#like I WANT that level of linguistic and historical and cultural details
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I feel like reading wuxia originally written in english doesn't do it for me after reading mdzs and tgcf. like obviously they have issues as novels and translation hiccups, but I just can't go back to awkward english-language wuxia-style stories that try to make things simple and digestible for english speakers. like I'm aware what 'authenticity' even means is a whole conversation too but thats what it feels like and I'd rather have these stories in their original language ig.
or maybe I've just never found a good wuxia-style english novel :/ bad luck from me
#as for the fact that I've never been able to get into any webnovel besides mdzs and tgcf and fgep. well I'm very picky#but none kf my issues were 'I feel like this is dumbed-down gruel bejng fed to me as an american'#like I WANT that level of linguistic and historical and cultural details#that was not the reason I had to quit qjj.#OH YOU KNOW WHAT. she who became the sun was not dumbed down. that was pretty good. I dropped it for other reasons#but maybe I should try it again. give the a physical book a try#cor.txt
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Hi Hunxi!!🥰 I just finished the first The Poppy War book and wanted to ask your opinion about something. Tho I loved it — exhilarating action, drug-fueled avatar assumption, rekindled ancestral rage and all — one thing bothered me a lot. As a native Chinese speaker (tho studying in the states, yay) I instinctively recognized much of the historical analogues + literary references, which made it all the more offputting to see place and people names like Nikara, Khurdalain, Venka & Kesegi. (1/2)
These names seem insanely incongruous with the Chinese landscape depicted, especially when contrasted with the 蘇妲己, 姜��牙, 哪吒, Fang Runin and other more obviously/culturally mandarin ones. Some of them (ex. Nikara and Kesegi) even sound vaguely Japanese which is so ironic given the history the book draws on. I’m not trying to nitpick but they literally kept pulling me out of the reading experience. Just wondered whether you had any thoughts on that? Hope you have a great 2023💕 (2/2)
hi anon! this is a fascinating question, because R.F. Kuang's deliberate decision to make the naming conventions in The Poppy War trilogy inconsistent (i.e. rather than all Mandarin-derived, or all made up) actually has a lot of layers of thought and craft to it on a metafictional level that tbh I never thought of until this ask??
Kuang has made no secret of the fact that the trilogy places 20th century Chinese history in a Song Dynasty-esque setting; her characters have direct counterparts in Chinese history, literature, and culture (most notably, Fang Runin being a reception of Mao Zedong). that being said, despite the fairly obvious expies in the world of The Poppy War (Nikara for China, Hesperia for the UK, etc etc), the series still remains fundamentally secondary-world fantasy
the genre distinction is important here: R.F. Kuang deliberately chose to write secondary-world fantasy, not historical fantasy. maybe she didn't want to deal with research and historical accuracy (unlikely, given her methodology in Babel). maybe she wanted to dig her hands into Song Dynasty aesthetics (extremely valid of her). maybe she wanted to be inspired by history but not bound to it, as remixing historical events into secondary-world fantasy reads differently from rewriting historical events and changing the course of history. maybe situating the violence and the war crimes of the narrative in a secondary world was critical for her writing process (she has, I believe, mentioned in interviews how in many ways The Poppy War was born out of her negotiating generational trauma and academic research). I don't know for sure! she might've said so in an interview, maybe not. the point is, The Poppy War trilogy is secondary-world fantasy, and that matters on a fictional and metafictional level
if you'll let me, er, quote myself here for a bit:
Particularly in the Chinese tradition, there are three thousand years of thinkers, philosophers, essayists, poets, novelists, and satirists that contributed to the culture. There are schools of thought that metastasize and spill over into squabbling branches that snipe at each other for subsequent centuries; there are critics and scholars and libraries full of annotations buried in intertextual commentary. Faced with this unwieldy, ponderous inheritance, each author working with the Chinese tradition has to choose—how much of the tradition will they lay claim to, to reimagine and reinvent?
Language, history, and culture are so inextricably bound together in any culture or civilization that borrowing a single element from the Chinese tradition—worldbuilding, literary references, character names, genre tropes—necessarily involves translation both figurative and literal. On a linguistic level, how do you render terms that lack an English counterpart? On a cultural level, how do you do justice to the tiny details and customs that form the fabric of a familiar-unfamiliar world? For secondary-world silkpunk like Ken Liu’s epic trilogy The Dandelion Dynasty, Liu files off the serial numbers on ancient Chinese schools of thought, pitting Ruism, Daoism, and Legalism against each other under different names (cheekily, he renames the Confucius figure “Kon Fiji” and comments on his stuffy rigidity), while Chinese poems such as Liu Bang’s 《大风歌》 Da Feng Ge / Song of Great Wind cameo in his text as the lyrics of “mournful old Cocru folk tune[s].” Layered through translation and one degree removed from their original sources, Liu’s reception of the Chinese tradition takes the historical Chu-Han contention as a springboard into a secondary-world fantasy epic that veers sharply away from its historical analog by the second book.
In contrast, R.F. Kuang calls directly upon classical thinkers and characters by name in The Poppy War. Though likewise set in a fantastic secondary world, The Poppy War sees its protagonists studying recognizable Chinese classical thinkers like Zhuangzi and Sunzi in school, while legendary figures like Su Daji and Jiang Ziya from 《封神演义》 Feng Shen Yan Yi / Investiture of the Gods (a 16th century Ming Dynasty novel) walk the earth as unspeakably powerful shamans. In doing so, Kuang angles her trilogy towards an explosive confrontation between history and modernity, science and magic, the rigidity of a traditional past and the mutability of a devastating future.
so! while The Poppy War clearly and lovingly borrows aspects of its worldbuilding and construction from Chinese history, literature, and culture, I think R.F. Kuang’s decisions to break away from, for lack of better phrasing, making the world “too authentically Chinese” in the series is critical to the text’s role as a diasporic reception of Chinese history, literature, and culture. the things that are familiar are familiar. the things that are unfamiliar are deliberately unfamiliar. the story may resemble Chinese history, but it is not Chinese history
being able to make this distinction frees Kuang to do much more exploration in the series, both in terms of following the implications of intensely destructive, magical drug-powered warfare as well as experimenting with “what if” scenarios that are absent from or adjacent to actual 20th century Chinese history. I don’t think it’s an accident that the characters and names that are most distinctively Chinese (Su Daji, Jiang Ziya, and to an extent Nezha) are the ones that are most associated with history, tradition, an older world order. meanwhile, characters with “less Chinese” names (Chen Kitay and Fang Runin, since in no conceivable variation of Chinese I know would “Runin” ever be abbreviated as “Rin” yet here we are) are the young generation, the receivers and remixers and destroyers and recreators of the very traditional culture that Kuang borrows for her worldbuilding. Kitay, Rin, and Nezha in the narrative inherit the Chinese literary and historical tradition, and over the course of the trilogy, they rewrite it in blood as Nikara limps into the modern day
I also think it’s worthwhile to point out that Kuang’s Nikara — fantasy China if you will — is very conscious of its diversity and colorism. colorism deeply shapes Rin’s childhood and resentment towards the world around her; other characters like Altan Trengsin and Chaghan Suren are deliberately and distinctively not Han. in diversifying the naming of The Poppy War world, Kuang destabilizes the image of a monolithic, Han-only (fantasy) China in a powerfully receptive, diasporic, and postcolonial manner
all of which is to say: I agree with you! the naming definitely pulled me out of the narrative when I was reading it too, but I think the choice to do so was intentional on R.F. Kuang’s part, since examining the naming as a level of worldbuilding and craft yields a lot of metafictional nuance and value
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Hellblazer Issue #20
Welcome back, ya’ll.
So, the cover is once again beautiful. I would love to have posters of some of these.
Ahh, Merc further buttering up Dr. Fulton by calling him by his first name. He’s so creepy, but she’s handling it great. Getting him arrested and getting away. Very smart, very brave.
Normally, I feel like kid characters are not well written and therefore are often written all the same; annoying and shallow. But I do like Merc.
Gettin’ into it now. Once again, if the Masons aren’t mentioned then it isn’t a paranormal conspiracy theory, is it?
“ВНЕБРАУНЫЙ!” seems to mean "bastard!" Though, I'm not sure that this is the right way to use it. In English, words that would be used as an insult might not be used the same way in other languages. Calling someone a bastard might be a major insult in a fight in English, but a different word might be used in that context in Russian. It might still be an insult, but not often used, or something like that. Cultural and historical things play a big part in this. In other words, instances like this can easily expose someone who isn't familiar with Russian language when it comes to everyday/natural use. Like when people translate things too literally or use Google translate.
To be fair, I know very little about Russian. We covered a bit about it on a technical level in one of my linguistics classes, but Slavic languages weren’t my area of concentration.
“ПРЕДáТЕЛЪ.УБИЙЦА. “ seems to mean “Traitor! Killer!”
This man did what I’m sure dozens of people have wanted to do to John. Should we call it a “public service” as opposed to an “unprovoked assault”?
So things are coming together now. It’s becoming very apparent that pretty much everyone in the project except for the few in charge have absolutely no idea what the end game is here. Somehow, I’m not surprised.
I have often wondered what the meaning of Jallakuntilliokan is. It could be just random syllables, but something tells me that it could be derived from something else. Considering Delano’s attention to detail, it wouldn’t shock me. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
According to Google Translate, "magi caecus dominari" means "blind sorcerers rule".
John here spittin’ the truth.
Now, unlike a lot of incarnations of John where he just springs “magic is real, lemmie show you!” on people, here we see him introducing the concept pretty slowly. It’s matter-of-fact, it doesn’t belittle anyone, and he doesn’t make a big show of it like some sort of stage magician (no offense to Zatanna, who is actually a magical stage magician). THIS is one of the things I love about Delano’s era. He makes John realistic by making his world, in many ways, realistic. People who subscribe to magic as a reality rarely just pull a magic circle out of their bum and start casting spells. He introduces it almost as a philosophical concept.
Got this fun little group here. Almost feels like a classic mystery now.
Beyond this point things pick up with a murder, a kidnapping, and...another murder. God, watching the kid get strangled....0/10.
I am...having flashbacks to Scooby-Doo again. Ya’ll see it too, right? No?
Words/phrases I had to look up:
Doo-Lally- deranged or feebleminded
Plod- walk doggedly and slowly with heavy steps. In context, I think he’s referring to a beat cop.
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Reviews as an Art Form
Back in the day when I had more time and patience, I used to review every Horrible Historical Novel I could find, which grew to a rather daunting task, since most HF of the past ten years churned out by American and a few British scribblers is utter crap. I do not want to compete with Dear Citizen Pixel, and I can't begin to hold a candle to her reviews, which are replete with charm, information, wit, and excellent analyses on many levels.
But if you are interested in pure historical demolition and snark of steroids, then look no further. I'm posting a review I did in 2015 of a book set during the apparently popular 1803 pre-and post Treaty of Amiens era, full of brave, intrepid British spies and dastardly French of any stripe. So pour a glass of wine and settle back. This will take a while. Killing the Bee King
PJ Royal [now re-issued with the author’s name as Jaymie Royal. Either way, she can’t write. And she owns the publishing company, Regal Publishing.]
My Review:
What’s not to like about a massive, 530-page tome with a cast of notables on both sides of the English Channel, not to mention spies, secrets, beautiful women, cunning politicians, a youthful former prime minister, and a choleric emperor? In a book so lengthy and complex, although it covers just two months, November and December of 1803, what about the history portion in this work of historical fiction? The author assures us in her blog dated September 29, 2012, that “Every aspect of the book that could be historically accurate…was.” And she says in another blog dated June 16, 2014, that she has provided “…a historical environment saturated with authentic detail that lends a vibrancy to the narrative without weighing it down unduly.” She includes a prologue for the book entitled “Historical Background: An Optional Read. England and France, November 1803,” to set the stage for the events in the novel. At the novel’s end we find an “Epilogue: The Historical Record,” where the author reminds us that she “sought to maintain the highest degree of historical accuracy throughout the course of this novel—from plants and architectural façades, to fashions, to food-stuffs. Many of the characters contained herein are historical figures, and their depicted appearance and personalities were also based on extensive research.” She admits, however, allowing herself the “fictional tweak” of placing Napoleon’s “self-coronation as emperor” in 1803, rather than in December 1804.
I quoted the author’s claims concerning the historical accuracy of this book because with so much insistence on accuracy, from plants to people and all points between, I was appalled at the extent of errors from first to last, big ones, little ones, and middling ones. Anyone with a scintilla of knowledge about the Napoleonic era, from the establishment of the Consulate in November 1799 until Waterloo in June 1815, would see them at once. No amount of pretentiousness, no faux literary prose as thick as treacle and as false as saccharine can disguise these bloopers. No pretending that this is some great literary work with its tortured, turgid sentences, images, metaphors, and other linguistic jetsam and flotsam clogging every paragraph and page can disguise the fact that the history is unrecognizable. The standard argument offered by some authors and fans of their work that “It’s only fiction!” or “That’s why it’s called historical fiction!” cannot logically prevail when the author makes such a concerted and repetitive case for her accuracy. Worse, I think, is the disservice done to readers who believe they’ve been treated to “the real story” not only with regard to historical events and people but also to the respective social and cultural milieu. I noticed that most reviewers have mentioned the “meticulous research” and the “mammoth amount of research” that allegedly went into this book without, unfortunately, understanding how very flawed on so many levels the history actually is. They were all swayed by what they believed was a fine literary style and use of language.
You have no obligation whatever to believe me or accept my opinion, and you certainly don’t need to read this review. However, this novel has 108 chapters bookended between a prologue and an epilogue, and every chapter has at least one or more errors of historical fact, language, social convention, political usage, or even physical location—I’d never before used the Notes/Marks feature on my Kindle as much as I did for this book. Thus I’ll cite concrete examples from the book, and you are free to decide whether you care that the author’s claims of accuracy cannot be sustained.
Let’s begin with the “Historical Record.” Right out of the box we get the mangled “Armée d’Englaterre,” apparently the author’s phonetic version of the correct French “Armée d’Angleterre.” Then we have the old canard of ‘“A nation of shopkeepers,’ Napoleon derisively said,” when the quote comes from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Section vii, published in 1776 This is followed in quick succession by references to “the English Isles,” and how Britain was facing her greatest challenge while she was “bereft of allies.” Apparently the author forgot to notice that Britain declared war on France on May 18, 1803, so the alleged lack of allies must not have mattered too much. However, for those who care, Britain had already laid the groundwork for the Third Coalition with Austria and Russia, with Sweden joining the next year.
The “Cast of Characters” also provides an occasion for mirth, and a bit of head-scratching. There’s Wolfe Trant, the Irish rebel supposed to be Wolfe Tone, leader of the United Irishmen, but since Tone committed suicide in 1798 while in a British prison, I guess his doppelgänger Trant carries on here in ghostly form. Malcolm Dundas is the substitute for Henry Dundas, who was one of William Pitt the Younger’s advisors and minister or war for a time, but under no circumstances would Dundas call Pitt “Will,” and Pitt would never address his subordinate as “Mal.” I forgot—one would actually have to know something about these persons in real life, and about social conventions of the time, to know how wrong that is. My favorite is General John Moore, who the author claims “served in the Seven Years’ War and the War for American Independence.” She also alleges Moore was in at least twenty-four battles/engagements/skirmishes, many of them in and around Charleston. Moore was a young lieutenant during the American war, but he spent most of the time in Nova Scotia, with a couple of forays as far south as Maine. However, since he was born in 1761, and the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763, I suppose Moore’s involvement was limited to waving his rattle at the enemy. William Brunskill was no more a “school friend” to William Pitt than he was the “warden of Newgate Prison.” He was the official executioner of London—executions there were carried out at Newgate—and of Middlesex and Surrey.
The villain of the piece, of course, is Napoleon—isn’t he always? Here he is “the self-appointed emperor of the French,” which ignores the May 14, 1804, Senatus Consultum naming him emperor, or the national plebiscite confirming it. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, often referred to throughout as the “duc de Talleyrand,” which is wrong on many levels, is supposed to be conspiring with the British to overthrow Napoleon because he is “disillusioned with Napoleon’s self-aggrandizing strategies,” a claim as factually incorrect in 1803 as is Talleyrand’s title. Joseph Fouché was not Napoleon’s “commissioner of police”—this was Paris, not New York, and the correct title was minister of police. Finally, we are presented with Jeanne Récamier, Parisian “society hostess,” traveling under the alias of “Primrose” as one of five leaders of the “French Resistance.” I truly feel sorry for the real Mme Récamier, a beautiful if somewhat emptyheaded woman who hosted salons from time to time, didn’t much care for Napoleon, but never lifted a perfectly manicured finger against him, to be portrayed in such a silly and implausible fashion. The worst part, of course, is this alleged “French Resistance,” a term used exclusively during WWII, and never at any time to denote opposition to Napoleon. Quelle horreur!
The author admits she “tweaked history” to place Napoleon’s coronation as emperor —or self-appointment to the position—in 1803. She never explains why, not that it matters, because all the history that flows from the decision to place the action of the novel in November and December 1803 is just wrong. All of it. I have an embarrassment of riches to choose from to illustrate what is nothing more than Bad History, something easily avoided by an eighth-grader spending three hours with Wikipedia. This author’s alleged ten years’ worth of research was time wasted.
A number of events occur during these last two months of 1803 that didn’t occur in the real historical world at this time, or even close. A group of Chouans, supposedly led by Georges Cadoudal, attempted to assassinate Napoleon by blowing up a barrel filled with gunpowder. Cadoudal ordered a number of assassination attempts, but he did not plan or participate in this plot, known as the Infernal Machine, which occurred on December 24, 1800, when First Consul Bonaparte was on his way to the Opéra. The seminal event leading to the establishment of the First Empire was the execution of the duc d’Enghien at Vincennes on March 21, 1804, not December 13, 1803. The duke was extradited—or kidnapped, if you prefer—from Coblenz on the Rhine, and not from his fiancée’s house somewhere in Switzerland. Talleyrand was minister of foreign affairs in 1803, and not plotting to overthrow Napoleon or, more historically correct, First Consul Bonaparte; he was most assuredly not Prince de Bénévente [1806], vice-grand elector [1807], or referring to Napoleon as dung in a silk socking [1808]. Napoleon did not assume the Iron Crown of Lombardy until May 1805. By November/December 1803 it is quite incorrect to say that thousands and thousands of men had perished under the Napoleonic regime—the only battles fought since Bonaparte became first consul in November 1799 were Marengo in June 1800, Hohenlinden in December 1800, although that was Moreau's battle, and in Egypt between the British and the remnants of the French army in 1801. Similarly the claim that men in their thousands—have to love the hyperbole here—were mutilating themselves to avoid conscription is false in 1803, but true to a much smaller extent after 1812. All the fatuous mentions of campaigns in Poland [1807], or the Imperial Guard having served loyally in more than twenty campaigns by the end of 1803 and earning the sobriquet of Les Grognards, are beyond belief. Thus the author did not “tweak” one bit of history—she mangled the entire historical narrative.
Remember that there is more to this novel than mere history—there are all those wonderfully accurate bits about “food-stuffs,” and “architectural façades,” and plants and fashions, right? Well, not at all. Here are just a few examples in the “food-stuffs” category: One did not begin a formal dinner with duck breast, no matter if it is sautéed; eau de vie is a colorless brandy made from fruit and not cognac from Brodiers; and there is no such thing as a “bottle of local kir,” when kir is made by combining crème de cassis and white wine and served in a glass as an aperitif, but not until the 20thcentury. [I just made myself a glass of kir royale, with champagne rather than white wine, so I can finish this review.] With regard to plants, it is certainly not true that the streets of Paris were lined with beech trees—those grow in northern forests for the most part. The streets were and are lined with plane trees, sometimes known as sycamores. Fashions don’t fare particularly well, either. The Duchess of Devonshire, le dernier cri in London fashion, is shown wearing what can only be described as an Ancien Régime style in 1803, while the female aristocrats gracing Talleyrand’s gatherings wear “stiff brocade.” There are also “elegant fashions behind gleaning glass” in a shop on the “Rue Fliette.” Well, no. Bolts of fabric, perhaps, but not ready-made dresses, and not on a street that does not—or did not—exist, at least spelled that way.
The world of architecture, whether in the artistic sense or as specific real estate is equally risible. Andrea Palladio had no more to do with the Tuileries Palace than Frank Lloyd Wright—the palace was the creation of Philippe d’Orme, with nary a trace of “neoclassicism.” Some forgettable character, an aristo named Adelaide, complained to Talleyrand about having to move out of the Louvre because Napoleon was turning it into an art museum. The fact is that the National Convention declared the Louvre to be a museum for the citizens of Paris on August 10, 1793, to coincide with the anniversary of the fall of the monarchy; the Directory added to the artistic treasures in the museum; it was closed for repairs from 1797 until 1801, and reopened with lots of new items from the First Italian Campaign and the Egyptian Campaign. So where Adelaide actually lived is indeed a mystery. Joséphine de Beauharnais’s house on the rue Chantereine was never “confiscated” by Napoleon before or after they were married, it never was in such a state of disrepair as the author claims, and it was never, ever used as a meeting place by the members of the alleged “French Resistance.”
This last architectural tidbit is so wonderful that it truly deserves its very own paragraph. The alleged spy Wolfe Trant/Tone/Whatever is fleeing from the Bad Guys through streets in Paris—many of which are misspelled, misnamed, or non-existent in 1803, as they are throughout this novel—and arrives at the Hotel de Ville, a “slightly disreputable establishment that rose pompously from the banks of the Seine. It overlooked the Place de Grève…that lately served as the home of Madame la Guillotine….Despite the notoriety of its location, indeed perhaps because of it, the hotel was immensely popular. It offered cheap rooms….” It scarcely matters that the guillotine was not anywhere near the Place de Gréve but at the Place de la Révolution further west. What matters is that this “hotel” didn’t rent rooms—it was the City Hall of Paris, and had been, in that very location, since 1357. In fact, every city hall in France, no matter the size of the city, town, or village, is called the Hôtel de Ville. And not one of them, large or small, rents rooms for anything other than the occasional civic gathering. Mon Dieu!
Just a few more jewels—or cubic zirconia, in this case. The author claims two people reviewed her use of French. I hope they didn’t charge for the service, since this novel is replete with errors, either in the use of words like lorgneurs instead of lorgnette, not knowing that “rue” is never capitalized, failing to distinguish masculine and feminine noun/adjective endings., and so forth. Although she didn’t say she had a firm historical grasp on social interactions of the time—the two months in 1803—I’d say the author missed that lesson completely. I already pointed out that Pitt and Dundas were not, nor would they ever have been, on a first-name basis. Lady Hester Stanhope, Pitt’s niece, would not have addressed Dundas or Wolfe Trant/Tone by their Christian names or asked them to call her “Hester.” Even more egregious, I think, is having Lady Hester say, “He is bloody miserable!” or “No bloody end!’ I do not believe any of us can imagine the Duchess of Devonshire, at a gathering in her London home, walking up to a guest and saying, “Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Georgiana….” And finally, there is the matter of William Pitt the Younger, standing in “the pulpit” of the House of Lords and reading a letter about the Irish Question. Pitt was not a peer of the realm, and therefore spoke only in the House of Commons.
There is so much more, folks, at least twice as many truly amazing examples of sheer awfulness as the ones I’ve highlighted here, but I’m done. I’d be surprised if anyone actually reads through this review. But I feel better for having written it , because there is nothing I loathe more than someone trumpeting about his/her historical accuracy in a period I know very well and producing instead a veritable welter of arrant nonsense. And what I detest the most is that readers often believe that it’s all true because they are told that it is.
--Reviewed on Amazon and Goodreads in August 2014, and removed in September 2019 when I pulled all my reviews because of some unpleasant incidents of doxing and stalking.
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So recently I’ve been interacting with activists in South Africa who are pushing for more decolonized conceptualizations of traditional African society and history and one of the things they were talking about is the separations of peoples into certain groups which doesn’t have any traditional precedent, specifically the separation of African peoples into three major groups.
The three groups have been historically called lots of things but most modern bodies of work will use the terms “San, Khoena (or Khoekhoe) and Bantu-speaking peoples”.*
These terms are problematic because they project colonial understandings of “race” and “ethnicity” onto something which doesn’t easily ascribe to either idea. The prescribed differences between the 3 groups are: The San are stone age hunter-gatherers, the Khoena are stone age hunter-pastoralists and Bantu-speaking peoples are iron age agro-pastoralists.
This is a major oversimplification of their relations and the purposes of this oversimplification is far more nefarious then it might seem at first glance.
Firstly, let’s talk about the relationship between the “San” and the “Khoena”. The “San” have lived in South Africa for approximately 44,000 years. They aren’t one singular group so much as several disparately related hunter-gatherer communities, the (near) full extent of which can be seen in this map below:
I say near full because there were “San” communities in the Western Cape and other locations throughout South Africa who’s existence has been recorded but only in the sense of being “pests” in the eyes of colonial governments and so their culture and language has been lost to the annals of time. (Also this only the South African “San”
The “Khoena” on the other hand possibly could have arrived around 2000 years ago and are similarly not a homogenous group. Now if you read the conclusion of the article, you’ll see that “arrived” is a reductionist term, so to speak. And this is where the first problem in dividing these peoples rears its head. How do you cleanly and neatly differentiate the “San” and the “Khoena”? Two issues stop this question from being easily answered:
1) Firstly there’s the language issue. The languages of both of these groups of people were grouped under the umbrella of “Khoisan”, first as a ethnic group by German Zoologist and organ harvester, Leonhard Schultze-Jena, then codified as a linguistic unit by less abhorrent person Isaac Schapera and then popularized as one of the four African language families by Joseph Greenberg. As you can see, none of those names are remotely African and the term is traced back to a man who harvested the organs of dead “Khoekhoen” and “San” who had been killed in the Namaqua-Herero genocide. Which is not a good start. This language family has been debunked as being artificial and is actually made up of 3 (or 4 depending on who you ask) separate language families, the families in question being: Khoe, Tuu and K’xa.
Here’s the interesting part - all “Khoena” languages fit into the Khoe language family. Okay so “all Khoekhoen speak Khoe languages and all “San” speak either a Tuu or K’xa language” right? I wouldn’t be making this post if that was the case. Out of the 11 listed languages on Wikipedia, only 3 of them (Eini, Khoekhoegowab and Khoemana) are/were spoken by the “Khoena”; the rest are/were spoken by “San”. So the difference between the “Khoena” and the “San” cannot be defined linguistically.
2) If it can’t be defined linguistically can it be defined genetically? Take a guess. But before I talk about that let’s go back to the whole “it’s reductionist to say that the “Khoena” arrived in Southern Africa 2000 years ago. The current theory basically is that cattle arrived in S.A from East Africa prior to the so called “Bantu migrations” and the assumption is that it was brought by small migrations of pastoralists from East Africa (see the link on 2000 years ago above for more details). These pastoralists intermixed with hunter-gatherers (“San”) to create a hunter-pastoralist (“Khoena”) culture (so they didn’t arrive as much as there was a meeting of cultures at that point). The thing is, the lactase persistence allele which is one piece of evidence used to argue this theory is not only present in all Khoe speaking peoples (i.e. both pastoralists like the Nama and hunter-gatherers like the Tshua) but it’s also present in both Tuu and K’xa speaking peoples although in lower levels (spoiler alert: It’s also present in Bantu-speaking populations at a higher rate than in Tuu speaking populations). So the difference between “San” and “Khoena” cannot be clearly defined through genetics either.
I could go into how culturally these groups had a lot of overlap too but I’d be treading over much of what I already have said and also I don’t have any good sources that goes into the culture of the various groups so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But I think you get the point, neither “San” nor “Khoena” make sense as labels describing two separate peoples unless you want to stretch the word Khoena to also describe Khoe speaking hunter-gatherers but at that point you may as well throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I’ll post a second part at some point talking about why “Bantu speaker” also is not a coherent group as well as why this three tier splitting of people is much more insidious then it looks at face value.
*Older terms used include “Bushmen” for the San “Hottentot” and “Khoikhoi” for the Khoena and “Bantu” for Bantu-speaking peoples. All of these terms are slurs today apart from Khoikhoi which is a mishearing of Khoekhoe.
I would also like to say that San is an exonym given to them by pastoralist peoples which means “one who gathers”. There isn’t a word in any of their languages which describes them as a macro-ethnicity. Because they don’t view themselves that way.
#long post#very very long post#lillypad.txt#lilly talks about south africa#mx. gum#wurmd#idk if you'd like it but it's anthropology related so I thought you might...#God this is a long ass post
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Hello! I was wondering if you had anything on Y Gododdin 😃
hey! fellow gododdin enthusiast! what a delight
i presume this is a request for reading recommendations - i don’t know exactly what you��re looking for, or how accessible these will be, but i’ve tried to cover most bases here. i WISH there were more literary criticism, maybe there is in the welsh-language scholarship and i just haven’t found it?
it’s entirely possible that i will have missed some obvious things here, i’m mostly sticking to stuff that i personally have read. if something mind-blowing has come out since the last time i did gododdin reading then it’s not here, i’m afraid!
but enough disclaimers. on to the recs!
text and translation:
for a translation, i cannot recommend enough joseph p. clancy’s translation as found in the triumph tree: scotland’s earliest poetry, 550-1350, ed. t. o. clancy (1998). this is fantastic. it’s poetic, it’s a joy to read, and having used it as part of a deep read last year where i went through the welsh text in detail i am honestly AMAZED regularly at how well clancy handles the many translation issues that arise. it’s loose, and it doesn’t translate every single stanza unfortunately, but for the spirit of the poem you really can’t do better
that said, if you need another translation to check against/to fill in the gaps, i’d recommend kenneth jackson’s the gododdin: the oldest scottish poem (1969). it’s a prose translation, so it’s harder to use in conjunction with the text, but it’s pretty clear and accurate
text-wise... things get complicated. honestly, the best edition is probably still ifor williams’ canu aneirin (1938), in terms of faithfulness to the words on the manuscript page. (i also really enjoy his textual commentary, but it is in modern welsh so not accessible to everyone.) the major problem with it is that you are not going to get the stanzas in the order they appear in the manuscript - he reorders them into groups of perceived variants. this also makes it harder to distinguish between the A-text and the B-text. AND it means that the stanzas are not in the same order as in any of the translations!
if you can get hold of it, i really really think it is worth having daniel huws’ llyfr aneirin: a facsimile (1989). the introduction is SO useful for understanding the manuscript context, and it comes with gwenogvryn evans’ transcription of the book of aneirin, which you can compare with williams’ edition if need be to work out where a stanza actually goes.
there’s a conspectus of editions which i think thomas owen clancy put together but i cannot for the LIFE of me remember where it is - if you think you’ll need it, PM me and i’ll see what i can do
dating, textual criticism and historicity:
t. m. charles-edwards, wales and the britons, 350-1064 (2013), chapter 11 - this is from more of a historical perspective than a strictly linguistic/palaeographical/dating perspective, but it’s a really good general introduction and i definitely recommend starting with it. if you read nothing else, read this. this whole book is a godsend
t. m. charles-edwards, 'the authenticity of the gododdin: an historian's view', in astudiaethau ar yr hengerdd, eds. bromwich and jones (1978), pp. 44-91 - this kind of lays out the standard view which everyone has been deconstructing ever since. we don’t know anything about what’s going on with y gododdin, but at one point we thought we did know something and this was what it looked like
d. n. dumville, 'early welsh poetry: problems of historicity', in early welsh poetry: studies in the book of aneirin, ed. b. f. roberts (1988) - and HERE is the deconstruction! a pretty good overview of the issues with “knowing anything” when it comes to y gododdin
p. sims-williams, 'dating the poems of aneirin and taliesin', zeitschrift für celtische philologie 36 (2016), 163-224 - i don’t have any notes on this and haven’t read it recently, but i remember it being good (it’s sims-williams so of course it is). almost certainly contains linguistics, but is probably also written readably
o. j. padel, 'aneirin and taliesin: sceptical speculations', in beyond the gododdin: dark age scotland in medieval wales, ed. a. woolf (2013), pp. 153-75 - if you can stand linguistics talk, padel does his best to make it understandable here and gives a good overview of the linguistic arguments for and against suggested dates for y gododdin. this whole book is actually very useful
g. r. isaac, 'canu aneirin awdl LI', journal of celtic linguistics 2 (1993), 65-91, AND 'readings in the history and transmission of the gododdin', cambrian medieval celtic studies 37 (1999), 55-78 - DEEP IN THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM. honestly, my poor attention span means i find it hard to pay attention all the way through these two, but if you want a really in-depth look at the possible relationships between the A and B-texts of y gododdin, this is the way to go
historical discussion and background:
charles-edwards in wales and the britons chapter 11 again
j. rowland, 'warfare and horses in the gododdin and the problem of catraeth', cambrian medieval celtic studies 30 (1995), 13-40 - this is a pretty cool look at the role of cavalry in y gododdin and while i don’t agree with all of it, i think it’s really useful reading if you’re going for a historical take on the poem
p. m. dunshea, 'the meaning of catraeth: a revised early context for y gododdin', in beyond the gododdin again, pp. 81-114 - makes some ESSENTIAL points re the question of: is catraeth catterick? moreover, IS CATRAETH A PLACE?
c. cessford, 'northern england and the gododdin poem', northern history 33 (1997), 218-22 - a historical perspective on the poem with some very useful points, comparing the situation as sketched out in y gododdin with what we know of the area at the time
m. wood, 'bernician transitions: place-names and archaeology', in early medieval northumbria: kingdoms and communities, AD 450-1100, eds. petts and turner (2011), pp. 35-70 - a welcome look at the archaeological and place-name evidence for what was going on in bernicia as it changed from a brittonic to a germanic-dominated area. really useful to have in mind both when reading the poem and when reading more literary history
r. collins, 'military communities and transformation of the frontier from the fourth to the sixth centuries', in the same book, pp. 15-34 - pretty fascinating look at the earlier background running up to the time period depicted in y gododdin, and the possibility of continuity between the roman occupation of hadrian’s wall and the post-roman era there. useful social/archaeological perspective!
f. h. clark, 'thinking about western northumbria', in the same book, pp. 113-28 - an early medieval english perspective on the area at the time, useful for comparison and completeness’ sake
literary discussion:
ifor williams, lectures on early welsh poetry (1944) and the beginnings of welsh poetry, ed. bromwich (1972, 2nd ed. 1980) - THE CLASSICS. an old-fashioned, not to say outdated, viewpoint, but that’s because this is the guy who INVENTED the viewpoint back when it was new! even now there’s a lot of good stuff packed into these and ifor williams’ prose style is a real pleasure to read. not to be missed
a. o. h. jarman, 'the heroic ideal in early welsh poetry', in beiträge zur indogermanistik und keltologie, ed. meid (1967), pp. 193-211 - likewise somewhat old-fashioned now, but lays out the classic viewpoint well and makes some good literary points. it may also be worth reading the introduction to his edition/translation, aneirin: the gododdin (1988). (i don’t recommend using it as an edition because he conflates the A and B texts and renders the text into modern welsh - this means it reads very smoothly but is quite a bit further away from what’s on the manuscript page.)
h. fulton, 'cultural heroism in the old north of britain: the evidence of aneirin's gododdin', in the epic in history ed. davidson, mukherjee and zlatar (1994), pp. 18-39 - a pretty interesting read, about the mindset expressed in the poetry, its purpose and its construction
this isn’t lit crit but i’m putting in my favourite g. r. isaac quote from his article ‘gweith gwen ystrat and the northern heroic age of the sixth century’, p. 69: ‘Koch writes that the Book of Aneirin’s ‘immediate milieu is… not the Celtic Heroic Age, but the High Middle Ages’, as if the ‘Celtic Heroic Age’ were a period of comparable historical status to the High Middle Ages. This is not the case, however. A ‘heroic age’ cannot be the ‘immediate milieu’ of any literary production, a ‘heroic age’ cannot produce literature, because a ‘heroic age’ is itself produced through literature (taken in the broadest sense). It is a literary product. The Homeric epics are not the product of a Bronze Age Achaean heroic age, but vice versa. The Irish Ulster Cycle is not the product of an Iron Age, pre-Christian heroic age, but vice versa. And the medieval Welsh poems of ‘Aneirin’ and ��Taliesin’ (and Triads, sections of the Historia Brittonum, and much else) are not products of a sixth-century North British heroic age, but vice versa.’
honestly there just is not nearly enough lit crit for y gododdin, in english at least, especially to explain cool shit that the welsh text is doing that isn’t visible in the translation, and/or things that could be subversive or ambiguous about it - so, i don’t know what your level of engagement with the medieval welsh text is, but if you’re curious, if you want to know more about what’s going on in a specific stanza (or which stanzas are extended puns), or just which things i’ve been dying to yell about all year, PLEASE message me and I! WILL! YELL!
articles which are almost certainly good and useful but it’s been too long since i’ve read them to say:
t. o. clancy, 'the kingdoms of the north: poetry, places, politics', in beyond the gododdin again, pp. 153-75
m. haycock, 'early welsh poets look north', likewise in beyond the gododdin, pp. 115-52
FINAL NOTE:
one of the problems with translations is that they give an impression of way more certainty about the meaning of the text... than is actually there. you’re pretty safe with clancy or kenneth jackson, but tread carefully. again, i don’t know your level of engagement with medieval welsh, but if you want to know if there are any major textual issues with a stanza, hmu and i will gladly consult my copious textual notes! but in general, BEWARE of basing anything too heavily on the following groups of stanzas:
A40, A41, B5, B6 (Am drynni drylaw drylenn; Clancy ‘For the feast, most sad, disastrous’)
A42, B25, B35 (Eur ar vur caer; Clancy ‘Gold on fortress wall’)
A48, B3, B24 (Llech leutu tud leudvre; Clancy ‘Standing stone in cleared ground’)
A62, B14, B15, B16, B36 (Angor dewr daen; Clancy ‘Anchor, Deifr-router’)
the Gorchanau if you’re interacting with those, especially the Gwarchan Maeldderw - if anyone tells you they know exactly what is going on in these, do not believe them. isaac has a full translation of the gwarchan maeldderw in cambrian medieval studies 44, and it’s useful, but i’m not by ANY means completely convinced by it, so tread carefully.
the more stanzas there are in a group of variants (or at least a group that shares lines), the more likely it is that those stanzas are going to be SUPER DUPER TEXTUALLY FUCKED UP, is a pretty good rule of thumb.
#y gododdin#cicely speaks#academic book recs#asnc things#I AM SO DEEP IN THE QUESTIONABLE ETYMOLOGIES AND SADNESS ABOUT DEAD YOUNG MEN#i have PAINFULLY detailed textual notes on this whole fuckin thing#behold my continuing love affair with ifor williams' prose in welsh and english#ANYWAY#hmu for GODODDIN YELLING#it may be yelling of sadness about dead dudes! it may be yelling of frustration about FUCKING SCRIBES!#who can say!#violetcancerian
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Is Japanese internet slang full of fish? - My washed-up linguistic theory.
A couple of weeks ago I was looking at a glossary of Final Fantasy 14 Japanese internet slang a friend had sent me, and I was struck by an idea: Japanese has a really wide lexicon of fish and fishing related words. Does Japanese internet slang also have more fish related words than English internet slang does? The idea made me laugh, and that was enough to want to try to pursue it.
The Japanese lexicon does, in fact, have a very extensive vocabulary related to fish and fishing. Masayoshi Shibatani (1990) wrote, ‘The vocabulary of a language reflects the cultural and socio-economic concerns of its speakers, and the Japanese lexicon is no exception to this truism.’ He explains that fishing was one of the primary socio-economic activities in traditional Japanese society, and therefore the native Japanese vocabulary has a great number of words and expressions relating to fish. Of course, we have a fairly wide fishing vocabulary in English as well, but Japanese goes into further detail. Shibatani gives examples of 9 different Japanese words for a fish that we would refer to simply as ‘yellowtail’ in all cases in English - in Japanese there are different words for it depending on its size.
Another wonderful piece of evidence of the abundance of fish words in Japanese is a 1940s ‘Glossary of Japanese Fisheries Terms’ that I found on the American National Marine Fisheries Service Scientific Publications Office website. In March 1947, J. A. Krug, Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior and Albert M. Day, Director of the Fish and Wildlife service, published a leaflet titled, ‘Glossary of Japanese Fisheries Terms.’ It is a dictionary of fishing terms and names of fish, including both Japanese to English and English to Japanese translations.
The introduction reads, ‘Fish and fishing play such an important role in Japanese life that an extensive and complicated fisheries vocabulary has evolved. Each of the hundreds of kinds of fish, shellfish, and seaweed has several vernacular names, the wide assortment of prepared seafood adds many more words; and the variety of fishing gear has a large specialized nomenclature.’ Clearly, the vocabulary related to fishing in Japan was so specific that it didn’t do well enough simply to translate it to the closest English word - a specialised glossary was needed so that American fishermen could understand precisely what the Japanese fishermen were referring to. (If you, like me, are quite enamoured by historical, niche glossaries or dictionaries, you can read the Glossary of Japanese Fisheries Terms here.)
With this evidence that Japanese does have more words to do with fish and fishing than English does, I wondered if perhaps the extensive fish-related lexicon in Japanese affected the creation of slang terms, particularly internet slang terms. While there is no definitive corpus or complete dictionary of Japanese internet slang, several fish-related phrases came to mind. For example, 雑魚 zako, literally meaning ‘small fish’ is a commonly used phrase in casual Japanese which means ‘a wimp’ or an ‘unimportant person.’ This is also used in MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, e.g. Final Fantasy 14) lingo to mean ‘low-level NPC (Non Player Character) enemies.’ Of course, we have the word ‘small fry’ in English which has essentially the same meaning of ‘unimportant person’, but we do not use it in the same context in online gaming. (I have been informed that in English we might call these weak enemies ‘trash mob’ or ‘slimes’ - a reference to the slime blob enemies in the game Dragon Quest.) I also recalled that 鯖 saba - ‘mackerel’ is slang for the word ‘server’ - a lovely wordplay on the loanword sābā.
I then asked on twitter if anyone could help me to come up with some more Japanese fish-related internet words. I had a few interesting replies, suggesting 釣り tsuri (fishing) which means ‘trolling’, accompanied with 釣り師 tsurishi (angler) for ‘troll’, and エサ esa (bait) and 釣り針 tsuribari (fishhook) , which both refer to the content used by a troll to entice other users into replying angrily. Although we might also call this practice ‘baiting’ in English, and we of course have the famous term ‘clickbait’ for baiting people into clicking a link, the metaphor is further expanded upon in Japanese internet language. When a troll gets the responses they were hoping for, other net users may say something like ‘大漁だな’ tairyou da na - ‘That’s a big haul.’
I was also told about ウェブ魚拓 webu gyotaku (web fish printing), which is a method of preserving the content of a website in a snapshot, like the service Wayback Machine. Gyotaku is the traditional Japanese practice of dipping a fish in ink to create a print, which could record a fisherman's catch they are particularly proud of, or simply make a nice picture of a fish. (Incidentally, the web address for the website where one can access webu gyotaku is ‘megalodon.jp.')
This is not an incredibly extensive list, but I was pleasantly surprised with the number of responses I received. I also tried to come up with a list of fish-related English internet terms, but all I could think of was ‘phishing’, ‘clickbait’, and ‘catfish.’ None of these are slang as such, but created terms for phenomena that only happen online. (They respectively mean, ‘sending scam emails’, ‘using sensationalised or misleading content to entice users to click on something’, and ‘pretending to be someone else on online dating sites.’) I suppose at a stretch I could actually include ‘the net’ into my list of fishing-related internet vocabulary.
I don’t, however, think that this is enough evidence to suggest that Japanese internet slang does indeed have a larger proportion of fish or fishing-related terms than internet slang in other languages. Furthermore, even if it did, it does not necessarily prove that it is because of the wide fish lexicon that Japanese has in general.
I think my next step would have to be to explore whether other aspects of the Japanese lexicon are reflected in the creation of internet slang terms. Shibatani also mentions that Japanese has an abundance of words to do with nature, but not many body part words. (Even a novice Japanese learner will have noticed that ‘foot’ and ‘leg’ are both expressed with one word, 足 ashi, and that both ‘smile’ and ‘laugh’ are expressed with the verb 笑う warau.)
The problem is, it is fairly difficult to linguistically analyse ‘Japanese internet slang’ as a concept, and to compare it to ‘English internet slang.’ There is no official online corpus of internet slang in English or Japanese, and it changes every day as new slang terms are created and older terms fall out of practice. The only way I can see to continue this research is to compile my own lists, either from spotting slang terms ‘in the wild’ online, or asking strangers on twitter to come up with any terms they can think of.
Even if I could prove that the tendencies of the Japanese vocabulary are reflected in its internet slang, what would this actually demonstrate? That, somehow, the balance of this lexicon is engrained in Japanese minds and so it affects the creation of new slang terms and wordplay? Or just that there are a lot of fish words so people create fish-related associations?
What kind of words are there more of in English than in other languages? Have we English-speakers developed a tendency to create internet slang based on… growing wheat… or… brewing… or whatever is that was traditionally engrained into English society, and therefore probably English vocabulary? Somehow, I don’t think so.
So, I was unable to come to a satisfying conclusion about my theory of fish-heavy Japanese internet slang. But I don’t think it was a complete waste of my time. It was my first foray into researching something just because I was curious and felt like it, and even though it didn’t lead me to any groundbreaking discoveries about the creation of new slang terms in Japanese, I had a lot of fun. It sparked some interesting conversations with friends and twitter strangers, and I got to read a 1940s fish dictionary. Some pretty good mental stimulation for a Wednesday afternoon in lockdown.
#japanese#linguistics#internet slang#internet linguistics#research#fish#fishing#misshanake#essay#japanese linguistics#japanese studies#slang#final fantasy#ffxiv#dragon quest
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Pylon Bios (An Update, with New Pylons)
Hello, lovely followers of script-a-world!
Please allow us to introduce ourselves! We haven’t had any sort of about-the-bloggers page available before, and now that we’ve added more to the team, we’re seeking to remedy that!
First of all, we call ourselves Pylons. What the heck is a pylon? Well, outside of this blog, it’s an upright structure for holding up something, usually a cable or conduit. When this blog was started more than a year ago (whoa), the group chose the word Pylon to describe ourselves collectively, as a fun little nickname. Whee!
Without further ado, meet the Pylons (and Mods)! (in alphabetical order)
Brainstormed: Hey there, call me Brainstormed, and you can find me at @thunderin-brainstorm. Any pronouns will do. I'm a student, illustrator, and world traveler. My home is in America, but I'm rarely there for more than a month at a time, so feel free to ask where in the world I happen to be! Worldbuilding has been my hobby for quite a long time and I'd love to give you some tips and tricks that I've learned, or take your idea and turn it on its head to perhaps show you a new perspective. The many projects I've developed have been lifesavers for me, as they allowed me to harness my Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder and use it as a positive tool for creativity. Aside from drawing and daydreaming, I spend a lot of time biking, hunting for cool rocks and bones, binge reading any scholarly article that catches my eye, and memorising completely useless random facts that I spout at any given moment in lieu of remembering actual important information.
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Constablewrites: My name is Brittany, and I'm a California girl living in the Midwest. I use she/her pronouns. I've always loved stories with rich and detailed worlds, whether in movies, books, games, or something else entirely. I'm the kind of writer who will spend hours researching to confirm a minor detail. Naturally, I not only write SFF, but my recent projects have all required worldbuilding on more than one axis (like multiple types of magic, or time travel on top of historical) because i am apparently something of a masochist. I'm a walking TV Tropes index and a whiz at digging up random useful knowledge, both of which come in handy as a Pylon. Other random facts: I'm a trained actress and singer, I used to work at Disneyland on the Jungle Cruise (among other attractions), and a laptop held together with duct tape is responsible for my day job in tech support. I blog about writing as @constablewrites and about random things that amuse me as @operahousebookworm.
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Delta: Hi! I’m Delta and I can be found @dreaming-in-circles or @thedeclineofapollo (writeblr), and I love sci-fi. Like, a lot lol. I work in NEPA compliance for a civil engineering firm in the USA, and have a lot of experience with infrastructure, bureaucracies, biology, and space (for unrelated reasons). I spend a lot of time haunting the astrophysics wikipedia pages, and my current all-consuming project is a novel that is angling to be about 150,000 words (at current projections). Can’t wait to hear your questions!
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Ebonwing: Hi, I’m Ebonwing. I’m currently studying IT in university. I’m a writer and worldbuilder, and sometimes a worldbuilding writer or a writing worldbuilder. I gravitate towards fantasy, though I’m not going to say no to the occasional stint in scifi, and as I’m also a giant language nerd, I enjoy making conlangs for my creations. Other than that, I’m also an artist and indulge in any number of other crafting hobbies, and if I’m not doing any of those things, I can probably be found playing video games.
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Feral: Hi! I'm Feral, and you can find me @theferalcollection (if you enjoy feminism, socialism, or over-analyzed fiction) or on my writing blog theferalcollection.wordpress.com. I'm a Southern girl who likes fancy dresses, mint juleps, big hats, and using being-underestimated to my advantage. I work in the interior design industry and am currently in school for industrial design. I have previously earned degrees in comparative literature and theatre & drama. I'm a big nerd who really likes school. I've been world-building since before I knew it was a thing and writing almost as long. I’ve written mostly fantasy but the past couple projects have been science fiction. I'm ridiculously in love with the idea of being an astrophysicist but don't feel like learning calculus, so I just read about science a lot. My hobbies include martial arts, drinking too much coffee, and tabletop games.
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Lockea: Hello! I’m Lockea. You can find me all over the internet as @lockea or LockeaStone. I’m a leaf on the wind who currently enjoys the SoCal sunshine in Los Angeles where I work as an engineer and data scientist. I love street fashion (especially Lolita) and making jewelry. I have two kitties, Theodore and Cecelia, and I volunteer at the local animal shelter as a cat handler and adoption counselor. I know way too much about cat behavior, honestly, and will yap your ear off if you let me.
Worldbuilding wise, I have a deep affection for science fiction and I’ve consulted professional science fiction writers on developing technology and worlds through the explanation of science and engineering. My engineering specialization is extra-terrestrial robotics, so if it has to do with space, planetary science, or robotics -- I got you. I’m also a fan of politics and really like developing political and socio-economic systems in fantasy and sci-fi worlds.
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Miri: Miri here, with my main tumblr @asylos and my writing tumblr @mirintala. I am a Canadian Pharmacy Technician by day and a small time ePublisher and gamer of many types by night. Mostly wandering around the Internet helping to organize events in the FFVII tumblr fandom (modding at @ff7central and @ffviifandomcalendar), and stumbling around within the Borderlands of Pandora. I use she/her pronouns.
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Symphony: Hey, I’m Symphony! Use whatever pronouns you feel like, any work. I’m currently living in Michigan with my fiance, and in-between jobs but I want to go to nursing school ASAP. My favorite genres in fiction are horror, sci-fi, and really anything that holds my interest. In my own worldbuilding I've always felt myself most interested in developing societies on the macro level (politics, diet, customs, stuff like that), and the more esoteric, strange parts of my world. I like to make a place feel lived in, with secrets that may never be found and people who seek them out.
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Synth: I’m @chameleonsynthesis on Tumblr, but that’s a mouthful, so just call me Synth. Any pronouns work. Born and raised in Canada, but living in Norway as of autumn 2007. Looking back, I’ve been worldbuilding since at least the age of four (in my early thirties now, so yeah), with a predominantly science-fantasy bent. I’m of the artsy creative type, with way too many projects on the go at any given time, and enjoy long walks through Wikipedia and getting caught in TV Tropes. The best thing is when I stumble across some strange factoid that can justify aspects of my many weird alien species. Stupid Synth facts: I have dual Canadian and Norwegian citizenship. My legal name contains a letter that does not exist in the English alphabet. I can curl my tongue into a cloverleaf shape, and wiggle my ears. My day job is musical instrument repair. I play French horn in a concert band, trombone in a jazz band, and don’t practice my flute or piccolo near as much as I should. Outside of band rehearsals and my job, I volunteer at the local cat shelter, work out at a gym, and attend events at my city’s newly established makerspace.
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Tex: I'm Tex, and you can find me on tumblr @texasdreamer01. Most of my hobbies are centered around fandom and worldbuilding for it, though I also like cooking and reading up on fiction and non-fiction whenever I have the time. I'm currently studying biochemical engineering, with a slant in nanotechnology and its medical applications, so I need to know a bunch about the different types of sciences, as well as projecting for the development of future fields.
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Utuabzu: Hi, I’m Utuabzu, I previously was part of ScriptMyth (RIP) where I tended to take the lead on Mesopotamia and Egypt related asks. I’m most of the way through a Bachelor of Linguistics, e parlo italiano und ein bisschen Deutsch. I have a deep and enduring interest in the history of the ancient world, particularly the ancient Near East, and I’m also a bit of a nerd for politics, which is helpful when it comes to worldbuilding. My random 2am research binges have resulted in my knowing a lot of odd things. I enjoy travelling and experiencing other cultures, however as I am Australian this unfortunately requires flying, which I hate a great deal. I expect to one day be crushed beneath a pile of my books. It is a demise I am ok with.
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Wootzel: Hi, I’m Wootzel, or @wootzel-dragon! I use she/her pronouns. I’m a recent college grad trying to figure life out. My favorite thing about worldbuilding is making things as realistic or pseudo-realistic as possible, and finding a justification for everything. Sometimes, this is also my least favorite thing about myself, because it can make things very hard! But, it can also be really rewarding when I get things to work out in a way that I enjoy.
My other hobbies include reading lots of fanfic while neglecting physical books, starting ambitious sewing projects on a whim, and wondering where all my time goes on a daily basis. I have changed major a few times, and I am still unsure about what I want to do with my life, except that it’ll always have writing in it somewhere.
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Okay, @tonyglowheart , here is that promised response:
@three--rings already brought up some points I was going to mention so I’ll skip over going into detail on those and just say that I agree with the use of caution and thoughtfulness in approaching works produced by other cultures (of whatever language), and I, too, love a mash-up of MDZS and CQL for ideal storytelling. Accepting genre tropes in general is really important as well. I once showed my grandfather a piece of my writing based on pulp adventure stories like Indiana Jones and his main reaction was “All these secret chambers and codes and gadgets, isn’t that all very convenient?” and I just had to shrug and say, that’s the genre, it’s part of what makes it fun to read. Also, based on reading about various medicinal histories I’ve been exploring, I can say that the coughing up blood thing is a trope based in Ancient China’s traditional medicine. Lots of pre-understanding-of-blood-circulation societies thought expelling old or stale blood was important for the body (possibly based on how menses works and reflected in Western medicine’s several-century-long obsession with bloodletting), and I recently read that having it caught in your chest and needing to cough it up was part of China’s take on things. I’m still not sure about all the other face bleeding, but if it’s not actually based in something historical it seems like a reasonable extension for the genre.
Okay, so the thing I want to respond to most is the translation bit, because I… okay. I understand that people are going to find works in translation less accessible than works written in a language they can read, and especially works written in their native language and of their own culture. Because obviously there are a ton of underlying ideas that inform word choice and symbolism and character arcs that most people just don’t really think about until they make a serious study of writing or literature (or they travel and learn more about other languages and literature traditions). On a linguistic studies level, language literally shapes the way humans in different cultures think, and what they pick out as important (an academic article that compares English and Chinese specifically can be found here). Even the distinctions between British English and American English, on a word choice and theme or syntax level, can have an impact. I have seen it turn kids off a book, because there are just too many elements they don’t get (this is, for example, why there are two English versions of Harry Potter). Same thing with different decades even. I’m talking about kidlit and YA here because that’s a lot of what I work with, but in that realm, the way we approach stories today is just incredibly different from how they were approached even 50 years ago, even in the same language and the same country. Think Judy Blume or The Dark is Rising vs Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Percy Jackson. And I’m fascinated by those changes, and by the effects of culture and bias on translations (I am extremely hyped to read Emily Wilson’s Odyssey translation, for example), so I tend to approach them as puzzles, where I’m reading the work, but also looking for clues that will tell me more about both the translator and the author to hang in balance. I enjoy that part, and I enjoy figuring out aspects of the two languages that can contribute to how a translation evolves.
I’m a language and literature nerd, and I know not everyone is going to take the approach I do. I’m not going to fault anyone for saying they don’t enjoy or can’t get into a translation. That’s a perfectly valid opinion. Reducing a work to its translation and judging it only on that impression of it, however, seems pretty shortsighted to me. Here are some things that I think are important to keep in mind when reading a Chinese work in translation, just based on my own extremely limited knowledge:
1. In Chinese storytelling it’s an established practice to reference idioms, poetry, folklore and historic events as a sort of shorthand for evoking the proper tone. Chinese writing tends to be extremely allusive, and much more understated than what we’re used to in English-language storytelling. We can see hints of this in some of the MDZS translator notes, and it’s likely that this difference feeds into a lot of dissatisfaction with the translation. Either the allusions are not translated in a way that adds meaning for an English-speaking reader, or the standards for detail are different. Indirectness and subtly are huge parts of Chinese literature, and so different words or scenes will have very different connotations for Chinese vs. English speaking audiences. And this isn’t even touching on the use of rhyme and rhythm in Chinese writing, which are all but impossible to translate a lot of the time, or the often extremely different approaches to “style” and “genre” between the languages (an interesting article on comparative literature is here at the University of Connecticut website). Given this knowledge, it’s entirely possible that, for example, the smut scenes are more effective in Chinese than in the English translation. In fact, I find it difficult to believe it would be popular enough to get multiple adaptations and a professional publishing run if they weren’t. In translation, smut is a lot like humor: every culture approaches it a little differently. Unless a translator is familiar with both writing traditions and the relevant genres (or they have editors or sensitivity readers who can offer advice), something is going to get lost in the process. And sometimes that something is what at least one of the involved cultures would consider to be the most important part. It’s unfortunate, but it happens.
2. Chinese grammar is slightly different from English grammar (and I’m focusing on Mandarin as the common written language here. For anyone interested, a very basic rundown of major differences is available here). Verb tenses and concepts of time work differently. Emphasis is marked differently – in English we tend to put the most importance on the start of a sentence, while in Chinese it’s often at the end. Sentences are also often shorter in Chinese than in English, and English tends to get more specific in our longer sentences. From what I understand, it’s also a little more acceptable to just drop subjects out of a sentence, and that is more likely to happen if someone is attempting to be succinct. I’ve been told that it’s especially common in contentious situations, as part of an effort to distill objections or arguments down to an essential meaning (if I’m wrong about this or there’s more nuance to it, I’m happy to learn more). As one example of how this affects translation, let’s take that and look at Lan Wangji’s dialogue. I’m willing to bet that most of his words are direct translations, or as direct as the translator could manage. But his words don’t work the same way in English that they do in Chinese. If you continuously drop subjects and articles (Chinese doesn’t have articles) out of a character’s speech in English, they start to sound like they have issues articulating themselves, and I see that idea reflected in fic a lot. The idea that Lan Wangji just isn’t comfortable talking or can’t say the words he means is all over the place, but I don’t think the audience was intended to take away the idea that Lan Wangji speaks quite as stiltedly as he comes off in the English translation. He’s terse, yes. But I at least got the impression that it’s more about choosing when and how to speak for the best effectiveness than anything else, because so many of his actual observations are quite insightful and pointed, or fit just fine syntactically within the conversation he’s part of.
3. Chinese is both more metaphorical and more concrete than English in some ways. In English we use a lot of abstract words to represent complex ideas, and you just have to learn what they mean. In Chinese, the overlap of language and philosophy in the culture results in four-character phrases of what English would generally call idioms. Some examples I found: “perfect harmony” (水乳交融) can be literally translated as “mixing well like milk and water” and “eagerly” (如饥似渴) is read as “like hunger and thirst.” If these set phrases are translated to single word concepts in English, we can lose the entire tone of a sentence and it’ll feel much more flat and... basic, or uninspired. The English reader will be left wondering where the detailed descriptive phrase is that adds emotion and connotation to a sentence, when in the actual Chinese those things were already implied.
As translations go, MDZS in particular is an incredibly frustrating mixed bag for me, partially because of the non-professional fan translation, and partially because my knowledge of Chinese literature and especially Cultivation novels is so minimal as to be nearly non-existent. But I have enough exposure to translations in general and Chinese language and literature in particular that I could tell there were things I was missing. The framework of the plot and scenes was too complete for me to ever be able to say that any particular frustration I had was due to the author, not the translator. There’s a big grey area in there that’s difficult to navigate without knowing both languages and the norms of the genre extremely well. At one point I was actually able to find multiple translation for a few of the chapters and I loved that. It was really cool to see what changed, and what remained essentially the same, and I was actually really surprised to find that rant you mention, because to me, more translations is always better. I think it was probably about wanting to corral an audience, and possibly also about reducing arguments from the audience about whether a translation was “wrong” or “right.” And that is an issue that’s going to crop up more in online spaces than it has traditionally. Professional translators don’t have to potentially argue with every single reader about their word choice. But then, professional translators also tend to have a better grasp of both the cultures they’re working with as well, and be writers of some variety in their own right, and while I can’t know how fluent (linguistically or culturally) the ExR translator was at the time, the translator’s notes lead me to believe that at minimum their understanding of figurative language use was incomplete. So I can’t fault people for not enjoying the translated novel as much as CQL, for example, because it can be quite choppy and much of the English wording feels like a sketch of a scene rather than something fleshed out fully, but I don’t think it’s fair to apply that impression to MXTX herself or the novel as a whole in Chinese.
More about ExR: I also got the sense that they have a strong bl and yaoi bias as you mentioned, mostly from the translator’s notes. And in general, okay, that’s fine, they’re working with a particular market of fans and I’m just not as much a part of that market. I knew going in that I wasn’t the target audience. I’m okay with that. What I was less okay with was getting to the end and reading the actual author’s notes in translation and finding that the author herself expressed a much more nuanced, considerate, and balanced approach to the story and her writing process than I had been led to believe by the translation and the translator’s notes. And so when people want to criticize the author for things that happen in the translation…. I just think it’s very important to remember that the translator is also a factor, as is the influence of the cultivation genre, and the nature of web novels, and the original intended audience. As you said, white western LGBT people were never the intended recipients of this work. It comes from a totally different context. But I think it’s also important to remember that, again as you noted, it wasn’t first written as a professional work. It was literally a daily-updated webnovel, which works a lot more like a fanfic than a book in terms of approach. And on top of that, it was the author’s second novel (if I’m reading things correctly) and one that they experimented with a lot of new elements in. Those elements earn a lot of forgiveness and benefit of a doubt from me.
About MXTX herself: Most of the posts or references to posts that I’ve seen that judge or dismiss her have to do with the stated sexuality of characters who are not Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. And it just kinda baffles me, because this is fandom. Most of us spend our time writing about characters who are stated to be straight all the time. Why is anyone getting up in arms about this? How can anyone in fandom just summarily dismiss an author for producing original work that centers around a gay relationship when that’s… literally what most of us write, to some extent or another? Again, I’m not saying there’s aren’t aspects that can be criticized in her stories, but the hypocrisy is kind of amazing. I think that fandom, as a culture overall, has issues with treating gay men and their relationships as toys rather than people, and individuals can address their own behavior on that as they learn and grow. That doesn’t mean that every work about gay men having sex is fetishistic, and honestly I’d say that the translator demonstrates more of that attitude than the actual story ever does. The smut is such an incredibly tiny part of the world, plots and character arcs in MDZS that it could be taken out without significantly changing the main narrative very easily. That’s… not fetishistic. That’s smut as part of an overarching romance plot.
Which leads me to the tropes discussion. Yes, obviously there are tropes in MDZS. There are tropes in every story. It’s not a failing, it’s part of writing. Are some of those tropes BL or Yaoi tropes? Sure. Wei Wuxian denying his own sexuality for much of the novel and his tendency toward submission and rape fantasy are some of the very first tropes mentioned in relation to the genre. That Wei Wuxian just sort of seamlessly moves from “pff, I’m NOT a cutsleeve, I’m just acting like one” to shouting “Lan Zhan, I really want you to fuck me” in front of friends, enemies and family without much of a process for dealing with the culture of homophobia around him also seems to be characteristic of the genre. But I think that’s about where it ends. You and @three--rings both made some good points about the nature of the actual relationship, which I agree with: There’s not much of a power play element, or an assigned gender roles element. They’re both virgins who only partially know what they’re doing from looking at illustrations of porn, and they do enthusiastically want to have sex with each other. They’re just bad at negotiating their kinks clearly and could use a decent sex ed manual. The trope I actually have the most issue with is the use of alcohol. I personally despise the trope of “I’ll get someone drunk on purpose for reasons that benefit me personally,” due to my own real life experiences. But it’s an exceedingly common trope in Western media (Idk about Chinese media, but my guess would be it exists there too), and it’s not exclusive to mlm smut scenarios. It’s pretty much everywhere. And, thankfully, Wei Wuxian does seem to eventually realize that he’s fucking things up by using it. That said, despite knowing what happens to him when he drinks, La Wangji keeps doing it. So they’re both contributing to that mess, no matter how much I dislike that it exists, and the narrative doesn’t actually condone it. No one says “Oh, Wei Wuxian, that’s such a good idea, that’s definitely something you should keep doing.” He is consistently warring with himself over it but unable to resist. It’s still dubcon and manipulation, and I certainly understand people not wanting to read it. I just also think that reducing the entire relationship down to “bad, terrible, fetishistic BL tropes” requires the reader to ignore large parts of the story and pretty evident intent on the parts of both the characters and the author.
On purity culture: Yeah, that’s obviously been cropping up all over the place the past several years (I have indeed been in marvel for ages :P). It does seem like there are places in fandom (to some degree any fandom), where “I don’t like how this idea was executed in this context” gets conflated with “This entire work is terrible,” which is a disservice to everyone involved. I agree that there are many things that can be legitimately criticized in MDZS, but I also just… really don’t understand where this attitude comes from that because something is not perfect, it’s trash. Wasn’t fandom essentially invented out of the desire to respond to canon? To make it more your own? Isn’t picking out the parts you like and ignoring the bits you don’t (or writing around the bits you hate until you can fit them in a shape you like better) pretty much what all fic is about? Aren’t those holes people are sticking their fingers into and complaining about opportunities for more fan content? But even more than “purity culture” I would term it “entitlement culture,” because a lot of it seems to be about the idea that media should fit into and support a certain set of beliefs at all times. A lot of fandoms are no longer an atmosphere of “I don’t like the way this is presented so I’m going to create my on version that works for me.” Instead there’s a growing element of “I don’t like the way this is presented so that means it’s wrong and bad and the original creator should admit that it’s wrong and bad and fix it to satisfy me.” And honestly? That’s just sad to me. More and more, we’re not having a conversation with canon, or even with each other. We’re not building what we want to see we’re just… tearing other people down. I really don’t understand what anyone finds fun in that, and I’m going to do my best to keep creating the things I actually do want to see instead.
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somewhat incoherent discussion of career things below
currently in the middle of my first real crisis of faith re: career paths since, like, my sophomore year of high school? i’ve known i wanted to be a classicist almost since i started doing latin, and as i got older and learned more i realized my interests lie much more in language and especially in literature than material culture or history. i’m a big-picture person, interested in historical/contextual criticism and reception; i study works in conversation with other works, not with themselves. the line i give is always “i like the languages because they give me access to the literature.” but i’ve realized in these past weeks that that isn’t strictly true— the greek workshop is so good for me because it’s this intense focus on exacting morphology where i usually just sort of...wing it. if that makes sense. and in the process i’ve discovered that i really do love the shape and form of ancient greek, and more than that i’m fascinated by where it all came from. we get a bit of linguistics and linguistic history in the program, and there is very little more wondrous to me than the idea of turning back the clock on language based just on what we have, and coming up with an entire tongue that does not exist in the archaeological record. the idea of evidence in everyday speech, material-not,
so good thing i’m training to be a classicist, a calling which overlaps significantly with linguistics! but i guess i struggle a lot with the detail-orientation that classics requires of you, in a way that lit theory in english doesn’t. it’s almost mathematical, the kind of precision with which good classicists do their jobs, and i find that really difficult— as you might expect, from someone whose brain is hard-wired for theory. but i don’t want to just do what’s easy for me, yknow? i want to do what’s hard, but also what fascinates me.
this also sort of plays into an anxiety i have about knowledge production— the knowledge generated in the academy by, like, material culture people and linguists feels much more tangible than that generated by literary scholars and critics, but literary scholarship is what i’m really good at and what interests me the most. what’s the point if the knowledge i’m producing is theoretical and abstract, analytical rather than novel? i feel like i’m adding to the corpus without adding anything to the (ugh this makes me sound insufferable) body of human knowledge, which is how i justify my engagement in academia when the world is on fire.
and another thing: old school classics is very traditional and philology-focused, to such an extent that i’ve heard it called the closest thing the humanities have to hard science. there isn’t a lot of room for literary scholarship in the more holistic sense, and certainly not a lot of room for reception studies. now obviously there’s a lot wrong with old-school classics, but like it or not those are mostly the senior scholars who i want to impress, and i don’t want to be dismissed for my interest in newer currents in the field.
and to top it all off i’m already worried about over-specialising in literature and not doing significant work on the linguistics side of things, so that when grad school time rolls around i’ll be stuck in this mold. like, this semester i’m taking a fully senior-level courseload, doing advanced work in my chosen field(s), and while that’s great i’m still. nervous. but also i’m a second year undergrad! i’m a baby! i have plenty of time to decide what i wanna do!
anyway i have to get dressed and go to class, this has been Career Crisis Hour with el antiquarians, see y’all next week where i agonize over how bad i am at material culture vs how much interests me
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(my no good utterly pretentious reaction to Geno’s interview in Russian wherein he expresses himself in a way we non-Russian-speaking fans rarely get to see and I go into an absolute asjafjsaghjas)
I just think about how lonely Geno has been in with such a hostile spotlight so young, the kind of thing I haven’t seen since the first defectors. Growing and maturing and then attending a draft alongside another Russian phenom bred to be lauded along his journey from league to league, by comparison Geno’s own hype and success ended up on a journey that paralleled those first Russian pioneers to NHL hockey more than any other player of his generation. In particular, a stark almost flip-opposite to the one his fellow draft alumnus experienced.
The NHL that Geno had begun to dream about joining in his teens had developed a different relationship to Russian players since his very early childhood. It was a stage set almost perfectly for the star rising elsewhere who would one day become The Russian Superstar in commercial terms and popularity that not even the Russian greats before him had managed to be. What’s relevant in particular is that Ove is famously known as an un-Russian type player, and was made so more or less by design. His destiny was patently to go out and “conquer” (to use his and his press’ patter) the NHL. His playing style is much more that of a North American power forward and the C*pitals’ hierarchy that places his scoring chances as top priority is the perfect environment for his style to flourish. He is the THE superstar, even having been mentored by Fedorov during his tenure with Washington. All and sundry around Ove have been driven toward his accomplishments. (Fed himself called Ove’s style not at all typical for a Russian. Ove’s falling out with his Russian coach at Sochi in some part to this.) Btw I know tumblr tends to be hyper sensitive and reactionary about this kind of thing, so just a reminder that these are facts that are *constantly* corroborated every year by every sports pundit and player, including respected colleagues and friends of Ove’s. The overwhelming majority of C*ps fans, and the entirety of the franchise, are perfectly happy with it! And thanks to getting a Cup into the bargain, very proud to continue it. To paraphrase him, if it never breaks then don’t “fix” it!
I bring it up with regards to How Very Russian Indeed Geno is by contrast, and now especially amid the many Ov*chkin-ized Russian NHLers. It marks a turning point in how Russian players in the NHL are presented and interact.
Geno in no small way represents the Old Gods. He’s got far more in common with Alexander Nevsky than Alexander Ov*chkin, if I can be allowed to be so pretentious and very historically loose. His choice to keep the A on another C’s team rather than seek out his own personal superstardom elsewhere - which would absolutely have been the parallel to Ove’s, as their close draft class status has proven repeatedly through the years - is Russian to the core. The desire to reflect on his own position in a club in terms of broader, collective success is - albeit to a North American anyway! - achingly Russian.
The many old world fables his story resonates with come right out of Russian stories: rags-to-riches; daring defection from his home country; from “jewel in the crown” of home to persecution as a perceived traitor; dramatic arrival to his new foreign city, including the first meeting with the young phenom he had followed since their childhood; the cruel and abrupt challenge of faith in himself at his first appearance on NHL ice; from cultural and linguistic isolation to half of a dual leadership with one of hockey’s greatest players on a three-time Cup winning team. It’s all there in fascinating, ever-revealing detail.
The Russian Five were my personal fascination when I was a teen early in my hockey fan days and the mention of them in this interview reminds me of how, in just one player, I have seen that same Old Russian magic revive again. The fierce loyalty to the new guard he belongs to but that unmistakable, slightly haunted aura of traveling with his heritage in everything he does is a lot more of what I was used to seeing in Russian NHLers than the more casual, comfortable relationships Russian players have with North American media and fans nowadays. I know we all have to be cautious about the Russian Bear analogies, especially as they relate to the media- and opposition-feeding frenzy that seeks to vilify him as having some sort of pathological level of rage and lack of control. Especially when spoken at the same time as North American players with blatant anger issues are coddled into fantasies of ‘simply doing their job’ good guys or flat out victims themselves. Geno has pride and a hockey temper, but it only looks out of proportion to the average pride and pugilism of any other player targeted for aggression, by those who don’t feel that he’s presenting himself in a way that is palatable to them. Most modern Russian NHLers return home and relax into very different personalities than the big smiles, laugh-along, don’t-talk-about-anything-serious versions of themselves that keep NW fans and media happy. Even if they find themselves in the box far more often or just as much as Geno, if the public already considers them a friend then much is forgiven. No armchair psychology of “anger issues” needed, no matter how bad the high stick or how many PIM. (and I won’t even get started on who ends up staying on referees radars more often than others, because it absolutely happens but most folks stay in denial unless it serves their own purpose)
As for the nature of his pride, Geno himself says that staying on a team he believes in is worth more than his own C. It’s worth taking a cut in money to help cap space. It’s worth being on the second line, and using his intelligence and vision to work with who he’s given to form his own leadership. And that leadership becoming seen by all as an equal and vital part of the captaincy - no “alternate”. With any other captaincy than Sid’s, Geno would absolutely have left to find his own rightful dominion. But for the grace of Sid being born and made with “hockey is a team-first and team-only effort” as his defining characteristic, Pittsburgh would have lost 71 and seen him become number one elsewhere… and very likely winning his own Cups. Geno’s loyalty to the city and franchise does not at all end or limit itself to Sid, but it absolutely begins with him. One superstar’s personality kept the other on his team, and that other’s personality is why he stayed on the other’s.
The Russian Five felt like “fish put back in the water” when put together. Geno has used his own tenacity, bravery and ingenuity as a generational superstar to find a swift current with that most Canadian of archetypes, Sidney Crosby. The combined effort is perfectly fluid, perfectly aligned, with not even a faint whisper of friction or disturbance in thirteen years. There have been and will continue to be many dynamic duos in hockey: there’s a reason why this one is called unique. They’re both natural born captains and each chasing each other within a delicate margin along the record books. They absolutely work well together on the ice, but genuinely operate best when leading their own lines. Maybe psychologically there’s an argument about how much they lean on each other, but I think it’s much more to their credit to point out that Geno found himself in familiar waters with a fellow leader who shares exactly the same principles as him. Side by side, and more than once proving capable of taking the team on their own back when one is out injured.
It’s a big part of why a major club like Pittsburgh has made the often baffling decisions throughout these thirteen years to take on hard-luck cases or players nearing the back end of their careers. A team whose leadership is founded and successful on load-sharing and listening is the perfect environment for players who still have the fight and/or the skill but who have lost their way. Or perhaps aged out of their old club. All you have to do is your best and the Pens will try to find you. But if you want to be the superstar or leap ahead of the guys who’ve done more time, you won’t find any sympathy in Crosby and Malkin.
And it’s just so poetic that Geno’s story, told by himself so beautifully by himself in this interview, is one of heart and good faith overcoming adversity after adversity. And that he did it by making wise decisions for himself, while holding himself unnervingly well in response to his own feelings of guilt and responsibility. And how his success in Pittsburgh has been to make the smart decision about staying with a club because of his faith in it. And that his personal successes and pride are the result of endurance and patience rather than a succession of fireworks, or even getting the credit he deserves.
Sid absolutely represents the ‘anything is possible through hard work’ and the more nurturing side of the Pens’ leadership. But Geno is the steely resolve and quiet rumble leading to powerful force that bears aloft even unlikely rosters to their absolute best.
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(asterisks and spelling changes used because I don’t know how tumblr searches tags anymore and I’m being careful - if you still somehow found this and get huffy about what I said wrt Ove then swallow it down and move along. Nothing I said is untrue or considered an insult even by Caps hockey pundits. It’s all factual and highly relevant in terms of how NHL hockey has changed for Russian players. Don’t blame me for watching hockey for decades and stating what absolutely everyone else does, including the Caps coaching and management! Their style is not under my control lol.)
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Re: Pan-Celtism and Celtic Descendants
Hi @aira-of-the-circle
I’m making my response in it’s own separate post as tumblr isn’t that great of a place for academic discussion, as I that’s something I prefer using the Gaulpol Discord for.
For those looking to follow the earlier part of this discussion, you can find it here:
https://aira-of-the-circle.tumblr.com/post/180820801915/once-again
Much of this confusion surrounds, the question of what exactly is a Celt? The word actually comes from ‘Keltoi’ what the Gauls called themselves, which means ‘descendants of The Hidden One’.
I understand your opinion of Celtic is that of an umbrella term for the religions/memories of religions of Celtic speaking nations and asserts that is in fact a label that exists beyond simple linguistics. I disagree, as the the Continental and Insular Celts (living in the times before, during and after the Roman occupations) actually had a super diverse ethnicity and religion, and the only thing that actually connected them was their language.
From Jean-Louis Brunaux’s Les Druides. Des philosophes chez les Barbares (French Edition):
“We wondered a lot about the reality of this little divine family. Was it conceived in this form among all Gallic peoples? The ethnic diversity of the peoples, the no less great of their political regimes and their strong particularisms make it doubtful. The Gallo-Roman epigraphic and statuary testimonies, certainly late, confirm in any case a religious geography of Gaul very contrasted if the figure of Mercury is very present at the beginning of our era in many regions of Gaul, it is often competed by Mars, Apollo, less often by Jupiter and in many cases by local or indigenous deities who do not find exact correspondent in the Roman pantheon.”
“As has been suggested above, Caesar himself could not forge this image of the Gallic gods by producing a synthesis based on the various information he could have obtained from the very mouths of Gauls encountered during his expeditions. He simply drew it from the work of Poseidonios.”
This dude is legit, as he is a researcher for CNRS and has done a bunch of excavations of Gaulish sites as part of his career.
If we think of Celtic in how archaeologists do, as an ancient people sharing a common material culture and distinctive (and cool) art style, Celtic would include the people of Central Europe (not just Gaul!) and British Isles in the late Halstatt period and all the way down to the Roman conquest, makes the argument that the Celts are dead entirely defunct because there are surviving languages, as well as material cultures.
Most Celtic scholars assign Celtic a linguistic significance for a reason. (Bettina Arnold goes over this. Her background: https://uwm.edu/anthropology/people/arnold-bettina/ as does Kim McCone, his background: https://www.amazon.com/Kim-McCone/e/B001K8513M) It’s done to eliminate the discrepancies I previously mentioned (through there are still a few issues). This means the people living in the six modern Celtic countries (Ireland, Scotland Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, and Isle of Man) or who currently speak / had ancestors who recently spoke a Celtic language are in fact Celtic. Not just Celtic either, but also the identity relating to their Celtic nation, like Gael or Cornish.
When it comes to the the past Celtic religions are inseparable and intertwined, many people see this initially and become stuck in the idea due to lack of appropriate knowledge. It ignores and dismisses the separation of each unique Celtic people by time, region, and cultural shaping events. Basing the idea of a singular Celtic religion on a few cognate deities (some of which aren’t actually found in each Celtic speaking territory) Lugh, Llew, and Lugus come to mind but it’s important to keep in mind that Lugus isn’t actually directly attested in Gaulish speaking lands.
Are there similarities in each religion? For sure. Does that mean these unique traditions should be thrown together in a single melting pot that is Pan-Celtism? Absolutely not.
Trying to sploosh the deities together doesn’t work. Ralph Häussler (his background: https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/staff/ralph-häussler/) talks about Interpretatio and how complex it is among the Celtic speaking people, showing that these religions are individualized multiple levels:
https://www.academia.edu/7952176/R._Haeussler_Interpretatio_Indigena._Re-Inventing_local_cults_in_a_global_world
The thought might occur that an argument one might have for pan-celtism is how they all liked druids, so here is our boy JLB from before who talks about that in his book Celtic Gauls: Gods, Rites and Sanctuaries, specifically p. 59: “There are no grounds for maintaining that the druids, of all the peoples, held identical beliefs. Everything suggests the opposite: the diversity of pantheons and of social and political situations must have been reflected in druid philosophy and mythology. It is not even certain that druids existed everywhere. They are not mentioned in Galatia, where there is talk of priest-kings. In Cisapline, only vates are mentioned. The term druid seems to have been understood in two senses by ancient authors. One is a misleading generalization referring to priests as a whole. The other, more instructive sense only takes the category of great priests into account. In fact it is in this sense the word was used in connection with the Germans. This also seems to be suggested by the etymology of the word, if druid is derived from dru-uid, meaning 'very wise'. However, it could originally have been a term of difference by which the Celts themselves addressed these extraordinary figures. According to Caesar, druidic doctrine came from Britain. He added: 'even today those who want to study it in depth generally go to Britain for that purpose'. The last of the great druidic functions was the administration of justice. Caesar gives us an example when he says that during their great assembly at the centre of Gaul in the territory of the Carnutes, the druids arbitrated in international but also private disputes. These surely involved the most delicate matters that only affect the powerful. Minor judgements must have been given in each civitas. This justice, dispense during the greatest religious ceremony on a Pan-Gallic scale, had a preeminently ritual characters. This mixture of the sacred and the civic, which was never divided into two distinct spheres among the Celts, extended from the juridical to the legislative.The druids, as guarantors of institutions, supervised both their workings and renewal. The power meant that the druids had to be recruited almost exclusively from the nobility. Caesar tells us that many students came forward of their own accord, from personal conviction, but that many young Gauls were also sent by their families. In effect, each family wanted to keep an eye upon this body of priests and to participate in it's power through the agency of one of it's offspring. The daily life of the druids is practically unknown to us. Were they vowed to celibacy? Did they live in communities? the texts only seem to indicate that they could found a family and preserve their fortune. We only know for sure that they lived in sheltered retreat apart from the common crowd, without being disturbed either by war, work or dues of any kind. The druids had an internal hierarchy, found upon position in the curriculum of apprenticeship and later upon reputation for wisdom and personal charisma. Above them was a chief-a sort of Grand Druid- whose moral authority earned him this position. He was chosen by his peers, but sometimes there was a disagreement that might be settled by force of arms. These different bodies of priests were structured into a complex hierarchy. In fact, besides the druids, the ancient authors mention gutuatri, dates, bards, and so on. Each category occupied a position relative to the others, but it also seems that each individual had a determinate place within his category. The hierarchy, which allocated roles within ritual, shows up clearly in the different functions that the authors attributed to the druids. The druids were actually in a great variety of matters, from philosophy to sacrifice and from education to justice, and it seems hard to imagine that the same people consecrated the king and took charge of the maintenance of the sanctuary. Instead, the ancient texts give the impression of a crowd of priests sorted into grades, each of which had a determinate function. These different categories seem to have been structured and rigid, but certainly age, reputation and perhaps even political maneuvers inspired by the system of clientage permitted ascent on this hierarchical scale. Those who were not druids, but lived within their sphere of influence or were historically antecedent, surely had more flexible forms of organization. This could have taken the form of fraternities or secret societies, who initiation ceremonies served at once to give access and ensure cohesion. Social access to them was also wider. It is likely in them the plebs could find means of giving free rein to their sense of religion. It is an illusion to imagine a united druidic society - a society within a society - upon which all cult matter devolved and all of whose members had similar powers. This illusion was derived from descriptions of druidic assemblies in the forest of the Carnutes, which nineteenth-century historians wanted to interpret at the first stirrings of a nation. Instead, the situation of the priesthood was very similar to that of political forces: in full process of change in Caesar's time, it might differ in every detail from one people to another. The history of the druids closely linked with the destiny of kingship and the development of the civitas.”
So while Druids were cool, they were not central to religion, nor were they universal among the Celtic groups.
While the Celtic religions may have sprung from a single progenitor religion, each of these traditions are separate. (Hence my interest to proto-Indo-European polytheism), but it’s fine if someone wants to take various gods from different Celtic speaking cultures and begin a new tradition with them.
However, this does not make it ancient Celtic religions the same, or gods pan-celtic (I’m looking at you Wicca!). Additionally, I’d like to re-emphasize that Modern Celts exist, and still have their own separations. The Welsh aren’t Irish, their gods aren’t Irish, and their language isn’t Irish.
Cheers,
Cunobelinus.
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Common mistakes in Worldbuilding (Part 2)
And here we go for Part 2! Later than I promised, because last week was rather busy. I’m looking forward to the weekend already again.
Previous Blogs about Worldbuilding
Blog Schedule
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Diversity
I’ll make this quick because this warrants an entire blog on itself (which I will write eventually). With diversity I mean diversity in culture, language, ethnicity, and so on. Diversity in all things imaginable. Elementary things to keep in mind are that people are never monoliths - they may share certain aspects in a country such as a common language or opinion - and that cultures interacting is a thing. If you want to create a homogeneous place, such as a country with only one ethnicity, you need to have a really good reason why. Did the country, for example, decide to segregate itself for some reason? Is it an environment where only a certain people are allowed in? In this case, you could make a case for an exception - mostly. But the fun, the tension begins when you start putting a black samurai into Bakufu Japan - or a white one for that matter (both who actually existed).
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Languages
Yeah, you shouldn’t if you aren’t Tolkien. Or a well-trained linguisitc who knows what he is doing. Some bad examples I read (and created) were bad attempts at mimicking Tolkien with different languages that just so happened to be non-sensical syllables smashed together with english grammar. This is not exactly how languages work. Just to remind you, I’m not exactly an expert either at this topic. My liguistic knowledge is limited to the two classes I had to take - and I hated every second of them. An easier way out of this problem short of studying Linguistics, is to simply mention the different language like GRR Martin does.
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As Time Goes By
A) CULTURAL STASIS And welcome to one of the greatest pet peeves I have: Cultural Stasis. Are you really going to tell me that for an incredibly long time, nothing changed? At all? No new medecines, no historical events happened, no new technologies? And then, your protagonist steps up and everything changes? No. This is just wrong. Shit will happen outside of your protagonist. Also ties in with my point about magic - time and magic both will change things.
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B) OLD SHIT (AND PEOPLE) Old means different things to different people. I’ve seen Americans call two-hundred year old buildings ancient - And then us other folk laugh at them and point at the nearest building which is at least twice as old and survived nukes and bombs (partially) in quite a few cases. To Cleopatra, the pyramids of Giza were as ancient to her as she is to us - she was the last queen of Egypt, a kingdom with more dynasties than some kingdoms had kings. Not kidding. In any case, what we think of as old might differ with the knowledge of history, our own age and where we grow up. Age is important - we as young children might think twenty is old but an five hundred year old elf might be just a child by its own people. We, as the writer and creator, need to keep that in mind and change the dynamics of the story accordingly.
On the Writing Level
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A) INFODUMPS - PLEASE DON’T
Technically a topic on its own, so I’ll make it short: Don’t. In 9 out of 10 cases, infodumps are bad. It’s like a chunk of butter - disgusting on its own if you bite into it, but if spread out on bread it’s good. Information should be spread out like butter on a piece of bread - not served as a chunk and stuffed into the reader’s face. I admit - sometimes an infodump is necessary. Take the prologue in the first Lord Of The Rings movie for example - for the movie as a whole to work and for everyone to understand said movie, the viewer needs information. Galadriel tells us what we need to know - about the ring, Sauron, Mordor, Isildur, and how the ring was lost and found. If we wouldn’t know about this whole backstory, chances are we would not understand why the story takes place at all. But it’s an awesome infodump - she does not only sit in Lothlorien, but Galadriel’s narration is overlayed with scenes from the war against Sauron for example - something still happens. We are shown what she tells us. Also, it sounds very strange if two experiences mages talk about how basic magic works. I mean, they should know this already, shouldn’t they? It can still sound weird if a mage explains basic magic to a new apprentice, but it is more justified.
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B) GETTING LOST (IN WORLDBUILDING)
Yeah, that happens. Sometimes. Often. Alright, all the time. Okay, worldbuilding is fun. It’s addicting. It’s like fiddling with Lego until not a piece is out of place in the finished model. But holy crap - You need to stop sometime and get down to writing. Really. If you want to write a novel, and you want to build the world of it until it’s done… It might take a while, if you even finish at all. So, sometimes you just gotta say “Well, that was fun” and start writing your story about your magical shopkeeper, no matter if Country X’s political system is finished into its last details. Or - as an other example - if your story takes place in one single country and barely touches on Foreign Relations you don’t need to plan every single detail of a country on the other side of the world. It’s simply not necessary for you in this moment. Maybe later, if your characters travel there you’ll need to flesh it out but if that happens in book 10 and you’re writing book 1 it doesn’t matter yet.
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I mean, there's the brute sort of demographic analysis, which is that you're someone I would broadly call a "STEM person", and I think positive disposition towards universal culture is pretty common in that milieu. But then that just prompts me to ask why that's the case, and, well..
If I'm to navel gaze about it a little, I might connect it to the sense of shared aesthetics that seems to exist in math and the sciences. You know—beauty is elegance, beauty is simplicity, beauty is when there's less information. Homogeneity. Like how everybody loves linear algebra, because it's highly ordered in a way we can parse: we know how finite vector spaces work, they're totally determined by dimension, we understand linear maps between them, etc. It's homogeneous, low information. And that makes it efficient, that means it leads to the fastest algorithms and the nicest proofs. Sometimes it feels like half of mathematics is just people asking "how can we turn this intractable-looking problem into linear algebra to make it tractable". And a universal culture is similar. All those bothersome details (over hear they speak this language, over there they bow instead of shaking hands) are eliminated, and the homogeneity makes the world smoother and more efficient. It's cultural linear algebra.
Of course, then there are people like me with a decidedly negative disposition towards universal culture, and I think I'm able to articulate at least the aesthetic half of why. Because, you know, I don't actually know many people who just love linear algebra for its own sake—the things that people are actually interested in are the things on the edges, the chaotic bits. For example, the sporadic groups are so fascinating to people precisely because they can't (yet) be understood in any simple and coherent framework. And once they can, if they ever can, people will move on to some other interest. People like linear algebra because it acts as a bridge into the unknown, which is where they really want to be. I hate to sound like Jordan Peterson or something, but order isn't any good without chaos to contrast with it; all the juicy stuff happens at the interface.
And my sense of aesthetics wasn't formed by mathematics, it was formed largely through conlanging. Every newbie conlanger makes a language whose grammar is totally regular, totally "logical". They want to improve upon the chaos of natural language by making something simple and predictable. But every single one I've ever met eventually gets bored of that, and people who've been in the community for a while generally veer in the opposite direction: they start lusting after the nastiest conjugations, the most complex morphology, the deepest orthographies. I think it's representative of a totally different sense of aesthetics, something nearly opposite to the typical mathematician's.
Human language has been described as a reef of dead metaphors. We might also say that it's a reef of dead syntax, and a reef of dead morphology, and so on. The apparent chaos of language, at every level (strange semantics, irregular conjugation, etc.), is extremely information dense. It carries data about the history of the language and the way it developed. This is precisely the data that makes reconstructing historical forms of the language possible, to at least a certain degree. That's the foundation of the entire discipline of historical linguistics: that you can learn to read the reef like a book (though doing so is always an act of puzzle-solving). And once you learn to read the reef, you realize there's an immense beauty in it. It's, you know, the sublime. The history of a language is the history of thousands of years of migration, of technological development and cultural change, a story over impossibly huge swathes of time, and the contours of that history are compressed into the structure of the words we speak. The words you're reading right now. The structure of the grammar, the patterns in the distribution of different sounds, there is something enormous and ancient living in there. If you want, you can learn how to see it.
When the newbie conlangers finally learn enough about natural language to get a glimpse of the leviathan, that's when they stop trying to kill it.
(I guess this analogy makes conlangers Frankenstein, except instead of trying to make a guy we're trying to make Cthulhu. Which is accurate. That's why they call it the secret vice.)
I think this aesthetic experience is the same one found in archeology and paleontology. It's the aesthetics of reading the vestiges. Mathematical aesthetics' evil twin. It finds beauty in irregularity, in high information density, in legible disorder. And homogeneity is fundamentally antithetical to this aesthetics, which is why I have a similar sort of pre-rational revulsion at the encroachment of universal culture. It's literally akin to burning a library. Look at all that information being destroyed! There's record of our past, held barely-undeciphered in the strata of the human cultural landscape, and we'd let it get overwritten as we bring in the bulldozers to put in a parking lot. More efficient for walking on. A beautiful plane of asphalt, geometrical structure fully understood.
And, you know, it's not that I don't like linear algebra. I can appreciate the beauty-as-elegance of it very much in its own right. But I wouldn't want everything to be linear algebra.
So uh, yeah. That's just how I feel about it I guess.
my positive disposition towards universal culture isnt reasoned to, its just my culture, but it does make me antsy sometimes thinking about having allegiance to something i see as an equilibrium all societies are sliding towards, like, am i just another might-makes-right gnon-head? or do i believe theres some fundamental justice to the universe, that makes equilibrium society desirable rather horrific? im sure if i tried i could convince myself theres some game theory reason but that just shifts the question, do i believe the structure of logic itself to bend towards justice? thats even more preposterous, even god couldnt do that. so idk. it sure is nice to root for the winning team tho
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Discourse of Saturday, 17 April 2021
There's a make-up, I think that what would most benefit your thesis statement—glancing back more often would help to mitigate your anxiety. I liked your paper has at least some background on Irish nationalism. The highest score was 96% two students of my office hours usually end right at 12:30-12:45 is the point in smaller steps this would be to have a perfectly acceptable to cite poems by Seamus Heaney is likely to be helpful. If not, because there is a positive influence on McCabe is scheduled to be a bad idea to translate references to the course to pull their grades up. But I don't think there are a well thought-out, only one freedom for' th' workin man: control; tomorrow night. Failure to turn it into an A-paper demonstrates a solid delivery. Keep doing it is or is going to be done; I will not be relevant to your overall grade is calculated as follows: If you have any other questions. Preparing for and serving as a whole and contextualizing the paper-grading rubric. If you do all three of the play. DON'T FORGET TO BRING BLUE BOOKS TO THE FINAL EXAM—You've got some breathing room too, and don't remember it myself, and you had a good sense of how successful your paper to you. Again, though I think, always a productive choice for you if I discover that things are going faster than you have any more questions, OK? Would 12:30. You might note that discussion notes here but not catastrophically so. Skim some of the performances you gave in section. Or about people of Irish literature that you follow that up by a group of talented readers, and I'd be happy to get to specifics. Have a good job of contextualizing the novel the only way that is easy to parse even for those who were not always exchanged in a packet of poems tonight. Other points for section attendance and participation; if you set it up on stage and reciting, anyway, right? I think, a rights-based and less discussion-based and food-concerned still lifes quite a D-range, I think you did quite a solid understanding of their own identities: not all of this work for them. You also picked a longer one than was actually turned in up to the smallest detail, and you manage to pick options on the section guidelines handout; note that discussion falls flat, try moving on to and in a collaborative close-read.
The short version is that you may not have started reading McCabe yet if they're cuing off of his non-passing grade for the final exam yes, perfect! But it's important, or other basic methodological approaches. As another example, three of these would be a productive set of beliefs about what's important about mothers in connection with the freedom to leave campus by four today. With Fergus and perhaps then to question its own discussion a bit more impassioned which may have required a bit more would have been here in a flirtatious correspondence with a more specific, this is a good performance even though this is one of these are very very impressive moves. See you tonight! There are other possible interpretations, too. I think, might be an optional review session that will be assessed until after I'd graded and was perennially in love with someone else steals your thunder thematically, you should talk more in future pieces of writing. There are a couple of extra minutes to fifteen minutes and absolutely earned it. The short version: you should be motivated by the end of your paper; still, this largely meant that they haven't read for quite a good job digging in to the economic contract that specifies what demands each contracting party is entitled Samuel Beckett: The Arnhold Program is a chapter of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment that is also a Twitter stream. Hi, I can assess your recitation/discussion assignment are available.
Ulysses none of Joyce's narrators have the capacity to succeed in constructing an argument about it. An Irish Airman even more closely on the web or in the morning. Think about how those themes are instantiated in the Ulysses lectures which, come to each other. It was nice, too, and the 6 p. Unless you have any other text s that you're capable of doing this. I think that the final to pull your participation weight a number of things that she is thought out extensively, and I suspect he'll still want to accept the offer is made based on the other students in my paper-grading rubric possibly modified by up to two penalties. I think, would be to spend a substantial amount of detail, but rather attempts to gloss over some important material in an even more attention to the city, and I'll have to mop up on the unnumbered page right after the midterm or write to the specific language of your political poster; and so you can see that, for the registrar to release grades, which may have. See you tomorrow night. Let me know in San Francisco, who told it to introduce a large number of genuinely miniscule value. I forgot to say that a more rigorous analysis. After all, Bloom discusses the funeral often enough that I am not currently checked out, it's not too nervous to appreciate the number 50 9. Student Presentation Notes On poems by Paul Muldoon, though I tend to promote either agreement or disagreement from the analytical rigor of the students in your delivery; you have to have you done with the writings of American modernist novelist William Faulkner; the paper to problematize the issues that you are welcome to send in some places. Thank you again for being such a good background to the text and to figure out how to properly attribute the language and thought, then it's perfectly acceptable to cite poems by Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Remember that your discussion plans requirement.
What the professor.
4:30 or 1:00 section. To put it in that case. Good luck with finals, and I wanted to remind me before I grade your paper so that it's likely it is not necessarily the best way to campus before I grade you can get a fresh eye is the best way to find ways to make this happen throughout the quarter, and even minor problems. Let me know! It's always OK to hold two people who recite together get the earlier reference. /Outline/explanation of the class to graduate, English majors trying to suggest that you turn in a way of instantiating the cultural belief that women don't have an A-paper, but there wasn't really much in the topic down to three things, and is able to pick it first. Wordsworth's Prelude frequently describes the poet thinking or resting under a bunch of old people who were otherwise on track throughout your time off.
Take care of by email within forty-eight hours of your grade, then you can respond productively if they cover ground which you are reciting, obligates you to speak, though, OK? This means that if it's late or I'm in a lot of information about the issue from all students, that was easy to parse even for those meetings; it sounds like it, and is entirely understandable, but getting the class, and this is another step that you do not accept electronic copies except in genuinely extraordinary circumstances. You'll want to do is to start with the fact that you've got it perfect. I need the title. Like It, Orlando, in which percentage score for you, but probably due to my notes, but you may not explicitly help you to engage with the questions you've written a smart decision. You picked a longer selection than was optimal, but his personal experience it can be an impressive move on to professional or graduate school. Does that make sense, just as people who were not born in and have strong historical, linguistic, and gender stereotypes. Too, your paper as a. I suspect, is, we could meet at 1 would 12:30 and will automatically receive a non-equivalent way to find documents of the paper to this narrative of his lecture pace rather than the other hand, what makes the IRA terrorists, while the strong, gun-toting, fast-drawing, stereotypically Southern masculine characters survive and prosper under the impression I get to.
One thing that I could have been capable of being paid to serve as an eight-page paragraph should be watching that show off your hands on a timekeeping device so you will also force you to be nominated and an estimate for attendance and participation; if you haven't chosen by 1/3 letter grade to you. Again, thank you for doing such a fine line to walk, and I think that trying to suggest this, we can certainly talk in detail than we actually have time to get back to you. Another potentially productive topic.
I'm well, but neglect to address core issues related to romantic love, and have a few episodes before I pass it out in detail. All in all, this is a strong piece of writing. The Butcher Boy here. My son. Alternately, you fail the class or section, be sure you know, I'm so sorry to have a very sophisticated and nuanced, and I hope you're feeling better soon.
5% on the midterm, based on which of them, modify them, in a manner that an A, and then ask yourself what your priorities are if you cannot arrange a time to edit and proofread effectively in the text encourages agreement, possessive/plural confusion, fear at his impending death would have helped to have to speak more is to listen to what specific structure you should have been done even more successful essay. You are perfectly capable of pushing this even further. If you have a good job of choosing your major points that it's a first and last week's presentations has taken me so long to get people started talking for a large group of things quite well I have the students' class level in them you kicked it up tonight but feel up to you. Shift p. Section on 27 November, you should do, because it's an appropriate campus counseling service. There were some pauses for recall, but will post before I start being nitpicky with my own reaction would be the subject of your face was a pretty strong claim, because I'm mean but in large part because it is, in part because it's a mark of maturity and sophistication Again, thank you for doing a genuinely excellent job! Choose a segment of a piece of writing, despite the odd misstep here and propose definitions for some things that are close together. Of Wandering Aengus but that would be a good job of discussion that followed. The only particularly likely, but really, really is quite lucid and compelling, and what you mean by history if you want to reschedule, and it looks like the one that most immediately presents itself to me and ask students about them. 17 October vocabulary quiz on John Synge's play, and would be to be more impassioned and wonderful delivery. Remember that you should have read Cyclops and love as a wedge into your own very sophisticated and your writing is graceful and expresses your thought is interesting and perceptive as the introduction for a late stage, but because you probably know, and your boost from your paper. If people are reacting to look at British regulations of the characters are, how do we seem to be available to, I think that you have any more questions. You've done a lot of important concepts for the course is concerned. Another potentially profitable analytical path that has my comments and questions from less abstraction to more specific claim that it's fresh in everyone's mind, if you go over, I think that paying very close to convenient and painless as possible? The Northern Irish accents were a lot of impressive moves. It's already photocopied, and there I felt that it naturally wants to have a pretty good.
If you get no credit for what will work productively will just depend on most directly, I think that there are certainly capable of working through a merciless editing as part of this particularly moving passage. This may be performing an analysis, and emergencies, not blonde, hair. Some general notes before I leave town. Perfect. D many other things differently. 116, p. Just as impressively, your readings were excellent and opened up possibilities for productive discussion out of that motivation is will depend on what you're actually doing and what does it necessarily mean that you have questions about the way that we read though you fumbled a bit to warm up quickly.
Again, I think that it would be happy to proctor it if possible, OK? The Covey and Pearse; you also gave a good weekend. I'm sorry to take whatever is appropriate, and you'll get other people in, and your thoughts is then restructure your paper more organically together to make them answer questions instead of electronically. There are a couple of quick things.
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ENG 703 Survey of Literary Criticism & Theory syllabus
Tuesdays 4:00-6:45 pm
Professor Anne H. Stevens, Department of English
This course is designed to introduce graduate students to some of the major texts within the long and complex tradition of literary theory and criticism. In a semester, the task is nearly impossible. The best I can hope to do is to introduce you to a wide range of approaches so that you can explore further on your own. The course is divided into four units of unequal length: 1) Foundations 2) Formalism, structuralism, poststructuralism 3) Race, class, gender, sexuality, and 4) Books, readers, history. Within these units we will be reading a mixture of entire books, journal articles, and extracts from books. Some of these readings you have almost certainly encountered before while others will likely be new to you. I have also ordered from the bookstore but am not requiring my companion book, for students who want a broad historical overview (from antiquity to the present). We will cover some historical context in class but our main focus will be on reading and understanding the primary texts.
Required Texts: (available at the bookstore or elsewhere)
G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History
Karl Marx, The Portable Karl Marx
Roland Barthes, S/Z
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Part 1
Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique
Other readings available through Web Campus or via email for auditors.
Optional Text: Anne H. Stevens, Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction
Course requirements for enrolled students: At least three 100-200 word blog posts, three initial responses to another student’s post, and a 2000-4000 word final reflection paper. Active participation in class discussion both in class and online.
Course requirements for auditors and passers-by: All are welcome to sit in on the class; you can choose your own level of engagement. Any auditors or others who wish to are encouraged to post and comment on the course blog and to participate in class discussion. I will make the Web Campus readings available via email for those who are interested.
The course blog: I have set up a WordPress blog for this course at eng703.wordpress.com. I will enable all registered students and auditors access as blog “authors.” This means you will be able to create posts, upload files, and moderate comments on your own posts. You will not be able to delete other people’s posts or the site itself. Each registered student must commit to writing three 100-200 word posts over the course of the semester and three initial responses to someone else’s post (I will pass around a sign-up sheet on the first day). Auditors are encouraged but not required to post and to respond to others’ posts.
Your posts should relate to the week’s reading and should be posted by 5:00pm on the Sunday before class, thus allowing enough time for the respondent to post and for others to comment prior to class. These posts will serve to begin our course discussion each week, and the discussion can continue online after class is over. Your posts can take a range of forms but should not be mere summary of the reading. Instead, they should focus on a particular passage, term, or question; connect the reading to something else either within or outside the class; use examples to clarify a theoretical point; etc. The designated first respondent should engage with the post and continue the conversation while remaining civil. Keep the genre of the blog post in mind as you write: images and links are encouraged, as are pithy provocations; detailed textual analysis is better reserved for classroom discussion.
Reflection paper: At the end of the semester, all registered students must write a 2000-4000 word essay that reflects upon the readings for the course and your own identity as a literary theorist. We’ll talk more as the semester goes on about the kinds of things you should and shouldn’t include in this paper. Your first task is to try to understand the sometimes quite difficult texts we’ll be reading. Your next task is to synthesize the readings, to find points of agreement and disagreement, to understand the range of approaches to a single topic. The first two tasks will constitute our main focus in the class discussion and course blog. Your third task, and the one that will form the substance of this final piece of writing, is to begin to internalize the theoretical approaches you have read, adopting and transforming concepts and methodologies that best suit your identity as a critic.
Schedule:
January 16: first day of class. Introduction, sign up for blog postings.
1 Foundations
January 23: G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History
January 30: Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, from A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and from The German Ideology, pp. 155-83; from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte pp. 287-323; from Capital pp. 432-503.
February 6: Sigmund Freud, “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”; “Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through”; “The ‘Uncanny’”; “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad”
2 Formalism, structuralism, poststructuralism
February 13: Ferdinand de Saussure, from Course in General Linguistics; Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”; Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth”; Tzvetan Todorov, “Some Approaches to Russian Formalism”
February 20: W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy”’; W. K. Wimsatt, “The Chicago Critics”; R. S. Crane, introduction to Critics and Criticism; Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”
February 27: Roland Barthes, S/Z
3 Race, class, gender, sexuality
March 6: Simone de Beauvoir, from The Second Sex; Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”; Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses”; Raymond Williams, “Dominant, Emergent, and Residual”
March 13: Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
March 20: Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality
April 3: Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”; Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”; Julia Kristeva, “Approaching Abjection”
April 10: Gloria Anzaldúa, from Borderlands/La Frontera; Judith Butler, from Gender Trouble; Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, from Epistemology of the Closet; bell hooks, from Ain’t I a Woman
4 Books, readers, history
April 17: Stanley Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum”; Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory”; Pierre Bourdieu, from Rules of Art; Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?”
April 24: Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” and “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”; Hayden White, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’; Stephen Greenblatt, from Shakespearean Negotiations; Howard Becker, from Art Worlds
May 1: Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique
Finals week: wrap-up and celebration.
May 11: Final reflection due
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