#and how contextual the language/culture is

[apollos-boyfriend]

there r a lot of little things i love about brazilian culture/portuguese but by far one of my favorite things is that instead of just saying bye we also tend to say kiss.... like yea it's most often follwed up with goodbye but it doesn't have to be..... u can just give a verbal kiss and it is accepted as much as any other form of farewell!!! idk i just think it's rlly cute :]

[vynegar]

help i have such Opinions on translation now

[utilitycaster]

this may seem needlessly finicky but I do actually believe it's important: calling Verin a himbo is just one of many examples where like, one of the cast says something off the cuff and it's not exactly the right word or it is highly contextual, and that is fine because no one is perfect especially in improv, but then it gets repeated ad infinitum within the fandom when it never really fit in the first place. We have Verin's stats and he's decently more intelligent than average with a 13 (smarter than most of Bells Hells for one; as smart as Pike); it's just he's the guy with a bachelor's degree with good grades followed by military service in a family where everyone has two PhDs - Matt said "himbo of the family" the way in a family where most people are exceptionally tall you'd call the 5'11" child the short one. In Call of the Netherdeep he appears as thoughtful and competent and promoted to a difficult position at a very young age, and in the campaign his appearance is simultaneously as a leader of troops in a dangerous mission, and someone who cares enough about poetry from a completely foreign and distant culture to have tried to learn more about it. I'm sorry, but if you're using the word "himbo" I don't think you're processing a thing about the character yourself; you're just the latest repetition in a game of telephone that's been going on since mid-2021.

And that's not deeply bad on the surface, and I'm using Verin not because he is the character most wronged by this sort of thing but because he's recent and it's really clear where the word came from and that it's not a good assessment, but something I happen to have a decent knack for is pattern recognition in language. I usually find it really easy to pick up on when someone's plagiarized because of the language and pattern shifts. I tend to remember urls and out of place words well. So I do tend to notice when everyone suddenly starts using a single turn of phrase and I tend to flag it. Sometimes that's not bad; sometimes it means everyone came to a similar conclusion and that's the best way to express that conclusion. But like, when Taliesin called the Yios episode a gas-leak episode and the entire fandom started parroting it? The line "bone-dry takes"? The fact that a lot of ship defenses I see were phrased precisely as "I have eyes"? without actually talking about the ship itself? the fact that I've seen a spike in the use of the term "ontologically evil" including in myself and not all uses are actually correct? And extending this beyond strictly language but consider any headcanon with minimal textual support that catches like wildfire (sidebar: remember how we make, or made fun of the SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE tendency on Tumblr a decade ago? same concept of repetition of a specific turn of phrase without internalizing) all sort of ping this.

And it's fine, truly, to come to fandom and turn off your brain. I know this will sound sarcastic from me, and that's because I don't personally agree, but I do strongly agree that you can do what you want in fandom and you don't have to listen to my opinions so in the end, yeah, it's fine because I am not the arbiter of "fine". But I think critical thought is a vital exercise and I think precision with language is part of it and so if you find yourself using the same exact words and thoughts as everyone else, that should, ideally, trigger a process of "but are these the right words? what do I see when I see this character and how would I describe them? do I agree with this assessment?" Fandom is an interesting and easier microcosm than reality in which to start doing that.

[adragonsfriend]

There are no trash takes on Jedi philosophy, there is contextual analysis.

As may be obvious from the title (humorous--I have gone through several common misinterpretations myself), this is about that infamous scrap of poetry,

There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.

And the other version,

Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.

I've seen quite a few interpretations of these along the lines of "the second version is reasonable but the first version is crazy and stupid," so here's why I think both versions are actually communicating the same idea, and the wording doesn't really change the meaning much at all.

So just like I did in my post about "do or do not there is not try," let's start by asking some questions to establish context before we look at the text itself.

Is it THE Jedi Code or just a mantra? Legends says it's the Code, canon says it's a mantra. The fact of the matter is that no matter what, it's really a scrap of poetry which couldn't encompass the entire philosophical basis of a culture even if it was trying, so we'll consider it a mantra.

Does the fact that it's a mantra rather than THE Jedi Code mean that we can't get anything deep or meaningful out of it? Of course not. Just because it's not the whole of or a full explanation of Jedi philosophy doesn't mean it's just a nice sounding string of words.

Who is saying this to who? This mantra is often used to focus a meditation, with the first phrasing used by adults in the culture, while the second phrasing is more often used by children.

What were George Lucas' inspirations for Jedi culture that relate to this mantra? (borrowing from this post) A combination of christianity, buddhism, and his interpretations. I'm not an expert in any religion, and definitely not in buddhism, but I know enough to know I'm about to make some sweeping generalizations, so take this with a grain of salt. Disclaimers aside, this mantra, and the way it is phrased, indicate it is being inspired more by buddhism. The way christian texts, specifically the Bible, are written typically goes "here is a story about people doing something, and here is how big G god and/or Jesus reacted." There are metaphors sprinkled in, but they are mainly there to clarify for readers. Buddhist texts on the other hand (and lots of other eastern belief systems as well, like daoism, hinduism, etc. It's an important note that these belief systems don't necessarily conform to the western idea of what a religion is, and often their original languages don't even have a word which is equivalent in meaning to "religion") use metaphor in often deliberately contradictory ways, to make the reader think about things which are difficult to express in words alone. The ongoing struggle to reconcile contradictory descriptions is the point. This doesn't mean those texts can be interpreted however a reader would like. There may be multiple right interpretations, but there can also be wrong interpretations.

What the mantra does NOT mean:

"There is no ___ …" =/= "The experience of ___ is fake news."

"There is no ___ …" =/= "___ is not a useful concept."

"There is no ___ …" =/= "We should totally ignore ___ and pretend we've never heard that word before."

The mantra is not realy a set of advice on how to act. It's a set of statements about Existance. And I do mean capital E, philosophical, epistemological, weird, deep, think-y, Existence.

Temperature Metaphor

You know the first time someone tells you as a kid that cold isn't real, it's just the absence of heat and you're like… "but I'm touching something right now and it feels cold???" It sounds wild the first time you hear it, but as you think about it more, maybe learn about it a second time in science class, get some more context about how molecules work, etc. it begins to make more sense. It gets easier to grasp, until eventually the knowledge feels intuitive--especially if you're a STEM person who thinks about it a lot. We still talk about cold as a concept, because it's useful to us as well--lack of heat can have damaging effects on our bodies after all, and a cold drink is great on a hot day--and it's more efficient to say "cold" than it is to say "lack of heat." But there are some situations, like developing refrigeration or air conditioning, where it is not just useful but essential to think of temperature as it really is--heat exists, cold doesn't--and thinking of it colloquially can only hold us back (if this isn't actually intuitive to you, that's fine, it's just a metaphor--you could also think about dark being the absence of light, vacuum being the absence of mass, any number of things mirror this).

Probably the easiest like to get one's head around, imo at least, is "there is no ignorance, there is knowledge."

Taken hyper-literally it would mean "why seek out knowledge ever when everyone already knows everything?" But if we say knowledge is to heat as ignorance is to cold, then we can understand the real meaning--knowledge is real, where ignorance is only the name of an experience.

The Whole Mantra

This is the way the Jedi are understanding of emotion, ignorance, passion, chaos, death, etc. They are introduced, as children, to the idea that whilst they may feel all of these things, what they are actually experiencing is the lack of the other things--peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, the Force. That's why they start with the "___ yet ___" phrasing--it introduces them to the first steps of understanding:

They can feel emotions, yet peace is still real and out there to reach for no matter how overwhelming those emotions may be at the moment,

They can feel ignorant or unknowledgeable, yet knowledge is out there to find,

They can experience passion (meaning suffering or pain in this context), yet know that serenity will return to them,

They can find their surroundings chaotic, and yet look for the harmony in the noise,

They can understand that death happens, yet be comforted by the fact that the person dying is still as much a part of the Force as they ever were.

Eventually they move onto the full mantra:

They will always feel emotions, but if they always reckon with those emotions and pass through them they can always return to a place of peace,

If they feel ignorant, they must seek out knowledge, rather than acting rashly. Also, their own knowledge is not the limit--others may hold knowledge in places they consider clouded,

They may experience suffering and pain--it may even feel like a good thing--but there is no wisdom in pain, it is the distraction from serenity, which is where truth can be found,

No matter how chaotic the world appears, it is actually a part of an underlying harmony that makes up all the patterns and the beauty in the world,

Death is not an ending, no matter how much it may look like one. It is a natural transition back into the Force, the place all life comes from.

A Jedi youngling is someone for whom this understanding is an essential part of the culture they are being brought up in.

A Jedi Padawan is someone who is beginning to learn to apply this understanding outside the confines of the Jedi temple, in a world where not everyone shares it.

A Jedi Knight is someone who has learned to apply this understanding on their own, without supervision.

A Jedi Master is someone for whom this understanding has become intuitive and automatic, no matter their surroundings.

All this is to say,

[deception-united]

Naming Fantasy Races, Step-by-Step

1. Understand their characteristics

What's special or different about them? Define their attributes—consider the physical, magical, and cultural traits of the race.

Determine their societal structure, beliefs, and history.

2. Choose a base word

Use elements from mythological roots or existing folklore and literature.

Draw from nature, such as "aqua" for water-based creatures or "sylvan" for forest dwellers.

Look at words from Latin, Greek, or other ancient languages for inspiration, such as "lupus" (Latin for wolf).

3. Find appropriate prefixes and suffixes

Examples of common prefixes:

Drac– (dragon)

Lycan– (wolf)

Syl– (forest/nature)

Aqua– (water)

Examples of common suffixes:

–kin (family, race)

–folk (people)

–ari (noble or magical)

–shade (mystical or ethereal)

–borne (born of or origin)

4. Combine & modify

Merge the base word with your chosen prefix or suffix and, if need be, adjust it to make for better pronunciation. For example, you might combine "sylvan" with "-ari" to create "Sylvari".

Mix parts of words to invent new, unique terms.

5. Ensure uniqueness

Once you've come up with a name, I suggest checking its uniqueness with a quick search to ensure the term isn't already widely used in popular media.

6. Contextual integration

Integrate the term into the lore and history of your world. How did this race come to be known by this name?

Consider the cultural significance. Think about how other races view them versus how they view themselves.

Here are a couple examples to get a better idea of how you might choose to go about it for different creatures:

Forest dwellers: Base word: Sylvan (related to forests) Suffixes: –ari, –folk, –kin New terms: Sylvari, Sylvafolk, Sylvakin

Water-based beings: Base word: Aqua (water) Suffixes: –nix, –morph, –ari New terms: Aquanix, Aquamorph, Aquari

Don’t be afraid to combine unexpected elements for a fresh take, and keep the cultural nuances within your world in mind when coming up with a suitable term. A race’s name might change based on who is using it or the context.

Hope you find this helpful! Happy writing ❤

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[lurkingteapot]

Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."

I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.

Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show. When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.

Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.

And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse. And that's even before cultural assumptions come in. It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.

Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).

Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.

This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!

As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).

For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …

ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hello!!

I have an OC who speaks several languages. Her native tongue is Arabic, the setting she normally is in speaks Japanese, and the language I'm writing in is English. She speaks more, but these three are the important ones.

I occasionally write a scene in the story from her POV, where she speaks Arabic at home with her grandfather, and Japanese with her friends and strangers. There are also other scenes where she may speak with a friend in Arabic and Japanese (a mix of sorts), and another friend in all three of Arabic English and Japanese, and other scenes where she talks to herself in Arabic in the presence of other characters. As a result I've a number of closely related questions:

How do I indicate that she's changing languages when writing from her point of view?

Is it necessary to? If so, when?

How do I do so organically without having to explicitly "tell" it?

Where does transliteration become necessary?

Arabic is a very God-centric language, where God is often mentioned in the most mundane (though not vain!!!) contexts. English is not so much. How could I "translate" that into the writing when the language POV is Arabic, considering that I'm writing in English?

I appreciate your blog and your answers. Thank you in advance. I hope you have an amazing day :)

Multilingual Character Issues

How do I indicate that she's changing languages when writing from her point of view? Is it necessary to? If so, when? How do I do so organically without having to explicitly "tell" it?

This is one of those situations where it's absolutely fine to "tell" the reader the language that they're speaking. For example...

Grandfather was sitting on a bench enjoying the afternoon breeze. "How are you doing today, Grandfather?" I asked in Arabic.

If you have multiple scenes that have cultural and character cues that will let the reader know where the character is, and therefore what language they'd be speaking, you can potentially highlight those cues and use language cues to "show" the language without a direct tell. Using Spanish as an example, something like this:

My abuela was working in her garden, probably picking fresh ingredients for tonight's pozole. ¡Hola, mi chiquita! she said, looking up with a smile. "I hope you've brought a big appetite for supper."

You can still pepper in the occasional reminder that they are, in fact, speaking Spanish. Again, it's okay to tell when you think it's necessary.

Where does transliteration become necessary?

If you're using mostly English to convey the other language, relying on telling and contextual clues to illustrate that it is the other language, I'm not sure when transliteration would be necessary. But, using my Spanish example above... I do not think it would be necessary to either transliterate or translate "pozole" or "chiquita." The general meaning of both are relatively clear via context. If she's gathering fresh ingredients for tonight's pozole, and later asks her granddaughter if she brought her appetite, it's pretty clear that pozole is a food. If you wanted to add more context for exactly the type of food, you could have the character muse about other preparations she's likely to have already made for other ingredients, or imagine tasting the hominy and meat-based stew. Transliteration... conveying how a word is pronounced... isn't necessary, especially when you have a story that's potentially going to contain a lot of words in other languages. Transliterating all or even some of them would bog down the story.

Arabic is a very God-centric language, where God is often mentioned in the most mundane (though not vain!!!) contexts. English is not so much. How could I "translate" that into the writing when the language POV is Arabic, considering that I'm writing in English?

Well, first of all, I don't think that's true about English at all. English-speakers often weave God into everyday/mundane language in much the same way as Arabic speakers, and not in vain. Some examples:

-- God willing, we'll have good weather for the game tomorrow. -- Praise God, the line is finally moving! -- As God as my witness, I will ground you if you're a second late. -- Oh, thank God my paycheck came in a little early this week! -- God bless, she is just the sweetest creature alive!

And, at the end of the day, even if you're using English to write what is supposed to be spoken Arabic, the context isn't English. So, when it makes sense, just be direct. But sometimes it doesn't make sense to be direct... using Spanish as an example again, someone might say, "Hoy voy a echar la flojera en casa," which basically means "I'm going to be lazy at home today," but the literal translation is, "today I am going to throw laziness at home." This is one of those cases where it just wouldn't make sense to be literal. It would be better to just have the character say, "I'm going to be lazy at home today," because as writers, our ultimate goal is clarity. We never want to sacrifice clarity for ambience or anything else.

I hope this makes sense, and please keep an eye on the comments in case any Arabic or Spanish speakers have anything they want to add, or in case I got something wrong.

Happy writing!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[archiveofliterature]

that one line about ramy's bangla being rudimentary made me absolutely sob (i'm bengali) and i wanna talk about why

there's so much to it both contextually with ramy's character as well as historically. contextually because ramy is fluent in 6 languages, an insane number of languages for one person but none of which are his mother tongue. he's described as a performer, one who knows he can't blend in so instead he stands out as a means to escape as much of the racism as he can. he gets lost in it that he almost forgets who he is; this is reflected in his language ability too – he gets so lost in his linguistic academics he just barely remembers the native language of his home place that he adores.

and honestly, you can't even really blame ramy for it at all when it was induced. it's the british who saw urdu, arabic and persian as more valuable than bangla, it's the british that make ramy put on this act so he can literally stay alive. and when you know the historical relevancies between urdu and bangla, it hurts so much that ramy was forced to forget bangla

very brief history context: after the partition, where british india was split into india, pakistan and east pakistan (now bangladesh) bangla was seen as inferior to urdu due to its hindu connections. bengalis experienced so much shit because of this (and bengali muslims are still dealing with the internalised cultural racism today honestly). pakistanis tried to make the official language urdu, even though literally everyone in east pakistan were bengali and spoke bangla, so bengalis fought back against it. we still celebrate that day today (feb 21)

so to have ramy be in this position in the 1830s where urdu was seen as superior to bangla, especially when ramy is a bengali muslim, is just extremely accurate?? and maybe it's bc we don't have much western literature where we talk about this but it's just so nice to have it acknowledged

the bangla language movement didn't happen until around the 1950s, over a century after babel's timeline, but the seeds are always there. while i do think it comes with both this islamic superiority tendency a lot of asians have (arabs i'm looking at you) and britian's imperialistic racism, i just love how it all makes sense

[novlr]

How do you write a flashback? When a character remembers something they’ve forgotten?

How to write flashbacks

Flashbacks are a powerful tool to deepen character development, create tension, and unveil hidden truths. They have the unique ability to transport readers to pivotal moments from the past, adding layers of richness to your story

Why are flashbacks useful?

Flashbacks serve various purposes in storytelling, each contributing to the overall narrative in its unique way. Here are some of the most common ways flashbacks are used:

1. Deepen character development and provide backstory:

Flashbacks allow you to delve into a character's past, unveiling formative experiences that shaped their personality. By revealing childhood memories, past relationships, and significant events, you can provide readers with a deeper understanding of the character's motivations, internal conflicts, and complexities.

2. Create tension, suspense, or surprise:

Flashbacks offer a powerful tool for building tension and suspense. You can strategically use them to foreshadow future events, creating anticipation and keeping readers on the edge of their seats. Additionally, flashbacks can introduce surprising revelations, challenge readers' assumptions, and add unexpected twists to the plot.

3. Reveal hidden motivations or secrets:

With flashbacks, you can peel back the layers of your characters and expose their hidden motivations and secrets. By delving into the past, you can uncover buried secrets that impact their present actions, unveil the true nature of supporting characters or antagonists, and provide readers with a deeper understanding of the characters' complexities.

4. Highlight character growth or transformation:

Flashbacks are excellent tools for showcasing character growth and transformation. By contrasting past and present versions of your characters, you can illustrate their development over time. These glimpses into their past can reveal pivotal moments that trigger significant changes in behaviour, allowing readers to witness their journey of self-discovery and personal evolution.

5. Provide historical or contextual information:

Flashbacks offer an opportunity to provide historical or contextual information that enriches your story. By exploring past events, you can offer insights into the historical backdrop or cultural context of your narrative. This enhances the authenticity of your world-building and provides a deeper understanding of the setting in which your story unfolds.

6. Surface a forgotten memory:

One fascinating aspect of flashbacks is their ability to surface forgotten memories. By resurrecting your characters’ buried experiences, you can explore the impact of past traumas or significant events in their lives. This allows for emotional depth and character growth as they confront unresolved issues and find closure.

What makes a good flashback?

A good flashback is relevant to the main narrative, providing crucial insights into the character's motivations and conflicts. It evokes strong emotions and utilizes vivid descriptions to immerse readers in the past. A well-executed flashback contributes to character development and maintains a balanced narrative flow, seamlessly transitioning back to the present story.

Choosing a strategic moment that adds depth or context to the story.

Using sensory triggers from the present moment to initiate a transition to the past.

Having a clear transition in and out of the flashback.

Ensuring the flashback doesn't disrupt the overall pacing and narrative, and that it serves a functional purpose.

Connecting to the present with an object or a sensory experience that triggers the flashback.

Bringing flashbacks to life

To make your flashbacks come alive and immerse readers in the memory, effective descriptions are crucial. Consider these six quick tips for engaging descriptions within flashbacks:

Use vivid language to paint a picture of the scene.

Incorporate sensory details like sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures to immerse readers in the memory.

Focus on details that are relevant to the plot, character development, or thematic elements of the story, avoiding excessive tangents or unnecessary descriptions.

Choose words and phrases that reflect the intensity of emotions experienced during the flashback.

Instead of relying on exposition, use action, dialogue, and interactions for characters to reveal information.

Highlight specific moments or key aspects of the flashback that contribute to the overall narrative.

Emphasise body language and gestures to draw attention to the emotions and reactions of the event.

Demonstrate character development by highlighting changes in behaviour, belief, or attitudes.

Showcase conflicts and resolutions, allowing readers to witness how they were resolved or left unresolved.

How to fit flashbacks into your story

There is no hard and fast rule for the best way to incorporate a flashback. But here are some interesting ways you can work it into your narrative, each with a different feel depending on the type of story you’re telling.

Consider shifting the narrative perspective when transitioning to a flashback. For instance, if the main story is told from a third-person limited perspective, you could switch to a first-person perspective during the flashback to immerse readers in the character's direct experience.

Switch between past and present-moment reflections to create a sense of urgency. This can be done by having the character contemplate the significance of the memory or showing immediate connections to a character’s present situation.

Adapt the voice of the flashback to match the character’s age, knowledge, and emotional state during the flashback. This helps differentiate the narrative style and adds depth to the character's past experiences.

Blend flashbacks seamlessly into the main narrative by incorporating them into the character's thoughts, dialogue, or actions, rather than separating a flashback out into its own scene.

Use clear markers, such as chapter breaks, section headers, or formatting changes, to signal the beginning and end of a flashback to keep it contained within a scene.

[max1461]

To understand the history of Europe, to read the majority of the major works and sources in their original language, how many languages do you have to learn? How few can you get away with, while still maintaining reasonable coverage?

I think the answer must at least include Latin, German, and French. Maybe beyond that English and Ancient Greek, although these are less important.

How about Asia? Well, Asia is bigger, so how about East Asia? I think you need (Classical) Chinese, Sanskrit, and... Malay, maybe? And/or Japanese. Sanskrit isn't from East Asia but you need it to understand Buddhism and you need it to understand Hinduism which you need to understand South East Asia. Sanskrit is very important for South East Asia.

Japanese and Sanskrit are on my "already studying" list, Chinese is on my "high priority for study" list. So there's that. Malay, I've wanted to learn Malay since I was in high school. Have I mentioned I used to have the Indonesian national anthem memorized? Because I'm a national anthem head and also a little bit of an Indonesiaboo. Maybe I'll get around to studying Malay one day, if I'm lucky.

And part of all this, you know, part of all this is "getting it". It's not just about reading sources. It's like, ok, maybe you read a translation of something from a language you don't speak, but it's a good scholarly translation with footnotes. If a word is mentioned, can you pick out cognates of it in a language you do know? Do you have the cultural context to "dabble" in other languages of the region, not for deep fluency but just for like, the fact that even knowing a little bit of a language is useful. Like if you speak French and Latin already, well, it's not so hard to dabble in Italian and get useful reading fluency or whatever out of it. Hell, with my relatively poor Spanish + random knowledge of Latin roots, I can make reasonable sense of the average Italian Wikipedia article. You would be surprised at how far local contextual knowledge gets you.

Latin is on my priority for study list. French is not, I speak a little bit of French. German is nowhere I have no intention to study German, I don't like how it sounds, I don't like [ç] and lack of dental fricatives in a Germanic language feels like getting ripped off to me.

I could understand Europe and Asia, reasonably well, by the time I am dead. It's possible.

[axuanmii]

admit you ship incest dude. the cn/jp shippers say its incest. pick up a book and translate it, it says kaeya is adopted. .. and heres a long paragraph about how incest is only between biological families and more disrespect to people who are adopted...

no idea why my inbox didn't give me this notif until now, but now's a better time than any to talk more about this.

i'm chinese. i speak fluent mandarin chinese. i've consulted other native chinese speakers about this, both genshin players and unrelated. i play genshin with chinese audio and english subs specifically to catch and complain about inaccuracies. i'd reveal more information but then i think it'd be trivially easy to doxx me if one knew what they were looking for.

fundamentally, the issue of incest lies in physical reproduction, yet i find adoptive incestuous relationships discomforting all the same. it's why i didn't like or finish go ahead (以家人之名) because i felt that it laid too much into the siblings aspect for romantic relationships to be feasible, and it was super contradictory from the initial general message of the first bittersweet yet wholesome episode.

however, personally, i just don't think kaeya felt like a part of the family until crepus's death and he really reflected on crepus's actions towards him (hangout). and even after beginning to view crepus as a father figure, he wouldn't have so shallowly made the transition for diluc to be his brother by adoption and consequently changed his entire mind about the guy (which you can see with the way he chooses to refer to both men with different terms, one adoptive and familial, one very clearly 'sworn', very consistently throughout the whole game. if that ever changes in chinese, well, at least you can know that i'll make a post about it if i still care about genshin by then.)

the localization team does make plenty of serious mistakes, and it's of my opinion that as a result, it has very clearly skewed character relationships with those mistakes, (cynari and collei, eulamber, some npcs in liyue, sumeru) some from cultural differences, some just from lazy translation overall. there's layers of complexity in how chinese utilizes honorifics and affectionate terms, as well as contextual consideration between fiction and reality, and sometimes i feel like the english localization team just threw it all into google translate and called it a day.

i don't even ship kaeluc that much. i like to call it the secret third thing where they can't get off their asses to talk about anything ever so they exist in an undefined space and to have them return to any semblance of a healthy relationship, platonic, familial, or romantic, would require a novel's length worth of development that hoyoverse will probably never write, and so my brain has made up novels of all three kinds and more.

however, i also don't care about people who do ship kaeluc or treat any other fictional media in an incestuous or otherwise problematic manner, regardless of language or culture. this is because i operate on a "don't like, don't read, don't interact" mindset. it makes being in fandom more fun; you should try it.

my disappointment wasn't aimed at the fact that i think too little people ship kaeluc. it just sucks to see people claim that that's what's wrong with the fandom and spin this evil gross imagery around the ship over a misunderstanding, especially when that's not how i view it. it's also the only thing vehemently regularly repeated ('klcers dni') when there's so many other issues with the game and the fandom.

(off topic but what's the worst thing that'll happen if a kaeluc shipper likes your fan stuff. it's not like they come into your tumblr asks to bother you with an "oh btw you're wrong about how you enjoy this media and this is what's right"-- oh wait that's what's going on here right)

including the fact that people like you purposefully go around searching in the kaeluc tag (which you probably did, because nobody is scrolling that far back in my blog to find this one specific post to complain about) to police and pick fights with people over a stupid issue from 2020/2021. i guess tumblr isn't a safe place to talk about kaeluc either lmao.

and to think i left anon asks on in the hopes that it could be an inbox for anyone who wanted to ask me art questions or just leave something positive and not feel too awkward (where do i get the confidence in thinking anyone would ask my incompetent brain for help lol).

to be fair, it's going to be my fault for continuing to draw attention to this by responding to such an ask instead of just deleting it and moving on but fuck it we ball.

this ended up pretty long but i feel like it would've been too rude to just say "会说中文的干嘛要翻书 :P". probably would've been funnier though and saved me a lot of time. kudos to you if you actually read this and read through everything.

final note:

[theblissfulstars]

The Hoodoo That You Do

Hoodoo first and foremost is a closed practice.

Within a western audience, the concept of a closed practice can be rather challenging for many, as it runs entirely contrary to the notions we are brought up believing surrounding religion in the West.

Socio-culturally, religion in the West has evolved under the mantle of Christendom. This evangelizing religion characterized by its soteriology(savior ideology) , ease of access, and proselytizing habits is open to all, radically so. All you need is to accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, and live righteously according to the Bible to secure eternal salvation. In many respects, Christianity uniquely conquers the mystery religions of old, characterized by their distinctive intimacy with the divine, secrecy and ritual, and subverts it, by making it universally open to all and actively telling you about it.

This line of thinking regarding "closed practices" can also be difficult with many western minds that have had extensive influence from movements such as the “New Age” movement, which seeks to bring together unrelated material spiritual identities under one umbrella.

Many people in the “New Age” movement have been largely influenced by the writings of the Theosophical society, which were some of the first writings on Dharmic religions available to a broad audience in accessible languages in western countries. This means that many of these individuals ideologically do not believe in the idea of culture since they eschew the cover of self, many believe we reincarnate across familial lines, species and even galaxies, fall prey to solipsism and claim that they themselves are the only real thing that exists, therefore everything is open to them, or purport an intrinsic universal connection through the Jungian collective consciousness that makes all things open to them. Having a unique gnosis dependent on your religious affiliation is normal and expected, using it to harm others is not.

Similarly, Christianity undermines the concept of ethnic religions and cultural religions which are predicated upon being born into them, or having immediate access into certain respective belief systems for validity in practicing them. Finding Divinity in the Christian tradition has nothing to do with where you were born, who you are or how you were brought up, but rather, is entirely up to ideology, practice, and a consistent theme of universalism.

However, as stated prior, due to ethnic and cultural religions being experiential, they are much more tied to a way of life, being, and a contextual identity in order to operate within the cosmological framework. This can be ancestral; do you descend from the founders of the tradition, are you connected by blood in some significant way in recent history? Land-based, i.e venerating a particular river, mountain, cave etc. And lastly, communal, do you speak the liturgical language of the religion, do you eat the same foods, do you understand the offerings? Many ADRs fall into the aforementioned pattern above. Many Hougans and Manbos will tell you that there are Lwa(Intercessory divinities in Vodou/Voodoo) that can only be summoned on Ayiti, making it a uniquely land based practice, and while in Santería, Boromú, an Orisha associated with the desert,and dryness, all but disappeared in lush and tropical Cuba. Most, if not all religions do start as ethno-religions, and many of them still have vestiges of these ideas present within them, and despite the open and universal evangelism of Christianity, even its spiritual practices fall into some of the land specific beliefs and functions mentioned previously.

It is in this contextualization of land, self and identity, that we begin to understand Hoodoo as not merely a “folk magic” practice, but a Magico-Religious tradition uniquely conjoined with the cosmological spiritual experience of Soulaani people in the United States. Hoodoo, like many American ADRs, is plantation religion, and as with the mentioned ADRs above, Vodou and Santería respectively,is syncretist in nature and a highly Africanized interpretation of the Christian faith which was violently enforced upon the enslaved.

Hoodoo historically is a belief system that was foundationally built as a form of resistance to European oppression, violence and abuse. With an emphasis on ancestor veneration, figures such as Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are heralded as elevated community ancestors, whilst figures such as High John The Conqueror, a mythic African king who could outfox any Slaver or false master, is deigned a powerful, worthy, and venerable Spirit.

The cosmology of Hoodoo, while being deeply Christian, is Animistic in nature and boasts a large host of Land and Place spirits with whole identities and person-hoods. Some of these spirits are “Elevated Ancestors” similar to the saints of Orthodox and Catholic traditions, while some of them are entirely natural in origin such as Simbii or Samunga.

Hoodoo, similarly to the American south from which it originates, exists equally in a Protestant and Catholic context, and also incorporates Native American wisdom and land knowledge into its Theological foundation because of Indigenous admixtures in Black populations, and vice versa, as can be seen by the Florida Seminole tribe with it's high afro-indigenous population to this day and many more.

With its context, it is no wonder that people feel that Hoodoo is an open practice, by its very origin, it is an act of black labor, meaning, it's meant to be exploited. All black labor, be it intellectual, physical, emotional or in this case, spiritual, is an open and free resource that can be cheerfully parasitized from by a broader audience, without acknowledging its history, origins or foundations. This unfortunate reality extends even beyond the Black American experience and universally unites the Black diaspora in imperialist or colonial states worldwide. When researching the origins of certain foods, dances, customs and ideas, it will be difficult to find the genuine full hearted acknowledgement of the enslaved and their contribution to broader knowledge and culture, this is the case in Latin America as well in both material and spiritual culture.

The colonial state chooses what is “Everyones” or rather, “American” and what is “Black” at any given time, and can choose to revoke and review these designations at will. A particularly clear example is Jazz music.

What once started as the herald of reefer madness, debaucherous devil music and depravity, has become the backdrop of urban luxury, sophistication and wealth. This is of course after the domestication of jazz at the hands of predominantly white musicians, who made it more palatable to the broader audience and it's popularization among the rich and famous.

Another example is soul food. What many consider to be “southern cuisine” is uniquely Soulaani in origin, however, due to the overall positive reception, accessibility and good reputation of soul food it became subsumed into the greater American identity not as a black invention, but an American one.

Similarly, Hoodoo received much of the same treatment in the late 80s- 90s. Instead of the lowbrow superstitions of slaves, Hoodoo was rebranded as a distinctly American “hodgepodge” practice, meant to appeal to aesthetics surrounding pastoralism,the rustic rough and ready, and a peculiar edginess, ethnic enough to bite but close enough to home not to leave a scar, after all, Hoodoo was never African according to Ross, and Hoodoo “Authorities” such as Yronwood “The earliest usage of the word “hoodoo” is connected with Irish and Scottish sailors, not African slaves, and may be a phonetic pronunciation of the Gaelic Uath Dubh (pronounced hooh dooh) which means evil entity or spiky ghost. In the mid 19th century, cursed, abandoned “ghost ships'' were called hoodoo ships or were said to have been hoodooed.”(2021,Ross).

The ability for the colonial machine of the U.S to change and claim things from being one thing, and subsume it into a greater American identity without any of its former history, or identity, is one of the things that makes colonial nations so distinctly villainous in the continued exploitation of marginalized identities. Such as Britain's National dish being Chicken Tikka Masala without even acknowledging the incredibly dark history of the East India Company and its dark impact on the whole of the Indian subcontinent. This consumption of identity is the reason why the black American appears to be “without culture”, and why Black Americans themselves can occasionally feel bereft of a unique identity. Often noted by others across the Black diaspora, Black Americans are often the butt end of everyone's jokes from the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa itself. This “stateless” identity sometimes displayed by Black Americans is by design by the colonial state, and a symptom of religious displacement and spiritual abuse at the hands of said colonial powers.

This powerful and calculated form of psychological warfare and its effects can be seen in the likes of Hebrew Israelites who claim to be the original Jewish diaspora, Kemetics who claim to be the original Egyptians and those who claim to be the original Native Americans. This speaks to a desperate longing to belong to something that goes back centuries, that is ancient, and worthy and powerful, none of them wanting to claim the legacy of slavery and its ramifications. With many Black Americans struggling to accept the lived history of chattel slavery, who will proudly embrace this “plantation religion”?

With these contributing factors, Hoodoo can come across as being either a failed attempt at reconnection conceived in the minds of desperate African Americans, a made up ahistoricism (as is often asserted in the case of Voodoo in Louisiana) or a genuinely all American folk practice open to all with no authority, order, or true history.

In fact, referencing a broader global view of African Americans, their customs, practices and identity,a global audience inverts the name into American Africans. A culture and identity that is a product of the eurocentricity and whiteness around it. America appears to be the land of “The Whites” and a “Second Europe” in public perception. However, many of these narratives come from individuals who have either; A. Never set foot in America or B. Decided that they would base all their perceptions off of an experience they had on a trip they took to Greeley Colorado in 2009, and movies. Neither of these are accurate as the American identity is not homogenous.

Hoodoo, while originating in the American South, is a land-based spiritual practice. Subsequently, it has evolved tremendously as it made its way Westward and North among the black diaspora itself. All spiritual practices, particularly land based practices, are beholden to regionalism. Regionalism is the antithesis of homogeneity. It is reflexive to categorize the gamut of all things with “American” origins as one homogenous mass, but this is both intellectually and materially disingenuous. All ADRs are regionalist, and this alone creates a dramatic difference in said practices.

Take for instance the various emanations of Palo, with four major denominations, Monte, Kimbisa, Briyumba and Mayombe. These four distinct Theological traditions evolved separately, largely in part because of geographical differences and different leadership. These seemingly subtle differences evolved overtime into hallmarks of an identity in how each sect handles spirits, the spirits they venerate, language(s) used, and major beliefs pertaining to cosmology and world structure. Notice however that all of these originated on the Island of Cuba. Cuba is roughly 750 miles long and 60 miles wide, driving from Denver Colorado to Billings Montana is 693 miles and takes around 10 hours to drive, while it typically takes only one hour to drive around 60 miles. The variety of spiritual beliefs in one tradition in a stretch of 750 miles is profound, and this isn't even taking into account the other traditions on the island, so why would we expect it to be different in the United States?

Which leads me to the question, what is the Hoodoo you do? Do you know its region, its history, its spirits? Just as there isn't a generic “Palo” tradition, or a Generic Vodou/Vudú/Voodoo, which also boast a robust number of lineages, most notably Tcha Tcha and Asogwé, there is not a “generic” Hoodoo, and the question becomes less about whether or not it's closed(it is), and more about it's cultural relevancy. The Hoodoo of a third generation New Yorker is going to look wildly different from the Hoodoo we see from a third Generation Californian, and let's add a caveat, the Hoodoo you see from a third generation Californian in the Bay area is going to be different from the Hoodoo from a Los Angeles Hoodoo, because of admixture, geography, and exogenous and endemic cultures in the region. In that same vein of inquiry, do you draw your lineage from the Baptist tradition of Churches, AME, Catholic, African American Spiritual tradition? All of these differences make for a different practice, and different structure.

Among the variations and differences in the Hoodoo tradition of the U.S also comes differing and various cultural attitudes to Hoodoo itself. In the broad Americas(the Caribbean and LATAM Included) the practice of banning and criminalizing Black and Indigenous spiritual practices was incredibly common and could be as dire as even leading to an individuals death “After emancipation, many countries in the Western Hemisphere passed new legislation attempting to suppress the religious practices of the formerly enslaved under the guise of “civilizing” their populations. Countries like Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti enacted laws that prohibited persons from engaging in “superstitious” rituals, fortunetelling, vagrancy, and similar practices. In the United States, African American herbalists and sages (whom the media described as “voodoo doctors”) were also arrested for providing medico-religious and divination services. However, once again, the U.S. government deployed generally applicable laws to suppress these practices; they did not craft new legislation to target the “superstitions” of the formerly enslaved. These individuals were charged with contravening laws against obtaining money by false pretenses, mail fraud, practicing medicine without a license, and related offenses.”(Boaz, 2017). Because of this, black America did their best to disassociate with “superstitions” and “barbaric” customs to avoid further discrimination and being targeted. If you went up to a black elder and asked them what “Hoodoo” was, they'd probably slap you in the gums and call down Holy Ghost fire upon you and yours. It wasn't until 1996 that the American Indian religious freedom act was codified into law after years of indigenous communities enduring the same discrimination as Black ones for alternative spiritual customs and traditions could finally safely practice their own religious and spiritual customs without fear, and these attitudes still linger in both communities respectively.

With all that being said, the question remains. Why must it be Hoodoo that you do? Were you adopted into a family that lovingly shared it with you from the time you were young to now? Did you break bread with these people, do you fight for their liberation with every breath? Do you really think being black in a “past life” grants you access to the trauma you most likely care very little about in this present one?

Magico-religious folk customs are a dime a dozen, many, open! Some closed. Hoodoo however, is contingent upon the social memory of slavery, oppression and a fight for justice. When putting the spirits to work, do you do so with a spectral whip in your hand, and the entitlement to Black bodies and Souls of those who came before you? The joy of learning and spiritual specificity is that you can find a practice you resonate with out of the multitudes that litter the masses of the American continent that may be socio-culturally relevant to you. Such as Italian stregheria which is prominent in some parts of upper Appalachia and New York, Ozark and Appalachian granny magic, Cajun Traiteur, Spanish American Brujería of the Southwest (as in SPAIN),Pennsylvania Dutch Braucherei, there are even Cunning folk practices associated with the Mormon church and Utah. Some of these despite being of European American Origin, are also closed because they are experiential.These are all uniquely American in nature, this is excluding places outside of the U.S who also have a multitude of open mystical practices, such as Ancient Egyptian Heka, or Hellenic Göetia, none of them with the baggage of Indigenous and Black trauma as an aesthetic.

Ultimately, everyone will do what they want and that's just a fact of life, I however hope this helps you stop and think of the damage you do to your Black and Brown siblings whose ancestors died for the right to pray to a God that looked like them when you insist on the right to access to BIPOC labor spiritually,mentally and physically.

[chalkrevelations]

There are things I say to my partner in the privacy of our living room when I’m blowing off steam that I would never in my life say to friends or other family members or bosses or work colleagues or fellow community members. I do this not because I’m two-faced but because I’m human. I get frustrated, but I’m also a grownup who realizes that my frustrations and fears in that moment are not the entirety of who I am. I have a right to express them, but I do not have the right to inflict them on the people who would be hurt by them. That’s why those conversations happen in private, in a safe space of trust, where my relationship allows me to show my partner parts of me that aren’t perfect and allows my partner to show me that I don’t have to be perfect in order to deserve to be cared about. I get support through my petty moments until I can be a better person.

This latest attack on Build is a horrifying violation of privacy and trust that leaves me feeling literally nauseated. I once again reiterate that I don’t trust third-hand amateur fan translation to be accurate and contextual, particularly given the provenance of the material, but Build himself is apparently distressed enough by at least some part of the material to make a public apology. So, that being out there, I will say: This was a private matter that should have stayed private, out of respect for everyone involved. Whatever was actually said is nobody’s business except Build’s and now, unfortunately, any named individuals who this was inflicted on and who may have been hurt by it. Which, rest assured, was the intention - to hurt not only Build with this, but also, particularly, Apo and Bible, both of whom Poi has shown her dislike of and ill-will toward in the past. I suspect some people also don’t know how abuse works, and it shows, given that what was purportedly said is a reflection of Poi’s own views back at her.

Whatever the context, I see that purity cancel culture still insists on freezing people in amber in their worst moments - without recognition of any capacity for change or growth - as long as it provides ammunition for a smug, gleeful Particicution. You’re stuck on some unkind things Build supposedly said more than a year ago? Let me tell you what I’ll remember for the rest of my life: The small, broken sound of Build’s voice just a few months ago as he tried to protect Bible and Bible’s career from a sociopath, in a telephone call that he felt he needed to secretly record as evidence of how he was being manipulated and abused.

Meanwhile, I see that swathes of KP fandom continue to be complicit in Poi’s campaign of public and dehumanizing abuse of him, which now includes not only borderline revenge porn, but separating him from his friends and isolating him. This is what abuse looks like. It’s happening in front of your eyes. Do you even care? Do you actually, legitimately care about abuse, or is it just a tool for you to use to win petty shipwars and make yourself feel righteous? Because here it is. Take a good look. This is a textbook play. And if you’re participating in reposting those screenshots of private conversations and mocking Build’s relationships and spreading vituperative language about him and acting like he deserves to have his life and career destroyed, you’re enabling an abuser. You are aiding and abetting her, as the very scenario she threatened him with - in order to maintain access to him, to keep him under control and compliant - continues to get spun out. YOU are a bully and a hypocrite and an abuser, helping to prove that the most dangerous time for an abuse victim is when they leave.

But I guess some victims do have to be perfect, huh?

.

(ETA: 7/18/23, 1520 - This post is being linked on Twitter by @cherryluminary with my permission. I'm not over there, but I increasingly feel like it's important to name what's happened, and continues to happen, to Build online as what it is - abuse. Similar to to my last post that breached containment, I'm going to ask people to remember that the behavior of Build's fans reflects on him - however fair that may or may not be - and should remain above reproach. I understand being angry - I'm angry, and at more people than I've discussed publicly, at this point. But if I find out you've been descending anywhere near the level of the ugly little sociopath in my inbox who openly admitted they want Build to kill himself, I'll block you.)

[duckprintspress]

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month with 7 Queer Books We Love

November is National Native American Heritage Month! We’re celebrating with books (as always, lol). We asked our rec list contibutors for their favorite queer books either by Native American authors or starring Native American characters. Most of these books (maybe all, I couldn’t confirm for all the authors) are both! Contributors to the list are Nina Waters, hullosweetpea, D.V. Morse, Shea Sullivan and an anonymous contributor.

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Indiginerds edited by Alina Pete

First Nations culture is living, vibrant, and evolving…

…and generations of Indigenous kids have grown up with pop culture creeping inexorably into our lives. From gaming to social media, pirate radio to garage bands, Star Trek to D&D, and missed connections at the pow wow, Indigenous culture is so much more than how it’s usually portrayed. These comics are here to celebrate those stories!

Featuring an all-Indigenous creative team, INDIGINERDS is an exhilarating anthology collecting 11 stories about Indigenous people balancing traditional ways of knowing with modern pop culture.

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Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Díaz

Postcolonial Love Poem is a thunderous river of a book, an anthem of desire against erasure. It demands that every body carried in its pages – bodies of language, land, suffering brothers, enemies and lovers – be touched and held. Here, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic, and portrayed with a glowing intimacy: the alphabet of a hand in the dark, the hips’ silvered percussion, a thigh’s red-gold geometry, the emerald tigers that leap in a throat. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dune fields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality.

Natalie Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves. Her poetry questions what kind of future we might create, built from the choices we make now – how we might learn our own cures and ‘go where there is love’.

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A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She’s always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories.

Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he’s been cast from home. He’s found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake.

Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli’s best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven’t been in centuries.

And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.

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Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear–and even follow you home.These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

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The Witch King (Witch King series) by H.E. Edgmon

Wyatt would give anything to forget where he came from–but a kingdom demands its king.

In Asalin, fae rule and witches like Wyatt Croft…don’t. Wyatt’s betrothal to his best friend, fae prince Emyr North, was supposed to change that. But when Wyatt lost control of his magic one devastating night, he fled to the human world.

Now a coldly distant Emyr has hunted him down. Despite transgender Wyatt’s newfound identity and troubling past, Emyr has no intention of dissolving their engagement. In fact, he claims they must marry now or risk losing the throne. Jaded, Wyatt strikes a deal with the enemy, hoping to escape Asalin forever. But as he gets to know Emyr, Wyatt realizes the boy he once loved may still exist. And as the witches face worsening conditions, he must decide once and for all what’s more important–his people or his freedom.

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Elatsoe (Elatsoe series) by Darcie Little Badger

Imagine an America very similar to our own. It’s got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream.

There are some differences. This America been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day.

Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.

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Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky series) by Rebecca Roanhorse

A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

What are your favorite queer books with Native American representation?

Want to chat your favorite reads with us? Join our Book Lover’s Discord server!

Update your Goodreads TBR with any of these books by visiting our queer Native American books shelf  on Goodreads!Shop books with Native American rep using our rec list on our Bookshop.org affiliate page!

[talenlee]

Goblin, Vandal, Sugg

Every word you’ve ever used comes from somewhere. The structures you use to discuss ideas is informed by ideas that came before it. I’m not getting all Sapir-Worf about this (and if you don’t know what that is, you don’t have to know because it’s probably not true), but rather wanting to draw your attention to the way the world you live in is in part defined by the words you use. If you’re an English speaker, there are ways you describe food that are a byproduct of French invasion centuries ago. Words like ‘technocrat’ and ‘hyperspecialised’ are constructions that borrow from how intellectuals used to use Latin. Your swear words are almost all from the poor working class, and used to describe sex, god, or excrement, and that’s not how all swear words work in all cultures!

Your world shapes your language.

In any given fantasy setting you work on, you don’t usually have the same linguistic history to justify why the people there talk like we talk now. In fact, to be completely fair, they probably don’t talk like us at all: you have fantasy languages, across fantasy constructions. Any given phrase a character in your world says is probably not using the exact same words as we are and we’re all working with a sort of fictionalised fantasy that makes the concepts reasonably translate across.

There’s a whole treatise then about how we handle Native American names and loanwords that we italicise like etouffee.

Point is that you have words, in your world, and you can attach stories to them. You’ve probably seen me talk about Orcs and how they relate to language and stereotypes, along in my long post on the word ‘Orc’. Here’s another set of examples I like for my world of Cobrin’Seil, as they pertain to the best little evolved raccoons, the Goblins.

The word ‘Goblin’

In Cobrin’Seil, most people speak two languages. Most people who speak only one language speak Common, and Common is full of loanwords from other languages. ‘Orc’ and ‘Beast’ are well known loanwords. There is a word that has risen in prominence throughout all the common-speaking countries in less than seventy years, and the word it displaced is still even in functional and legal use.

The word is both new and old; new to common, but an old word to the language it’s from. This word is Goblin.

Goblins are by no means new. They’re one of the three great old cultures of the world, a social symbiote culture that pretty much exists in any given settlement of any size. It’s usually seen as a sign of health that a community can sustain Goblins — in the same way that communities that lack pets are probably culturally alienated from all the cultures that do keep pets — and if you encounter an enclave that lacks goblins, it’s often because that enclave is specifically for a purpose and has done proactive things to drive out Goblin presence. Goblins are a culture that’s as old as Orcs, older than Ogres and even most of what you’d consider modern-day Elves.

But the word Goblin was not a word in common language and descriptors that was used in dictionaries and education and technical words, until what are known as the Peoples Reform. Not People’s Reforms – but the legal system of the Eresh Protectorate (which tends to set precedents most of the rest of the world follows) formalised the idea of Peoples. For most cultures, this didn’t make a lot of changes, but it did peel out of the laws one of the largest and long-standing carve-outs for Goblins that eroded the idea of their own cultural identity and heritage. The word Goblin is encoded as the term Goblins use to describe Goblins.

Linguistically, Goblin is a funny word. It’s an omniterm; without modification, it serves as noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb and preposition and it does so in entirely intelligible ways to those contextually familiar. The sentence ‘Goblin goblin goblin goblin goblin’ is a meaningful sentence describing a party taking care of a third party because they see the commonality they have with one another. Good luck making that make sense in a sent letter though.

Goblin is possessive; in a lot of ways it can be translated to the common term ‘us,’ with some wiggle room. It’s also a comical non-answer; guards asking a Goblin ‘what are you doing?’ will often get the answer ‘goblin,’ which in this case means something like ‘being myself and doing what I should be doing,’ which is an answer but it is also unhelpful, and you have to understand how goblins communicate to get a handle on what that might mean. Goblin language is simple but contextual and it tends to highlight that goblins are extremely prosocial. Goblin language makes very little sense without the context of who is talking and about what.

There’s a real truth to the fact that many Goblins who have taken to theatre or art will write dialogue in Goblin but stage directions in Common.

But the word is new, legally, but the people aren’t. What was the change? Well, prior to the Peoples Reforms, the term the human kingdoms used for the people known as Goblins was the term Vandal.

The Word ‘Vandal’

You can’t kidnap a Goblin.

Legally, I mean.

This isn’t because Goblins were protected under the law, no no, the laws were way too racist for that. The crime was that, wherever you transported the Goblins to, the people didn’t want Goblins there, so you were committing a crime by inflicting Goblins on them. Basically, it was considered a crime to take a Goblin from one place to another, because the place the Goblin arrived didn’t necessarily consent to the presence of a Goblin.

The term for transporting a Goblin was based on an archaic term for Goblins that operated on the assumptions that Goblins were just a problem and a pest brought into any space. They were known as Vandals, a term hypothetically meaning all nonhuman troublesome cultures including Gnolls and Bugbears, because if those people arrived in a place, they’d wreck things. Funnily enough, Gnolls and Bugbears got removed from this term over time because they would usually, if it rose to legal levels, be committing much more dire crimes, and also, guards didn’t like just bullying them at random, since they were very big and tough people by comparison to the much smaller Goblin. Over time, ‘Vandal’ came to mean ‘Goblins, and behaving like a Goblin,’ and that association meant the legal term got ensnared around it. Ultimately, dropping Goblins off in a space that did not want them was the act of Vandalism. Vandal then, was a term used to not to refer to the Goblins themselves; much funnier, instead, it was the legal term for a person who committed the crime of nonconsensual transporting of Goblins.

During the Peoples Reforms, since this law already existed, the crime of Transporting A Goblin Nonconsensually remained on the books, but Kidnapping, as defined under laws, had its historical Goblin Carve-Out. Nowadays, kidnapping a Goblin is typically treated as Vandalism (Kidnapping), because tidying up old and technically incorrect laws is a lot of a pain in the butt. This even applies when the Goblins are lawyers, who as it turns out, delight in getting non-Goblins in trouble for ‘Vandalism,’ which is a catch-all term under Eresh law for ‘general goblin-like behaviour.’ And we’ll talk more about what makes something Goblin-like in the context of Cobrin’Seil another time.

The word ‘Sugg’

But there is a word, ambiguous in meaning and origin that exists in common, that most people know and that word is ‘sugg.’ It seems to indicate a sort of laziness, a restful state. If you see a Goblin curled up on a pile of playing cards, ears out, eyes closed, you might say ‘can’t use those cards, there’s a goblin sugging on it.’ Or ‘sorry man, I’m pretty sugg.’ The word is extremely ambiguous but it has a thread throughout it of being:

Indulgently lazy

Very relaxed

Overwhelming and absolute

The thing is, nobody’s too sure what it means, and when you ask people who would know, they tell you to ask a Goblin. Goblins, after all, are where the word comes from. In fact, if you ask the right goblins in the right trail you’ll find that while Goblins use the word ‘sugg’ in the same way, they think it comes from Common. Why?

Because Goblins got the word from this thing they found in established human communities. There’d be a nice small dark box, full of paper that you could just curl up in and nest in, and on the outside of the box, there’d be a notice: SUGGEST IN BOX. So they assume the Goblin who enjoys that box the most must surely be their sugg-est Goblin. Which meant paying attention to how they all sugg, and from there, the neologism was born.

Now, non-Goblins and Goblins alike use ‘sugg’, each convinced they got it from the other.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[qsycomplainsalot]

Recently the French news cycle has been dominated by us patting ourselves on the back from refusing a racist law project from some dickhead in parliament, and a frankly shameful debacle where a teacher took their students to the Louvre and took them without warning to see a painting featuring naked people, with the students being eleven to twelve years old in that context. I invite you to read about it yourself although you should keep in mind that a lot of sources show a very strong bias in their language describing the event.

What we see with that whole nonsense is that 130y after Alfred Dreyfus' trial, we still have the proceedings over controversial facts and statements be ruled over by some clique with obvious conflicts of interest passing judgement by telling us that no everything's fine we swear, it's the minorities that we need to worry about. A teacher shows artistic nudes to 12yo's with no warning but no no it's their fault you see, and the fault of their religion, this eternal enemy of the Republic (except when it's fairweather catholicism)/s. The students complain that this is part of a pattern of hostility from said teacher, but it's okay because the teachers tell you that it's not. And now the minister of education wants to punish the students. Classy.

It's honestly not hard to see a pattern of abuse towards these kids and we don't need to have this teacher personally involved in it either, because if even a single student in this class was Muslim, or Jewish, or literally any other religion than Christian, there are laws that should be unconstitutional in nature that already bars them from even harmless outward displays of their religion, because of a fundamentally moronic, stunted understanding of what secularism and the separation of church and state was about. It was supposed to stop discrimination, but instead it hits on the head any and everything that might stick out to a white Christian point of view with absolutely no self-reflection on how hypocritical it is. France has had a deeply religious culture for as long as it existed, our national myth STARTS with our people's conversion to Christianity, but because it is our culture and we're used to it we do not see it, we do not question it, and any attempt to point it out is an attack on the values of the Republic, you filthy non-assimilated foreigners. Ignore over half of our holidays being literal Christian holy days, all of our stores legally having to close on sundays and wearing cross pendants in school literally never being prosecuted, we're so fucking secular it's beautiful.

Mind you this is borderline irrelevant in this context though, because a teacher decided to shoulder the responsibility to show nudity to children, not all of whom were Muslims and they were obviously made uncomfortable by the experience. There's probably an age at which one can expect students to look at tits in a painting and be able to contextualize them with their art history lesson, I'm going to be honest though it's not gonna be twelve years old. Reframed without the racist "their obscurantist beliefs can't handle our beautiful art of chubby ladies in what I can only assume are poses an Italian man four hundred years ago thought were sexy", it's not an attempt against the sanctity of the republic not to show tits to children without warning them and their parents. But apparently some fucking dullard did a dumb, and rather than address it or any of its systemic issue the French education system is circling the wagon and shitting on its students twice as hard.

“At French schools, we do not challenge authority, we respect it! At French schools, we do not contest secularism, we respect it! ! At French school, we don't look away from a painting, we don't cover our ears in music class, we don't wear religious dress, in short, in French schools we do not negotiate the authority of the teacher nor the authority of our rules and our values!”.

--Gabriel Attal, French minister of education/Macron simp, showing how becoming minister at age 34 might be a bad idea and an indictment to the institution you claim to represent by ignoring the past some two hundred and forty years of French history.

"Shut up and do as we say, after all the French system as an impeccable record of mediocrity so clearly we're doing everything to merit your obedience !!"

I cannot stress this enough, kids this age are NOT COMFORTABLE WITH NUDITY AND SEXUAL THEMES, it is not a purely religious thing and not all kids who complained were Muslim. The school and media are brushing over that because it doesn't fit their racist framing job, because it would not be convenient for them to report the news accurately because it would expose how the education system in France is rotten from top to bottom, from underpaid teachers who stopped giving a shit all the way to a political appointee minister who couldn't pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.