfuscate, now reactivating gramma markle into the mix right on cue!

…… images of happy anger. …

Fake PR trip, photos of the family appearing happy but seething underneath. Anger shows in non verbal communication, actually all feelings show. Non-verbal communication is about 85% of how we, as humans communicate. Although with social media, that might alter.

🦟🦟👶💉🧸

This is the need for regular vaccinations of a child along with the vaccines needed for Africa especially malaria. This is a high risk trip for such a young baby. It’s hilarious that another article, l think in the Express, stating they’re postponing the North America trip because amw is too young!😏🧐🤨

GSTQAOBC 🇨🇦

💜🙏🏻 THANK YOU MM ANON🙏🏻💜

Interesting….the Stockholm syndrome…..PH has been acting since Toronto IG…..doesn’t live with her, never has….is never alone with her….only sees her at events….so interesting….. Great job once again dear PG😊💜💜

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