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artyblogs · 4 years ago

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What are your Ahsoka headcanons? Also do you have any Togruta headcanons? We don’t really know a bunch about their species so it’ll be cool to see your view on them.

I meant to answer this a long time ago. I’m so sorry Anon. Hopefully, it’s worth the wait.

For those on desktop, there’s more under the cut. For those on mobile, my condolences.

So according to some sources that I don’t care to look up right now, Togruta language sounds like bird noises, or they just really like birds, and this detail alone is what I base all of my Togruta headcanons around. Shili is full of all kinds of birds of paradise, of all sizes, in all habitats, and all of them are revered by Togruta. All Togruta languages sounds like bird sounds, but different dialects sound like different bird calls entirely. Because Togruta kits are functionally deaf, there is a sign-language mode that incorporates both lek movements and hand movements.

Related to this: Walking through Shili cities, or through Togruta ethnic enclaves, is to be subjected through a glorious raucous of birdcalls.

Those who traditionally studied birds, who knew how to trap and release them humanely, who protected bird habitats and knew how to harvest feathers sustainably, who know how to sing traditional Togruta epics, are called Birdsong Priests and Priestesses, and are religious leaders in Togruta culture. Modern Ornithology is taught in universities, but the field is split between scientists, and the clergy class.

Birds are considered sacred because they can fly back and forth between the land and the sky. Thus, their feathers are considered sacred too. Featherwork features prominently in Togruta cultural artifacts, and can be found in regalia worn by traditional dancers, to feather standards and religious paraphernalia used in ceremonies, to headdresses and articles of clothing worn by all members of society. Sky blue feathers are reserved for the royal family only (anyone else caught using them face...consequences), and darker blue feathers for the nobility and aristocracy, but all other colors can be used by everyone else.

Speaking of traditional dancers, lots of Togruta traditional and cultural dances resemble the dances done by the birds of paradise. Because Togruta montrals are sensitive to gongs and sounds from metal instruments, traditional instruments are made of wood. There are lots of wooden drums and flutes. Dances are performed for all sorts of reasons, and religious dances are performed by the Birdsong clergy or are performed under their direction because they accompany a birdsong chant.

In addition to feathers, traditional clothes are woven through specially processed red and white ti grasses found all over Shili. These natural fibers paired with the pigments found in the soil of Shili make for especially pretty cloths stamped with geometric patterns. These patterns are inspired by the shapes of nature, like mountains, rivers, akul teeth, lek and montral patterns, etc.

(You probably suspect by now that a lot of my headcanons for Togruta culture is inspired by cultures found throughout Polynesia. This assumption is correct.)

Traditional Togruta weapons are made of akul teeth bound to carved pieces of native wood. Togruta martial arts are especially mean and vicious, and are not for the faint of heart.

Now for Togruta biology. Besides the birds, almost everything else on Shili has evolved to be the most dangerous creatures possible, and Togruta are no exception. Togruta bones, nails, and teeth are denser than most species’, their frames are packed with muscle, and runty adults still hit 6′0″ not including their montrals (I headcanon Ahsoka to be about 6′0″ without montrals). They have a special coating of cells at the back of their eyes that reflects light and allows them to see in very low light. Togruta are obligate carnivores, so they eat a lot of meat.

There’s seafood, pork, bantha, poultry, etc (obviously, they don’t eat birds of paradise lol). Togruta eat meat raw (their systems can handle it) and they also barbecue. Togruta barbecue is incredibly popular and tasty, and there are chains all over the galaxy.

Akuls are more reclusive than popularly believed; they tend to avoid civilization as much as possible. The akuls that do get hunted are old/sick/injured/desperate akuls that cannot hunt for themselves anymore, so they start killing people. When problem akuls pop up, locals of proper age just gear up and go out to get rid of it, and they happen to bring the kits that are old enough to learn how to defend the village/town/neighborhood. When the akul’s brought down, these kits get teeth for their headdresses. Akul hunts aren’t a solo thing as depicted in popular culture (holonet shows and holomovies).

Royalty and aristocracy Togruta usually reach 7′0″ and over. I personally headcannon Shaak Ti as 7′2″ (at least. She is TALL). She insists that she isn’t a chief, but whenever she visits Shili and Kiros, she’s called “Chief Ti” anyway. The King of Shili sent her a feather standard with dark blue feathers that she loans to a Coruscanti museum, where it’s on display.

Some history: The first king of Shili started as chief from one of the more powerful tribes. He envisioned a united and strong Shili to better politically maneuver through the oncoming Galactic Republic, so with the blessing of his birdsong priests, he waged war across the planet and won his crown (you know, as most incoming dynasties do). The current King of Shili is his great-great grandson, and he’s actually the most progressive king that Shili has ever had (not progressive as in like... pacifist though. He’s not a toothless fool lol).

This leads me to politics: Governor Roshti of Kiros was considered an odd one by Shili standards. While most Shili Togruta subscribe to "sheathed knife” politics, Roshti announced that the people of Kiros will employ “open hand” philosophy. After the whole Kiros colony was kidnapped by Zygerrian slavers, and was brought back only with the help of the Jedi, Roshti was quietly replaced with another governor with more “teeth.”

After the whole Kadavo debacle, the King of Shili awarded Ahsoka Tano with an honorary knighthood and Shili citizenship. This move is...controversial, because Kiros is trying to gain independence from Shili. For Shili to reward Ahsoka’s actions on behalf of Kiros, that has implications. And for Ahsoka to accept/reject this knighthood also has implications. I would like to read/write a fic that explores this (Shaak Ti comes along to serve as an advisor because she’s had more experience navigating these political waters and maybe other Jedi come too and it becomes a Three Musketeers AU? I don’t know, don’t look at me like that).

That’s all that comes to mind for now. If anyone wants to use these ideas in artwork or in fics, they’re very welcome to. Just let me know so that I can check it out too!

#anonymous #star wars headcanons #Ahsoka Tano #shaak ti

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serpentfever · 4 years ago

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Serpentine Headcanons: Part 1

I have decided to compile a list of personal headcanons regarding the serpentine. This probably will be the first in a collection of such, which will pertain both to the species as a whole, the different tribes, and the individuals.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

General Headcanons

-A long long time ago, back when Ouroborus was still a thriving city, the serpentine DID have a legitimate ruler, in the form of a King or Queen. However, due to a variety of factors, this type of matriarchal leadership began to fall apart, and many of the tribes begun to fall under the rule of the Generals. This lead to the formation of more military based rule.

-To go along with the above statement, many young serpentine are indoctrinated into their military ranks at ages of around 13.

-Serpentine age pretty similar to humans, only slightly faster. Humans are generally considered to reach their sexual maturity around the age of 18-22 (With the human brain taking until about 25 to become fully developed). Meanwhile Serpentine reach theirs around 16, but after that their growth rate becomes greatly slowed down, and healthy serpentine can live well into 135.

-There is no sexual discrimination within the serpentine tribes. Both male and female, are expected to fight. Additionally, there is very little discrimination based on sexuality or gender. Many young snakes will go through a period in their life where they can come to decide what they define themselves as, which is universally called the Journey of Self, and begins around the age of 10. Nonbinary serpentine are common.

-Additionally, there is little sexual dimorphism between serpentine. However, true to real snakes, females are usually bigger.

This next headcanon is more like me looking at canon and deciding to politely ignore it.

-The serpentine variations seen within the show are actually different biologically from the others. The modern serpentine also operate under a type of caste system to go alongside their military focused culture. This is why the denominations of scouts, soldiers, and warriors all consist of different looking snakes. Despite popular belief (aka what canon says), the snakes do not metamorphize when they rise in rank, this is only something the warriors who challenge the General will do, as the magical metamorphosis here only alters their legs. It is possible for quote on quote “scout class” serpentine to rise above their rank, but it is exceedingly rare.

-Despite the fact that the slither pit is generally seen as a brutal game with no laws, this is not the case. Generally, only snakes possessing the rank of warrior can challenge the General. Or at least, the general is only expected to respond to a challenge from a Warrior. It is generally seen as below the General to accept challenges from scouts or soldiers.

-The serpentine all have their own regional dialects, as well as an older universal one. Despite the tribes having gone their separate ways long before the first Serpentine-Human War, they still teach their young the universal language. Many serpentine also know the human languages, but this is mostly those participating in the fighting, as it is useful to understand your enemy. Many civilians, especially after being trapped underground, don’t know any human.

There are two headcanons I have regarding the Serpentine Human War and the serpentine’s imprisonment:

-For one, the reason the humans locked not only the warring classes but also the civilians underground was due to propaganda and fear. Because serpentine are more physically adept than the average non-fighter human, with claws, fangs, and their respective tribal power, there was worry that even the civilians were too dangerous to simply be left alone.

-From here, one idea I had is that the elemental masters originally intended to release the serpentine eventually, and provided them with just enough rations to last them about 50 years. A war crime to put that many civilians in those harsh of conditions. They then hoped to indoctrinate the snakes into their own societies, keeping them on a tight leash so as to assure they wouldn’t try to instigate another war. The anacondrai were the exception to this rule, as, being the most dangerous of the serpentine, the elemental masters believed they were too dangerous to even risk the potential of them being released again, and purposely left them without rations. However, plans fell apart, and the serpentine were eventually forgotten

-My second theory is the one that the imprisonment was meant to be permanent, and the serpentine only got by for as long as they did by eating any bugs or small animals that managed to find their way into the tombs. This additionall means there were likely a lot more of all the tribes, but many of them died due to starvation. However, thanks to good leadership from the generals, most of the tribes were able to sustain at least part of their population thanks to good partitioning of resources. However, because the Anacondrais’ generals had been sent to the cursed realm, they had no such guidance, and quickly devolved into anarchy and cannibalism.

-In a similar vein to how the humans have myths and wives’ tales about the serpentine, so too do the serpentine have cautionary tales about humans. Most young serpentine children are terrified of the elemental masters for this reason, as unlike with many human myths about serpentine, the serpentine know the humans are real. And very dangerous.

Tribal Headcanons

-The Constrictai conserve their history through written records, as shown by the cave descriptions. They even have a rudimentary writing system.

-Aside from this, most of the other serpentine do not keep written records, and tell their tales through oral tradition. The Venomari are especially well known amongst the tribes for the way their culture celebrates storytelling, and they even have a whole sect of civilians dedicated to preserving it, called Gursas. These Gursas would often sing the stories they were taught, and the venomari would often put on festive displays, with music and dancing.

-The Hypnobrai are actually the only serpentine species with a natural resilience to the cold, do to the unusual presence of brown fat, a natural thermoregulatory in their bodies which is absent in most other serpentine.

#serpentine ninjago #ninjago #serpentine #headcanons #Serpent Fever Talks #hypnobrai #constrictai #venomari

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ton-e · 4 years ago

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Ooo small worldbuilding detail But!! On earth 513, on Asgard, it's not an uncommon reacurance for royalborns to be illiterate while the normal class receives mandatory education;

They, specifically princesses or general female personel, are thought general politics and basic history, yet the male population isn't educated in forms of writing and reading as they're just not seen as important. At best, they're thought at least high vocabulary but that's about it, because most of them end up involved or ruling over a heavily warfare influenced field.

"Our boys are going on a battlefield," Borr huffs mockingly as he drowns perhaps his 5th goblet of wine. The purple rain drips down from his frizzy beard and sticks long after he slams the gold down. "What are they going to do? Stab the enemy with a quill?"

Bestla sighs, resigned a close familiarity on her tongue, knowing it's a battle lost. Her eyes send a mute apology to three heads watching longingly from the tall windows of their chambers down at the chain of little feet thumping happily towards the schooling grounds, laughter walking closely in their step.

She teaches them in private, secretly away from cunning eyes and ears with more love for money than for their life. Bestla knows her husband well, better than he knows her, or else he'd know she doesn't leave any battle on her knees.

Hel and Allfather harbour a love for books and pretty words, pudgy little fingers following every line of charchol ink as if to gobble the world hiding in every letter, making her heart warm. Balder interests himself in academics, everything from the history of the titans to Njords first touch of water, he's knowledge about, and Bestla bursts with a pride as big as the staff for seeing them starving for a knowledge young and innocent.

Its a nice escape from a harsh reality.

Then, Balder finds his Godhood, and Borr ceases to care what he does.

The distaste is not spoken directly, but the angry screams bleeding from the marital chambers tell him enough. He's not permitted on any battleground touching even the tightest corner of their Kingdom and no one feels brave enough to point his absence out.

'It's because he cares, ' Allfather tries to convince himself, ignoring the presence of a hand, heavy and cruel, squeezing his heart when no celebration is in order for his brother. Balder was devious, harsh, and fickle, but he was his brother all the same. ' Father would hate for him to get hurt.' Even if he knows Balder doesn't hurt easily.

There was a knowledge of what Hel was, when he was born, the nothingness of sound as the cold body of a cryless infant was carried ringing like a death bell above everyone. Hel is born more ghost than boy. Many thought him death. Many think he still is

. But when the proof of his Godhood manifested in the form of a crow dusting in the wind for stealing Bestlas necklace, rumors become information. He holds his baby brother during the long cry of a sleepless bed like a man going to beheading for a terrible cry.

Borr, like countless others, lacks the courage to deny him anything after that.

The poetry slowly stops. What's the meaning of beauty if you can't share it with anyone?

Allfather and Bestla keep them the stash still.

Allfather dreads the day he will have to stop being a mortal, praying to the Norns to grant him as much time as possible. Blessings are granted to the needy, however, and without much surprise soon he presents too.

The greatest feast of all 9 Kingdoms is raised for his Godsake day, and all he wants is to hide. Hide from the tales of old soldiers wishing him good fortune, for the weaponsmaster pushing swords, daggers, axes and spears into his arms, from the young lords, too young and too naive for what awaits them, boosting about the terror they'll unleash in battle, and from his father's mead flavored breath .

" You're my last hope, my one true son," the King slurs, hand cradling Allfathers face in his gloved hand with an affection the blonde lad knows not what to do with it. "Your mother, she thinks I don't know those two aren't my blood. She doesn't know me, just as much as I don't her. But I trust that you will become the King this country needs, won't you? You'll be strong, and true, and worthy. "

He gulps his uncertinity as much as his fear. "... Yes."

"Good lad," Borr beams, eyes hunting for the maiden behind him. "I love you most, Odin."

Allfather locks his books away. He learns to handle a sword sooner than a pencil.

With times, his beloved stories lose their shine to the grime of battle, of war, of what he can't forget, can't give back. His mothers soft lullaby fades to the the screams of widowed women, mothers without husabnds or sons. He wonders, would the knights in his books look at him a hero, or slay him with the sharpest sword? Both possibilities make his chest ache.

But not every region is like that!! Nidavellier prizes wisdom best, tailored their legacy onto paper rather than in battleground; Therefore education is extremely important to them, knowledge crowned the true King among them. It makes no difference to them weather they teach a Prince or princess, stable boy or lord, squire or knight; Everyone is seen the same.

In Jotunheim, they can be considered brightest as they're the main providers if that makes sense! Even if they prefer the shred of reclusiceness in their own territory, a cinsierdable present of the country is seen as a merchant state; They supply almost all of Asgard with plenty of materials, foods, fabrics, you name it they got it, which indicates most of their educational system is a blend of everything.

But it's really important to keep in mind what regions values as "Education" to them! On Asgard it's politics, teaching them their roles as leaders and how to twist the coin so it lands in your favor; On Nidavellier, they encourage each person to aim for blacksmithing, therefore chemistry, physics, mathematics and the such is the most prominent pattern!

Jotunheim, in the same as many Northern regions that differentiate the North and South, possesses a knitclose kinship with spirituality and the unknown old practices, therefore their knowledge holds very close to nature and it's branches; Animals, biology, travelling, everything is an ecosisyetm of subjects but it boils down to being able to shape expert craftiness in wildlife!! Not only do their raise scholars, but also survivors.

The idea came from imagining Allfather being embarssed and feeling unworthy of being in the presence of two of the brightest minds in this generation; Frigg is a ball of energy with a mouth and brain that spills the most interesting sounding things. He doesn't understand them, but she could make floor scrubbing seem captivating if she really tried.

Farbauti has an elegant way with his words, carefully hand picked, complex sentences hosting even more complex thoughts that he can't feel are dumped down for him. They can hold lengthy conversations between the two of them, until the sun raises and falls, trading ideas that sound brilliant. He can't bear the humiliation when they turn to him for his piece and he stays silent, so most of the time, he just agrees without his own addition.

But it's not only that, it's him being very eager to listen to them reading, content to let his hair be played and caressed while resting On a comfortable lap of either harsh leather or soft silk. But he never reads with them. Everytime he tries letter blend into the other or mangle themselves to take form of either other dialect or even numbers.

They take note, because unlike him, they use their heads for something other than holding the rest of his body together.

Farbauti is a gentle man, mirroring the fierce beast in so many ballads and whispers about him. " If you... If you'd fancy some aid with reading, I'd be happy to help you. I know the hardness of being introduced to concepts that, perhaps, you weren't made familiar with. Really, I thought Shaggy dog would skin me for always forgetting a certain sign, he's been looking for a motive for a time, and,-" He stops, words halted and eyes wide when Allfather refuses to meet his gaze, hand wiping away shameful tears.

He's pulled to a strong chest, having to lean down due to their considerable size imbalance. "There is no shame in not knowing," he hums, lips moving gentle and loving in the crown of gold hair. "There is no shame around me, understand?"

The same story happens with Frigg, who brings him great comfort when her small figure sits on his knees and her autumn burned hair tickles the bridge of his nose as they read a book together, out loud, one gentle voice coaxing the other to say every line.

He didn't use to write much, not as much as he read, before. He was content with only drowning in a world far away from the one he couldn't escape, that he didn't dare to create something else.

He writes their names first and the envelope securing well wishes is salted with tears of happiness.

#worldbuilding #earth 513 #allfather #al odinson #balder borrison #hel hellison #bestla #Borr #farbauti fenrison #frigg eitrison #shaggydog #thunderfam

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mszegedy · 5 years ago

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Speaking a non-lectal idiolect for fun and profit: an essay

This is an essay on what’s in it for you if you make the way you talk unique. It’s very long, because first you need to understand the social implications, which requires a lot of background knowledge. Think of this as a technical introduction to something that’s hard to do right, but written without assuming you already know anything about sociolinguistics. In my opinion, it’s worth it to know all of this, because then you can think about the way you speak on a new level, where you’re aware of what it’s doing for you socially.

What is an idiolect?

It’s the way a single person talks in a single language. Most people’s idiolects belong to a dialect or regiolect (a regional variety), a sociolect (a variety associated with a social group), and some amount of registers (varieties used in different social contexts). Some examples of dialects of English, with varying scope, include General American, North San Francisco Bay English, Older Southern American English, and Scottish English. Some examples of sociolects of English include African American English, surfer slang, the “gay lisp”, and Received Pronunciation. (All sociolects are somewhat regional in nature, too.) Some examples of registers of English are the way you’re asked to write in essays in grade school, the way you talk with your family, the way you talk with your friends, and the way you talk on the internet. (Prescribed registers like Grade-School Essay English are usually plagiarized off of old high-prestige sociolects, so they can feel sociolectal. But the way you write grade-school essays is your grade-school essay register, and that’s a register, not a sociolect.)

These categories can collectively be called “language varieties” or “lects”. The boundaries between lects are fuzzy. The way you tell whether an idiolect belongs to a lect is whether it has some features that are part of that lect: pronouncing a vowel a certain way, using certain words instead of other ones, that sort of thing. But these features never cluster together cleanly into lects where everybody has all the features of that lect. Each feature has a slightly different geographic and social distribution. Here’s a bit of Rick Aschmann’s wonderful map of American English phonological features:

This isn’t even all of them. You can see him picking out dialects, but it’s hard to do with so many intersecting features.

Regardless, you don’t have to have all features of a lect to have that lect, since no feature even “belongs” to a lect in the first place. But there are some features that aren’t even on the radars of any of these lects, and would be out of place in the idiolect of one of their speakers. For example, pronouncing “new” as “nyoo” would be weird anywhere on this map. The people who do that learned English on a different continent entirely.

If the language you’re speaking is your second language, your idiolect might be pretty unique, and contain features from your parent language, with the most apparent ones being phonological ones. There isn’t a good word for this as far as I know; I just hear it discussed as “foreign pronunciation of X” or “X as a second language”, which makes it sound like a collection of speech errors instead of an idiolect. It’s not. Your idiolect is always valid. It might cause problems, though, especially if you’re a second language speaker, when people can’t understand you. It might also cause problems if people stereotype you based on it (see below). Finally, it will cause problems if your idiolect contains slurs, and I have no sympathy for you in that case. But no matter how many problems your idiolect causes, it’s not worse than anyone else’s on some universal scale. It’s just different.

What your idiolect says about you (to laypeople)

People are better at identifying lects than they give themselves credit for. They might not be able to narrow it down to a single city and social group every time, but at the very least they can tell the country you come from, and can pick out major sociolects like African American English (AAE). They use your idiolect to infer a lot of things about you, based on how they feel about the groups that use those lects. They often go so far as to say that the language features they notice in these lects inherently produce these feelings. When people say that, they are almost always terribly wrong.

A common example of this is racism towards black people. If you speak a version of AAE, people are reminded that you come from a black community. They will then apply their assumptions about black communities to you. White people will imagine you growing up in a ghetto, and not having a good education. They imagine you dressing and acting a certain way. Their assumptions are built on the AAE speakers they’ve seen in the media, and in real life. Black people have gotten to the point in mainstream media where now there are multiple black person character archetypes. But most real people don’t fit those.

(Meanwhile, a black person who speaks a white sociolect will get called “articulate”, because people have better stereotypes about black people who speak that way.)

Another common example is the image of upper-class British people that Americans have. If you are a Received Pronunciation (RP) speaker, Americans will describe you as “posh”. They will imagine you having lots of money and strong opinions. They will, again, imagine you dressing and acting a certain way. This is again because of the contexts in which they’ve been exposed to RP in. In media, its speakers are educators, acclaimed writers, royalty, and historical figures. As an RP speaker, you might not be any of those, but you will still get the credit for it.

This effect intersects with sexism as well. Valley Girl English is a heavily-stereotyped sociolect. If you have features of Valley Girl English, people might call you “superficial”, and think that you are dumb and that you sleep with many people. They will imagine you dressing and acting a certain way. (I’m repeating myself for the third time because with all of these examples, you can probably imagine what way I’m talking about without me telling you. Everybody knows Valley Girl English speakers, for example, wear revealing clothing and have expressive body language.) They will imagine sexist things about you because the Valley Girl stereotype is in general a sexist stereotype.

One interesting example I don’t see brought up very often is features associated with bigots. One such feature is using the substantive for certain groups of people. People get offended if you say “blacks” and “Jews” instead of “black people” and “Jewish people”, because they know that that’s what bigots say. If you have this feature, people will imagine that you are dismissive towards the problems that minorities face.

What (lay)people say about your idiolect

People who think they know things about language will say that their stereotypes about your lects come directly from the language features themselves. They will say that the AAE sentence fragment “did’n do nofin” sounds “lazy” and “uneducated”, and when asked why, they will say that it’s lazy to not have a “t” in “did’n”, it’s lazy to have “f” and “n” instead of “th” and “ng” in “nofin”, and most of all, it’s bad grammar to have two negatives. They will say that Valley Girls use “like” as a filler word so much because they don’t actually have anything to say. And they will say that the reason that words like “blacks” are offensive is because it is dehumanizing to not include the word “people”.

All of these things are wrong. The truth is that these features occur more or less randomly regardless of social attitudes. Sound changes occur all the time to every language and every lect; the “posh” RP is just as much of a pile of sound changes as the “lazy” AAE. There are many languages and lects where flipping all the negatives in a sentence negates it, like in AAE, instead of just flipping one negative. My first language, Hungarian, is one of them. AAE isn’t any worse for having it. It’s just a way that it’s different from most other English lects. “Like” isn’t used more than any other filler word, and filler words are in every language. There is nothing empty-headed about using filler words. Everybody does it. Saying “<adjective>s” instead of “<adjective> people” is far more common than not, over all languages. In many languages it’s the only way to do it. Even in English, it’s the preferred way to do it for nationalities, e.g. “Americans” instead of “American people”, or things that sound like nationalities, e.g. “lesbians” instead of “lesbian women” (although you do hear the two-word forms in some narrow contexts).

The best way to figure out whether your feeling about a feature is an inherent thing about it or just a bias of yours is to ask, “Does this feature also occur somewhere where I don’t feel about it this way?” The answer is almost always yes. It’s a big world out there.

Rigging the system

Getting stereotyped isn’t fun. Nobody can opt out of stereotypes. People will take every little facet of you, from your clothes to your height to your gender to your skin color and infer a whole bunch of things about you no matter what you do. But you can stop people from including your idiolect in the information they use to construct their stereotypes. Or at least, you can discourage them. Or instead of opting out of stereotypes altogether, you can try to control them instead, and use them to express things about yourself. You can do this by being aware of which language features form which lects, and which lects invoke which stereotypes. After that it’s just a matter of adopting the language features you want, which is still easier said than done.

One way to use this power is to adopt an idiolect that runs counter to the stereotypes that people might construct about you for other reasons. You can often do this just by changing register, without retraining yourself to a different lect. For example, as a child, I got stereotyped as “smart” and “gifted”. I did not feel very smart or gifted, but I did know that I wanted to erase stereotypes. So I tried to speak very informally all the time. My hope was that my actions would speak louder than my words, and people would think I’m smart for real reasons, and feel less like the register I was using was only for dumb people. It’s hard to estimate the amount of success I had, but I never stopped wanting to speak in ways that people don’t stereotype as “technical” and “too complicated for normal folk". People still think of me as “technical”, so I guess I’m a failure.

Another way to use this power is to adopt a non-lectal idiolect. This is the main point of the post. “Non-lectal” is a term I made up to refer to something that has a collection of features that make it impossible to classify into a lect. Having a non-lectal idiolect will make it difficult, but not impossible, for people to form stereotypes about you based on your idiolect. It might also give you more freedom of self-expression, because each language feature can say something different, instead of all of them together saying that you belong to a stereotype.

Non-lectal idiolects

Having a non-lectal idiolect is harder than it sounds. You can’t just make a grocery list of language features you want, because that list is endless and you will always forget something. Maybe one day, somebody will write a complete guide to all English language features, telling you who uses them, and how people feel about that. Then, in a year or two, that guide will be useless, because attitudes towards certain language features have changed, and new, interesting language features have sprung up that should really be in your guide. But then, that’s the almanac model. If people cared about that sort of thing, you could make a lot of money re-releasing an updated version of your book every year.

A good way to make a non-lectal idiolect is slowly. Think of yourself as a language feature collector, like somewhere between a postcard collector and a Pokémon trainer. Whenever you notice a cool language feature you would like, think about what groups it would associate you with. If you’re comfortable with that, add it to your idiolect. Maybe read up on how it works, if you’re lucky enough to have literature on that. If not, do your best to figure it out on your own, or come up with your own version of it.

There’s a couple of pragmatic considerations to keep in mind:

Borrowing features from lects that are closely associated with minority groups you aren’t part of is not a good idea. People will think that you are pretending to be a member of this minority. The people who will be the most offended are the minority members themselves.

A classic case of this is that it’s not a good idea to borrow distinctive features from AAE if you are white. I have personally wanted to do so many times, as a sign of respect and as a way of normalizing a sociolect that people look down on. But I’ve ended up borrowing only innocuous things where I have the plausible deniability of having taken it from somewhere else. I feel justified in using multiple negatives, for example, because my first language also does it. But really, I do it because of AAE.

Trying to use language that people consider offensive in a way where you feel like you’re removing the offensiveness is not a good idea. You will never make anything but enemies if you try to bleach or reclaim a slur, for example, especially if you’re not part of the group that the slur applies to. You have to get an army of people to do the same thing with you before you can do that and not be taken for a bigot.

Trying to use the substantive, which, as noted above, is associated with bigotry but isn’t inherently insulting the way slurs are, is a project that maybe has more merit, but consider this. You will, eventually, use the substantive around a minority member and make them feel unsafe. This is a somewhat different dynamic than when, say, a white person feels unsafe around an AAE speaker because they associate AAE with crime. In the first scenario, the minority member is guaranteed to have already experienced bigotry, and has every right to be wary of bigots. In the second scenario, the white person is just racist, precisely because they haven’t interacted with AAE speakers enough. Is it a positive thing to give a minority member experiences where a substantive user turned out not to be a bigot? Well, sure, but in the meantime you’re making their life worse. I would err on the side of not making people’s lives worse.

Is a non-lectal idiolect right for me?

Think about what you want your idiolect to mean. It matters more what your idiolect’s features mean to you than what they mean to other people. You’re the one who has to listen to it all the time, after all.

Sometimes what a feature expresses to you can be so different from what it expresses to other people that you start to feel bad about it. And sometimes this is a feature you’ve acquired naturally, not by planning your idiolect. For example, the thing that affects the way I speak and write the most is that I have central auditory processing disorder. I absorb language and information through text far better than through speech. It about balances out; it’s like the text and speech capabilities of a neurotypical person got switched. I hardly ever remember things from lectures, but once I read something in a textbook, I’ll remember it for a long time. In my dreams, I can read text, but I can’t understand speech. And, most importantly, I naturally acquire language through text, not through speech. This means that, while most people end up writing the way they talk until they are trained to use a unique register for writing, I would end up talking the way I write if I didn’t put every ounce of my effort into not doing that.

I would love to naturally express to people through my idiolect that I have more of a connection to written things than spoken things. And in theory just letting the acquisition take its natural course would be a good way to do that. But the problem is that the most common written register of English is basically an anachronistic pastiche of formal English sociolects from the 20th century. People don’t just think that I sound like a book. People think that I sound “smart” and “educated” and “technical”. This is what I’ve wanted to avoid all of my life.

I would like to express other things than just my connection to text. There are many lovely dialects that I have respect for and a personal connection to that I would like to give a shout-out to in my idiolect. For example, in the Hungarian lect my family speaks, the word for “New York” is Nyujork instead of Nujork, because it was borrowed from British English and not American English. I think this is really cool and cute, so as a way of paying tribute to it, I pronounce words like “new” and “nude” as “nyoo” and “nyood”. I could have just changed how I pronounce “New York”, but I already have other features competing for New York-related real estate, and having the sound change be universal is easier anyway.

The biggest reason to worry about which language features to have is that you ultimately know yourself better than your language acquisition engine does. Your language acquisition engine will take features from your environment and dump them into your lap. Your job is to vet these features and see if you like what they tell people. If you just let it do its thing, your idiolect will probably tell people where you lived, and maybe what communities you’ve been part of. But probably not as well as if you’d put some thought into it.

Putting thought into your idiolect doesn’t have to mean making it non-lectal. Making it non-lectal is the nuclear option where you don’t want people to immediately associate you with certain places and cultures. If you are okay with being associated with a place and/or a culture, consider its distinctive lect something to build around. There is no hard boundary on being a non-lectal speaker. You can have a lot of features that point towards one thing and several other features that point towards other things. Experiment.

Conclusion

Language is the most versatile tool for expressing yourself. The semantics of any language are already a powerful engine of communication that you’ve been training yourself your entire life to use. Make the pragmatics, the metatext, work for you too. Don’t worry about every feature; there’s too many of them to do that. But if you single out features you care about, you can turn your idiolect into a beloved work of art that you can carry with you everywhere. Whether the art that you make will be non-lectal, I cannot say. But know that the option is there, and it’s a goldmine of untapped self-expression potential.

#linguistics #conlanging #english #self-expression #language #language art #sociolinguistics

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utopianparadoxist · 6 years ago

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Dialectic Identity? Thoughts on Fozzer, the Page of Heart:

OK this is gonna be shorter than Marvus obvs but Fozzer DID give me a good amount to think about, so here goes

Fozzer outright identifying as a dialectical materialist is exciting for a couple reasons. There’s a lot one could say about dialectics and Paradox Space in general (I’ve been trying to write that script for about a year) but here I want to focus on the Materialist half of that, because it immediately reminded me a lot of @arrghus’ idea of the notional/material divide between aspects.

Ever since the Extended Zodiac, we’ve been wondering if the way the Aspect wheel is laid out might suggest some relationships between Aspects, either original to Homestuck, mirroring the relationships the Signs share in the traditional Zodiac wheel, or some combination of both.

Arrghus’ essay series proposes a model for how those relationships might work, at least in part. I’d suggest checking it out for the full picture, but here I want to focus on the divide I find clearest and most compelling: That between the Ideal/Notional Aspects and the Material/Physical ones.

The gist is this: The top five Aspects (Mind, Hope, Breath, Life, and Light) are more closely aligned with the World of Ideas, and so those bound to them tend to be more concerned with the ideal, abstract, and imaginary. The bottom five (Void, Doom, Blood, Rage, and Heart) are more closely tied to the material, physical, and real.

If you’ve seen my prior writing on Homestuck, you might note that this dovetails easily with Gnosticism’s old cosmology of reality as divided between an imaginary world of Light and a physical world of Darkness. That said, this isn’t a hard binary--Blood obviously refers to some concepts as well as physical experience, and Breath obviously links to some things that happen in physicality, even if those elements are by definition elusive and insubstantial.

Space and Time are an even split, as much conceptual law to be deciphered as they are physical element of reality to be experienced. It could well be that this reflects most strongly in the perspectives those Bound to each Aspect are given to, as opposed to an underlying reality of the Aspects themselves, and in any case all twelve Aspects are necessary to describe a full picture of reality.

One of the most exciting possibilities this model raises for me is the idea of Aspect “Mirroring”, which is essentially a different kind of relationship Aspects can have. Aspects that are Mirror each other vertically, for example, might express the same ideas through the filter of the Ideal vs. the Material--reflecting the hermetic/magical principle of “As above, so below”.

Heart and Light are a pretty good way to express the relationship between vertically mirrored Aspects, as it turns out. Consider:

In Gnosticism, “Light” refers to directly to Information/Ideas, as the world of Light is the world of the imaginary. This is where “Platonic Ideals” live--the perfect imaginary version of any object, from which all physical manifestations of that object are derived.

Humanity gains the ability to access this world, the self-aware conciousness necessary to think, when the Goddess of Wisdom Sophia descends from that realm and imbues us with her Light--the light of curiosity, of wisdom, of the power to know. The light of the soul.

In this way, we can think of the Soul--the Heart--of living beings as their inner Light, expressed throughout their lives in the realm of physicality. And we can think of Light/Ideas as abstract concepts, that can only enter reality proper through the doorways created by the self-expression of individuals, as enabled by their soul.

There are a lot of ideas and concepts that Dirk’s soul seems consistently inclined to express onto reality. The shades, the concept of “being a Bro”, the idea of the Hard Anime Dude, Stoicism, the pervasive homoeroticism innate to the Greek ideals he’s generally shaped by, etc.

The clearest example of this might be his sword, which is itself a physical object seemingly ripped directly out of the “fake” (read: imaginary) world of anime. An idea, made physical, through the sheer expression of will manifested by Dirk’s soul.

This is what makes his katana so powerful:

It’s quite near to being a physical expression of our collective idea of the “Perfect Sword”, much like Bro sets an impossible ideal of “Perfect Manhood” that Dave wrestles with living up to. This might give you an idea of some of the more direct ways Heart’s conceptual toolbox could be exploited or weaponized.

The point here is that just expressing the idea of a “Bro” is extremely important to Dirk, and expressing the idea of “Cats” is similarly important to Nepeta and Meulin.

In the same way, Fozzer seems like an acutely intense expression of a political Persona. A philosophical idea, expressed in the physical world as an intense commitment to an associated identity. His shovel is an expression of that identity, much the same way Dirk’s katana or Nepeta’s claws are expressions of theirs.

But then again, Fozzer’s identity ain’t exactly stable, is it?

Before we talk about The Thing That Happens, we should note that as much as Fozzer seems to genuinely believe in his communist philosophy, he mostly seems interested in it as a means for self-expression, rather than an actual political movement with direct goals and results he’s looking to achieve.

And even though he’s very intense and earnest about it, Fozzer seems inclined to exploit his own identity in somewhat self-serving ways. Unintentionally or no, he more or less uses his ideological speechifying to conscript the Reader into doing work for him, therefore inviting the reader to Serve him through Heart, for Fozzer’s own benefit.

This, coupled with his strongly noted cowardice, leads me to consider him a Page. But my real point here is that even if a lot of us here on Tumblr find Fozzer’s ideology appealing, Fozzer seems less invested in ideology proper than with the identity it comes with--and even here, Fozzer isn’t exactly being portrayed as unambiguously Good and Correct.

Even if he’s preferable to the alternative. Sigh.

Let’s talk about the thing.

[WORLDBUILDING INTERMISSION]

So the biggest surprise of this friendsim was that we stumbled onto what’s basically a swell of Scratch energy just...hanging out under Absence Park, apparently?

Which is. A lot. This energy resets our conversation with Fozzer and changes his personality, which we’ll get into in a minute, but first I want to speculate: How the hell does this thing exist at all, and what does it even mean? There’s a couple of possibilities.

Since this is essentially Time-coded Scratch energy we’re dealing with, @blindrapture pointed out that it could have something to do with the Handmaid, which I’d expand to include Lord English--and though I doubt it’s directly linked to Scratch himself, since he’s not too associated with Time the way the former two are, he may be aware of or able to use this...”glitch” in reality.

It’s also possible this is a natural consequence of a Scratch, and pockets of leftover Scratch energy like these are present in some locations of Post-Scratch worlds. For that matter, it could be a consequence of John’s retcon powers, which act like the scratch in some ways and might have had consequences we don’t yet fully understand.

Finally, given the language, I suspect that the hole in Absence Park is actually just a hole into the Void, leading to the Furthest Ring, much like Roxy’s windows. This Scratch energy seems to have entered the Furthest Ring, and is presumably writhing there until circumstances allow it to vent out through this particular entrance to reality.

What are the implications? Who knows. If this is a hole into the Void, then this is another avenue through which Hiveswap’s cast might be able to exit Alternia and find a new world.

If the Scratch outbursts are recurring enough, then we have at least one way for our heroes to “Time Travel” and basically save scum to try and achieve optimal desires results, like saving a troll friend who gets killed by going back in time for example.

That’s probably the biggest takeaway to me, because having a way to time travel built into Hiveswap’s text already makes me that much more sure that no matter what kind of carnage and brutality our beloved troll friends get subjected to, we’re ultimately headed towards a happy ending where probably nobody dies-- I can reasonably see the possibility that even antagonistic figures like Ardata and even Trizza could be saved, under these circumstances.

Ok back to Fozzer.

So the thing about “Post-Scratch” Fozzer is that I feel he’s being dismissed somewhat due to his admittedly unsavory politics. This still strikes me as a very genuine and direct expression of Fozzer’s Classpect inclinations.

Fozzer is still taking a very materialist view of reality here, for example--he’s interested in the actual physical history of how this system evolved, and considers understanding that history necessary to understanding society.

And however he disagrees with you, his instinctual response is the same. He storms off after verbally thrashing the Reader, but its interesting that he does it the same way both times: By imposing identities onto the Reader. Hilariously, Fozzer is unwittingly owning alternate versions of himself, too, and unwittingly inviting self-owns is basically the core of the Knight/Page aesthetic.

So really, Fozzer’s core personality is much the same--what’s taken place is a binary flip in the persona he relates to the world with. In one reality, he conveys the ideas of the hopeful revolutionary underclass.

In the other, he projects the identity of a happy and willing member for the Empire’s war-machine--the joyful slave, the pain of his own exploitation cushioned by a strong sense of societal purpose and identity. Note how the shovel easily parses as a strong symbol of this identity, too--a triumphant tool with which to serve the empire, rather than an ironic symbol of oppression.

I don’t think we should be hasty in assuming one Fozzer is more real than the other, even if we’re inclined to like one of them more. Especially since Fozzer works in Absence Park and seems familiar with these lights, meaning these scratch shifts might have been happening to him for a while.

The two Fozzers give us a fascinating window into the nuances of Heart, and indeed we’ve been told this sort of splintering of self can be common to the Heartbound by Calliope. Their opposing ideologies present us with a self-contained dialectic, in fact.

A dialectic at its core is a search for truth carried out by contrasting and comparing two diametrically opposed ideas, which in Hegel’s dialetic at least are defined as the Thesis and Anti-Thesis, respectively.

In Hegel’s understanding of the term, we can only truly understand an individual idea (say: Fozzer) by examining the tensions and similarities between these two opposed perspectives.

And these tensions are usually resolved not by one winning out over the other, but by achieving a Synthesis that combines he best traits of both.

Maybe because of that, I find the fact that we can only “win” by embracing the “Happy Slave” Fozzer unnerving. It’s hard to say how Fozzer’s path will evolve going forward, but given how central the idea of conflicting opposites is to his expression of his Classpect, I highly doubt we’ve seen the last of “Comrade” Fozzer.

So, I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes?

[Closing disclaimer: I’m not entirely sure how different Marxism’s Dialectic Materialist approach is from Hegel’s Dialectics. For instance, I’m unsure if it also uses the “Thesis”, “Anti-Thesis”, “Synthesis” model Hegel describes, or if I’m accidentally mixing the two.

@gamblignant8 on the Perfectly Generic Podcast described Dialectic Materialism as being Hegel’s Dialectic applied with a focus on physical reality, mixed with an analysis of humanity’s historical evolution on the physical plain.

Cursory Wikipedia research seems to bear this out, with Marx even describing Dialectic Materialism as simply the opposite of Hegel’s more philosophical and idealistic take on the idea, which Marx regarded as full of “Mysticism”. As a Hopebound more comfortable with the ideal than the material myself, I suppose its no surprise I find Hegel’s dialectics more immediately approachable and comfortable, for now.

What I’m saying here is, take everything I’ve written about dialectic materialism here with a grain of salt: I’m trying to do my homework and make sure I have the facts straight, but it turns out philosophy can get hard to sum up, especially when you’re trying to reconcile it with a fantasy metaphysics system. Feel free to clarify if I’ve messed details up. ]

#Homestuck #fozzer velyes #fozzer #Hiveswap #Hiveswap Friendsim #My MSPA Analysis #Gnosticism #Heart #Light #Persona #Dialectics #Dialectic Materialism

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zwischenstadt · 5 years ago

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In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the production of entities other than commodities. Most striking have been discussions of the production of knowledge leading, in particular, to a radical critique of the status of science. Furthermore, there has been a strong current emerging in psychology to demand an examination of the social production of the individual psyche. These trends form the centre of emphasis for the general critical attitude- that no aspect of the human condition is pre-given; all are construction within definite social formations. However, there have been moves beyond this position to what I see as a kind of social solipsism- an argument that scientific knowledge is nothing but a shared code for conceptually structuring the world which is specific to our current society. To parody a famous rejoinder to similar attitudes, “the sophism of such philosophy consist in the fact that it regards science as being not the connection between society and the external world, but a fence, a wall, separating society from the external world.” Indeed, it is then an inevitable step to dismiss an external pre-given or natural world altogether, regarding it as a social construction. The underlying fallacy is that of pushing the parallels between commodities and knowledge too far. Not sufficient attention is paid to their different modes of consumption. The feminist critique of the family drew attention to the need to understand the whole cycle of production and consumption in a systemic way. It is no longer legitimate to restrict analysis of social contradictions to the major sites of commodity production. An important component of production, the worker as embodiment of skills, is itself a commodity produced in particular circumstances. The purchasing power of the wage can be dually seen as the mediator of commodity consumption and labour-power production. Now it is evident that there is no exact counterpart in a circulation of knowledge. Certainly the worker is constructed not just through commodity consumption but through informing with particular skills. Although the latter is referred to as consumption of knowledge, there is a crucial difference; commodities are destroyed by consumption, knowledge is not. This is not trivial. Knowledge is difficult to destroy because it is an indefinitely reproducible information-structure of society. A consequence of this permanence is the tying together of temporal events, which enables us to break free of the social solipsism described above. This point is wroth making in some detail. In individual perception, solipsism is unavoidable, since a hypothetical isolated individual has no way to factor out from its interaction with the world those changes which result from its own manipulations and those which are intrinsic to an object. Naturally this kind of individual is a myth, and every person’s perception is socially mediated from the outset. The necessary inter-personal communication this entails destroys solipsism from the start, since we thereby verify that an object’s properties are independent of perpetual standpoint. With consideration of socially produced knowledge we run up against the same question at a higher level. We are all caught up in the specific means of production of our society, and within its own terms it might be impossible to differentiate between truth about an objective world and our constructions. However, not only can we examine the world view of other contemporary social formations (sic). More importantly, we have messages from the past through information carried in artifacts, writings, etc. Moreover, each individual endures for a span of time as a material carrier of structure, often persisting through vast upheavals of the social order. This suggests a definition of the natural/social distinction which is not rigid but is compatible with commonsense meanings. The very way in which the category “nature” is employed characterizes it as those aspects of human experience which are relatively independent of the social formation. How is this to be understood if all knowledge is produced within definite social conditions? Only through the fact that a change in the social order, no matter how catastrophic, is never totally discontinuous. So we can envisage history as a sequence of temporal cross-sections bound together by the people constituting the world at any time. Against such continuities, which are themselves supported by yet more permanent material things- buildings, machinery, earth and sky- we can then see the movement of the social order which, in a real sense, re-makes the people, their perceptions, their understandings in a periodic yet evolving succession. If it is granted that such permanences (or, at least, long-term invariances) exist, then it is hardly surprising that we accord them a different ontological status. So we conceive them as objects standing prior to and independent of the social order.

Allen Muir, Holism and Reductionism are Compatible. In Against Biological Determinism: The Dialectics of Biology Group (ed) Steven Rose. Allison & Busby publishing. 1982.

This is probably the best explanation of Marxian epistemology (philosophy of knowledge) I’ve ever encountered

#allen muir #philosophy #epistemology #marx #biology #steven rose

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years ago

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Morality and style . – A writer will find that the more precisely, conscientiously, appropriately he expresses himself, the more obscure the literary result is thought, whereas a loose and irresponsible formulation is at once rewarded with certain understanding. It avails nothing ascetically to avoid all technical expressions, all allusions to spheres of culture that no longer exist. Rigour and purity in assembling words, however simple the result, create a vacuum. Shoddiness that drifts with the flow of familiar speech is taken as a sign of relevance and contact: people know what they want because they know what other people want Regard for the object, rather than for communication, is suspect in any expression: anything specific, not taken from pre-existent patterns, appears inconsiderate, a symptom of eccentricity, almost of confusion. The logic of the day, which makes so much of its clarity, has naively adopted this perverted notion of everyday speech. Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case. Rigorous formulation demands unequivocal comprehension, conceptual effort, to which people are deliberately disencouraged, and imposes on them in advance of any content a suspension of all received opinions, and thus an isolation, that they violently resist. Only what they do not need first to understand, they consider understandable; only the word coined by commerce, and really alienated, touches them as familiar. Few things contribute so much to the demoralization of intellectuals. Those who would escape it must recognize the advocates of communicability as traitors to what they communicate.

Not half hungry . – To play off workers’ dialects against the written language is reactionary. Leisure, even pride and arrogance, have given the language of the upper classes a certain independence and self-discipline. It is thus brought into opposition to its own social sphere. It turns against the masters, who misuse it to command, by seeking to command them, and refuses to serve their interests. The language of the subjected, on the other hand, domination alone has stamped, so robbing them further of the justice promised by the unmutilated, autonomous word to all those free enough to pronounce it without rancour. Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies. From the objective spirit of language they expect the sustenance refused them by society; those whose mouths are full of words have nothing else between their teeth. So they take revenge on language. Being forbidden to love it, they maim the body of language, and so repeat in impotent strength the disfigurement inflicted on them. Even the best qualities of the North Berlin or Cockney dialects, the ready repartee and the mother wit, are marred by the need, in order to endure desperate situations without despair, to mock themselves along with the enemy, and so to acknowledge the way of the world. If the written language codifies the estrangement of classes, redress cannot lie in regression to the spoken, but only in the consistent exercise of strictest linguistic objectivity. Only a speaking that transcends writing by absorbing it, can deliver human speech from the lie that it is already human.

Mélange . – The familiar argument of tolerance, that all people and all races are equal, is a boomerang. It lays itself open to the simple refutation of the senses, and the most compelling anthropological proofs that the Jews are not a race will, in the event of a pogrom, scarcely alter the fact that the totalitarians know full well whom they do and whom they do not intend to murder. If the equality of all who have human shape were demanded as an ideal instead of being assumed as a fact, it would not greatly help. Abstract utopia is all too compatible with the most insidious tendencies of society. That all men are alike is exactly what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not quite determined by its totality. The technique of the concentration camp is to make the prisoners like their guards, the murdered, murderers. The racial difference is raised to an absolute so that it can be abolished absolutely, if only in the sense that nothing that is different survives. An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences. Politics that are still seriously concerned with such a society ought not, therefore, propound the abstract equality of men even as an idea. Instead, they should point to the bad equality today, the identity of those with interests in films and in weapons, and conceive the better state as one in which people could be different without fear. To assure the black that he is exactly like the white man, while he obviously is not, is secretly to wrong him still further. He is benevolently humiliated by the application of a standard by which, under the pressure of the system, he must necessarily be found wanting, and to satisfy which would in any case be a doubtful achievement. The spokesmen of unitary tolerance are, accordingly, always ready to turn intolerantly on any group that remains refractory: intransigent enthusiasm for blacks does not exclude outrage at Jewish uncouthness. The melting-pot was introduced by unbridled industrial capitalism. The thought of being cast into it conjures up martyrdom, not democracy.

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

#*#theodor adorno #minima moralia

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soldierwatch · 6 years ago

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ツ : An OC you created that you are proud of?

ஃ ➡ mun questions. // @lordamulu

oh no here we go !!amulu you asked the WORST ( best ) question.

this is a long post.

SO it’s not so much as a single MUSE, as a cyberpunk dystopian CITY filled w/ OCs i shamelessly adore—but of course, there is one trash boy i love above all others.

lemme tell you about dox & his home—

i’ve worldbuilt this place called the UNDERCITY.

it’s, as the name suggests, the SHIT-END of a city—a futuristic city ( in the middle of a desert ) that’s built INTO the ground - one-hundred levels, split into three parts : the UPPER-LEVELS :

it’s where the RICH & FAMOUS live—levels 100 through 87, each level receiving SUNLIGHT & FRESH AIR ;

the MIDDLE-LEVELS ( med-lev for short ) :

86 through 53 ; the level you live on dictates your SOCIAL-STATUS.

& then finally, the Lower-levels ; the Undercity :

levels 52-21 ( the remaining levels down to zero uninhabitable, UNCOMPLETED in construction, as it’s too close to the radioactive isotopes of the earth ). citizens can travel between the Upper & Middle levels freely, but the Undercity is completely BLOCKED OFF—there’s a massive barrier in place locking the people in there ; it USED to be an open area, but the Administrators of the city soon found the denizens of the UC - referred to as Slumrats ( originally an insult, but the people adopted it as their official epithet ) - were too DANGEROUS to be allowed freedom.

SEE, there’s this man down there named 5liip.

he’s the leader of the #1 gang down in the Undercity, {Black Bracket}. though the UC is chaotic as all-hell, deemed UNCONTROLLABLE, this man is essentially the KING.

( there are HUNDREDS of gangs running amok down there, with the top four being {BB}, followed by 7R0U8L3, then poisyn, & finally Carnival, all specializing in different consumer content to get ahead & earn their status. )

5liip is a MANIPULATIVE sonuvabitch, & DAMN he does it WELL—he corralled the UNCONTROLLABLE slumrats of the UC and kick-started an UPRISING that cost him his wife. the undercity had originally been levels 40-21, but with 5liip’s lead they STOLE twelve whole levels.

( his second-in-command is named Lobster, & I love him. he originally went by ‘Mobster’ until he dyed his hair red & everyone in the gang started calling him ‘Lobster.’ he speaks entirely in Leet, & I will explain everything in these parentheses : )

i’ve Of Course created gang leaders & their SiCs, but I’ve gone further and developed dialects for a language spoken - LEET. there’s three forms of it in the city : SPEAKING it, SIGNING it, & WRITING it. to SPEAK it is to essentially list your numbers to their corresponding numbers, ‘H-three-Y four-M-U-L-U’ ; signing it is just applying sign language instead of SPEAKING ; & writing, is, 0F C0UR53, JU57 7H3 7YP3D F0RM.

i’ve developed SLANG for Leet & it’s three forms ( 17 is both an INSULT & a CURSE, synonymous to both shit or bitch depending on context ), there are even MORE curses & insults peppered in common language ( grimesucker, gutterhead—i’ve created DRINKS & DRUGS, & most importantly the TECH known as ONLINE DRIVES.

At birth everyone receives an incision in their left arm into which is planted their own unique Online Drive. It’s a thin plate accompanied with a USB, a card, and a code. The USB can be entered into most home systems for accessing the Online Store - which is just the hub of things you can purchase with your drive ( movies, clothes, music ), you can play games, enter chat-rooms ( you can even purchase cell-like devices, enter your OD code, and it basically works as a cellphone )—it’s basically the internet. The card is how you pay for things OUTSIDE the Online Store - just physical shopping n’ such, like a debit card - all your Counts ( the city’s currency ) are stored on your Online Drive account. —the code is just your unique number - sort of like your SSN, but used frequently and all over the place if you’re unable to use your USB / card.

bUT SO— when the chip is implanted it sends out a surge of nano-bots that travel throughout the body to reach specific destinations and make homes.

The ‘infection’ of nanobots and the signals they send out affect the entire body - it’s how, when you purchase Hue Alterations on the Online Store, the changes IMMEDIATELY install. For example, dying your hair. With just a SWIPE across a holo-screen you could change your hair color from red to blue. Those nanobots get into every aspect of your genetic make-up and affect it how you want. …But body modifications are EXPENSIVE, especially inflated if you take the Online Drive route instead of making these changes yourself - hair dye, tattoos, certain physical procedures.

NOW LET ME CONTINUE & ADD,

There are THOUSANDS of people in the city that have powers, which is not a lot compared to how many people live there OVERALL— people aren’t BORN with the magic, just the POTENTIAL to GAIN it— it all depends on their genetic make-up, and how the Online Drives merge with them.

It’s RARE, but the signals the nanobots send out have reported cases of TRIGGERING certain genes, applying unique magical abilities that the Resident can take advantage of, assuming the activated power is something that can be CONTROLLED.

Every ability is UNIQUE, no repeated case having yet been recorded.

—as can be read in an excerpt stolen from my blog,you can see there are people with POWERS in the city - that brings us to DOX.

dawson cox, though ( you may have picked up on this ) NO ONE in the Undercity goes by their REAL name ; when you live in a TRASH-HEAP where ANYTHING can be stolen from you, your TRUE IDENTITY is the ONE THING you get to keep for yourself ( & sharing it with someone is a MONUMENTAL show of TRUST ).

SO DAWSON COX goes by the alias ‘Dox,’ & he was granted HEALING powers through his Online Drive—something for which he HATED in the beginning, viewing such ability as something ‘effeminate’ ( as a child, he’d wished he’d gotten something cooler like FIRE MANIPULATION, as Lobster has )—BECAUSE of his healing abilities he was picked off the street as a slumbrat ( obviously, what they call the children of the Undercity ) & taken in to live with a Mechmender known as Kejja ( a GOOD THING, really, since it’s extremely RARE for parents to keep their children, & most slumbrats don’t have homes—not that there are harsh weather conditions to worry about, considering the Undercity is basically a massive PRISON ).

Kejja had abused Dox’s abilities, abused Dox, until finally one day Dox just killed the dud & took over his engineering shop, turning it into a small little CLINIC where he traded MIRACLES for FAVORS ( or Counts, being the city’s currency ).

Dox mostly shelters the slumbrats, letting them cycle in & out of his home when they need it, knowing the streets can be DANGEROUS & kids can be STUPID.

in return, the slumbrats bring him back INFORMATION, given the kids of the city make REALLY GOOD spies—& down there, INFORMATION is valuable above ALL ELSE.

dox is SASSY & MEAN but goddamn he’s a FIGHTER ; stubborn & rude,but loyal as HELL to people who prove themselves WORTHY.i love my trash son.

uh.

i just blanked.

i don’t know what else to say from here—

LOOK, just—

this is the tip of the iceberg. all the information about this character & the city & all the OTHER characters can be read on the blog, GRIMESUCKER —

i have a lot of love for this place. thank you for asking this question. ♥

#amulu i didn't know how to NOT ramble. ;;#there's literally So Much Time & Effort & Love i've poured into this city. ;;#if you have the patience to read it all i will love you endlessly. ;;#more-so than i already do. ;;#lordamulu #ஃ ➡ ᵍᵉᵗ ᵗʰᵉˢᵉ ʲᵒᵏᵉʳˢ ᵒᶠᶠ ᵐʸ ᵖᵒᶤᶰᵗ ( answers )

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junck-ritter · 7 years ago

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hunlarpfag asks:

Do you know anything / have sources about what kind of "training" or level of expertise the very average guy could have with swords or other weapons, let's say kind of late 15th century germany? I mean obviously we have to differentiate between various kinds of peasants, towns people, full citizens, nobles, etc but it's as good of a conversation starter as any

I know a little. There’s big problems getting reliable information on it but there is a bit. I have read a lot into this but definitely not extensively. I will try to summarise what I’ve found so far.

This is gonna be a huge post, but it’s a huge question. If you read this whole thing you will have a pretty good idea of why fencing manuscripts never appeared until mid 1300s-1400s, as well. It may not be 150% correct, but I’ve substantiated everything to a reasonable standard and would love to hear counterpoints if anyone has any.

I would say that the level of training and conditioning that medieval and early renaissance people had would hinge on a few axis. The first one which remains quite constant through this whole period is social class.

You had peasants at the low end, nobility at the high end, and through the middle of the spectrum there were monastic classes and as the 14th and 15th century rolled on, an emerging middle class of city-dwelling proto-modern people, who did modern things like own their houses, have professions, and do things for fun in their spare time.

Before the rumblings of the renaissance started to make their impressions on physical culture around 1350+, the approach to physical training altogether was pretty poor for anyone outside the nobility. The reasons are complex but in summary it looks something like this:

The monasteries had a very influential position in terms of cultural transmission and dissemination of knowledge. They were the ones who were reading and writing most of all, and a non-trivial amount of cash was tied up there. They were also responsible for schooling of anyone but nobles.

Their primary concern was spiritual. If you accept Hegelian dialectic theory, in this period there was a swing of the pendulum as far away as possible from the excesses of Rome. Things like gladiator/olympic games were considered paganistic idolatry, and a reckless obsession with the worldly body to the detriment of the spirit. Physical education was not part of the 7 arts taught at universities traditionally.

Physical health was not totally disregarded of course, except maybe by some monks wanting to live an ascetic lifestyle. The prevailing idea seemed to be fitness to do your duties was good, but excess was a bit too much like worship of the material body. This is probably what made it OK for knights etc. to train, as it was a duty.

Peasant class generally didn’t produce much demand for physical culture. They would participate in festivals watching or joining in with dances and acrobats, but since armaments weren’t commonly available to them, fencing etc. would not be too common. Probably a little wrestling and stone throwing, but even then it was only on holidays and festival days. The social standings of the peasant class didn’t afford them much room to take up strenuous training programs for their own enjoyment usually.

In those earlier days the knights and nobility would be educated in a completely different way. From around the age of 14 they would be taught reading, proper speech, etc. Eventually taking up riding, dancing and some acrobatics. As time went on and they became a squire they’d do pretty hardcore military training. There was an expectation that a knight could mount their horse, in armour, without assistance of a stepping block or even using the stirrups. A knight should also be able to “hang” from their horse to pick things up from the ground, and would be expected to participate in competitions of physical prowess.

The nobility would also be training their riding and pursuit skills in the hunt, and this tradition stretches all the way back to ancient times. Hunting was considered extremely important part of military preparedness, and of course, the peasant class had no access to this activity and would be punished if they committed themselves to it. (Sidenote, there were eventually organised movements rebelling against this tyranny on theological grounds, and they gained some amount of momentum in the early renaissance, opening up the hunt a little more to classes under the nobility)

The Annales Lamberti of 1075 written by a Hessian, comments that the peasant class is generally unfit for military service, in contrast with professional soldiers. This might seem quite obvious, but the contrast was stark enough for some thinkers to suggest that using levies was un-economical. This is much earlier than the time period we are dealing with, but hold that thought because I will contrast it as we go on.

As time rolled on through the 14th and 15th centuries, things changed. Economics were different in the later middle ages and early renaissance. True city life started to exist for really complex reasons I myself only have a basic grasp on. I will summarise the changes that happened within the scope of physical and martial training as best I can:

More people began to live in cities. Their standards of living improved, population density increased, people began to have more free time and with it, excess resources at their disposal. This is the so-called “Burgher” class. With this, came a demand for recreational activities, and a market for them.

Guild system started to gain more and more influence on city life, while the influences of the clergy and state relatively dropped. Things started to decentralise and be driven more by market than by planning, including laws etc.

Reading and writing became less the domain of the monasteries. Important developments like paper and printing meant more people could benefit from reading and writing. There was in general an explosion of books on secular topics in conjunction with these developments, physicality and military topics were part of that. More people were generally getting themselves educated.

In the urban centres, there was special demand for certain kinds of physical activity. People didn’t have as much room for recreational shooting or running or swimming so there was increased demand for specialised activities which could be practised in smaller spaces. Fencing was one of those.

Along with these changes, universities started offering more physical activities to their content. Along with the spread of written information, fetishisation of the old hellenistic and roman athletic competitions and gladiator events became popular among the middle class. I.33 has been theorised by many to be connected to university fencing. One of the earliest known fencing fraternities can be traced to 1386 at Heidelberg university. By the year 1487 the first imperial license was granted for fencing.

In the middle of the 15th century Vittorino de Feltre founded a school which exemplified the idea of “L'uomo universale” - The universal man. The idea was that a human should take care of themselves holistically, mind/body/spirit all as one, which is in contrast to the approach of the monastics mentioned earlier. This was a relatively new idea at the time inspired by classical civilisation (again probably spurred on by more people having access to classics) and this is reflected in the activities carried out at the school, which included discus and shotting stones, javelin, wrestling and running, as well as fencing and mock battles.

At some point around the 1430s, The Ritterspiegel was written. This might be our best single source for how a knight was expected to be trained in 15th century Germany. It details that the knightly class were expected to be good at 7 things: Riding, swimming, climbing ropes and ladders, shooting crossbows, jousting, wrestling and jumping, and courtesy/table manners/dancing.

Basically, a knight in active military service would have usually been incredibly physically fit, training all these things as part of their job. Fighting ability is hard to quantify exactly, but we know that knights prized taking their opponents without killing them, and without resorting to projectile weapons, with sources from France indicating the latter fairly directly. It is totally likely that knights in active service would be good with hand to hand confrontation.

As the middle ages progressed, middle classes would participate in almost all of the “knightly” activities with the common exception of the tournaments. There is even some evidence that middle and lower classes used equipment similar to that which knights would train the joust with at times.

During the 15th century, particularly in Germany, a formalised system of town watch matured. As urbanised people had more and more exposure to physical training, more excess resources, and political situations within the empire changed (think free cities + feuds etc) the idea of using the citizenry as a defense force became viable.

This developed to such an extent, it became quite common that physical training and the maintenance of basic arms was a requirement for citizenship. Initially guilds would provide the central organisation for maintaining town armouries and training which would be called into action by ringing bells and raising flags when shit was about to go down. It is entirely likely that guys like Paulus Kal would be working in this kind of environment.

At this time the peasantry in the country started to mimic the civic defense organisational structure of the cities. Sources for this are naturally more scarce but the evidence we have seems to point to defense organisation of the country being less organised and less equipped than the cities (duh).

The next shift to happen was citizens being responsible for their own training and organisation. As the 15th century was drawing to a close, people living in urban centres would be expected to keep their own weapons in their own house, and be ready at short notice to present for duty. Citizens were obliged to buy their own gear, and in an emergency men would need to rally in the square while women, children, and the infirm would barricade buildings and prepare for firefighting.

At this point training was a little decentralised. Households of a street would be managed by an officer who was responsible for that street, each of whom would report to a quarter master for each district of the city, who in turn would be answerable to the captain of the guild (one, Peter Falkner, left us a fencing manuscript in the 1490s)

The normal equipment of this time for citizens on duty would vary from town to town and year to year, but most commonly it would be expected that a citizen could, when asked to, present themselves in a breastplate and simple helmet, with a polearm, a spear or probably more commonly a halberd, and a crossbow or gun. Many would also have owned swords as they were legal for citizens to carry. Polearms and projectile weapons were either forbidden from day-to-day carry, or were a mark of somebody looking to cause trouble, while a sword was a perfectly fashionable and acceptable weapon to carry with you everywhere (unless you were unlucky enough to be born a Jew, Woman, or non-citizen)

In the 15th century the Fechtschule, often coupled with a shooting competition, was a somewhat regular occurrence, and these activities were popular leisure activities for Burgher class which provided an added benefit of military preparedness, and so they were supported or at least tolerated by the state.

Of course shooting competitions grew more and more in popularity while fencing phased out of favour. We can read the complaints of P.H. Mair and J. Meyer about the dying breed of skilled fencers, most opting to practise their shooting instead.

What this kind of points to is we had a relatively short window in history where “common” middle class people were making themselves proficient with medieval weapons and fencing. Prior to that, fencing was of course practised, but firstly, we have no records of it, and secondly it was probably largely the domain of the upper classes of society, where fencing on foot was almost certainly of secondary importance to finesse in riding, use of the lance. and broader military concerns.

It would seem that in earlier periods, folk traditions of wrestling, boxing, and stick-fighting occupied the peasant classes, but comments from contemporaries indicate their viability as a fighting force was severely limited by their general fitness (and perhaps by extension the competence and methodology of their fighting education). This tradition seems to have continued with the lowest classes of society into the early renaissance, but as time advances, the middle class urban human comprises a greater segment of society as a whole, and certainly of people engaged in fighting arts. While we see a reasonably consistent body of artwork and literature about military and tournament deeds, information of the practical points of fighting is very lacking until the 15th century.

So I will reiterate on the point at the very beginning. The likelihood that someone in late medieval and early renaissance time had any exposure to physical or martial training, pretty much depends on their class. The 15th century is of peculiar importance and the effects of that can be seen in the record of information we have on fencing, wrestling, and so on.

We can be almost certain that the way nobles and citizens were trained for “fighting” was quite different. It is tempting to group fiore, vadi, and the “blume des kampfes” into a noble military tradition while Liechtenauer and the other German and English treatises may have supported a burgher class (despite commentaries on Liechtenauer making lofty claims about their fighting system being the secret and sole property of the nobility) - we of course have no direct evidence for that. But the duality for sure existed.

As for peasants, fuckin’, I’ll conclude by saying it would really suck to be born one of those guys.

#hema #fencing #history #fighting #combat #medieval #sociology #class

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kinetic-elaboration · 4 years ago

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May 6: Too Many Circle Thoughts

So I think the reason The Circle (s1) got into my head and is now going to be living there for a bit is that it’s just so damn wholesome, and I didn’t watch it for its assumed wholesomeness (I watched it because I thought it would be dumb and mindless) but that’s where we are. It was cheesy and it often tried too hard, and it talked up a big game of ~strategy and ~drama and judging books by covers blah blah blah but what it really proved to me was that people on average actually do want to like each other and be liked on a genuine level and will form friendships over rivalries whenever possible. It’s an encouraging lesson.

I have a variety of theories as to why it turned out like that, one of which is that the game is not really a social media competition and it doesn’t actually mirror real social media at all. Thus the lessons/assumptions of social media are not relevant to it. People aren’t becoming popular by appealing to the largest mass audience possible, as irl influencers do; they’re forming alliances, friendships, and partnerships in a supremely limited environment: only 7 other people at a time. Very little of importance happens, especially after the first day, in the realm of status updates, photos, new posts, likes, etc. It’s all about group and private chats. In other words, social media really may reward shallowness and superficiality, but on the show, people are rewarded for how they talk to other human beings. I do think there was an emphasis on the overly happy, overly positive genre of writing that social media has definitely spawned, and some of that was a little fake--as you can tell from also seeing people talk just to themselves alone--but tbh I actually think more of it was genuine than not. The language, or the code they were using, was that cheery, upbeat, bright, optimistic, over the top, emoji and hashtag strewn dialect of online speak, but the sentiments were real underneath a lot of the time, and that was rather heartwarming to me.

My other and more specific theory, though, was that it was Shubham. He might not have been the winner, but he was the center of the show; he made the season what it was and defined the tone and the unspoken set of rules that essentially governed who was eliminated and when. By which I mean, despite all the big talk about strategy and gameplay, on average, the players rewarded people who were genuine, and penalized those who were too blatantly playing the game. I think the reason they did this was Shubham.

This is obviously a generalization and not every blocking precisely fit the pattern. But I think it’s broadly true, especially if you differentiate ‘blatantly playing the game’ from ‘is a catfish.’ You can use your real photos and still have everything out of your mouth be, if not a lie, a calculated statement to get you to a certain place. And you can be using someone else’s photos and acting just as if they were your own--like Sean, for example, for the 12 hours she decided to catfish.

Antonio was one of the Players I thought was most blatantly playing the game; I can’t remember him saying anything that wasn’t for the purpose of gaining something. Yes, everyone thought to some extent about what their statements or interactions meant, but he seemed to have no other motives. Similarly, Karyn/Mercedeze was a catfish, but she was also a strategy player. She lasted a little longer than Antonio because she was a little bit more real, and she had a real friendship with Chris, but you could tell from her monologue outside of the chat that she was in strategy mode all the time. It didn’t serve her well. Adam was a catfish who only lasted as long as he did because he spoke as some kinda version of himself with the guys--even having only watched the season once, I suspect that he was saved by his male friendships, not his creepy flirting. Four of the five finalists were not only not catfish, but they were people who had pretty consistently just said whatever they thought was right, not what they thought would be the most effective strategy-move at all times.

So obviously there are some exceptions to the pattern, but imo, not strong enough to break the theory. Alana hardly counts as anything because she was eliminated based on almost nothing. They all barely knew each other at this point. If anything, I think what doomed her was Sammie being an influencer, and her ill-conceived “skinny bitches chat.” Sammie didn’t like that, and with so little other evidence to go on... there she went. Miranda I think was just a casualty of bad luck and, to some extent, the handicap of all later additions: that everyone else knew each other better than they knew her. Similarly, Bill was 100% a casualty of his timing. Coming in with another player, and leaving with another player, while having almost no time to distinguish himself from the superficially extremely similar Bro, Adam, was his undoing.

Rebecca to me is apparently the biggest wrench in the theory but actually, I think she proves it. She is a catfish who made it to final five. BUT.

First, I could argue she was more genuine than she seemed but tbh I have no idea; I still can’t figure out if Seaburn is an amazing liar or if he really is that shy/sweet and just only felt comfortable behaving that way in the game if he wore a female face. Or something in between. Like Karyn, he made some contradictory statements about his persona, strategy, and rationale.

So I won’t argue that.

I do think that Seaburn had two big things going for him as Rebecca; first, that her sweet/shy/nice persona was exactly the sort of thing that most of the players, coming in good faith, wanted to believe in and were drawn to; and second, her incredibly strategic alliance with Shubham, which came to her rescue especially when the first advantage broke down. Rebecca was a pretty consistent third ranking and I think that general popularity was a product of the shy persona. She wasn’t most people’s favorite-favorite, but they did like her. BUT, when people started doubting it--when her odd statements started adding up, and people like Ed, with no loyalty, voiced doubts that let other people feel safe at the very least talking amongst themselves--it all would have broken down but for that Shubham alliance. It was too well known that Rebecca was his girl (”sister” lmao ok; funny how that word didn’t come up until she started flirting with actually-kind-of-grew-on-me-in-retrospect catfish-Adam). And in fact when Joey had the decision to make between her and Sean, he chose Sean to get rid of specifically, actively, and admittedly, because his bro Shubham would be upset if he blocked Rebecca. And like, part of that was strategic because he didn’t want to break an alliance with a betrayal (not know that at that point it barely mattered anymore) but I think a lot of it was straight up friendship too. He didn’t want to hurt someone he cared about. I felt bad for Sean and I could understand her deep betrayal, but if it had somehow weirdly worked out that it was her or Shubham, I don’t think she would have thought twice about the deeper meaning of Joey’s decision, because it would be so clearly straightforward, and this was essentially the same, just in equation form. Ultimately, she was blocked because she came onto the game way too late to form any alliance that could compete with the relationships among the OGs and that’s that. I’m sure she couldn’t see it at the time, but it’s really to her credit that she would have probably made top 5 but for that Rebecca/Shubham/Joey triangle, because Joey speaking for himself, would not have picked Rebecca over her.

Anyway, so you see Shubham directly influencing the makeup of the top 5 and, somewhat ironically given his own value system and dislike of catfsh, directly facilitating the the original catfish’s entrance into the finale, but imo he was also behind the whole general ambience of the group, the greatest influencer, pun intended, on the value system that everyone roughly adhered to throughout the show. I’m not saying that Joey, Sammie, Chris, and the rest were complete blank slates, and maybe it would have turned out the same otherwise just based on general casting. But my theory is that some people were coming in with no other thought than strategy, and Shubham was coming in with an express mission to Be Himself with as little artifice as possible, but most people were somewhere in the middle: playing as themselves, trying to be likable, trying to make good decisions for themselves as Players, but also wanting to make friends, to be nice, to be personable because people like pleasant interactions with other people, not just because Nice People Win Popularity Contests. I mean the reason being nice is a good strategy move in a popularity contest is that people don’t want to be around others who are mean!! It’s not arbitrary!

I think Chris would have been the absolute same no matter what--frankly, even more than Shubham (who did have a strategic mind himself, and not only in that he had something to prove or a thesis to test), I think he was playing as his genuine, real self, without recourse to strategy, 98% of the time. But Sammie, Joey? I don’t know. I think they, and some of the later players too, would have behaved differently if the overall mood of the game were different.

I think what happened is that Shubham being ranked eighth was the real turning point in the game. Because he was so sure that meant he was going home--that his hypothesis was just wrong at its core--so he said things honestly and sadly simply because he had nothing to lose. That triggered honest, genuine, good hearted sympathy from these, I really believe, basically good hearted people, and the ones who reached out to him then both earned his loyalty, and came to genuinely like him. Thus, a cycle: the good feelings he engendered put him at the top again and again, and his loyalty to his core people redounded to their benefit again and again. People were not ranking him high to be strategic, though. Toward the end, they actively admitted that they were ranking him too high for their own good! They were ranking him high because they honestly thought he deserved it.

There are a variety of values the group collectively could have chosen in making their rankings: pure selfishness (penalizing anyone they thought could hurt them, or sabotaging people they thought others would like--though if everyone takes this strategy, it would soon devolve to chaos); attractiveness; personal connection; personal favor. But they seemed to pick being genuine, not necessarily in a (non) catfish sense, but in an interpersonal sense. Genuine friend versus strategic player. I think that’s because being genuine was Shubham’s most cherished value, and he made this very and explicitly clear, and everyone, or nearly everyone, aligned themselves to that both because he was (/they’d made him) so popular, and because they genuinely liked him and were won over by him and agreed with him.

Not that this kid invented thinking honesty was a virtue lol. I just really felt like it was a revelation of over-thinking that he defined the whole game.

But he didn’t win lol. Of all the players, I think Joey probably did deserve the title most. I think Chris deserved the money most, though, which was my only thing.

Well, that and.. Joey is my favorite himbo and I think he was for real. But every now and then he had moments that made me almost go galaxy-brain in wondering if this was the biggest con: not just axing Miranda and Sean directly after flirting with them, or thinking Antonio was fake, but piling on with accusations against Mercedeze and Rebecca, things like that.

That said, he was one of the premiere narrating-to-my-room contestants, and that monologue, which had no strategic value, was... 100% certified himbo. So, good for him.

#the year 2021 #2021: fandom thoughts

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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WHY

But there has to be; how many users make a critical mass? The way to do it. Steve Wozniak. Another surprise was that the hypothesis we were testing seems to be more politics, and less scope for individual decisions. It's kind of surprising that a trend that lasted so long would ever run out. If you understand how compilers work, what's really going on is not so much that this is only done to suspected spams. C was written by people who needed it for systems programming. Comparison The first person to write about these issues, as far as I can tell, succinctness power. Making money right away was not only designed for writing throwaway programs, but was pretty much a throwaway program is brevity. In the Valley it's not only real but fashionable. Another approach would be to include working unsubscribe links in their mails.

Hackers share the surgeon's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in poking about in gross innards, the teenager's secret pleasure in popping zits. So when a language isn't succinct, it will make a very big difference to the bottom line how many users they can support per server. You were also safe if they said they wanted C or Java developers. If you're really getting a constant number of new customers, but the relative importance of determination and talent probably do vary somewhat. And even more, you need to. And it must have powerful libraries for server-based applications, it could be that a lot of people continued to write machine language until the processor, like a bartender eager to close up and go home, finally kicked them out by switching to a risc instruction set. Given that you can use any language you want. To hack is a transitive verb—hackers are usually hacking something—and in practice languages are judged relative to whatever they're used to hack. I'm not sure even Larry and Sergey as one person. And if Lisp is so great not because of some magic quality visible only to devotees, but because it is the people.

If all companies were essentially similar, but some discover relativity. How much confidence can you really have in financial models for something like that anyway? This prospect makes naive founders clumsily secretive. They only have one foot in publishing. That was a social step no one with a college education would take if they could avoid it. You're lucky if your productivity is a third of what it was, and perhaps be discouraged from continuing. Advertisers were willing to pay more for better content, why wasn't anyone already selling it to them? We have to be designed to suit human strengths and weaknesses as much as shoes have to be designed for bad programmers is that there is now potentially an actual audience for our work. It does not, for two reasons. McCarthy thought of it. When they first start working on something, you must have it, no matter how inexperienced you seem or how unpromising your idea sounds at first, because they've all seen inexperienced founders with unpromising sounding ideas who a few years of being used only by a small number of early failures, the startup business, VCs can still make money from. So far the experiment seems to be mobile devices, but that is not, at least some people who know early on what they think will be an increasingly important feature of a good programming language.

And yet I think they are often mistaken to feel sorry for themselves. There's no reason a new Lisp shouldn't have string libraries as good as they could be, and to prevent abuse, auto-retrieval should be combined with blacklists of spamvertised sites. Values are what have types, not variables, and assigning or binding variables means copying pointers, not what they point to. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the members don't like it. Although a lot of money. But there is a qualitative difference between Silicon Valley and other places. This was why they were trying to get people to start startups who shouldn't.

Ditto for most of the Lisp programming done today is done in Emacs Lisp or AutoLisp. When you choose technology, you have to think about what the program should do, just make it faster. If he wants to be on your board not just so that they can advise you, but so that they can see different problems. But in Lisp the functions and macros I wrote were just like those that made up the language itself. A friend of mine rarely does anything the first time, is that source code will look unthreatening. I wouldn't be surprised if most programs started as throwaway programs. Among other things, an experiment to get things started. Though I can't off the top of my head think of any field in which determination is overrated, but the last I heard there were about 20,000. The most useful comparison between languages is between two potential variants of the same size today. In young hackers, optimism predominates. But recently I realized we can also attack the problem downstream. The assassin has to get past the police to get up to an apartment that overlooks the president's route.

But that means each partner ends up being more like an older brother than a parent. In fact, the language encourages you to do something trivially easy. 7, though there doesn't seem to work very closely with a program written in Lisp, we'd be able to solve part of the patent problem without waiting for the line to collapse. You have to invent a secret boss to force Mark Zuckerberg to buy it. To write good software you must simultaneously keep two opposing ideas in your head in order to hack Unix, and Perl for system administration and cgi scripts. Fortunately we've come up with several techniques for sharding YC, and the cost of compliance, which is the most influential founder not just for me but for most people you could ask. I don't know exactly what the future will look like, but I'm not too worried about it.

If there's one number every founder should always know, it's the classic villain: alternately cowardly, greedy, sneaky, and overbearing. And yet the Lisps we have today are still pretty much what they had at MIT in the mid-1980s, because that's where the word incubator comes from. That's why we advise groups to ignore issues like scalability, internationalization, and heavy-duty security at first. If one top-tier VC firm started to do series A rounds that started from the amount the structure of VC funds, not the needs of startups. The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely influence but command: often the expert hackers are the very people who, as their bosses or faculty advisors, tell the other programmers in the cafeteria about the problem of trolls. Hacker, Eric Raymond describes Lisp as something like Latin or Greek—a language you should learn as an intellectual exercise, even though it may feel like it is. Language designers are solving the wrong problem. Remember, hackers are lazy. The final contributing factor is the culture of the forum. Now that the term ramen profitable has become widespread, I ought to explain precisely what the miracle will be, or even make sounds that tell what's happening. This sort of trolling was in the spring of 1998, before Google was founded. The total effort of reading the Basic program will surely be greater.

This kind of metric would allow us to compare different languages, but I watched it happen to Reddit. It's so easy to oversee. And going to bed, and then thinking of the answer in the shower in the morning. Bring us your startups early, said Google's speaker at the Startup School. Even the most willful people are susceptible to it. Your watch? There are too many dialects of Lisp. At Yahoo this death spiral started early. When you only have a few users you can support per server. The assassin has to get past the police to get up to an apartment that overlooks the president's route. The last ingredient a popular language needs is time. Some we helped with strategy questions, like what the company is doing.

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disturbingbookclub · 7 years ago

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Pier Paolo Pasolini (5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975)

On Pasolini’s death By Rossana Rossanda

Il Manifesto, 4 November 1975

“The whole Italian press of both left and right speaks in pained tones as it weeps for Pier Paolo Pasolini, the most troublesome Italian intellectual of the last few years. Or rather, one who became too troublesome.

What he had been writing recently did not much please anyone. Not us on the left: after all, he railed against 1968, feminists, abortion and disobedience. Nor the right: for these forays of his were accompanied by a disconcerting reasoning, which the right found suspect, unusable.

Above all, his recent writing did not suit the intellectuals: for here they did the opposite of what they generally do, cautiously distilling words and positions as serene beneficiaries of the separation between ‘life’ and ‘literature’ – even those whom 1968 had given a bad conscience. Only one among them, Sanguinetti, in his piece yesterday, had the courage to say ‘finally we’ve shaken him off, this confusionist remnant of the 1950s’. That is, the apocalyptic, tragic years of division – which, for the leftist intellectual, were ultimately left behind. This near total unanimity is, of course, a second vehicle riding roughshod over Pasolini’s body. As with the first one, whoever has a clear conscience about it can say ‘he was asking for it’. For anyone who is not so sure, it is, instead, the last sign of this contradictory creature’s contradictory nature: and it is a real contradiction, not one that can be put back together again through some artificial dialectic. For if one thing is certain, it is that everyone suddenly recognising themselves in Pasolini’s thinking now that he has died – and died in this way – is truly our unloved world’s last piece of mockery against him. Because it is not the traditional homage to a deceased great man, nor the habitual absolution of a dead man hated when he was alive.

Everyone is now writing on the same register (in a box written in pained tones, L’Unità even sketched out a self-critique, while the Partito Radicale signed him up post mortem…) because they all today think that they can draw some advantage for themselves from Pasolini’s thinking. Did he not say that young people today are like the foam of a wave that has swept away the old values? That any collectivity must assume some order, a system of coexistence, a model? Everyone is in agreement on this, except that everyone attributes this order and this critique the characteristics that best suit their own purposes. Pasolini, having been the most outsiderish intellectual of Italian cultural life, through his indecorous death provided iron proof that this is no way of going about things. A proof so convenient that everything else can be pardoned.

I think that Pasolini would have spat on this fervour and all that goes with it – if it is legitimate to imagine such a straightforwardly kind man doing such a thing. Who, if he had pulled through, would today be taking the side of the seventeen year old who beat him to death. He would be cursing his name – but taking his side. And so he would continue until his inevitable, perhaps foreseen and feared, death came the next time around. But he would be on his side, because it was in the world of youth, among these creatures with whom he was most truly alive (‘I really know these young people, they are part of me, of my direct, private life’) that he obstinately sought the light. In them; and not in the world of order – which does not only mean police stations.

He came back to this point time and again, because in his view of the world there was no other way. His attack on ‘development’, on the values of consumerism, of profit, and of the sameness that they induced in a preindustrial society in which personal, non-alienated, not passively accepted relations could still prevail was – as in general in this line of thinking, with its illustrious exponents both Catholic and secular – as one-dimensional as the society that he criticised. He lived this society as the end of history, as oncoming barbarism, faced with which you can only try to retreat. Retreat, in as much as a refusal of this kind of ‘development’ – and who could, except the periphery, or a Third World not yet at this level? – would not have offered any anchor of salvation. Elsewhere, he did not see salvation: and for this reason Pasolini stubbornly kept going back to the borgate [Rome’s slum areas], and the more they escaped from him the more agonised returns there he made. All the more so because in all senses they must have appeared to him as a frustration, a contradiction.

Is it that he sought an authentic relation but instead established a commercialised one? That he sought an open relation but instead himself repeated the relation between oppressor and oppressed – the rich intellectual arriving in his Alfa Romeo and paying the young guy who is so much more fragile than him, socially and personally? Neither could the humiliation that he must have received in exchange (how many trials, with less tragic ends than his death, he must have gone through: mockery by one-time comrades; rejection; the resistance of he who feels used and thus rebels…) absolve him from the fact that he himself was part of this alienating mechanism. In which his interlocutor ever more escaped him, becoming ever more his ‘object’. Different from how it once was, when the young guy went along with him but maintained his own character, an un-integrated dimension that could not be subdued, like Tommaso in Una vita violenta. Now that was true no longer: the guy who killed him had little in common with the borgata resident of once upon a time. He ought to be released tomorrow, in the sense of the values that rule this society (beyond an elementary humanity) because there is no doubt over his neighbours’ testimony, that is, that he had no great desire to work – who has? – but was ready and close to entering back into the family order, which he had violated only temporarily, if venally.

Nothing in this story is truly what it seems. Not the depraved rich man who sought hidden love among the marginalised – no one lived his homosexual inclinations more simply than Pasolini, and he could satisfy them without risks of this type in a now more permissive society. Nor the depraved youth, who is nothing of the kind: neither depravity nor delinquency, nor even voluntary deviancy, set him in rebellion against the norm.

An accidental death in chasing a phantom, we might say. Satisfying for most, bitter for those who held Pasolini in esteem and respect. And the funeral now, with his glorious absolution by those who first built up and then exorcised this spectre. When Pasolini is today so praised, when – probably in good faith – so many people recognise themselves in his discourse, it is because for him ‘the other half’ that he saw as essential, and in which he placed his hopes, was baseless.

How many discussions we had, the few times I met him, and always the same: the ones he repeated just the same with Moravia. It is true that capital has dehumanised us. It is true. It is true that conformity to its model is monstrous. It is true that this is so powerful as a force that it is reflected even in those who reject it: in 1968, when he wrote his famous verses on the clashes at Valle Giulia, Pasolini saw in the student the product of a class who can ‘try their hand’ at revolution, while the policeman, the son of a southern farm labourer, is not at liberty to do so; and here he captured part of the truth. It is true that today, unlike yesterday, we can speak of abortion, not only because the feminist movement has ripened but also because male society is thinking about ‘economising’.

It is true that compulsory schooling and TV are organs of the prevalent consensus. It is true that the fascist is not so different from the democrat, in his cultural models, as in 1922. All true, and all partial: because each time Pasolini touched on these uncomfortable truths, he made a leap from the ambiguity of the present back to the unambiguous humanity of ‘before’, rather than identifying in the student, in feminism, in education, in conformity itself, the beginning of a way forward, though certainly only a hypothetical one. Pasolini grew ever further from the idea that we have to carry through this journey right to the end, and there to pick up again on the thread of a world given back to humanity. He could have been a sceptic, but became a ‘reactionary’ in the classic sense of the world.

And this is today being exploited – and this is the second car running over his body. After all, nothing of the cutting, violent value of his ‘reaction’ remains in the first, second and third pages in the book of elegies dedicated to Pasolini. He will have a bourgeois funeral, and in time the Rome city council will name a street after him. They will kill him far better, his real enemies, than the boy the other night did. Before dying, Pasolini must have seen in this boy only the dead end into which he had been chased, only his error. And to think that he sought the angel of the passion according to St. Matthew.”

#pier paolo pasolini

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stretchjournalemerson · 6 years ago

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Difference of Dialects

By Maria Vu

I was seven when I had my first taste of discrimination.

It had an unfamiliar flavor that left me with a puzzling aftertaste. I stood beside my father on a Saturday afternoon. We were waiting in line at a nearby Dairy Queen because my father promised me ice cream that weekend. Since English was not his first language, he spoke with a noticeable accent. When we finally reached the counter, my father ordered two ice cream sundaes for us. I could see that the moment he spoke, the tone and mannerism of the lady who took our order changed almost instantaneously from a helpful and inviting employee to one that was uncaring and cold. She took our order without a word and immediately went on to help another customer. We decided to take a seat and wait for our ice cream and after a long wait, she finally handed us our sundaes, but my father realized she had gotten our order wrong. He told her this and she looked at him in disdain and mumbled underneath her breath, “Some people need to learn how to speak proper English.” I wanted to give the lady the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was having a bad day or she was stressed and we just happened to be the unlucky people she took her frustration out on, but I had a gut feeling that wasn’t true. Needless to say, I didn't get my ice cream that day. It was the first time that I realized that being different tasted nothing like the sweet ice cream I was anticipating: it was bitter and unpleasant. As we walked away, my father leaned down towards me and said, “When you grow up, don’t be like one of those people.”

As I got older, I tasted this same unpleasant flavor, not only in ice cream shops, but from anyone and anywhere. When I was ten, the flavor came back in the form of a rude desk receptionist. When I was twelve, I tasted it in a grocery store with my mom. And once again, the flavor was accompanied by an ignorant stranger when I was sixteen. Over the past eighteen years, the taste unfortunately became all too familiar to me and it made me realize how inconsiderate people can be towards something that is simply unfamiliar to them. In June Jordan’s essay, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan,” Jordan talks about how dialects that are not considered “the Standard White English” receive negative reactions, specifically the negative attention African-Americans receive from speaking their community’s version of English, also referred to as “Black English.” Jordan’s essay brings to light how people who don’t communicate in “Standard English” are pressured to conform in order “to please those who will never respect anyone different from themselves” (Jordan 364), similar to how I have witnessed discrimination pressuring those close to me to suppress their ways of communicating. After many years of witnessing this, I finally understand what my father meant: people should be accepting of others’ differences. And in this case, people should neither dismiss nor belittle ways of speaking that they believe do not adhere to their standards.

One reason that people should accept different ways of speaking is because by dismissing ways of speaking that do not fit into what they consider “the standard,” they also dismiss the community’s identity. In Jordan’s essay, she explains the many qualities of “Black English” that make it different from the standard “White English.” From the way that sentences are structured to the way the voice of the speaker sounds orally, there are many elements that make it stray away from the “standard” and some might view this as not being able to successfully adapt to the proper way of speaking. However, what some might not recognize is the importance dialects and accents hold. The way a person talks and communicates can hold their identity, from historical to cultural.

In my own experiences, I have noticed that most of the older generation in my family speak with an Asian accent intertwined in their English. But behind their accents, there are elements of their lives that are not audible to the human ear: their cultural backgrounds living in Vietnam before the war, all the hard work they had to go through to learn English, and the struggle that they had to endure trying to establish themselves in a foreign country. One specific difference between the Vietnamese language and the English language is the use of honorifics in Vietnamese pronouns. This can often times be lost in translation and cause there to be an incorrect use of grammar and vocabulary between my family’s “Vietglish” (Vietnamese-English) and “Standard English.” In the Vietnamese language, the pronoun can imply a social relationship between the speaker and the referred person, and this is very important because polite speech and respect is highly valued in the Vietnamese culture. All of these elements come together to represent aspects of their lives that help to identify them, so dismissing one’s way of speaking would also mean dismissing their identity.

Another reason that people should accept different ways of speaking is because, by looking down on ways of speaking that do not adhere to their standards, they are basing a person’s intelligence purely on how they speak. In Jordan’s essay, she writes, “White standards, control our official and popular judgements of verbal proficiency and correct, or incorrect, language skills, including speech” (Jordan 364). Like Jordan states in her essay, the “standards” of what is right and wrong when it comes to the English language have been ingrained in our society for years, and most of this is because of what we were taught in schools. Intelligence is often defined by being educated in the American school system. One of the core subjects that students are taught is English. More specifically, the American school system emphasizes one correct way of using grammar, vocabulary, and the expression of the English language. Since proper education is so strongly connected with intelligence in our society, some people automatically assume that because one speaks in a way that does not adhere to what is taught in schools, they lack intelligence; this is entirely untrue.

For example, many immigrants come to America with hopes of achieving a better life. People, like my own family members, have to drop everything and start from scratch, but many of them have proven their intelligence by having successful careers and lives in their own home country. One relevant example would be the story of my grandfather’s own journey back in Vietnam. My grandfather was in no way born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Rather, he was born to a poor family in a predominately uneducated town. He had to start from the bottom and work his way up, usually all by himself, and because of this, he was lucky enough to receive an education later on in his life. My grandfather later graduated in the top of his class, created useful and meaningful connections with people, and became the governor of a province in Vietnam. In addition, after coming to America, he was able to create a good life for himself and support his own family in a completely new environment. He proved not only his intelligence in education but also through his social skills and ability to craft his own path despite his given circumstances. And although he does not speak “Standard English,” he has proven that he is not intellectually lesser than those who do.

When I was sixteen, a stranger was respectful towards my family’s prominent accent. When I was twelve, the grocery store clerk helpfully showed my mother to the correct aisle. When I was ten, the desk receptionist greeted my uncle with a smile and kindly answered his questions. That’s how I wished it could have been. But when I was seven, a Dairy Queen employee belittled my father's way of speaking and that was when I tasted the flavor of discrimination. For some, they could have been even younger, even more vulnerable, and even more directly affected by this unacceptance. They could have grown up silencing their own voice, telling themselves that their own identities do not matter and that their intelligence is based off of the standards of others. They could have grown up never understanding what it meant to be accepting of those who are simply just different, and thus starting the same cycle of prejudice all over again. But our attitude towards others’ differences now will be a model for what we choose to feed our generations in the future. So I ask you, what flavor would you prefer?

Works Cited

Jordan, June. “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You And the Future Life of Willie Jordan.”

Harvard Educational Review (1988): 363-374. Web.

#june jordan #maria vu #stretch2019

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amorremanet · 8 years ago

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@apolloniae Okay, first: skffghfk, omg wow, thank you!! That means a lot, especially since this passage is all still early-ish in the writing process for me (like… it’s not as early as the borderline stream of consciousness first-person POV stuff that I was writing with this project last summer, but it’s still fairly early), and I consider it pretty rough still

THAT SAID. omg, dialogue is actually something I both love and dread writing, because I never feel like I have the best gauge on how much is enough or if I’m shoving in too much exposition with it or what, but! I have a couple things I rely on

Not-so-fun secret first: that particular section might be a pretty early draft, but I’ve still revised it something like four times, from jotting the initial idea down longhand, through the different typed versions of this scene that I’ve written (which have gotten changed around pretty significantly), and revisions help a lot with dialogue, in my experience. They can be anything from small stuff like figuring out a better word order but mostly keeping things the same, to taking a really sketchy outline (e.g., “A says something about B’s shoes, B thinks A is being rude and what is up with that, and C is just happy to be here, why can’t we all get along” or full on snatches of dialogue, but written in a way that doesn’t fit the characters) and building the scene up from there. Either way, revisions are a writer’s friend.

But, okay. Speaking more generally: the best place to start is just getting familiar with dialogue, both in real life and in fiction. You really do need both of these influences to write dialogue, because getting more familiar with how people speak IRL can help your dialogue feel realistic — and in some cases, it can be really important to have that verisimilitude, e.g. when you’re writing a bilingual or multilingual character and don’t want to fall into some of the more tired, unrealistic tropes of how multilingualism can manifest in people’s speech; and when you’re writing a deaf character (disclaimer that I’m not deaf, and this fic isn’t the be-all and end-all of how to do this well, but I really like the portrayals of Steve and Clint in, “Trump Diet” by caloriebomb on AO3, and they’re pretty well-researched and well-written portrayals of deaf characters).

On the other hand, though, only listening to how people talk IRL isn’t enough. You can learn a lot from that, for sure — especially when it comes to things like how people present themselves from situation to situation, and how their speech patterns or word choices can change in different contexts (from full-fledged code-switching, to more simple things like swapping in child-friendly substitutes for swear words when you’re with your godkids/younger sibling/grandma/whoever) — but you also need to look at how different techniques for writing dialogue work or don’t in order to figure out how to best present the dialogue so that it helps tell your story.

Different writers also have different strengths that you can learn from, e.g. JKR is really good at blending summaries of things the audience already knows into new scenes (like Harry witnessing the, “Snape brings Remus his Wolfsbane Potion” scene, then immediately running and telling Ron and Hermione), vs. Neil Gaiman’s ability to make dialogue read as realistic and natural even while his characters are talking about patently non-realistic things like magic and whatnot (which I think especially comes out in American Gods, but I’m biased because I’ve been rereading it in honor of the TV series starting), vs. the way that the late, great Terry Pratchett had of really making the dialects, accents, and so on a part of his characters, rather than something pasted on (JKR can also be good at that, but sometimes she goes a bit overboard). So, reading as much as you can is good, and paying attention to how the different writers use dialogue will help you write your own.

Unfortunately, a lot of dialogue-writing ends up being a, “play it by ear” sort of thing. You can easily overdo it with flowery dialogue tags, or repeating, “said” too much. Having too much action between bits of dialogue can bog down the scene, but not having enough can make it feel like nothing’s happening while these people talk (plus, what characters do or not during a conversation can help characterize them as much as, or arguably more than, what they say and how they say it).

One of the biggest pitfalls for a lot of writers is that we put too much dialogue in, usually focusing on the parts of conversations that don’t do anything to help show who the characters are or tell the story. Like, unless your characters have a particularly unique way of saying, “hello” (and showing that to the audience helps establish the characters for us), or there’s something important about how they answer questions like, “Nice day, isn’t it?” (e.g., the, “Wonderful weather this morning” / “Yes, but I always carry an umbrella” exchange from CATFA, because it’s not actually about the weather, but is the password into the secret SSR laboratory), or, “How’re you doing?” (e.g., your character is someone who doesn’t actually respond to that question with some variation on, “Fine, and you?”), then there’s a lot of dialogue that you can probably skip.

However, it can sometimes be difficult to tell where the too much/not enough line is, once you get past that — which really just goes back to the, “Revisions are your friend and you shouldn’t be afraid of them. They don’t mean you’re a bad writer; they’re a part of making your work stronger and telling your stories in the best ways for them” point.

Finally, though, the best rule of thumb is just knowing your characters. Knowing at least a few baseline things about where your characters come from and how they present themselves are helpful for finding their voices and keeping true to it in different scenarios. A character who excessively tries to mold themself according to what other people want them to be, or who unconsciously mirrors those around them, probably won’t have the same speech patterns as a character who doesn’t give a fuck what other people think of them, or who might give a fuck but is too tired/upset/intoxicated/whatever to censor themself effectively. Characters’ upbringings and backgrounds can also come out in their dialogue, so being (more or less) clear on them can be helpful.

One pretty classic example of these ideas is the trope where someone who’s going about in unfamiliar circles may be able to emulate other people’s behaviors, pick up the common speech patterns, verbal tropes, and lingo pretty well, and so on…… but still has a particular verbal tic or cadence to their speech that they can’t shake.

For instance, my Sebastian, from that passage, grew up in a wealthy family that would be minor nobility if the U.S. acknowledged that we totally have a de facto system of nobility (and his paternal grandparents often make a big deal out of how they’re descended from a legit, “Our ancestors earned their title as knights in the service of the King of France before certain well-to-do members of the Third Estate started buying their way up into our ranks, back before the glorious Ancien Régime was even a Thing” noblesse d’épée bloodline). He’s been around folks from a mix of different backgrounds during his time in school, and more so in his adult life, which has involved a lot of hijinks in places that would make his Grandparents go, “Good Heavens, why are you slumming it with the lower classes” before focusing on the actual issues like,, “Why on Earth were you dating an ecoterrorist” and, “Oh dear, our grandson who wanted to join the priesthood when he was a boy seems to have developed a serious problem with opiates”

Like, real talk? Roland and Cecile love their grandchildren, they really do. But when Sebastian went to rehab, they tried to push for sending him to a ridiculously expensive inpatient clinic in California with a huge, pedigreed list of celebrity clients because they thought of it as Rich People Rehab. The explanation, “No, okay? If I’m doing this, then I’m going to this place in Minnesota that exclusively hosts LGBTQ clients because I really don’t feel like I’ll be helped by potentially being around homophobic fellow patients and/or staff”…… was mostly met with blank stares that were the human equivalent of the, “buffering… buffering…” spinning wheel of doom, and the response, “…But going there will put you in treatment with the common rabble, why on Earth would you want that.”

Thankfully, Abe and Marceline, Seb’s parents, were nowhere near this bad — but that classism and the emphasis on how We Are From A Distinguished, Noble Bloodline, So Act Like It were still part of the atmosphere that Seb and his siblings were raised in. Their experiences in schooling moderated it a bit (though less so for, say, eldest brother Max, who went to Posh Boarding School for all four years of high school, then did his undergrad at Columbia and grad school at Harvard), and Seb got a lot of moderation by learning the hard way that sounding too posh in a decidedly not-posh environment is a dead giveaway that you don’t belong there and might get you mistaken for a Federal agent. But it’s hard to completely shake that posh upbringing, and it comes out sometimes in his phrasing, his word choices, etc.

On the other hand, though, Seb is also a human disaster in ways that affect his speech (…and he’s multilingual, but that doesn’t fall under the heading of, “human disaster things”). The trick with those parts of him — like his anxiety and how it kicks into overdrive in certain situations (like, when he’s talking to Stephen, his sponsor’s curatorial assistant, who Seb is crushing on) — is finding a balance where it’s part of his characterization but also doesn’t get completely impossible to read (like the mistake that some people make when writing characters with stutters, where they overdo it to the point that you can’t tell what the characters are saying, but because the writers didn’t do this on purpose, you’re expected to know what’s being said).

Anyway, I’m sorry this got kind of long, but I hope it helps a bit! Dialogue can be tough to work on, but you can learn a lot from experimenting with different ideas and techniques, and just continuing to work on it, even when you hate what you’re writing. ❤️

#apolloniae #replies tag #writing is hard #writing advice #dialogue #mine: writing #…and now i need to edit this so it won't be a huge mess of html fuck mobile #drugs ref// addiction ref//#long post//

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