#my Latin novel

[macaron-tea-party]

On White People Losing Their Minds to America Dirt Crud. Again

So I’m making a brief blog post.

People may remember eber the controversy around American Dirt but not how much it pissed off Latine folks, especially authors. Pamela Paul (who has her own problems with being crap at research and manipulating reviews in her previous job for the NYT)

She decided to write another one-sided (her side) look at book controversy by making the Latine authors who made concise and reasonable critiques of the novel and how it got ridiculously propped up. (The linked article is not the only one)

I'm just taking this opportunity to share this video from one of the founders of Dignidad Literaria who was one of many Latine writers who criticized the novel for lifting from other authors (like from Luis Alberto Urrea’s By the Lake of Sleeping Children) and for the larger trend of Latin authors not being given the chance nor anywhere near as much compensation for their own stories Cummins watered down for her cheap thriller novel.

Dr. Bowles is a prolific author, poet, translator, and professor (and a personal favorite academic of mine). I highly recommend his book, They Call Me Güero

"She's this middle-class, bookstore-owning woman who left Mexico with a small fortune in her pocket, like she was going to go to France or something. With inheritance money. With an ATM to her mom's life savings. And why did she leave? Because she was flirting with a drug lord who's now trying to kill her.”

If you want to hear more about the controversy give LatinoUSA’s podcast about it a listen.

[childrenofcain-if]

How would W react to an MC who is obsessed with them? Like they need help with a small thing? MC drop everything and run to the rescue. W doesn’t take care of themselves? Why bother when MC takes care of them.

W’s presence wasn’t always loud, but it was startling, an emotional thunderhead that you could feel rumbling in your ribs before it even fully cracked.

when the call came, their voice tried to sound casual but failed miserably. “i, uh, could use a hand with something.”

it didn’t matter what it was—something about a deadline they’d forgotten or a lamp they’d broken while pacing in frustration. you didn’t even ask. you dropped your coffee cup on the kitchenette counter, grabbed your jacket, and bolted out the door without thinking twice.

the quick walk to their suite was a blur and when you arrived, W was sitting cross-legged on the couch, their thin frame curled in on itself. they were wearing a mismatched pair of socks, one of them being yours—the blue one with the tiny stars that you’d lost weeks ago—and it was enough to make your heart ache.

“what’s wrong?” you asked, dropping your jacket at the door and crossing the room in three long strides.

W didn’t answer right away. their fingers were busy tracing invisible patterns on the edge of their sweater, which was so oversized it might as well have been a blanket. their silence stretched like a taut wire, and then, finally, they said, “i forgot to eat again.”

your chest tightened. not with anger, not even with frustration, but with the unbearable weight of love for someone who couldn’t always love themself. you didn’t say anything. you just walked into their kitchenette and started rummaging through cabinets and the refridgerator.

there wasn’t much to work with—a box of crackers, a bruised apple, a carton of almond milk. it didn’t matter. you threw together something small and easy and brought it back to W, sitting beside them on the couch.

they looked at the plate like it was a challenge, their fingers twitching toward it but never quite making contact.

“i’m sorry,” they murmured, their voice barely above a whisper.

“don’t,” you said, shaking your head. “you don’t have to apologize.”

“i do,” they insisted, their voice cracking. “you shouldn’t have to—”

“W,” you interrupted, your tone firmer than before. “i’m here because i want to be. because i love you. that’s it. that’s all there is to it.”

they looked at you then, their sapphire blue eyes watery and wide, and for a moment, you thought they might cry. instead, they reached for the plate and took a small bite of the apple. it wasn’t much, but it was definitely a start.

that night, after they’d eaten what they could and you’d cleaned up the remnants, you found yourself sitting together on the couch. W was curled against your side, their head resting on your shoulder, their fingers absently tracing shapes on your arm.

“you’re warm,” they murmured, their voice soft and sleepy. “and you smell nice. like fresh laundry.”

you smiled, pressing a kiss to their temple. “and you’re wearing my missing sock.”

“it’s a good sock,” they said with a tired chuckle, tugging at the hem of it. “better than the pairs i own.”

“you could’ve just asked for it,” you said.

they tilted their head to look up at you, their expression caught somewhere between a smirk and a fond smile. “and where’s the fun in that?”

***

later, as the night deepened, W began to fidget. their fingers, which had been drawing lazy circles on your arm, began to scratch at their own thigh, leaving faint red marks in their wake.

“stop,” you said gently, catching their hand in yours.

they flinched but didn’t pull away. “sorry.”

“don’t apologize,” you said, your voice kind. “just… tell me what’s wrong.”

they hesitated, their gaze fixed on the floor.

“i don’t know how to stop feeling like this,” they admitted. “like i’m… too much. or not enough. or both at the same time.”

your heart broke for the hundredth time that day. you pulled them closer, wrapping your arms around them like you could shield them from the weight of their own thoughts.

“you’re not too much,” you said. “and you’re not not enough. you’re exactly who you’re supposed to be.”

they didn’t respond, but their body relaxed slightly against yours. after a moment, they said, “i love you so much, i can’t bear the pain.”

the words were so quiet you almost missed them, but when they sank in, they hit you like a freight train. you tightened your hold on them, pressing a kiss to the crown of their head.

“i love you so much, i’ll bear it for you,” you whispered.

W looked up at you then, their eyes soft and full of something you couldn’t quite name.

“you mean that?” they asked tentatively.

“every word,” you replied, leaving no room for doubt. W said nothing but their smile was brighter than the lights in the room.

after a while, W whispered in latin, “te amabo aeternum.”

you recognized the words instantly, even though W’s accent was softer, less confident. i will love you forever.

“amabo te in aeternum,” you corrected gently, your voice warm and teasing. the structure mattered less than the sentiment, but you couldn’t help it. W’s latin was too endearing to leave unpolished.

“of course you’d fix that,” they muttered with a faint smile, their tone holding no actual irritation. “you always seem to know everything, don’t you?”

“not everything,” you said, smiling softly as you ran your thumb along the back of their hand. “just the important parts. like how much you mean to me.”

W looked up at you then, their blue eyes catching the light and you leaned in closer, your nose brushing against theirs.

“et ego te amo.” and i love you, you said, soft but firm, as if the words themselves could shield them from everything clawing at their mind.

they sighed, a sound that carried equal parts relief and exhaustion, and melted against you. “thank you for everything, mein stern.”

***

as the night wore on, W continued murmuring fragments of latin into the quiet—“es somnium meum,” they said at one point, and it took you a moment to piece it together. you are my dream.

you tightened your hold on them. “tibi in somniis et re in aeternum pertinebo,” you whispered back. i will belong to you in your dreams and reality forever.

that earned a smile from W, small but real, and when they finally closed their eyes, you stayed awake, holding them close. you whispered one final phrase into the night, one you weren’t even sure they’d catch:

“in saecula saeculorum.” forever and ever.

they didn’t respond, but their breathing slowed, steady and even, their body curled against yours with all the trust and affection that they could ever afford to give back.

[aster-draws]

YOU.

I cant even begin to formulate a sentence to convey how much i adore better halves. I even started writing my very first fic beacuse of it.

On that note: i have no clue what I'm doing. Any tips for writing? I'm thinking specifically when it comes to dialogue, but any and all advice is appreciated!

consider me pinned to the floor like that one cat with the onions (sorry it took so long for me to reply- work school adult responsibilities ect)

Wow I'm so happy to hear you started writing! Genuinely it brings me so much joy and to know I'm inspiring others is like. you know. tear jerking or whatever.

I don't really have many tips apart from like, the fact that it's the same as any other skill, right- you're gonna suck at it a little at first. I wrote so much crap by volume it's insane. If you don't believe me there is evidence way back on my a03 page (and there's a lot more that isn't. hundreds of thousands of words in my google docs). Sometimes I still feel like I'm just writing trash. so you just keep on trucking and then it gets more and more decent. until eventually it's like. good. ish.

As for specific advice with dialogue- I talk through my stuff all the time. i read it out loud to myself and also anyone who will listen. I feel like better halves specifically takes a lot of cues from like early 2000's rom coms, specifically in dialect, most of MY favorites of which are adapted from shakespeare, and so I wouldn't exactly call the way they speak natural, if that makes sense? People don't talk like that. But I think it's fun and genre. But even with that, there's a lot of more of it that is? I just hear them in my head.

So yeah moral of the story is to just write all the time and read it out loud if you're not sure. It's gonna be a lot faster to figure out what's wrong than to figure out the way to fix it. The best advice I have for how to develop an ear about it is to read. A lot. The more you read and the more variety you read the better your ear/eye will get for it. unfortunately this means reading a broader variety of stuff. i read a lot of fanfiction, but also literary fiction, classics, non fiction. don't get stuck by genre and push to read more difficult things because it really can change the way you think and approach your own work

yeah xo you're gonna create amazing things I believe in you.

[renmackree]

Wednesday WIP

I was tagged by a gaggle of talented people:

@okdeannawrites, @whimsicalmeerkat, @dear-massacre, @endwersed

@hedwig221b, @eevylynn, and @equallyloyalandlethal

Anyone and everyone can participate in this WIP Wednesday; may you all have amazing days ahead.

WIP below the cut

The rest of the evening passed easy for him with his nightly workout, dinner in his apartment, the latest episode of his favorite show ‘Adolescent Vampire’, and a long, warm shower. He was in bed and asleep before ten which was rare, but needed. He just wanted the day to end and a new one to start.

Which meant something had to interrupt. His phone went off in the dead of the night and Derek jolted awake to answer in a familiar panic. “Laur?”

“Were you born or bitten?”

   “Born,” Derek answered and glanced at the clock. The hands read a little past two in the morning, Derek sitting up and rubbing his hand over his eye. He took a slow and steady breath and realized that it was Stiles calling him, not Laura. 

    “And you’re an Alpha by…”

    “Gaining my Alpha Spark by starting my pack in college,” Derek confirmed for him, heart returning to its normal pace. He had expected this question to come up earlier, it was always the question that someone asked when they found out both his sister and him were Alphas. “Contrary to popular fiction, you can become an Alpha without killing someone for it.”

Stiles’ fingers began typing and little sounds of active listening came through the phone. “That’s the whole true alpha thing right? That’s what happened to my friend, but he was told it was rare?”

Derek let out a little sound that was half skeptical. “It’s a little complicated, but it is harder for a bitten wolf. Your friend really is a ‘rare’ alpha according to Werewolf history. ‘True alpha’ was incorrectly translated propaganda from the 1560–1630 during the Werewolf Trials.”

“There were Werewolf trials?” 

“Yes, it was actually around the same time as the witchcraft trials so a lot of the times people forget they happened.” Derek moved on the bed a little more as he felt his body wake up more than he would have liked. “It’s a whole thing, so –”

“I’m here for the details, Derek,” Stiles said eagerly, clearly actually interested in the history lesson.

 “During the reading of the charges, they would say the term ‘scintillae alphae’ when leading them to trial, which directly translates to ‘spark of an Alpha’. Since the trials were through a lot of France, sometimes it would be written in French rather than Latin and would be written ‘susciter alpha’ which when translated to Latin again actually comes closer to –”

“True Alpha,” Stiles finished Derek's sentence, humming to himself. “So because someone couldn’t decide if they wanted to speak in Latin or French, my best buddy was told he was a rare, super cool True Alpha by a creepy veterinarian, when really he just had a spark of a wolf. Lame.”

Derek made a face at that, unsure exactly what a veterinarian had to do with anything. 

[lohtulauluja]

Laitetaanpa tännekin Merenkehrä-sarjan toisen osan kansi, rakastan tätä. ❤️ Kansitaiteilijani Anna Makkonen on supertaitava, edelleen.

[foggyfanfic]

Woe that I had a team of researchers to help me make my period drama fanfiction as accurate as possible, but alas all I have is duck duck go, some old photos claiming to be from the right time period, and Wikipedia

[inflammatory]

Also while im being a jackass braggart online can i say as a surfer on the asian in asia education system ocean i cant find it in myself to be impressed by US high school successes in the slightest what do you mean your trigonometry teacher. They make one guy for every math subdivision? Its trig the whole class???? Do you also have a specific calculus teacher???? Whats your next period?? history of monarch butterflies?

Wait heres the famous primary school leaving exam question from here. Im not 12 years old anymore so im too fking stupid to get it right without thinking really hard. But theyre really so wicked to these 12 year old children over here theyre like freaking evil wizards setting ghastly puzzles for those who might wish to escape the evil lair of primary six. And every time the little kids are like dodging and weaving around the fireballs getting thrown at them. They parkour around these questions within minutes. And then they grow up go to progressively more advanced tuition centres turn 17 and then kill themselves

[devilsskettle]

whenever i hear a song that i would like if it weren’t for the fact that it was too long, i think about this:

like you can afford to write tangentially if you/your music is already popular and you know that people are going to listen to you no matter what and in fact laud your longer pieces as being genius etc but can you really be releasing 5+ minute long songs without a built-in audience?

[britneyshakespeare]

they cut off my tags on that thoreau post. i wrote like much more of a rant and tumblr didnt even tell me they were cuttin it before i pressed post

[dykeseinfeld]

the desire to study literally everything..................

[catilinas]

your 'horrible horrible catiline. wow!' tag has got into my brain and now I have to Say It whenever I see something around about him somewhere. which is Often. 10/10 Good Phrase That Haunts My Head Like Some Kind of Old Dead Roman.

oh literally same ever since @garland-on-thy-brow first posted it! it's a translation paraphrase of a line scene from raffaello giovagnoli's novel about spartacus. i think. i have not read it because there is no english translation but it Has tempted me to try to learn italian on several occasions

[iishmael]

I’ve been slapped in the face by hubris. I’m gonna read Honduras in Spanish. And Nicaragua too

[somethingvinyl]

HEY HI hi just stopping by to tell you you're extremely cool! i was in a latin club throughout highschool and seeing that's what you do rly made me smile also your taste in music is impeccable♡ bonam fortunam tibi exopto!

HELL YEAH lingua Latina aeterna sit! Love is stored in the high school Latin club 🖤🖤

[dndspellgifs]

look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

[ssmokyquartz]

less than 20 pages to finish slaughterhouse 5 and yeah it's a good book but GOD everytime I read a book written by a) a man and b) an american I remember why I avoid these two together so much

[thepapernautilus]

I wonder how many Latin duolingo lessons I could power through in a slow day at the office