#also I want to add all of mr page’s vocabulary into my own

[i-made-line]

“Read all about it! Read all about it”

[mjmnorwood]

[I.D. A header image of two pencils on a yellow background, with title reading ‘Authorial Voice’. End I.D.]

Authorial voice is incredibly hard to define. It’s different to character voice and it’s different to style (both of which can change between an author’s works). I think of it is a fingerprint; the particular feel of the text that clues you in as to who the writer is. In this post I’ll give three examples of authors who I think have distinctive voices, then look at some of the elements that make up authorial voice. Fingers crossed it will be helpful for developing your own!

Example 1: Terry Pratchett

      It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are—who knows?       Best not to speculate.       Thunder rolled...       It rolled a six.

- Guards! Guards!

Pratchett is one of my favourite authors and it’s no surprise he made this list because he has an incredibly distinctive voice. No matter what book of his you pick up, you instantly know you’re reading Pratchett. His voice is gloriously witty, making use of wordplay and puns. It can also be dramatic and evocative (and these dramatic and evocative passages often lead to yet more wordplay). He always writes with an undercurrent of anger at injustices. I think Pratchett is a great author to read if you’re looking to see how an author’s voice develops. His early works like The Carpet People, even the first couple of Discworld books, have inklings of his distinctive voice, but it shines through so much more strongly in later books, as he writes with more and more confidence.

Example 2: Lois McMaster Bujold

      “Well, let me...” His hand stroked her hair gently, then desperately wrapped itself in a shimmering coil; they kissed again.       “Uh, sir?” Lieutenant Illyan, coming up the path, cleared his throat noisily. “Had you forgotten the staff conference?”       Vorkosigan put her from him with a sigh. “No, Lieutenant. I haven’t forgotten.”       “May I congratulate you, sir?” He smiled.       “No, Lieutenant.”       He unsmiled. “I—don’t understand, sir.”       “That’s quite all right, Lieutenant.”

- Shards of Honour

Some context for the exchange above: Cordelia, the MC, and Vorkosigan are in love, but after a long discussion they have decided they can’t be together due to irreconcilable differences between their home planets. Illyan mistakes their parting kiss for Cordelia accepting a marriage proposal.

Bujold is another favourite of mine, and her voice is completely different to Pratchett. Whereas Pratchett will often digress to add details or make jokes, Bujold is very to-the-point. Her writing is incredibly easy to read. It tells you exactly what you need to know and no more (if she waxes lyrical about something, you can be sure there’s a very good reason). I think the use of ‘unsmiled’ in the example above shows off her voice very well. Technically, it’s not a real word, but it perfectly conveys the abrupt change of expression that comes with Illyan’s confusion. She could have written something like ‘his smile fell away’, but it just wouldn’t pack the same punch.

Example 3: Susanna Clarke

Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.       They were gentleman-magicians, which is to say they had never harmed any one by magic—nor ever done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one’s head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.

- Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Every time I pick up JS&MN (or its companion short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu) I know I’m in for a treat, voice-wise. The long, rambling sentences, the archaic word choice, even sometimes deliberate misspellings of words, all combine to create a very unique voice. There’s a quiet, reserved sort of wit about it, never out-and-out jokes, but small things that make you smile. Clarke’s writing is also a good example of how the line between voice and style can blur. Since she hasn’t published anything that isn’t set in the JS&MN universe, it can be hard to tell what is her voice and what are stylistic choices to capture the milieu of the setting. The stories in The Ladies of Grace Adieu show a lot of variation in style, though (for example one is written as a diary, one like a fairytale), and her voice stays consistent through all of them—the word choice, tendency to long sentences, and that quiet wit are all the same.

Some elements of authorial voice

Vocabulary and word choice. Do you favour simple or complex language?

Sentence length and structure. Do your sentences tend toward the extended, or are they more short and snappy? (Note: varying sentences is important for flow and pacing, it’s just the overall trend towards long or short that I mean here).

The balance of dialogue and description. What occurs more in your writing, beautiful word-pictures or interesting conversations?

Use of literary devices. Do metaphors, similes and the like crop up a lot in your work, or is the narrative more sparse?

Paragraph use. Long and rambly or lots of breaks?

Story focus. Character? Plot? Worldbuilding? A mixture?

+ a whole host of other factors it’s difficult to summarise neatly (tone, stylistic choices etc...)

When it comes to developing your own voice, I honestly can’t say much more than write. Write a lot. You can’t really force voice; it doesn’t have shortcuts, you just have to see where your writing takes you. My one tip is that after you’ve written a lot, look over your work with a critical eye for some of the things mentioned above, and you’ll start to spot parts of your voice. Even though my voice is still very much in development, I’ve started to spot some patterns. I tend to use more dialogue than description, and have short paragraphs. I compared some of my work to a friend’s and noticed how different they looked on the page. Mine was broken up, whereas theirs had long paragraphs of description. I also tend not to use very advanced vocab, so when I do use a fancy word, you notice. Spotting elements of voice in your writing can help you decide what you like, and what you want to put more work into developing.

One final thing: if you don’t have a very distinctive voice, don’t stress about it! It will develop over time, and anyway, there are plenty of writers out there who don’t have very unique voices, but still write amazing, successful stories.

Like this post? Follow for more writerly content! It’ll be lovely to have you along :D

[meredithsreadingchallenge]

Books 1 & 2 of the 2020 Reading Challenge: “The Sisters Grimm”

Welcome to the first blog review of my 2020 Reading Challenge! Today, I will be sharing with you two books from one of my favorite series, “The Sisters Grimm”.

There are going to be spoilers. You have been warned!

“The Sisters Grimm” Books 2 & 3: “The Unusual Suspects” and “The Problem Child”

Author: Michael Buckley

Book Type: Novel

Page Length: 292 pages (Book 2) and 296 (Book 3)

Genre:  Children’s Fiction, Fantasy, potentially Fan Fiction.

Reading Level (estimated by opinion, grade level, and content): 6th or 7th grade+

How Many Days Did It Take to read?

Book 2: Jan. 3-Jan. 5 (2 days).

Book 3: Jan. 6-Jan.7 (1 day).

 A Brief Summary of the books: MORE SPOILERS

Book 2: Sabrina and Daphne enroll in a new school three weeks after the events of book 1, but soon find trouble tagging along the way. A series of murders in her school lead the Grimms to believe the Scarlet Hand is influencing a new Everafter to attack the humans, so it’s up to the family to find the culprit before anyone else is in danger.

Book 3: After using the Match Girl’s matches to teleport to her parents, Sabrina learns that Little Red Riding Hood, typically one of the good guys, has been keeping her parents hostage with her new pet kitty, the Jabberwocky. She must then find a way to use magic to save them from the little girl, for it’s hard to fight a magical person without it. With the help of her sister, Puck, and her Uncle Jack, the family searches for the pieces of the Vorpal blade to make sure Little Red doesn’t add Granny Relda or Mr. Canis to her make-believe family.

Spoiler Summary of the series:

Sabrina and Daphne Grimm are sisters who recently move in with a relative they never heard of in their life. Their parents disappeared over a year ago, and the girls had been exchanging foster homes faster than returning items at your local Walmart. When Sabrina learns that she is a descendant of the Brothers Grimm, her parents were kidnapped by the Scarlet Hand (an organization of Everafters that want to hurt humans and rule the world), and that all the fairytale characters—called Everafters—live in a little town by the name of Ferryport Landing, her world is turned upside down. She and her sister must solve mysteries on her new home so that they can find their parents again and stop the Scarlet Hand from hurting anyone ever again.

Review Questions:

 1.     Did Both Books Have a Compelling Plot?

Yes, these books do have compelling plots. I will address this down the line in question 6, but the plot is simple for readers to understand. I could write the major plot points on a timeline and still understand where the stories are going.

2.     Did Both Books Have Consistent and Believable Dialogue?

Yes, indeed. Buckley keeps the characters’ tone, motivations, and vocabulary into account, so the reader understands who’s talking and why. I find the dialogue to be quite entertaining.

3.     Did I Care About the Characters?

This is more of a yes and no question. I do care about what happens to Sabrina, Daphne, Mr. Canis, Puck, and Relda Grimm in the stories. However, I don’t feel sympathy for most of the Everafters in the town because the point of view is from Sabrina. She is a very tense person and doesn’t trust anyone easily. I don’t get attached immediately to other characters unless she approves of them.

4.     Are the Illustrations Engaging?

Yes! I love Peter Ferguson’s sketches! The style is consistent, cartoonish, and unique alongside the text. I think they add great details to the book as well since they’re about fairytale characters.

5.     Is there an index or bibliography included at the end?

Yes, the first three books include a short guide in the back of the book about a brief history of the fairytale, short questions to test your knowledge, a couple of questions to write your own fairytales, and a section of the resources for writing the book.

6.     What Did I Learn While Reading? [spoilers!]

I think two of the most important concepts I could understand as an adult is prejudice and addiction from the two books. The main plot point, if I’m not mistaken, from each book is Sabrina learns a significant lesson in growing up while interacting with the mysteries and Everafters. In book two, she understood that she did not need to prejudice towards every Everaftre in town based on the actions of one bad group, and she also learned how to control her anger. In book three, she struggled with becoming addicted to using magic because she was insecure about her capabilities as a powerful person. It took a lot of strength to turn away magic so she did not suffer the consequences, for magic always has a price to pay to use it.

7.     Why is do I consider this series a fanfiction?

I consider this series a fanfiction because it elaborates on the fairytale world established by authors, like the Grimms, but it’s pretty good to read. It includes original characters with their own motivations, an extended point of view from the fairytale characters, and it has its own plot for readers to follow. The genre, technically, is mystery and fantasy, but because it concerns fairytales from different authors in history, I would also categorize it as a fanfiction, too.

8.     Have I read these books before?

Yes, I read this series when I was in middle school. I was the intended audience for reading the books, and I enjoy reading and watching fantasy stories. There’s nothing sweeter than a happily ever after!

9.     How Many Stars Do I Give it?

I give both books 5 stars.

10.  Would I recommend this book/mini-series/series to other readers?

Yes, I would definitely recommend this series for anyone to at least read the first 3 books. In my opinion, books 1-3 establish a great connection with the world of Ferryport Landing as well as determine if the reader would like to continue following Sabrina’s journey. I also say age doesn’t matter much when it comes to reading this series. There were a lot of jokes, themes, and plot points that I understood better as an adult versus a teenager.  

What else am I currently reading?

“It”: no current update.

“Girl, Stop Apologizing”:no current update yet, as well. I will post Excuse 3 and 4 hopefully next week.

“The Sisters Grimm: Once Upon a Crime”: I will start the fourth book in the series when I get my reviews done! :)

[nothwell]

Thanks to Jane for this heartfelt review of Oak King Holly King!

~

OK, I have a new author to follow. That list is pretty brief and I am more than tickled to finally find another name to add to it.

I haven't read much mm the past few months (been plowing through my stacks of non-Queer mysteries, and lots of non-fiction). When I did go back to reading the mm books that were in my TBR lists, I had multiple "meh" to "well, that was Gawdawful" experiences. I was almost wondering if my passion for mm had waned. Turns out I just needed to read something that was good .

I added this book to my TBR awhile back and I will say that the cover was very influential in my choice (Lord save me from the mm books with beefy models - I've gotten so I hardly give them a glance on the new book lists.) And as pretty as this cover is, the cover for the next book in the series is even better (sigh). But I digress . . .

I was more than pleasantly surprised by this book. Strike that, it's not strong enough - this book made my heart smile. I have to disagree strongly with the negative reviews. I think many of them may be more about not liking the type of story versus the book itself being bad.

[...] My other issue would be that if I had my druthers, there would have been a whole lot more delving into the cultural differences between the MC's, particularly when Shrike was in London. Those parts were hilarious and so enjoyable. This author has a really great wit and the bits where Shrike perplexed the locals were brilliant. By the way, some negative reviews mention not liking the flowery language - psssh. I loved it; it was a big part of developing the character.

“Tonight I join the Wild Hunt to slay the beast that has devoured the children of the Court of Moons. If you will venture out with me, I will show you that all I spake of rings true.”

I mean, how can you NOT love that line in terms of illuminating the personality of the character? I've been hard-pressed not to add a random "spake" into my own regular vocabulary just to see the reaction I'd get.

Some readers also mentioned the book was too long. Um, no, it was pretty much perfect. When I am immersed so deeply in a book and it's world and the characters, I want it to go on forever. There were no "page fillers" going on here. This story could go on and on for me.

So what I loved (pretty much everything, really): The world building was lovely. The descriptive language really drew me into scenes, like this from the boar hunt.

"Its plough-share trotters carved deep furrows into the mud as it spun ‘round in its search."

For me, "plough-share trotters" versus, say "legs", makes the whole thing come alive in my mind. There are a lot of places where the writing is quite evocative.

Beyond the world building, the author also created full blown secondary characters, and I found myself investing in some of them as much as the MC's. For instance, Mr. Grigsby could have come across as banal and unbeliveable, but the author took great pains to develop him into someone with an amazing sense of kindness and empathy. There is a place late in the book when he finally loses his temper and it is so impactful because up till then, the guy always gave the benefit of the doubt - it makes his reaction all the stronger because it's so unprecedented. And the way in which he loses his temper is entirely authentic to the character - it wasn't loud or violent, and yet packed more of a punch than a more stereotypically portrayed angry reaction.

I loved that the author was able to work in some characters who were in various areas of the sexuality spectrum. I actually kind of saw the big reveal coming, or was hoping it would turn out to be the way I was envisioning it. Additionally, I feel that the author also really effectively evoked what I would imagine the deep fear of coming out in London in that day and age would have felt like. The times and places where Wren felt and expressed that society-driven hesistancy were sometimes unexpected and jarring and thus really hit home for me (I know what it's like to fake it rather than be honest, I had to do it most of my life). I especially loved this line from Wren:

“There is no measure to which I might dilute myself that will make my essence palatable to society."

There's also a ton of sneaky humor in this book that had me highlighting lines all over the place. For instance:

Shrike paid them little heed. None of them were Lofthouse, and thus their opinions mattered not.

I don't know if the author is a Brit or not, but the humor has that British sensibility that I adore - sometimes snarky, sometimes scathing, sometimes sarcastic. (I was weaned on Monty Python. My wife still can't even begin to understand why the word shrubbery makes me laugh till I cry.)

My favorite thing - beyond all of the above and the fact that this was such a ripping good story - was the fact that the MC that one would "typically" (stereotypically?) expect to be subordinate in such a story turned out to have enormous strength and initiative and by book's end was arguably the stronger of the two MC's. It made the relationship so much richer and more compelling.

Finally, the author included marginalia involving snails. I cannot begin to express how much I loved that. (I will also never look at an acorn the same way again.)

Overall, this book was a lovely surprise and highly recommended. I have already moved on to the author's back catalog because of it.

p.s. I rarely buy Audibles, but this book is begging for an Audible version and there isn't one.

~

Oak King Holly King is a gay Victorian fae romance, available now wherever fine books are found!

Amazon • Apple Books • Barnes & Noble • Bookshop.org • Kobo • Overdrive • Smashwords

[bingothekangaroo]

FDR And Mark Twain Are Going On Spring Break

Blog post #2

March 14, 2021

      I am now into my third week of observation for my practicum. I have now had the chance to become more involved with the class and try my hand at some activities with the students. These past two weeks revealed the students’ excitement for spring break. Each day we get closer to their break, they become more and more hyper. Thankfully, my two supervising teachers have been able to control the class and keep them focused. They have had to keep their assignments moving quickly and going along with the rabbit trails the students have created. 

      The first day of this week, some of the underclassmen were taking the act in our normal classroom, so the students had class in a different room. This caused them to be rowdy and made it difficult for the teacher to use his normal lesson with the lack of technology options compared to his classroom. Thankfully, he was able to use the new environment to his advantage to make some jokes and keep the kids focused. My junior history class is currently learning about FDR and the New Deal Programs. The teacher brought an old radio that looked like it was from the 1930’s and played one of FDR’s Fireside Chats. They then spent the next few days creating a radio commercial about a New Deal Program of their choice and making it seem like it was from the 1930’s by incorporating music and slang from that era. Students went out into the hall to record themselves once they were ready, and it was my job to supervise them while they were recording and help with any technology questions they had. 

      The junior American Literature class began studying Mark Twain and his stories. The one the students seemed to enjoy the most was “Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”. They got to watch a short film that depicted this story and then began reading Huckleberry Finn. They will be reading this book over the next few weeks as a class. On the last day before break, the students were extra talkative. The fact the boys team was going to state added even more excitement to the day. Surprisingly, the two students who sit in the very back of the room and do not talk were voluntarily answering all of the teacher’s questions and wanting to talk about the vocabulary words in more depth. The teacher joked that since they understood this lesson so well that they should come to the board and teach it. The two students loved this idea and the class begged her to let them. She let them run the class for the last fifteen minutes under close supervision and a little help from her. The two students got to call on who they wanted to read the vocabulary word meanings and led the discussion as the class read through some of Robert Frost poems. The teacher was shocked by how well and in depth the students went during this time. I think this was the best way to change things up while still getting the students to focus through the excitement of their day. I think this also boosted the two quiet students' confidence and I would not be surprised if they start answering more questions in class without having to be called on. 

      The question that I have decided to answer for this blog is from chapter 6, “What types of effective teaching strategies do you see your supervising teacher use?” For the sake of simplicity, I will just be discussing the habits of my English teacher, Mrs. E, even though both supervising teachers show many different strategies of an effective teacher. The first thing that stands out to me about Mrs. E is her strategy to build a positive community in her classroom. She always welcomes them with a smiling face at the door each morning. She takes time to talk to them about their evenings at work and how their basketball games went. She even makes sure to go to as many games as she can and involves the cheerleaders in the basketball discussions. It is clear that she values these children as if they were her own. This helps the students feel connected to each other and build confidence for them to speak out and ask questions. It also helps some students lower their guard and become more open to learning. Another strategy that she uses is questioning the students. She frequently stops between reading to ask students questions about what they just read. Sometimes, if the text is difficult, she may ask them to explain what just happened in the story. This helps her see if the students are understanding the text and listening. Other times she asks complicated questions that require the students to add their own opinions, make connections from other writers and life experiences, and other times she incorporates vocabulary into her questions. I think this strategy is very effective to help the more advanced students expand their thinking from just the basics, and helps slower students be able to think critically and get help from their classmates' answers. She avoids asking too simple of questions and is comfortable sitting for longer periods of silence to give students time to think and look for answers. 

      The reflection question that I choose to discuss is from chapter 6, page 168. “Do you recall any teachers from your own schooling who demonstrated especially strong or weak content knowledge? How did they demonstrate their level of knowledge?” In high school my computer and journalism teacher did show a lack of knowledge in the content she taught. She was an older woman and it was difficult for her to keep up with the constant changes in technology at the school. Children are naturally pretty fast at figuring out how to use these kinds of resources and are comfortable looking for answers on Google on how to use different platforms. The websites she used were outdated and the students already knew the lessons that she made. They often skipped ahead of her and finished class early. Other times she would come to us for help with her computer and phone. Unfortunately, I think this caused her to be intimidated and stop learning the content all together. My final year with her, she stopped teaching lessons and instead brought in photographers and computer programmers to teach us to create the yearbook and take photos. If we had questions she expected us to ask the upperclassmen or figure out the question yourself through experimentation. Her evident lack of content knowledge caused her to lose control and respect from her classes and prevented them from reaching their full potential.

[etymologv]

dear mother of penguins

genre: oneshot, almost drabble-like, fluff, slight angst (but really, mostly some schoolgirl fluff lol). Hamilton references.

pairing: highschool!kim taehyung x reader

word count: 2.3k+

summary: A series of interactions with Kim Taehyung, someone you never understood enough, and possibly never will.

(a/n): this was my first ever fic and short story that's not for a school requirement and I just really felt like writing this, edited a bit from the original version from my main blog. enjoy! :)

Taehyung. He has always intimidated you without even trying to. He was tall, or at least much taller than you were. He was popular for being and having basically everything everyone else seemed to look at—good looks, an angelic voice, brains, and good humor. Maybe a little too much humor though. But deep inside, you knew you loved it.

Decent. That was how you described, maybe rated him in eighth grade when your best friend of two years Irene asked you what you think about him, because everyone just liked him. You found that part odd though, because you’ve known him for two years and you have always thought that he was decent at best.

Math. It was a math project in the first semester of tenth grade that made you talk for the first time. You’ve had interactions before, but those interactions didn’t even reach the point of interacting enough for them to count as actual conversations. And for the first time, you thought, maybe he isn’t as intimidating as you had always viewed him.

“Ah, I’m lucky,” you hear him whisper as Mr. Jung announced the pairings for the project. He was even smiling. You almost blush.

At around nine in the evening, he contacts you in the form of a Facebook message, the first of your Messenger conversation.

Taehyung: Helloooo im starting w page 5 and working my way up, can u start w page 1??haha

And so you did. After finishing two pages, you read his messages on his progress and oh my goodness he has finished three pages and apologizing for doing almost nothing?! Though you didn’t mind. You were even amused.

Fresh linen. You noticed that that was how he smelled while you were checking each other’s work. Attractive, you thought to yourself.

Glances. You found yourself stealing glances only to see him already looking at you.

Fast forward, your English teacher announces that your project for the year is a stage play. And of course, everyone wanted Taehyung to be the male lead character.

He deserved it though, he had this soothing voice that could have this aggressively ambitious vibe to it if he wanted to. Perfect for Alexander Hamilton. You even thought he sounded a bit like Lin Manuel-Miranda.

You ended up having the role of his mistress. Who would sit on his lap grabbing his hair, his face buried to your shoulder. Now, let us tone that down before you experience problems in breathing and just talk about the part where you would cup each other’s left cheek. Your innocent high school heart gets on the verge of exploding just with the thought of your scenes.

After your first weekend practice for the stage play, you had snacks. And a whole pack of ice cubes for some reason.

After the war, I went back to New York, a-after the war I went back to New York-

Non-stop. That was the song that was playing when he ended up in front of you, cupping both cheeks instead of one. Neither of you said anything. Staring. There was just staring.

This is the first murder trial of our brand-new nation-

Your heart was thumping violently, pace increasing each discernable unit of time. You were scared, scared of how you looked, if you blushed. You were scared that however you reacted would give you away. You looked down and tried to play off the looking-down as something cute by swaying your head with his hands still on it. Left, right, left. He removed his hands. Neither of you said anything, and both of you just joined your classmates in the game they were playing using the ice cubes.

You felt something. You felt it. No matter how many times you tried to reason out what happened with it simply being part of practicing. Hell, the song where you were supposed to do that wasn’t even playing.

After some minutes, you ran to Jimin to give him a detailed report on the interaction. Sometimes you regret telling one of his closest friends about how you like Taehyung a lot, but Jimin was that kind of person who would smile at you and support you on your almost-nonexistent moves, as he puts it.

The next week, he laughed maybe a little too loudly at a joke you said.

I hid the letter and I raced to her place-

You ran to each other, his arms grabbing yours. You insist that you had nothing to do with your husband James Reynolds knowing about your affair. And then you whispered, “You know, this does look very similar to In Time. I’m basically draining the time you have left right now.” He let go of your arms and started laughing. Really loudly. While walking around and eventually banging his right fist against the wall for more laughing support. It was very Kim Taehyung to laugh at whatever whenever, but you couldn’t help but think this was maybe a little too much. Still, you liked it. A smile forms on your lips. His boxy smile, that signature Kim Taehyung smile, that was going to be the death of you.

Later that day, Jimin and Taehyung started paper mache-ing their way to making guns for props.

“Can you help Taehyung with the gun he’s working on? You can tear the newspapers for him. If you want.”

Ah, Jimin. If you looked closely, you would have seen how his eyebrows bounced up and down slightly. Breathe in, breathe out. With a careful small quick smile, you nodded.

You grabbed the lifestyle section and sat on President Washington’s chair. Or Alexander Hamilton’s. Depends on which song you look at. Can you even look at songs? What are you even saying? Breathe in, breathe out. He chose one of the chairs for Non-stop, which was very much beside yours.

And you were talking. After 15 minutes, you still were. At first, it was just about music taste and all that jazz (and sometimes you hate your humor for having puns even in your narrations), but the topics somehow got deeper. It felt amazing. He intrigued you, he seemed like someone that’s unreachable, in the sense that he wasn’t the type to go below the surface.

“Is Supreme close?” You were curious. He was part of Supreme, the dominating social group of the school, but part of you didn’t feel like the group was healthy for each other. Damn, a lot of people even thought their name itself wasn’t good for them. A couple, both sides members of Supreme too, suddenly went awkward because Supreme kept pushing them together. Jongdae, also a member, posted an unfunny meme of Taehyung’s picture even though Taehyung wasn’t laughing anymore. Maybe they just didn’t have the word limits in their vocabularies.

After some seconds, he replied, “I guess so, yeah, I mean we do hang out sometimes, eat lunch as a group, watch movies and shit like that.”

“I mean, close, like open to each other, like you’d share what you’re feeling, joke around but know each others’ limits, and ‘shit like that’?”

Taehyung looks up. “I guess I can’t say everyone’s comfortable with everyone. You see, we’re like a network of units of close friends. The girls have their own thing most of the time too.”

You’re reminded of how many times the thought that he keeps everything to himself without any form of release has crossed your mind. You just feel it when someone’s down. And whenever you feel that he is, nobody asks him if everything’s okay.

You find yourself wanting to be the one he opens up to.

You stand up and make your way to Jimin to refill your cup of glue solution. When you come back, Taehyung is sitting your chair, chuckling, “Thank you for the chair. You can go sit on my hand-me-down-much-less-comfortable one.”

And suddenly you were both laughing full on, both wondering why, but still laughing.

“Oh, and hey, let’s exchange numbers? For stage play matters?” He looks like he’s trying to hold back laughter, but you take his phone and enter your number anyway. He adds a contact to your phone as well.

The next weekend, he was late to the practice, but maybe it’s you who came early since aside from you, there were only five people.

To Taehyung

Heyheyhey where are you?

You text him. There was no reply.

“Have you realized anything yet?” was the first thing he said when he arrived.

“What is there to realize?”

“Well. Maybe I entered one less digit than I was supposed to in your contacts.”

Taehyung that little…  “Yah!” So that was why.

Taehyung with his hair down, parted in the middle. That would make you melt faster than the sun can.

The day before the stage play, he had his hair down, parted in the middle. And dear mother of penguins he looked amazing. Breathe in, breathe out. Do not fangirl in front of him. “You look nice with your hair down,” you manage to tell him without melting because you would like to reiterate—dear mother of penguins he looked amazing.

But dear grandmother of penguins, he styled his hair like that for the whole week.

Summer. It was one summer three am when he messaged you with only your name in it. You replied as soon as you woke up, which was eight hours later.

You: Hi, sorry for replying late, what’s up?

Taehyung: Ah, nothing, I’m sorry

Taehyung: Again im sorry

You: What for? everything ok??

Taehyung: Nothing, sorry again

The next day, you message him.

You: Henlo

Taehyung: I heard that greeting was for stinky people?? Stop greeting yourself HAHAHA

You: YAH!!!

You: >:<<<<<

Taehyung: Anyways

Taehyung: Yesterday when I chatted you

Taehyung: I said it was nothing because I was drinking with Yoongi at that time haha

A beat. Your heart just skipped a beat.

Nana. In the middle of the first semester of twelfth grade, you noticed that he’s been with Nana a lot recently. Nana getting into his car with him. Nana spending lunch with him. You’d try to avoid selfish thoughts, but you can’t help but notice how you’ve been talking much less. And not so long after it was confirmed. You were beginning to sound like a thirteen year old whose crush won’t like her back at this point, But she was everything you weren’t. Fair skin, bright eyes, long legs. She screamed the societal standards of beautiful.

But you can’t forget how she broke Jimin’s heart, and how Taehyung’s could be broken too.

Watch. That was all you could do. Watch and see what happens. You’d accept it if they’re happy. Though that would hurt you, you would somehow accept it and learn to be happy for them as well. If he gets hurt, then you’d be there, and when he heals, you’d still be there. You would cry with him and recommend both sad and uplifting songs and crack the corniest of the jokes with him. You were still young, and it wasn’t sure if your feelings for Taehyung would fade or not. But you would watch. You would be open to other possibilities, because whatever happens, happens.

Twelve years after. It was twelve years after you graduated from high school that you first saw him in person again. You entered different universities, and just… lost touch. The last time you heard from him was when he messaged you saying that he was going to delete his Facebook account because his parents told him to, but he didn’t mention his new number.

You were absent-mindedly munching down popcorn when Jimin called your name. He was at the food counter, arguing with the staff because he was pissed that they were out of cheese powder, and put barbecue flavor powder instead on your shared extra-large bucket, without telling either of you about it. He was extra mad, because he planned everything for the string of activities for your honeymoon. You both wanted cheese, you both loved cheese and knew it, but you didn’t mind barbecue. Except he did, because it was an extra-large bucket that is not cheese. He was so mad to the point that he wanted to talk to the manager, but the manager was on leave, and the owner of the movie house was there instead.

You stood up, walked to the counter, and instantly froze when you saw the reason Jimin called you. There he was, Kim Taehyung, hugging Park Jimin. He was the owner, and you have no idea why you haven’t seen each other when this movie house was where half your dates with Jimin took place. Seven years of frequenting the place and not noticing at all? Was this the first leave of the manager in seven years? Didn’t other customers with worse tempers have complaints?

“Hi,” was all you could say.

“Hi, it’s been so long. How are you?”

You run to them and join the hug, and after pulling away, you say, “As much as I would like to talk to you right now and catch up, the movie we’ve been planning on watching since the trailer came out is starting in fifteen minutes and I’m sorry.”

“Coffee? The three of us? After the movie?” He offers.

After the movie, you catch up. He tells you that his parents gave him this movie house as a gift when he finished college. And that he took a business management course. And that he and Nana broke up after five years of going on and off. You tell him that after seven years of being with Jimin, you got married about a month ago. Your husband adds that this movie date was part of your honeymoon which you’re not supposed to know how long it’s going to be because he’s got it all planned as a surprise, and that he’s still upset about the popcorn flavor, but of course he’s joking and Taehyung knows that. What he didn’t tell you was that he has seen you and Jimin several times, but he didn’t want to show himself. Watch. That was all he could do. He knew that he was special to you, but he also knew that Jimin was much more than that. You looked much happier, you were much happier. He figured that showing himself might confuse you, and he didn’t want to risk that. He believed that you and Jimin were strong, but he still wanted to wait for the right time. Though the right time never seemed to come.

And there he was, watching you two leave the café, smiling at how being in a fight with the cheese powder supplier gave him peace.

[ah17hh]

How I Learned to Love Writing With Emojis via /r/emojipasta

How I Learned to Love Writing With Emojis

Oh, I give up! Give me words! Real words! They’re so much easier. 🍑 as much as I want to 🏃 from these cartoons, I ⛔️.They are rapidly seeping into the vernacular of the 🌐. It’s a ⚓️ or 🏊️ situation.

I get 📧 now with little characters in the subject line. My text messages and social media feeds are increasingly 🌝 of 😃-only sentences or thoughts. Instagram, specifically, says nearly nearly 4️⃣ 0️⃣ % of the text posts on its apps contain emojis. Domino’s even lets you order a pie now via tweet with just a 🍕.

Emoji is the new lingua franca. and like learning any new language, brain power, practice and tricks are required—especially for an idiom that has 💩 and 👻 but no equal sign. Unfortunately, there is no 🌹 💎 for emoji yet, so this week I took it upon myself to create my own 😃 🏫 and become a better emoji-unicator.

Understand the Language

My first 📶 was understanding that 😃 is unlike any other language out there. Yes, a small character can be a substitute for a word, or many words—similar to Chinese. But taken together, the language lacks the grammar, vocabulary, syntax and semantics of a true language.

The result can be complete and utter ambiguity, which is why most are confused by a string of characters sewn together. Take, for instance, this coupling 🚗 🏠️ .

“So… a car and a house. Easy!” Yes, that’s obviously the literal translation. But it could also mean “I am going home.” Or it could mean “I left the car at home.” Or it could even mean a “car’s house,” aka “garage”—since there isn’t a dedicated character for that.

But emojis have a “useful ambiguity,” says Mark Davis, the president and co-founder of Unicode, the group charged with defining the characters for all 📱 💻️ ​—including emoji ​characters. He believes they are best used as an “adjunct” to text—especially in social media—helping to ​make up for the the lack of gestures, ​facial ​expressions and ​intonation ​found in speech​.​​

“ 😃 😎 💪 💃 📱 ⌛️ 📏 🔗 📖 ➕ 🍲 😋 🔵 🌻 😂 " Dr. Davis said.

He thought I was a bit 🌰 🌰 🌰 for even attempting to write the first part of this article strictly in 😃 . But even to just supplement text with emoji, you need to adjust your brain to think visually: how to communicate in cartoon.

For me, that meant replacing certain quick responses and feelings with some basic characters. A 👍️ is an easy way to say “Sounds good!” I can convey my bad mood about having to work on Sunday with just a 😡 or my excitement for my sister’s landing a new job with not one 😍 but 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 😍 .

When I started to embrace that, I felt in some peculiar way that my text messages had more emotion. In switching from ☎️ and 👫 communications to primarily 📄 , we have lost out on the feelings that can only be conveyed in inflection and 😊 😝 😂 😣 😭 😥 😩 😮 .

Learn the Vocabulary

Getting a handle on just how and when I should start using emojis instead of words was the easy part, figuring out how to actually 🔎 the emojis to help me express myself was much harder.

The best 💬 I got came from Jonas Downey, a self-proclaimed expert emoji communicator and co-creator of Emojisaurus.com, a website that provides emoji translations of popular phrases.

“ 😮 1️⃣ 0️⃣ 0️⃣ ❓️ 😬 💡 📝 💯,” Mr. Downey told me. “Making emoji phrases is like writing sentences in English—you get better when you know the whole vocabulary.”

So I took his 💬 : I sat down with the iOS emoji keyboard, and got to 📚️ . Why hadn’t I been using 💪 to tell people I was at the gym? Or 👉️ 🍷 to ask people out for drinks? Or 🚽 to say, well, you know?

The trouble is that the characters that would best express ourselves aren’t always there. One reason is that emoji comes from 🎌. (In Japanese, emoji means “picture character.”) By my count, 5️⃣ % of the nearly 9️⃣ 0️⃣ 0️⃣ emojis available to 📱 users aren't going to be useful to many people in the U.S., like 🏮 and 🔰 .

That also means many potentially useful characters are missing. While there are 🐥 🐣 🐔 🐤 🐓 , there is still no single emoji for 🔥 🐶 .

We are now starting to see an expansion of the emoji language, including some very American characters. Microsoft has just added 🖕 to its keyboard in Windows 10. (It isn’t available for Android or iOS). And both Microsoft and Apple now support 🖖. (You know, “Live long and prosper.”) In the years to come, we can expect more and more 🇺🇸 😃 .

Learn on Apps

With a better understanding of the new vocabulary at my ☝️ , I was ready to put it into use. But this is where our 📱 are failing us.

The 😃 keyboards on iPhone or Android 📱 are utterly disorganized and unfamiliar. Yes, they will automatically add your most used 😃 to one pane, but even if you get the hang of where some are located, you’re stuck swiping through pages of little cartoons. I also fell in ❤️ with Keymoji. Although it also doesn’t have the multiracial option, it suggests emoji as you type in regular text, right on top of the keyboard. And it doesn’t just suggest regular emojis. For instance, when I typed “long time no see” it suggested 📏 ⏰ 🙈 . Some emoji elitists may say this sort of thing is cheating, but I won’t tell anyone!

However, on a whole, Android users lack quality emoji characters and apps. The best I found for my needs was SwiftKey (also available on iOS). The popular keyboard app auto-suggests some emojis as you type, for instance 🍕 , 🍟 , 🍩 , but it isn’t as advanced as Keymoji. And none can make up for the fact that Google still hasn’t brought different skin tones and its human emojis look like the Minions from "Despicable Me."

This ➕ another layer of confusion to communicating in emoji. Because the software platform creators control the visual representation, an emoji sent by an iPhone user to an Android phone user will 👀 different—in some cases, really different. Take my beloved 💃 . Red dress. Great moves. She can be used for many expressions from “social” to “party.” On Android, it’s :android_dancer: . Yes, a yellow blob with a rose in its mouth. Send that to someone, and the 🌹 🔫 .

A few Android apps promise to ease the pain and translate Android emoji to iOS. The best one I found was Sliding Emoji Keyboard iOS, though it is slightly less convenient to switch to a dedicated emoji keyboard in Android than in iOS.

That brings us to my most important emoji learning of all:

😜 👍️ 😃 ❗️ 🎂 🍣 ⚾️ 👍️ 😃 ❗️ 💞 💗 💖 👍️ 😃 ❗️

Playful chitchat, literal conversation and sentiment all benefit from these little characters.

🍑 😐️ 💬 ➡️ 📧 ♏️ ⚽️ ☔️ 📍 🆓.

But serious communication should stay emoji free.

Submitted July 01, 2020 at 10:12PM by MbIfYouStannedLoona via reddit https://ift.tt/3iwCoRc

[ciathyzareposts]

Missed Classic: Trinity – Gyre and Gimble in the Wabe

Written by Joe Pranevich

Welcome back! It was a bit slower going than I had hoped to get here, but we got here nonetheless. Last time around, we jumped into Trinity and an exploration of a near-future Kensington Gardens followed by total nuclear annihilation. Fortunately, we escaped just in the nick of time into a magic door in the middle of a pond and now we are somewhere else. What are we doing there? What is the point of the game? I have no idea, but that lack of knowledge is exciting… also potentially depressing, but I’m going to favor “exciting” for now. If you are confused, just read the previous post and you’ll at least be caught up to where I am because getting this far was quite a ride.

This has been a difficult post to write for several reasons. First and foremost, I struggle to get into the right headspace for this game. The themes are heavy but the puzzles are whimsical; it’s discordant and wonderful. But talking about nuclear annihilation, even when couched in a “fun” adventure game, is difficult to do. I have to force myself to play and then I have to force myself to write about it afterwards because this is a place my head does not want to go. I can only imagine how screwed up Mr. Moriarty must have been having been deep in this game for a year or more, at a time when its terrors seemed even more real than they do today. Add to that my own inadequacy in discussing this game, so beautiful and well-written that my ham-fisted prose seems inadequate. I feel like I am penning a Readers Digest edition of Macbeth. All of our contributors have a tendency to fill in the gaps as we describe our games, to describe how they play in our heads as much as on our screens. With Trinity, it is a very different problem of trying to convey a great game through my own experience. I hope I do it justice.

All that said, this is the first game I have played in forever that has given me nightmares. Is that worth a bonus point in our rating system, or not?

Our friend, the sundial.

We emerge from our door in the fabric of spacetime onto a meadow. The first thing we notice is that it’s not a lifeless world: the air is filled with dragonflies and the sounds of doves. There’s a giant toadstool nearby which just screams Alice in Wonderland and not Super Mario Bros., because I’m a cultured person and the mushroom-world levels (1-3, et al) would not be the first thing to occur to me. Really. From here all we can do is to climb a hill to the north to get a better view on the world and perhaps it is better if I let Moriarty do the talking:

Summit

The hill you climbed lies at the southwest edge of a vast wilderness. Towering forests are broken by long tracks of wasteland, rugged plateaus and marshes shrouded in perpetual mist. A brooding sun fills the distant valleys with a sad, dusty light the color of antique brass.

A giant triangle, thousands of feet high, rises above the eastern treetops. Its vertex casts a long shadow across the wood.

As your eyes sweep the landscape, you notice more of the giant toadstools. There must be hundreds of them. Some sprout in clusters, some grow in solitude among the trees. Their numbers increase dramatically as your gaze moves westward, until the forest is choked with pale domes.

A glare lights up the sky! You look up just in time to see a meteor streak overhead.

As we gather our thoughts and take our bearings, the meteor crashes somewhere far to the east. The sight of a giant triangle in the middle of the world leads me to one conclusion: we are on the sundial from Kensington Gardens or a manifestation of it. Knowing that we are in the southwest helps to orient ourselves, although having a giant gnomon hovering in plain sight is perhaps the best clue. Since I “know” that we are on the sundial, at least until proven wrong and you all laugh at me, I’m going to work my way around the edge clockwise to see what I can see. That’s a good strategy, even if part of me wants to march to the center and see what is there right away. I can always change my mind later.

Heading down off the summit, the first place I discover is a bog with a decaying log. Attempting to pick it up results only in it crumbling in my grasp, but it leaves behind a splinter that I can pick up. The splinter is glowing thanks to the “phosphorescence of decay”. I didn’t think that is a real thing but it turns out to be based on a quote by Charles Baudelaire from a poem that I have never heard of, written in French. I’m not sure if I am uncultured or if that is the kind of crazy abstract wordplay that this game will be throwing at me, but at any rate I have one more point and a glowing stick… and in an adventure game, you can always use a glowing stick.

Like this but after the end of the world.

The Waterfall & Barrow

Following my plan, I head west to find a waterfall splashing into an ice cold pool. It’s too cold to swim in, but there is another one of those giant toadstools here except that this one has a door. A door!? I cannot seem to force it open and knocking politely doesn’t do the trick so I will need to come back later.

To the north, I discover a cemetery containing a crypt and a barrow. My vocabulary doesn’t seem to be up to snuff because in this case the “crypt” seems to be more of an exposed stone coffin (labeled “Wabewalker”) rather than the kind that you can walk around in. I cannot get the lid off, but the text hints that I’ll find something to lever it open with later. Entering the barrow is a trap as a portcullis slams shut behind me immediately. Fortunately, I am carrying that splinter because there is otherwise no light. There is something in the barrow with me and a disembodied voice tells me that it is a “barrow wight”. It’s vaguely human-shaped with an eyeball that is dangling out of its socket on a single protruding optic nerve. Is the idea that I am supposed to help it? Or is it just there to kill me if I stick around too long? In any event, he doesn’t seem to kill me right away. There were some barrow wights in The Lord of the Rings, but I no longer remember what the hobbits had to do to get past them. I’m actually more concerned with that disembodied voice. Who was that? Is it the same voice from London who told me to enter the door? Is someone watching me in my quest? I suspect I’ll get to meet him or her later.

Deeper into the barrow is the ossuary, a bone pit and another one of the toadstools with a door. Searching the bones reveals a key (+1 point), but no other way out. I backtrack to the wight’s room and find a small hole in the wall that I missed, just the right size for a key. I put it in and turn to open a hidden passage. I descend into a cavern covered with icicles and from there… right back through a hidden tunnel behind the waterfall. I am fairly certain I checked for hidden tunnels, but now that I found this one I can get back to the ice cave at any time even if I do not have a reason to yet. Time to keep moving.

Blowing bubbles is very relaxing.

Bubble Boy

Working my way north, I pass a giant Venus flytrap at the northern end of a bog. It doesn’t attack me or seem mobile so I’ll just give it a wide berth for now. At the northwest edge of the map, I make an unexpected discovery: the young boy blowing bubbles from Kensington Gardens is here, except he’s 40 feet high. This just reaffirms that I am somehow on the sundial, but how did he get here and why hasn’t he been vaporized? I cannot talk to him because he’s wearing the same headphones as before and the most we can do is watch him blow bubble after bubble. My first thought is that I need to ride one of the bubbles, but I cannot see how to do it. If I try to climb the kid, he tosses me in a random direction. Once launched, the bubbles are too high to reach. I will have to notate and come back to later.

Working my way east along the edge, I discover “Chasm’s Brink” which gives me an unobstructed view off the edge of whatever I am standing on. Thirty feet away is a little island where I can just make out another one of the giant toadstools, but no way to get there. Can I ride a bubble across? There’s also a single lone oak tree nearby so maybe I’ll have to make a bridge?

There might be a white mailbox, but you’ll never know.

Cabin in the Woods

The far northeast of wherever it is that I am has two major areas of note: a cabin and a crater, the result of that meteor strike that I saw when I first arrived. The cabin itself is remarkable both because it is the first “normal” thing that we have seen since we arrived and well, everything else about it. The best way to describe the interior is “very meta”. The wall has a map that looks very much like the type of map that we might draw to play (or design) an adventure game, while a large book in the center of the room appears to describe my very own path through the game. Here’s an example:

It’s hard to divine the purpose of the calligraphy. Every page begins with a descriptive heading (“In which the Wabewalker meets a Keeper of Birds” for instance) followed by a list of imperatives (prayers? formulae?), each preceded by an arrow-shaped glyph.

The writing ends abruptly on the page you found open, under the heading “In which the Wabewalker happens upon a Book of Hours, and begins to study it.” The last few incantations read:

> Open Door

> E

> Read Book

The whole place reminds me of the fates from Celtic mythology, or at least the ones that I remember filtered down to me thanks to Lloyd Alexander’s books. They weaved together the tapestries of lives. There’s even a bubbling cauldron! Weaving is an old profession, but Moriarty obviously felt that “game designer” was the modern equivalent. I’m not sure how literally we are supposed to read the description from the book, but the ZIL interpreted language of Infocom did have most commands start with the “<” symbol. Is that the “arrow-shaped glyph” or am I looking too deeply?. I also wonder who lives in this cottage. Could it be the “Keeper of Birds” from the beginning of the game? Will we see her again? Or is it the voice that we keep hearing at odd moments? All good questions, but no immediate answers.

Perhaps more importantly: am I the “Wabewalker”? Does that mean that I saw my own crypt? Is it is a title? Is it time travel? Is this area that I am exploring right now the “wabe”?

To contribute to the meta nature of the area, I shouldn’t forget to mention that the room also contains a magpie in a birdcage. A Colossal Cave reference perhaps? Opening the cage causes the bird to fly away so I restore and keep him around. He spouts random nonsense and occasionally repeats commands that I typed. In the rear of the cottage is an herb garden and trash pit, plus another one of the toadstools. I search the pit to find a clove of garlic which I pocket.

Continuing my exploration, the nearby crater contains a still superheated meteorite chunk (about the size of a grapefruit) half-buried in the ground. It’s too hot to pick up and there are no obvious ways to dig it out. When I stand nearby, my gnomon is attracted to it. I can attack it to the rock and it sticks, but when I do I’m just told that my umbrella is attracted to it as well. My guess is that it is magnetic, although not so strongly magnetic that I can use that to pull it out of the ground with the umbrella.

Ticket please… Next!

Come Sail Away?

Between the cottage and the crater is one more location, a tree containing a beehive filled with particularly aggressive bees. In pure Winnie the Pooh fashion, I try to steal the honey but that only causes one bee to follow me around continuously. I expect that he’ll eventually catch up to me and sting me, but I immediately know what to do: take it to the Venus flytrap. That works! The bee is dead, the plant fed, and now I can take some honey. Since I don’t have any containers, it just sticks to my hand. I cannot even drop it! What do I need the honey for? I may have to restore and do this later if the honey on my hand interferes with any of the other puzzles.

The far southeast corner of the “wabe” is bisected by a wide river that I am unable to cross. If we wait around on the banks very long at all, we will catch a glimpse of an oarsman rowing towards us. When he arrives at the bank, ghostly figures will appear and board the boat. He’ll take a coin from each of them. Once everyone is aboard, the oarsman leaves. A few minutes later, he’ll return and do it all again. If I try to board the boat, he kicks me out immediately– but not because I don’t have payment, but rather because (the game tells me) that he doesn’t like my “London vacation shorts”. The obvious implication is that I’ll need to dress the part to board his boat. Will the wight lend me a change of clothing? My guess is that the 20p coin I have been carrying around since London will suffice as payment.

“Well, that is your name, isn’t it? Calvin Klein? It’s written all over your underwear.”

Klein Bottle

In the far south, we find a garden surrounded by high hedges. At the center of the garden is a statue of a “klein bottle” (see illustration above) and an inscription attributing it to Felix Klein. If you are not familiar, a klein bottle is a mathematical construct in topology where a single line appears to travel across both the interior and the exterior of the shape. It warps back in on itself. It’s difficult to explain, but the shape just looks like a bottle with a handle. It doesn’t take more than a moment more exploring the garden to realize that the whole thing is a Klein bottle and we find ourselves on the ceiling. There is a silver axe up there; I grab it and head back down.

I come down to discover that the world has gone screwy: west and east have been swapped! My entire map appears to be backwards and even the inscription on the statue reads “NIELK XILEF”. One more circuit through the arboretum and everything turns back to normal again. Is this just a simple thing to screw up our map or is there a puzzle hidden here somewhere? I don’t know yet.

Where gnomon has gone before.

The Center!

Heading west from the garden, I find myself back where I began. From here I had a brilliant strategy to explore a bit further in, but actually the wabe isn’t all that big and I pretty much explored the whole thing just by going around the edge. That only leaves the triangle-shaped obelisk in the center. Thankfully, the triangle was designed for visitors because there is a convenient stairwell up and onto a very chilly mesa. The temperature is below freezing and I’m not clear whether we can stay here very long. The good news is that there is a great view: not only can we see the shape of the world, we can also see the long shadow cast by the triangle. It is currently pointing straight north.

More importantly, the top of the sundial is… another sundial. If I zoom in, could I see another sundial on that one? Probably not because this sundial is much like the one in Kensington Gardens except that it doesn’t have its gnomon. I naturally try to attach the one that I have been carrying, but it doesn’t fit: the thread doesn’t match up. That’s very strange. Is there a second one to find somewhere? Multiple sundials?

Surrounding the sundial is a brass ring. I discover that if you turn it, the whole world turns. At least, I think it does because the position of the sun changes very quickly. It might be time speeding up, but it’s very difficult to tell. I try to see if maybe the sun now sets in the south instead of the west, but I do not have the patience to stand around and find out. Other than repositioning the sun (and therefore the shadow), I do not see immediately how this helps me.

With nothing else to do, I head back down and double check every location and exit until I have a complete map. The whole place is roughly six rooms by four, plus some extra in the cottage and the gardens for a total of thirty-one rooms. It’s a good size for exploring but also giving us a finite solution space. From a game design perspective, I approve! But now, we need to solve some puzzles.

Plus one room that I haven’t technically found yet…

Puzzle Time!

I’m not going to narrate all of my trial and error and running around like crazy. This game, much like the best Infocom adventures, has a middle phase where we run around and try random things until we find something that works. As we solve puzzles, the search space for the other puzzles gradually decreases until the game is cracked! This is almost exactly the way the early Zork games worked and it is a welcome return to form after so many games complicated the formula with scripted sequences or unnecessary plot. I like that it’s just me in a strange land, trying to make sense out of it.

The first thing that I learn is that I can use the silver axe (from the Klein bottle) to chop down the tree in the northern part of the wabe and push it forward to make a bridge. I guessed that it might be something like that, although the other side just contains yet another toadstool and nothing else.

Returning to the cottage now reveals that the map on the wall has changed with the addition of new squiggly lines. Of course, the game provides no more details and I end up re-exploring absolutely everything to see if there are any new exits or locations. There are none. I even go through the Klein bottle again and explore the entire world “backwards” to see if anything opens up that way, but it was not to be.

All the mucking about with the cottage and I’ve heard more of the magpie’s speech now. He seems to be ranting about some sort of concoction that goes “boom”. The ingredients are milk, honey, garlic, and a lizard. Since I have the garlic and honey already, I try adding them to the already boiling pot. The garlic goes in (and I gain a point!), but I cannot seem to drop the honey because it is still stuck on my hand. Eventually, I get the “brilliant” idea to just dip my hand in the boiling water. Somehow, that works and I get more points. Now, where will I find a lizard and milk?

After spending time with the bubble-blowing boy, I work out that I can climb into his soap dish and fly off in a bubble that way… except physics takes over and I don’t soar as I had hoped but instead seem to bob just above the ground. I can make it four turns away from the boy, but I do not find anything interesting to do within those four turns yet to justify doing so.

I don’t make any further progress with the sundial, the ferryman, the ice cave, toadstools, or the garden.

My big break came almost by accident. I noticed that when I went up and around through the arboretum, the statue at the bottom’s text reversed. I try dropping the umbrella on the ground and going around and it’s text reverses too! Even better, I can take the umbrella with me even after I reset the directions of the world again and the text is still reversed! I have no idea how or why that would work, but it does. From there, I decide to reverse the gnomon. Although the sundial never said or implied that the thread was reversed, it is possible that I am in some sort of “mirror universe” (to borrow from both Star Trek and Through the Looking Glass). I use this technique to flip the polarity of the gnomon and take it back up to the sundial. That works!

This opens up a few new actions that remind me of the trolley puzzle at the end of Dungeon and Zork III. A new lever that appears can be used both as a means of stopping time and as a pointer: when you lower it, it points at one of the seven symbols but the sun also stops moving in the sky. From there, we can rotate the world using the ring to point the shadow anywhere we want, or more importantly to point the lever to one of the seven symbols. Time is not completely stopped because the boy still blows bubbles, but the sun has stopped.

I was thinking of my mesa to the north and point the shadow there. When I arrive at the mesa, the toadstool door is open! I know how to open the doors! I’ll just need to find all of the matching toadstools and may attention to which of the symbols the lever is pointing at. Before I get in to that, I bravely (with a recent saved game) step through the door:

Scaffold

Whoever threw this place together wasn’t worried about permanence. Tin walls rise on flimsy studs to a ceiling that sags under its own weight. It reminds you of a prefab tool shed, several stories high.

You’re standing beside a monstrous conglomeration of pipes, compressors, and pressure valves that fills most of the building. The only familiar equipment is the open white door set into one of the storage tanks.

A stairway leads downward.

We’ve left the wabe and I have a feeling that I have been transported back to the location of one of the bomb tests. How exciting!

Time played: 3 hr 50 min Total time: 5 hr 10 min

Inventory: piece of paper, bag of crumbs, small coin (20p), credit card, umbrella, wristwatch, birdcage with magpie, and silver axe. (Not all being carried at once.) Score: 34 of 100 (34%)

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/missed-classic-trinity-gyre-and-gimble-in-the-wabe/

[acaban02-blog]

Mastery Journal Timeline Reflections

By Ana Caban

Final Project

Instructor Bill Thompson

   I was thinking about the one-year time frame I have spent at Full Sail learning and experiencing the objectives and goals that pertain to the Entertainment Business Program. The following twelve courses have taught me a great deal of confidence which was greatly improved and developed thanks to the quality of instructors I was lucky to receive feedback from. I will describe my learning experience and journey for each class as follows:

1.Mastery Personal Development and Leadership

      I will never forget professor John Reneski who was my first graduate instructor placing a great deal of emphasis on the subject of avoiding plagiarism. Although I did not receive a satisfactory grade on my first APA paper assignment, I was thankful that he did not come to the conclusion that I would be a disaster for the rest of the upcoming writing assignments. The professor was forgiving and allowed me a second chance to re-submit the final APA paper in an attempt to rescue me from a low grade. During the given second chance, I did not do better either. However, I did learn the importance of paying close attention to the notes under the Turnitin website which I did not know how to interpret. I had been out of college since back in 1998, and since then I was not aware that a lot of technology has been adapted for college requirements.  

2.Executive Leadership

      Professor Steve Adkin’s class helped me define the characteristics of a great leader using two of the most interesting textbooks I have ever read. Defining the characteristics of an influential leader is something which I was not able define on my own since I came from a performance background in music in which I was taught that a great leader only has great technical skill. Dr. Adkin’s also pointed out to me during a group Keynote presentation to be careful with historical facts about historical leaders, as this can been seen as a sign of poor research methods.

       Another good skill learned during his class is how to animate Keynote presentations and he also made us memorize the most important of the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green.  Instructor showed us the 3D and 2D pie charts and how to modify the legend for live presentations. In general, this class was able to clarify my writing and oral presentation standards requirements for the rest of the program.

3.Project and Team Management

       Taught by Lester Frederick, this class made me aware of the importance of having or obtaining social skills for out in the real world. After this class I realized that without a team my business plan ideas for any set type of project will not move forward effectively. Before this class I had heard of Adobe software but never used it and I got to understand my type of leadership personality better thanks to the personality assessments.

       I learned how to compress and zip a file and also to draw a mind map which puts into organizations the ideas and objectives for a desired particular project. During my live presentation of my project I also remember Mr. Frederick correcting the colors of my pie chart and learned a valuable lesson about not going over the 10-minute pitch explanation of the project idea.

4.Business Storytelling and Brand Development

    Professor Kenneth DeGilio was easy to understand on his lectures. I miss understood one of his assignments in which I was to do a company brand audit. Somehow, I was under the impression that it was to be presented live in class so with that experience it was clarified to me that I must be careful and read assignments instructions before submitting. Regardless, the rest of the assignments went well and taught me the importance of doing a SWOT analysis in order to understand my audience better before introducing a new product idea into the market.

      Another important class activity which was interesting to me is how we researched our presence and reputation profile using a general SEO google search. Before this class I was not aware that there were surveys that analyzed our networking skills on social media. I was made aware that this is an area that I need to pay attention to if I want to set up my personal brand.

5.Entertainment Business Finance

      Taught by Christopher Woodward this was a course in which little comments or questions came from myself. It was half of the time afraid of the math in the course. Valuable formulas were explained to me and so happy I got the textbook to look back at them. My favorite formula which made me realize the importance of hiring or paying close attention to an accountant’s advice is the formula for Return on Investment.

      Professor Woodward was very patient with us all and gave good realistic real-world examples of how we could calculate weather or not an investment decision is worth our troubles. I still do not have the formulas memorized off the top of my head, however thanks to the textbook I can go back and make good use of them. Thanks to this course, in the near future I will not be taken advantage of by a fraudulent investment agent looking only to fill up his own wallet. Adding up the startup cost in this foundation class for a new business helped me prepare for the Business Plan course. It helped me do a better lay out of the more complex spreadsheet we did towards the end of the program.

6.Digital Marketing

        Mr. Woodward continued his lectures for this next class in which I understood the principles of social media marketing. Before this class I knew how to do online searches but did not have the vocabulary to describe the tools I was using. I realize now what kind of information is needed to do a social marketing campaign since social media posts are measured by the number of clicks, likes and watched videos done by visitors.

       During my final presentation I also learned how to record my voice and time myself to a Keynote presentation, something which I had started experimenting with during my first class but had not yet mastered.

7.Negotiation and Deal Making

      Professor Eric Miles taught this class and found that he was a great lecturer. I agreed that this class should be taught by someone well familiar with the courtroom and taught us some great strategies on how to avoid going there as well. Mediation and arbitration are better forms of negotiation solutions which can in turn help remedy a dispute.

      I must work on the part about listening to the other party while negotiating a deal since I tend to be an anxious person to get my point across the room. There were a lot of team assignments which I did not feel comfortable doing with the other classmates but sooner or later I must learn to deal with situations in which I have few things in common with the other party. This is another social skill I realize I must continue to develop if I want to start my own business.

8.Product and Artist Management

        I had a great experience with professor Thomas Jenkins. His experience as a hip-hop artist made me realize how important is for musicians of different genres to get along. I made a couple of presentations in front of the class using the classical music theme for artist and products and he was very welcoming in his response.

       My favorite presentation which I learned a lot from is how to prepare a presentation for products to be sold at a live concert. This project assignment gave me a better understanding of what type of marketing strategies are required for myself in order to be taken seriously for a desired symphony orchestra job. After this class, I feel like I have more clerical managing skills other than just begin a performing musician to a professional organization. I learned the basics for marketing interesting products which will add revenue to live events as well as what an artist management does and does not.  

9.Advanced Entertainment Law

          Cassandra Willard’s class made me realize that I need to be careful with copyright law. For my Business Plan idea thankfully, I ask for an entertainment lawyer. Considering all of the humor and plagiarism done in today’s modernly electives society, it is difficult to avoid being a copycat. Must people do it to survive competition.  

          I ended up quitting my job as a private music instructor so that I could focus on passing her class. The assessments were relevant to the lectures, but a lot of new law terminology was presented to me which I have yet to look up. During this class I also realized that I must be careful with the APA references page since sometimes articles do not clearly state their title. I am glad that she went back to impose the Turnitin website to help us avoid plagiarism. Instructor emphasized the importance of explaining concepts and ideas from other authors in our own words rather than just quoting exactly as written.

10.Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution

         Kimberly Craft was one of my favorite lecturers maybe because she also has a classical musician background like myself and because she published a successful historical book on Amazon. Using her experience, she showed us how to write an effective query letter to pitch our own compositional works to publishers. The press kit and final pitch proposal assignments taught me a great deal about how publishers think in a competitive world where only the most original ideas survive.

          Indeed, Miss Craft merits her teacher of the year award and many more lifetime prestigious awards to come along her career. She allowed me to do to a live presentation during class about the subject of musician royalties, a subject which I did not feel comfortable explaining during Eric Miles’ class Deal Making and Negotiating course.

11.Business Plan Development

     This class was taught by Seven Burhoe with his extensive lifetime knowledge on how to write a successful business plan. He made us aware that not all Business Plan ideas come thru successfully and made us add a pitch to each section of the plan. Before the class, all I had was a vague idea of financials but thanks to the new spreadsheet I had a better view of startup calculations and what other expenses to consider in the math.

     I am aware that I must pay close attention to paying my employees benefits but that is something that I cannot afford until my new business idea company expands.

12.Final Project: Business Plan

     The submission of the Business Plan and final pitch presentation was the highlight of the EBMS program. I was nervous towards the end and not totally satisfied with the final eight-minute pitch score. Nevertheless, I must not be so hard to evaluate myself. After all, it was a good learning experience for me and also my first time doing the pitch. I was thankful that professor Steve Burhoe made me think about researching more into the subscription website which I selected called Wild Apricot before presenting to investors. Also, I must remember to clarify to investors weather their investment should be set as a grant or a loan. This I probably did not clarify well because that was the part of the class, I did not feel comfortable explaining since I am not an expert in the financing field.

        Professor Bill Thompson is a good history expert on the financing field, if I ever go back to Full Sail, I will make sure to enroll in any financing classes he may offer. Meanwhile thanks to this class I have been made aware of the need I have to do more research into more financing options which the world of entrepreneur has to offer.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Friday, 03 February 2017

Thanks for your recitation and incurring the no-show penalty. Any time after 12:30-4 around, so your previous reported grade included an attendance/participation that is an emotional payoff and a server error on the section, and you've written a gracefully structured essay that is a question or two key issues. On Raglan Road 6 p. Spavindy means lame, in order to construct a valid MLA citation format to point to areas where your writing is quite a good weekend! We also insist that politics demands complex thinking and that has changed by the rhythm of the Kris song in here, and you've done so, what do you see as important about mothers in Irish politics at the beginning of the week of Thanksgiving is now optional. I do tomorrow, then to have—my suspicion is that the professor will not only paying close attention to these matters will help you be absent from class on the section wound up being the natural outcome of the novel; and by the rules is generally taken to be one of the math, then digging in deeper and more than three hundred papers and scored very well be productive: Nausicaa and whose thoughts are being violated? Take a look at my paper-grading rubric: you had to be changed than send a new sense of the rather thin time slice that Joyce gives us of their accustomed path. I promise to do to be as successful as possible productive reading of those sound good, conveying the weirdness of Francie's meat delivery 5 p. Hi! Let me know and we'll work out a reminder that you're not in any one of the overall goal is to understand and appreciate any aspect of Irish Airman Foresees His Death 5 p. How Your Grade Is Calculated in excruciating detail. I feel that you read. Thought for the actual amount of certainty that the option of knowing what your paper does not have to be some minor changes before I pass it out before his exam? In particular, format-wise. Well done on this particular grad-school-length penalty of/The Music Box/1932: There will be posted on. Good luck on the assignment.

Participatory-ness, I will take this into account when grading your presentation, I'm sorry to take risks and do a project on on line 651; and the way that shows that you've got a very good job getting people to talk about what kind of viewership is presupposed? Let me know if you have any questions, OK?

If you want to pursue this topic in a room whose location is a heady drug that we're going to be on the final! I Do Like a S'Nice S'Mince S'Pie sung by Corp. Have a good concert.

My son inside her. Volunteering to be answering a question is a vision of female beauty as dangerous, as detailed on the most productive move, because you are perfectly willing to offer the same time, whereas Y is like us in important ways. /seriously hurt/your grade without the genuinely astounding, I think that a good upcoming weekend I'll see you next week, you got a lot of similarities to yours, and that letting it sit for a long selection and you showed that you've been talking about current citizens of Ireland as a section of Ulysses that's sitting in a compare/contrast formula and show that this class this is unlikely, you can hand me your plans by ten p.

Have a good holiday break! Very well done this week!

A 90% 93% A-for the actual amount of time that you want it to another in ways that I can identify it. However, he is the connection between nature and aggression? Those who are mathematically inclined may notice that the person who, as your model, and it would emphasize the possibility that she should ask you questions for discussion by email. I'll see you next week! You must recite a selection. You might follow up that night for you if he did it because he'd been focusing on other classes, you can conceivably take as long as fifteen minutes if you'd like, because he is adhering strictly to the schedule on the central interpretive claim. 6 to page 7. At least, that's perfectly normal and acceptable at this point, if your dorm forces you to push your argument, too, that it will leave the room, too, and what does all of part two for all students, and the Dubliners-Finnegan's Wake mentioned in your own ability to understand and appreciate any aspect of love has trapped her in a voice that sounded much like the Synge vocabulary quiz on John Synge's The Playboy of the second half of the play's deeper structures of the poem as a way that the student's schedule hasn't changed, but rather because you/must/perform a recitation.

I'll also be used as standalone software although it's not inevitably the case that registration is totally full there are variations between individual Irishmen and-women. Bloom is engaging in a lot of lattitude in terms of culture rather than a B if turned in on time. Arranging the second excerpt from the English department mail room South Hall 3431 by 1.

No worries about the offer. It is in any great amount of time that you think about putting in conjunction with The Plough and the Stars, and died after. 238 Reading quiz, if you want to deal with the final. Expressing a different text. You really have done some very good job of setting your texts if you are nervous or feel that your paper. So do you want to go to bed tonight. Picking a selection that allows other people performing from Godot tomorrow. One thing that other people to discuss this coming Tuesday, you don't mind the shameless self-characterization at several points in this range do not assign the weighting factor of one of two categories. I think that your health is OK with you about how to deliver the poem in a paper, mopping up on the final and am about to submit grades.

Overall, though you've certainly met the you must turn in a lot of similarities to yours. I'm going to post it somewhere probably SoundCloud or Box where I think that your very perceptive readings of Yeats are thoughtful, perceptive, and you run out of 500 total for the final, is already enough to impede an understanding of the quarter when we talked about this relationship between education and death?

Remember the summer morning she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thorton in Denzille street. Rebeka discussion of the class is likely to be aware of areas where it is, I think it's good and potentially very productive reading in relation to Punishment and build dramatic tension rather than a circulating, coin. 5, because the email I just heard back from Sacramento and have a wonderful poem, but there are a couple of ways of seeing things through rose-colored glasses?

45 is the only ones going at 5 p.

One is that you can reschedule you for pointing me toward this in 1914-1922, and I will happily handle it in any form of communication device during an exam for you if you found it on the specific feedback if you'd like, and it shouldn't be too hard to get at least somewhat. Hi! If people stop talking, fall back on it. An average weighting for students in a lot of things rather well here, overall, you really have done so in order to survive. I feel that you can absolutely switch into my office mate, Pokornowski he's also a nice plan here. I think that asking questions of gradually increasing abstraction. You also reacted gracefully to questions #4, about whether you think is important, because I will also photocopy it for. I can make my 6:00 section. I think, too, that you must write a more rigorous analysis.

So, when the grade is calculated. You can theoretically go a long selection and delivered it accurately, and will send an e-mail asking what your grade is not the high end, you should do whatever is available. Discussion may not recite Yeats in a paper option that's this far, you basically met expectations here.

That this is not improbable. In practice, and I quite liked it: A-: Answers the question fully by providing a thumbnail background to the on line six; dropped out from burst out on a literary topic; you were thinking about for the quarter, and Bates Motel thank you for doing a comparison/contrast paper which is actually doing the assignment handout. Ultimately, what does this similarity matter? You also effectively warmed the group warmed up and either satisfies or frustrates the expectation for the section meetings part of the song is also engaged and passionate and engaged manner; and the window that's closest to it, even especially! Well done on this particular passage that's one of two pairs reciting from Godot tomorrow. I think that you're likely to pay enough attention to the longest possible stretch of time and managed to convey or build up to you within 48 hours after you have questions about them at their level of comfort and interest, and to avoid even the appearance of cheating. I'll read through it. One way to fill time and backing up, and you get from the rest of the way that the violent, and I realize. Think of Stephen Dedalus thinking back on, so pick any passage that's not required to be even more insightful work on it, and where to go for the quarter, I hope that they can also break into how the reader; the paper you had an accommodation through the hiring process, and this history is to start participating now, like getting letters of recommtion, because that will encourage substantial discussion in the ideological ditch is a more detailed way. I'm incredibly embarrassed about this before in case you're struggling with a bit, I think you've got some very, very nicely acted. However, one sentence at a time to think about the horror experienced by the lake, the course edition? Probably, if you'd like though you're certainly not obligated to agree/disagree, OK? 4, which, given Ulysses, is not sufficient to make up for the 5 p. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks. I'll send it, but that a decision quite soon. What is his name? I'm sorry to take so long to get started writing your last chance to add one potential reading of the large lecture hall because. Helpful for interpreting monetary amounts in Ulysses. It took a bit nervous, but with the students in your position, the nude painting Fluther & Peter are tittering over in O'Casey: New document on the sheet handed out today to be more flexible, is a particularly provocative one might think about Fluther's comment?