#constructed religion

[stagkingswife]

I’ve been thinking about posting/reposting some stuff about my personal self made religion. But you guys have to promise to be cool about it okay? Folks have been distinctly not cool in the past so I took as much of this stuff down as I could.

No trying to join my religion, no getting mad if I won’t privately provide additional information or confirm that you’ve been contacted by one of the entities that I worship. And definitely no “those are trickster spirits/you’re delusional!” I just want to have my little self made religion with my little unrecorded gods, and tell people about them because I think they’re neat.

[miochimochi]

First part of translating for me goes like this:

Subject Object Verb Link

The Creator stood upon the mountain and overlooked a frozen land. This is how it was in the beginning.

English is an SVO language which means that, typically, the subject comes before the verb which comes before the object. I don't know how to explain what each of these is as it's not as simple as agent-patient (the one doing the verb and the one being acted upon). We understand subject, object, and verb even if we can't entirely formulate the words to entirely explain them. "The dog bit me" and "I was bit by the dog" mean the same thing, the agent and patient are the same in both, but the subject and object switch.

SVO isn't the only word order either. We'll use the words "She hit me" in all word orders:

SOV: she me hit (Japanese)

SVO: she hit me (English)

VSO: hit she me (Irish)

VOS: hit me she (Fijian)

OVS: me hit she (Urarina)

OSV: me she hit (Warao)

I ordered these from most common to least common word order as well - and before going to Wikipedia for example languages! (Had SOV and SVO switched on the list initially though)

SOV accounts for almost half of the world's languages. But there's actually one other word order: free word order. This was the word order of Latin that would eventual be replaced in the Romance languages with groups preferring to use words in certain orders, most of them being SVO. The way that Latin did this is by markings that indicate what is what through a nominative-accusative system, one of the morphosyntactic alignment systems.

These systems are dependent on the syntactic relationship between various components of a sentence rather than placement of words within the sentence. The simplest system is the Dixon argument system:

(S)ole - the subject of a transitive verb

(A)gent - the subject of an intransitive verb

(P)atient - most times called the Object, but I like giving it more separation from word order, the object of a transitive verb

And the various alignments:

Nominative-Accusative - S=A ; P

Ergative-Absolutive - S=P ; A

Active-Stative - S¹=A ; S²=P

Austronesian Alignment - both S=A ; P and S=P ; A are true, people can choose to use either, although there are common triggers for each, working similar to voice in English

Direct Alignment - there is no distinction between S, A, or P, it's based on context clues

Tripartite Alignment - S, A, and P have their own separate cases

Transitive Alignment - A=P ; S

The most basic breakdown of the section chosen without any alteration to words to mark for anything is this:

Creator stand mountain overlook land-(frozen). This be beginning.

Marking them again for word position:

Creator stand mountain and overlook land-(frozen). This be beginning.

And now marking for argument:

Creator-A stand mountain-P and [Creator-S] overlook land-(frozen)-P. This-A be beginning-P.

Creator here is both the Sole and Agent in the same sentence since there's 2 verbs linked by an "and" which, in English, implies the subject being used again if no new subject is presented. Stand and Be are intransitive verbs where Overlook is transitive. Transitive verbs require an object for the subject to act upon where an intransitive verb can be acted upon by a subject without an object. You can say "I'm standing" and that's a complete sentence but you can't say "I'm overlooking" and have it be a compete sentence. "I'm standing" can take on an object with a preposition such as "on", but "I'm overlooking" always requires an object that is being overlooked and takes the object without the need for a preposition.

There's a few ways we can deal with the double argument:

Implied argument change - the subject is implied in the second part and so is the argument

Prepositional argument change - the preposition takes on the argument for the subject, so "and-S" would be its own separate thing from "and-A"

Repetition argument change - having to use the subject both times, changing only the argument

There's also other noun classes that can be used. For the nouns we have, we can go for a number of different possible cases (and this isn't an extensive list, just what would work here):

Creator : direct, ergative, nominative (not the intransitive case even though there's an intransitive verb because the preposition makes it grammatically act like a transitive verb and we could even make stand-on its own verb)

Mountain : absolutive, accusative, direct, locative, prepositional, superessive

Land : accusative

This : ergative, identical, nominative

Beginning : ablative, accusative

Could've missed some, but here we are. Thinking of cases, there's a hierarchy that languages typically follow, although breaking from these typicalities is typical of language as well. It's a general rule rather than a hard-set law.

nominative > accusative or ergative > genitive > dative > locative or prepositional > ablative and/or instrumental > others

Generally, if they're missing one of these, they are missing all after it. Such as, if there's no dative case, there likely isn't a locative, prepositional, ablative, instrumental, or others.

Verbs also have their own "classes" leading to what's called conjugation. Anything that changes a noun can even affect the verb form, such as having verb-a for a nominative and then verb-b for an accusative. The main ones to focus on first are gender, person, tense, and aspect.

Linguistically, gender has nothing to do with biology or psychology, although it's often tied to human biological genders (male and female). Could even look to a "spiritual gender" such as the concept of two-spirit in Amerindian cultures where one person has both a male and female soul and are, as a result, closer to the spiritual. That's why the culture building is an important part of language building. I imagine Mochian culture as having a belief in 3 souls: the genderless immortal soul that reincarnates, the soul that is inseparable from the body (and thus is what the body is) that rests when they die, and the soul that is created by memories that dies once they are forgotten. The memory-soul's "gender" is what they are remembered as and has nothing to do with one's biology.

Person depends on perspective. We all know first, second, and third person. First person is from the perspective of the subject "I ran home". Second person is from the perspective of the other "you ran home". Third person is from the perspective of an outside observer "they ran home". But there are other persons to go with. Could simply split the third person to have one case for denoting the topical person and the other case for the obviate person. Could even have a 4th person or a 0 person for an indefinite general referrence.

Tense is another commonly understood one. English has three - past, present, and future - right? Actually, no. That may be true in an abstract temporal sense but not in a linguistic sense. English only has two tenses: past and non-past. "I wanted", "I want", and "I will want" are all talking about want at various temporal moments, the past being "I wanted". But "I want" and "I will want" are using the same grammatical tense, the non-past tense. The word "will" is adding context about the non-past verb "want" to denote this as a future thing that is to come. But there are languages that do have a dedicated future tense so "I will want" would have "will want" as a singular verb with a future tense, so it's more like "I want-F". There are a lot more tense systems - and even tenseless systems which rely on context clues and "helper" words. Past-Nonpast is as described, Present-Nonpresent and Future-Nonfuture work similarly. Tenses work in two ways: relative or absolute. An absolute tense is relative to the "now", a relative tense is relative to another point in time. A relative tense can also be divided between a strict relative and an absolute-relative tense. Strict relative is relative to just some point in time, absolute-relative is relative to a point in time that is relative to the "now". "I ran", "I sweat when I run", "I will be running tomorrow" are examples of absolute, strict relative, and absolute-relative, in that order.

Aspect is another side to temporal marking. Rather than telling the point in time, aspect tells the finality, or lack thereof, of the verb. These do more than just say whether or not the verb is ongoing (continuous "I'm running") or complete (perfect "I ran"), it can also tell that it happened in a single moment (momentane "I sighed"), that it's done regularly (habitual "I run everyday"), that it almost happened (defective "I almost fell"), and that it is beginning (inceptive "I'm about to run").

So breaking down the verbs:

Stood : Past tense, perfect aspect of Stand

Overlooked : Past tense, perfect aspect of Overlook

Is how it was : Past tense, perfect progressive aspect of Be

All of these verbs had an ending, all of them happened before the present, one of them is the end of some that was continuous. Last thing I want to get to is adpositions and modifiers, which are divided between prepositions (preceding their complement) and postpositions (following their complement). The main thing about adpositions to look at is Hawkins' Universals:

Preposition ⊃ ( (N-Demonstrative v N-Numeral v N-Possessive ⊃ N-Adjective) & (N-Adjective ⊃ N-Genitive) & (N-Genitive ⊃ N-Relative) )

Postpositions ⊃ ( (Adjective-N v Relative-N ⊃ Demonstrative-N & Numeral-N & Possessive-N) & (Demonstrative-N v Numeral-N v Possessive-N ⊃ Genitive-N) )

Lemme explain what you're looking at...

If the language is Prepositional, then is the Demonstrative, Numeral, or Possessive comes after the Noun then the Adjective will come after the noun, if not then it can go either way. If the Adjective is after the Noun, then the Genitive will come after the Noun, if not then it can go either way. If the Genitive comes after the Noun, then the Relative will come after the Noun, if not it can go either way.

If the language is Postpositional, then if the Adjective or Relative come before the Noun, then the Demonstrative, Numeral, and Possessive will come before the Noun, if not then they can go either way. If the Demonstrative, Numeral, and Possessive come before the Noun, then the Genitive will come before the Noun, if not then it can go either way.

I just threw a lot of words at you so I should define things that you probably don't know (we all know what an Adjective and Noun are, right? I don't need to define those, right?).

Demonstrative : "this" and "that" words, indicating what's being referred to

Numeral : "one" and "once" words, indicating the quantity of what's being talked about

Possessive : 's, indicating the owner of a thing

Genitive : an expression of the relationship between two nouns

Relative : a clause that modifies a noun

And finally, languages have hierarchies in the order of a modifier. The modifier hierarchy for English so as so:

Quantity > Opinion > Size > Age > Shape > Color > Origin > Material > Purpose > Noun

You don't say "the grey round old stone", you say "the old round grey stone". In an agglutinative language, you could pile all of these into one word, mashing word pieces together to build a bigger word. "The old grey stone" could be theoldgreystone if English were agglutinative.

Now it's time to finally build this language... in the next post! I did a lot for this one, I'll get back to it later.

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

I have been summoned.

I absolutely love this topic, and it’s also something that I find really beautiful about the friendship between Matthias and Inej.

The dominant religion in Fjerda is a belief in many gods with the primary of these being Djel, the Welllspring from which all life begins. Interesting note, ‘djel’ can be translated from Scandinavian languages (the region by which Fjerda is mostly inspired) and it almost invariably translates to ‘demon’. (Please be aware I do not speak any Scandinavian languages myself, I used google translate so I may be incorrect). Through the presentation of Matthias Helvar we understand that, although there are multiple gods (to my memory it’s unclear if there’s a small group or a large pantheon) it’s Djel who is generally respected as the most important. It’s respect to Djel that influences aspects of Fjerdan culture, such as praying every time a tree is cut down because ash trees are sacred to Djel, or it being more culturally important to be buried instead of cremated so that one can “take root” as the trees do. They also say in the show, I don’t believe it’s specified in the books but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, that although Fjerdans leave a mark on their trees to signify the border between Fjerda and Ravka that they will not mark the ash trees because they’re sacred. Of course one of the most important aspects about our understanding of Fjerdan religion is also the warping of that religion through the Drüskelle, which brings into question the line between religion and cult. Theoretically, the Drüskelle are raised (forced) to believe the same basic principles of the religion that most of the religious people in the country are: Djel is the Wellspring and all life is connected through his waters, when they die they will be buried to take root with Djel, that they are loved and protected by their gods, and (I’m taking this from implication in the books) that their religion is the only correct one and it’s ok to label other cultures/peoples/countries/etc as “heathen” or “barbarous” because they follow different religions. Although the final point is of course unfortunate it’s also not entirely unusual within religious groups, which of course is why it’s so often played on in constructed worlds. However, what’s taken completely further is that the Drüskelle are told that the only way to be truly respected by their god is to take decisive action against Grisha people for their power, because it’s “demonic” and a warping of Djel’s gifts. Now first of all, none of the religious teachings we learn about as the reader even remotely suggest this, which suggest that it’s a baseless prejudice for which religion has been used as an excuse for so long that it’s become culturally ingrained and believed.

Although there is a cultural prejudice and evident hatred towards Grisha in the country, it’s almost exclusively the Drüskelle who take action (I’ll touch on some other situations later). The Drüskelle also have their own religious festivals, ceremonies, and limitations that do not align with the religion as a whole, and personally I think one of the most important things we can do to look at this is to study Hringkälla, the Listening Ceremony, in which aspirant Drüskelle are either accepted or refused into the order. The Drüskelle belief is that they are Djel’s chosen men, and this is perpetuated by the Listening Ceremony, wherein they hope to be spoken to by Djel at his sacred ash tree in the centre of the Ice Court. To even achieve the Listening Ceremony, the aspirants must first cross the ice moat completely unseen by the guard towers. They’re told that, if they are worthy, Djel will show them the way across the moat and to the sacred tree, but it is in fact older Drüskelle who tell aspirants they want to succeed what the secret is. The boys who’ve made friends and fit into the group well will then have the message passed on to them by the others, and it’s described as “a way of culling the weak”. Matthias even shows particular pride that he was personally told the secret of the second glass bridge by Jarl Brum himself, which I have a lot to say about in a moment. But first I want to address this “culling” of “the weak” because Matthias himself proclaims that he had no interest in befriending the other boys when he was applicant, and that he viewed the Drüskelle only as a means to an end (there’s a long discussion about the similarities between him and Kaz in this situation here for another time), so by the order’s own understanding of the word “weak” he should never have succeeded in crossing the moat. Djel never showed him “the path” and he probably never passed the message on to anyone else (although I can’t confirm that because he doesn’t tell us either way) but because Jarl Brum took a liking to him he was successful.

And this is the thing, ok, because by claiming that Djel will show the boys the path and then telling them himself (!!!!!!!!) Brum is claiming far more power than a servant of Djel and or Fjerda. No, now he turns himself into a messenger if Djel, a prophet if you will, just to reaaaalllly double down on that religious trauma he’s giving these kids. He is putting himself into the Messiah-like position; he’s saying that Djel sent him to them to tell them that they must kidnap and kill people to earn his love. Now beyond the thousand issues of this, especially considering that in his own practice Matthias would appear to see Djel as a benevolent god, Brum appears to either actually believe or willingly perpetuate this image!!!!!!!! When he’s talking to Nina at the Ice Court and encouraging her to trust that he is entirely hoodwinked by her disguise, he tells her about the Listening Ceremony and how the aspirants hope to hear the voice of Djel. And he tells her that this has always been the way Drüskelle are initiated, “since Djel anointed the first of us”. So there’s a few things to unpack there.

First of all Nina’s beautiful inner monologue throughout this scene just sums it up beautifully: “Sure, a giant gushing spring chose some guy to hunt innocent people down and murder them. That seems likely”. Although Nina in part is referring to her own atheism in this statement, which I’m going to brush past for now because I’m operating from the view of people believing in Djel, she’s also touching on the exact issue with any violence suggested by a benevolent god - or for that matter any demands from one at all. A benevolent god, as the name suggests, is usually believed to love all equally and not require anything to earn that love. Then there’s his use of the word “anointed”, which is very interesting to me because it implies the direct involvement of someone to complete the act of anointing, and yet they claim it was completed by their god. Now we know that the Drüskelle as an order have existed for thousands of years, so it’s more than likely that their exact origins are unknown, but if someone was in fact directly involved in the process of anointing someone as a Drüskelle and then years later it’s described as being anointed by Djel himself, then this would heavily imply that whoever actually committed the action was seen as, or presented themselves as, a vessel of Djel just as Jarl Brum seems to. It seems to me like an acknowledgment that this abuse of power in the position of leading the Drüskelle as a religious order has not only arisen with the actions of Jarl Brum, which I do however have more to say about in a minute, but are an institutional problem. (Catch the Good Omens 2 reference). Jarl Brum, however, is consistently described as having massively expanded the Drüskelle order, as having organised them like no-one else, and as having had then more actively and more successfully commit their violence than ever before. I genuinely believe this is because he has presented himself as a Messiah-like figure and effectively forced these young boys to believe that betraying him is akin to betraying Djel - just as Lars blames Matthias for doing so when him calls him a traitor to “you country and your god”.

But what’s so beautiful about Matthias and his relationship with his religion is that he never does. Betray Jarl Brum? Yes. Betray his country? Depends on your definition, but according to the law as it stands yes. But betray his God? Matthias Helvar could never.

Matthias really struggles for a period of time to separate the idea of Djel from the idea of Jarl Brum and the Drüskelle, because for him religion has forcibly become akin with his pain. When, through Nina, he is able to come to terms with the fact that he’s been manipulated and acknowledge that he was abused and lied to, he learns how to find a version of Djel to believe in that he is comfortable with. For him, and similarly to how some followers of the Saints religion believe their Saints were very powerful Grisha, this comes from believing that Grisha power, a power that he was told destroys but he has come to realise actually creates and enhances, is a gift from Djel and an example of his action in the world. I've talked recently about the differing presentations between Grisha power as "the small science" and the presentation of it as effectively magic in the King of Scars duology and how it's all about the way they needed to be perceived to give them the best chance of survival and this idea is touched on in Crooked Kingdom when Matthias begins to see Grisha power as a gift from god and therefore as a power beyond comprehension rather than science because that's how he needs to understand it to overcome his conditioning and accept it. One of my favourite moments of this is when Nina expresses hatred for her new power because it feels more like merzost than small science, and his response is "perhaps Djel extinguished one light and lit another" (or something like that, sorry I don't have the book on me to double check). This just so wonderfully shows that he's learnt to see power, no matter what form it takes, as something beautiful and as a force of life (therefore Djel, as the god of life - "Djel is the god of life, not death") rather than destruction. It's also super interesting that he considers the possibility of Drüskelle hatred being rooted in jealousy, saying how it must burn them up inside to serve Djel and yet see his gift in others. And that brings us back to the piece of human scum that is mister Jarl Brum: he wants to paint himself as a Saint-like figure (effectively a Grisha-like figure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) so that he can feel the kind of power he feels he missed out on whilst literally taking it from others.

Brief interjection to thank Leigh Bardugo for her genius 🙏

Inej follows the most popular religion in Ravka and seemingly all of the Grishaverse: that of the Saints. (By the way, I don't think the religions have been given specific names so I've not used them in this, but I've just forgotten please let me know!!) Inej's relationship with her Saints is a particularly interesting one because she specifically seems to believe that anything she choses to do to connect with them is a form of prayer, no matter the situation, and I find that particularly beautiful. Examples of Inej praying in unconventional ways include: naming her knives after her Saints because they are her protection, imagining her Saints present with her when she's taken captive by Van Eck (they inspect her bindings before she breaks through them and give her general words of encouragement, they effectively become her eyes in the room since she's blindfolded but imagines them present as she feels her way along the wall), reciting her knives names to comfort herself and before a fight, her mission to hunt slavers (she prays to them and it begins to rain, and she realises that she wants to bring a storm powerful enough to level all the pleasure houses in Ketterdam), and many more. Inej says herself that gods her prayers anywhere but it's men who seek grandeur when discussing the Church of Barter with Kaz, who complained "why do gods always have to be worshipped in high places?" whilst navigating the climb with his bad leg.

Something else I love about Inej's relationship with her Saints is that she never has any fear that they will reject her for anything that happened to her at the Menagerie, whilst many religious people in our world might because of the taboo or even shameful culture that can exist around sex in some religions, or in certain interpretations of religions. For Inej, she finds comfort in her Saints as an unwavering support to her victimhood and there is never any doubt that they would view her as anything other than a survivor, despite the subtle implication that the religion might have taboo around sex since she fears her parents judgement of everything she's done to survive "not just at the Menagerie, but every day since". The use of "not just" suggests a fear that there would be some level of judgement for this, and since we as the reader know Inej's parents to be some of the kindest, most loving people on the planet who would move heaven and earth for their daughter if they had to, I think it's fair to assume that this probably comes from a cultural taboo rather than a personal one. And even in this, the fright is far more prevalent about judgement for her time in the Dregs. Personally, I believe that Inej's parents will never question her and only let her tell them what she's able to say when she's able to say it, and I think they're going into seeing her again with at least some idea of what she's probably been through, as well as suspicions if what she probably had to do to get out.

The support Inej receives from her Saints is unwavering, as long as she does penance for the lives she takes. This is sooooooooooooooo important to me and it's so strikingly different from the warped perception of religion Jarl Brum forces onto Matthias. Matthias and Inej actually have a really interesting symmetry to them in some ways, because they both have to make adaptations to the religion they were raised on in order to find a place where they feel comfortable with it in the place their lives have taken them to. For Inej, this adaptation is to trust that her Saints understand her survival circumstances and therefore don't reject her for committing murder or other crimes. I actually think that coming to terms with this is one of the most important things to Inej's survival, because if she couldn't put herself in a position where her Saints still loved her then it would have genuinely destroyed her. As finding rekindled faith in Djel gives Matthias the strength of acceptance and the aim of deconstructing the Drüskelle to change Fjerda on a institutional level - "we'll find a way to change their minds" - believing and entirely trusting her Saints is in some ways (and I've touched on this before) what stops Inej from becoming Kaz. (I'm drawing from the fact that we know he prayed as a child before waking up on the Reaper's barge but his response to his experiences is losing any concept of religion and closing himself off from all connection. Inej is very aware that she was on the brink of losing the ability to maintain physical contact because of her time at the Menagerie, but whilst Kaz tried to protect himself and became debilitatingly reliant on his gloves Inej was able to force herself through pain and learn what she could and could not tolerate in her healing process through her faith and her belief in fate - this must have happened for a reason, so she cannot lock herself away, she has to trust in her Saints having a plan for her). And both Matthias and Inej to some degree are able to achieve their aim. Although Inej gives herself the painfully sad belief that her pain must be 'worth' something, it does lead her to saving others from the same experience, and although Matthias dies for his cause when he tries to change the mind of a young Drüskelle, his death leads Nina to Fjerda and sets in motion massive institutional change within the country since it will gain its first Grisha leaders.

Thank you so much @lunarmooo for asking me to do this, sorry it's taken so long! And sorry @inejs-knife for derailing your post a bit, it may not be 3 hours but this is pretty long

where are the 3 hour video essays on religion in the grishaverse specifically pertaining to inej and matthias and how they both deal with it in their own ways???? where are they???

[kingoftheu]

"In the beginning, there was One, and the One was All and None. They were in the image of every Race, and the image of none. Into every Race They poured a small sliver of Themself, and All of Themself.

They created the heavens and the earths. They called the universe from nothingness. They set upon the universe Their law. They bored holes into Their creation, and sewed Races large and small.

Unto every Race They sent Two, Two they sent. A First before Them, to prepare the way, and a Second after. And the First did not know for whom they worked, but the Second does, and so perfected the work of the First. And so every Race shall know the One that is All and None"

Variations on the Infinite Stars, the Holy Symbol of the Omnivitas Faith, the primary evangelical religion in a SciFi setting I may start cooking with. All, of these would be used by various groups from, “Theocratic Government” to “Church in neighboring state unaffiliated with the theocrats” to “bored kid doodling”

[son1c]

thinking about the sonic world and worldbuilding again and you know, sonic is a famous hero in the same way that tony hawk is a famous skateboarder but there's so many gods and deities in the sonic world that what if some people just thought HE was a god? he'd hate that so much. but it would make sense, and it would be insane if he stumbled upon something dedicated to him like that

[valtsv]

Hii have you read "Hell is an absence of God" by Ted Chiang? It made me think of your angelverse a lot...

i haven't, but i'm definitely going to now! i think there's a fundamental difference in that in angelverse, the existence of any god or godlike being is left deliberately ambiguous; even angels don't know if there was ever a god or gods. they've destroyed their own historical records so many times in the wars for the throne of heaven, and its changing of hands between the various political factions that make up the republic of heaven, that it's impossible to be sure. which is both a liberating and vulnerable position to be in, because it leaves a lot of people seeking to place their faith in something in a position to be exploited by angels and demons posing as false gods, or emmissaries of one. however, from what i've gathered from the summary, it would serve as fantastic inspiration for my writing and worldbuilding.

[chamerionwrites]

Intellectually I understand where people are coming from, but personally I do THE biggest double take every time someone boils down conservative Christian ideology (and/or secularized cultural reflections thereof) to a kind of dour puritanism that proclaims happiness is sin/suffering is a moral good/everyone should be miserable all the time. Like I get it! I do. But also, institutionally, I have never met a group of more passionate worshippers and vicious defenders of their own comfort than evangelical Christians. There is a reason the common thread between my various weird triggers more or less boils down to "toxic positivity." There is a REASON my exvangelical tag is #walking away from omelas.

[armedbirds]

weird shaped cloud over the sun yesterday afternoon prompted me to tell my sister about Varun in one of my attempts to get her to read tlt bc she's been putting it off for far too long, she's uninterested in the lesbians in space description but you know what did get her attention?

"that cloud reminds me of varun the remnant soul of a murdered planet"

what

"yea hes looking for his siblings who are also murdered planets but the one he's looking for is a human–not really human but possessing a human"

WHAT

I think we got her, boys

[thejaymaniac]

Alright I'll say it. The reason i don't believe in the Christian God is because men have the same amount of ribs as women. Major plot hole there, can't believe we let them get away with this

[ihavea-tummyache]

Poem #1:

[moscahbriar]

some design concepts from a religious movement! notes under the cut

the movements official name is a "Witnesses of the Sun", and its a a sect of Tagmiack Tegrian (Tegrian being the most widespread religion, and Tagmiack Tegrian the most widespread of the three primary branches) but due to its cultish tendencies - with some sects being full on cults - they're called the "Chastity Cults" in the regions they're found (mostly North Ohcea). the movement started in the country Skeana, in the North-East of North Ohcea.

both women and men are required to cover up and retain modesty - such as covering their necks - but women have the pressure of modesty much more strongly. its a quite conservative religious movement; part of this is that gender roles are strongly focused on (e.g. the typical expected hairstyles for men and women as shown). while its stereotypical for members to be wearing the hats shown, its usually only the more devout who actually wear them. the hats are a religious symbol found in other branches, too, with men's hats generally being taller. makeup and jewellery is highly frowned upon, unless it has religious symbols - such as the sun - and women's hair is to be kept braided up and men's short, except the beard

for names - there's a mix of normal names found in the area, and a mix of iconic/stereotypical historical Puritan esque ones (e.g. "Goodness", "Trials-and-Tribulations", "Humility", "Praise-the-Lord", "Repentance", "Faith", etc). last names often - but not always - follow two patterns; ones ending in -er ("Tanner", "Holler", "Silker", "Pauler", "Gallagagher", etc), a very common form of last name there, and ones consisting of two words into one ("Goodspeed", "Whitehill", "Blackbell", "Goodsong", "Makepeace", etc), another common form of last name. the first comes from -er meaning basically "from"; earlier forms of last names had this in front and separate, such as "ér Cornha" from these. over time the "ér" changed its sound and spelling and migrated to the end, as a suffix

[miochimochi]

Alright, time to build the language.

Let's play around with word order after figuring some other stuff out first, although I'm leaning towards OSV right now. Let's just remind ourselves the system we're working with

Subject Object Verb Link

The Creator stood upon the mountain and overlooked a frozen land. This is how it was in the beginning.

I'll be going with Active-Stative alignment, so S¹=A and S²=P, perhaps going with agentive-default fluid-S, so this would mean that S¹=A will be unmarked, as it is assumed the default position, where S²=P will be marked, as it is a change to the default. Nouns will have a Agentive and Patientive form as a result, with the Patientive Sole being marked like the Patient. But languages aren't strict rule followers, they have exceptions. I could imagine there being exceptions to the rule, such as a Locative being marked in both Agentive and Patientive cases, depending on which one is being x'd on. Speaking of cases, I think I'll go with Genitive (GEN - attributive relationship between two nouns), Dative (DAT - marks the recipient of an action), Locative (LOC - indicates location in relation to another noun), and Instrumental (INS - something being used by another noun) cases. For the locative case, the specifics of in, on, under, &c. is inferred but helper words could be used.

And here's the rule for adpositions:

Prepositional - Demonstrative, numeral, adjectives, comes after the noun, possessive, genitive, and relative come before the noun

Quantity > Opinion > Size > Age > Shape > Color > Origin > Material > Purpose > Noun seems perfectly fine to me, I guess I could change some just to change some. Could order them by objectivity I suppose. I could go objective to subjective

Quantity > Material > Size > Shape > Origin > Age > Color > Purpose > Opinion > Noun

Or the reverse

Opinion > Purpose > Color > Age > Origin > Shape > Size > Material > Quantity > Noun

The noun should come at the end due to the language being prepositional. So I'll go with subjective to objective for this, keeping the objective closer to the noun just makes sense to me.

Number is something I didn't really go over, that's my bad. English only has 2 numbers: singular and plural. But I'll do more than just the two. Singular (SNG) "one dog", definite plural (DPL) "multiple dogs", indefinite plural (IPL) "many dogs". The definite plural is for a defined or implied set amount, such as "dogs in the city" or "two dogs". The indefinite plural is for an undefined amount, there's just "dogs" out there and we're not talking about some specific amount.

I will also go with a tri-gender system of Masculine, Feminine, and Inanimate. There is a neuter as well, but it would be based on syntax. So this means I would need to determine what triggers gender agreement. The most common is vowel-based triggers. I think I'll go with /i/ and /ɪ/ for the feminine neuter and /a/ and /o/ for the masculine neuter. The masculine and feminine are together the "animate" gender for this language, but this doesn't mean only animals will get it, as animacy has been applied to what is inanimate, such as rivers, mountains, the sun and moon, &c. Pronouns would come from this, so He/It (it¹), She/It (it²), and It⁰ are the pronouns that come directly from this gender system but some others will be used as well. There will be both an inclusiveᶦ and exclusiveᵉ to various pronouns. Clusivity is simply marking whether includes or excludes something. English doesn't have this, if you say "we" one would have to infer by context clues if you're including them or if it's you vs them. So, we have I/me, youᶦ referring to a group, youᵉ referring to an individual, weᶦ including you, weᵉ excluding you, and they. It⁰ would be divided between 3 definites: d¹, d², and d³. These are the this, that, those, and these of the language. There's also the relative and indefinite pronouns which I would say distinguishes directness rⁿ for the relative which refers back to something "to whom it may concern, that which we knew what was to come" and r⁰ for the indefinite which is more general "to each his own"

Another thing I forgot to mention in my last post: articles. Articles are the "the"s and "a(n)"s. English has 3 articles, 2 marked. Definite, indefinite, and zero. Definite is like "the book", whereas indefinite is "a book", and zero is simply "books" as it's only used for plurals and mass nouns. I'll go with animate definite "the¹ man", inanimate definite "the² book", and zero which will be for anything not definite "the² book" vs "⁰ book".

Now for verbs... imma be pretty basic with tense: past (PST), an unmarked present (PRS), and future (FUT). Then I have to think of the aspects that I want to convey. I think unmarked would be perfect (PER - it has happened and still has relevance to the now). There will also be a perfective (PFV - it has happened at some point in relation to the now), continuous (CON - it is ongoing in the now), discontinuous (DIS - it happened but might not be now), prospective (PRO - it is beginning to happen), and I couldn't find one for this so I'm creating the name suspensive (SUS - it is about to stop happening). The discontinuous could only be applied to the past. At least, I can't conceptualize it being used in a present or future tense.

Word order is still there to figure out, though... so the general rule across the majority of languages is Object-Verb bonding. That means that the Object and Verb are most likely to be next to each other. So SOV, SVO, VOS, and OVS. So would Proto-Mochians hold to this? Most likely. But part of what should be figured out is where exactly their Euro-Asiatic ancestors came from and then we can look at how their languages developed. One idea for the first peoples of the Americas would be through ancient Siberian populations. So what are the Siberian languages like? Itelmen is SOV, Chukchi is free but SOV is standard, Alyutor is also free with SVO and VSO being common, Nivkhe languages are SOV, Ket is SOV. It seems that among Siberian languages, there's a tendency towards SOV, but this also may be a result of contact with other languages, such as the Turkic, Slavic, and Mongol languages. What of languages in the region in our timeline? The Salish languages are by and large verb-initial with the most common word order being VSO. Alyutor has VSO also being common, so perhaps the Alyutors (sadly going extinct with less than 500 people and less than 10% of that actually speaking the language) and the Salish might have a common linguistic ancestor? Highly unlikely, bordering on the absurd, though interesting to think about such a possibility. So we could take the other approach to the Salish for that dichotomy of the two worlds, but I think a fusion of them might be better. So what do we get with SOV+VSO? We could use both, and indeed this proto-language will be free word order, but for the purposes of where we'll end up, let's go with VOS as the commonly used word order and give that a shot. Can always change it later as a part of the language's evolution.

Next step after putting all of this together is to take the phonemes and these rules and put them together to finally (for real this time) translate.

[asterdeer]

tear the pitch apart

not really please be nice-ish but i'm submitting a pitch to a literary festival pitch war and i need to be the most specialest goodest writer so the pitch war runners will say nice things about me in front of 50 people and maybe decide to agent me. haha what

A farm boy follows a thief on an interplanetary petty crime spree in search of a mythical deep-space monster. The Monster At the Bottom Of the Universe is a sweeping space opera about the myths we tell to keep ourselves alive — and what happens when those myths come true.

it has to be 280 characters or less (i'm presuming including spaces a la twitter) and this feels so shallow and uninteresting to me but i don't have ROOM for more and i'm trying to follow their pitch construction formula. would you read this book, is the second line too cheesy, is it too vague (I CAN'T HELP IT), should i temporarily change the 41-character book name so i have a little bit more room to pitch the damn book rather than its title, do i need to start from scratch

[loveerran]

There are LDS folks who believe a) all Spirit Children of our Heavenly Parents are binary male or female, and b) everyone's assigned sex at birth matches their Spirit's eternal gender. Since LDS theology holds that our underlying Spirit is part of an eternal existence that has no beginning or end, the binary gender view is particularly significant.

However, consider that there are times sex at birth is assigned incorrectly or cannot be determined:

Perhaps 100 billion humans have lived. If only .02% have had ambiguous/divergent genital/chromosomal presentation, we're discussing 20 million individuals, up to 2 million of whom are alive today. At broader definitions of intersex, that number is more than 100 million persons alive today - about the same percentage as people born with red hair.

Use whatever criteria you want to determine whether a body is male or female, somewhere there will be an individual who rides the line between male and female such that you cannot determine which side of the line they fall on. No matter who defines the criteria, or what those criteria are, there comes a point where we just can't tell.

Which Spirit does God put in that body? What if, under given criteria, the body is 60% male/40% female outside and 60% female/40% male inside? What Spirit is sent to the body then?

We don't have to go far to find cases that raise questions. Castor Semenya was born, raised and competed as a woman her entire life, until it was discovered she was XY (and she still competed as a woman some after that). Other cases, like a 33 yr old man with a uterus, ovaries and XX chromosomes internally, but full outward male genitalia, or an XY woman who never got her period, are mentioned relatively frequently in medical literature and the news. Development factors, natural and artificial, further complicate gender and sex identity. We're still learning about neurological differences outside of typically identified intersex characteristics.

If someone who is reproductively female spends their entire life as a man, what Spirit did God send to that body? Because somewhere, somewhen, this has happened and it may be more often than you think.

Since we cannot make a blanket statement about the gender of Spirits matching assigned sex at birth, let's be more careful about what we say. The truth is we don't always know. The gospel is about ministering to the one, and somewhere that one is listening to you. Be kind to them. Tell them the truth, even if that truth is 'we don't know all the answers for everyone' (LDS Handbook 38.7.7). There is goodness and power in admitting to not knowing everything and in pleading with the Lord for further light and knowledge. Such honesty may give us less to repent of later.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

The word transsexual is not a slur.

Transgender just does not do justice in explaining our experience anymore. It has become too broad a word. If you’re going to say that you do not need gender dysphoria or to medically transition in order to be transgender, there needs to be a word that describes people like me who need medical intervention in order to survive.

The transsexual experience has much less to do with gender than it does with our own sex characteristics. Gender is kind of a secondary problem, but for us what it’s really about, is our sex, therefore transsexual. Because we experience so much distress over our biological primary and secondary sex characteristics.

That's why this whole narrative of, "gender is a social construct and therefore I can be whatever gender I feel at any moment," is so frustrating for us because gender is really a secondary problem for us where the main problem being our sex, which is why we have the need, the intense need and drive, to transition medically.

Do I feel more comfortable in the female gender role? Yes, absolutely, of course I do. But really, I could take on all those roles as a man. And I wouldn’t be any less of a man.

It is this incongruence between my brain and my heart and my physical body combined with a distress of my biological sex characteristics that drives me to transition. Not because I think, "oh well, I always liked Barbie dolls, or I always like the colour pink." And while those things may be true, it all boils down to our sex characteristics. That is the driving factor and motivation behind us transsexuals' transition.

Not making this video to invalidate anyone. I’m just getting a lot of comments of saying, "ew, gross, why would you say transsexual?" And the reason is because it is a definition that describes my experience and other people's experiences like me, and it is needed and it is underneath the trans umbrella. Okay, that’s it.

==

Reminder: every "LGBT" group has already removed dysphoria from the definition of "trans." It's now entirely about preferences, personality traits, moods, and fetishes: what are your favorite colors, what toys do children like to play with, do you feel more feminine or more masculine today?

People with a significant clinical disorder are left out in the cold as pretenders, narcissists, fetishists, perverts and other activists steal or manipulate the language they use to explain who they are.

I support the plight of transsexuals. I will not participate in the pretend games of "transgender"; you're an average person LARPing as special and screwing things up for those who have real needs.

[vergess]

It's the fucking ~revolution will save us~ rapture shit, it really is.

Westerners are so poisoned on their own toxic theology-turned-colonialism that they cannot fucking conceive of a Good End.

Palestinians must be grateful that Hamas slaughters them en masse for the goal of slaughtering all Jews, because it's ~better than the alternative~ of Israeli immolation.

Have you sick, twisted western animals ever fucking considered that perhaps your refusal to ALLOW a good end because of your own colonial needs are the goddamn problem?

No?

No, you think it's just the Jews, right? The Jews have a special evil deep in their hearts, yeah? The Jews, who were EXPELLED VIOLENTLY from every other place in the region are the problem.

Why?

Because your religion says so.

Your religion says Jews are evil and Palestinians are animals to be sacrificed in cleansing that evil.

You're all barbaric little mongrels.