#oh homonyms

[livefastwritetrash]

“That ferry ride was brills. I’ve never ridden a ferry before.”

…WHY DID YOU LOOK AT EDWIN LIKE THAT—

[lurkingteapot]

Every single time with language learning I'll hit that one word I thought I knew that makes ZERO sense in context, and then I look it up, getting more and more confused, until way down in the definitions I find out that tea looks synonymous with numb water (*) or that the words used to indicate staying overnight and owing an amount of money are spelled identically (*). And then I'll run into a word neither of my dictionaries know and have to turn to Google to help me find a definition I understand in a language I barely speak (thanks, longdo *sob*)

(* I assume my memory aid to these is not how they actually work but ehhh it's gotta work for me in this context)

[13thpythagoras]

[coffeebanana]

they call it editing, which sounds nice and calm and concise but what's actually happening on a cellular level is that my last remaining neuron is bouncing around my empty skull incessantly as i bang words together, and statistically at some point, after an avocado's number of collisions, it'll eventually spit out the write words and i can note them down, bang them through a few more iterations, and eventually come up with something that keeps me up all night because i'm so damn excited about it lets me sleep at night and holy shit i love that feeling

[lilacthebooklover]

never gonna forget that one time my primary school made me be an accountant for the day. they just took a year 4 boy and a year 4 me into the headteacher's office and made us calculate numbers for a whole day. no calculators, just paper. in retrospect, that was really weird.

[sysig]

Giggles (Patreon)

[falinscloaca]

cat hacker reintroduces mspec lesbian discourse into my life my brain obliterates itself in ocd-fueled recursive self-argumentation

[megalobsterface]

sorry but if you can read shit like this:

and your main takeaway is "You know what, this horrid caricature of trans women as terrifying horror monsters is actually okay, I'm gonna support this as soon as I can," then you're dumb.

This essay "debunking" a person talking about bigotry they've experienced is intellectually void and morally cruel, and the only reason I haven't told the author of it to fuck off yet is because I had better things to do.

I'm not gonna waste my time re-reading this to debunk every individual terrible point this counter-essay made, but in summary:

No. You're purposefully misinterpreting both the text and my reaction to it so that you can get away with playing a video game that is actively bigoted against You Specifically without feeling as gross as the developers actively want you to be. Individual symbols can have more than one meaning. Ranni is not a lifeless, murdered tool like Anna and Nepheli are. You do not understand baseline metaphorical storytelling, let alone when it is being used as a political tool to insult you. You Are A Big Dumb-Dumb going to bat for people who are spitting in your eye. You and anyone convinced by this hack-job of a rebuttal you made can go fuck yourselves with hot iron because I'm tired of seeing shit like this tag in my notifications.

Elden Ring is a transphobic, misogynist, Racist game (didnt get into it in this post, but demi-humans?????? the black guy's name is Blackguard???? Did JK Rowling work on this oh my fucking god this game is racist as all fucking getout), and on top of all that, is one of the most critically acclaimed and financially successful games of all time. You don't need to go to bat for it so hard that you have to shout down the people who it is bigoted *against* who are asking for better treatment. Go back to the RNC with that shit, I'm tired of hearing it. Fuck off.

No One Else Is Saying It So I'm Going To: Elden Ring DLC Is Transphobic As Fuck

The entire character of Count Ymir feels like Fromsoft was upset people weren't as disgusted by Gwyndolin as they were supposed to be, so they turned the transmisogyny up to 11 and made it absolutely unmissable how much hatred they have towards trans people. And most people on the internet are still fucking missing it somehow, so let's break it down, I guess.

Count Ymir is an NPC in the Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, and is the main character of his own questline in the DLC. He's an old man who sits on a throne and is only ever referred to with he/him pronouns, and he wears a 'priest's outfit' that involves a habit-like crown and a long, purple robe.

One of the first things you learn about Count Ymir is that he's somehow attached to a deceased child named Yuri, to the point where he starts calling tiny fingercreepers by his name. You can find Ymir at night sobbing over the gravestone, while during the day he cradles a tiny, dead hand and calls it Yuri. While giving him an obsession with an underaged boy who may or may not have even been his son is definitely sus, it's literally the least weird part of this quest. It's mostly there to set up unease and distrust with Ymir, because they player doesn't know how Yuri died, and suddenly this old man is treating creepy monsters as children and calling them by this dead child's name. Again, nothing incriminating on its own, but that's just the set-up.

Ymir gives you a "bell," which is a long, cylindrical object with a bunch of holes in it, one of those holes on the elongated tip, that the player takes to places called 'Finger Ruins' to unlock treasure. Finger ruins are large, grey deserts with giant stone fingers jutting out of the sand. These ruins are inhabited by fingercreepers, enemies from the base game that are spider-like severed hands, and these new enemies that are long, lamprey-like finger men that can grab the player and suck on their face. To use the bell Ymir gave you, you go up to a giant version of the bell and blow into it, the hole on the tip the size of the player's entire face.

As you go on these treasure hunts, you meet Jolan, Ymir's bodyguard, a woman who is protective of the old man for some reason. Ymir mentions that Jolan has a sister named Anna, and both of them are purehearted. Here's the thing, though. During the 2nd treasure hunt, you can find a secret room in a tower nearby Ymir's church, and in that room is Anna's corpse, turned into a puppet somehow. Puppet summons in the base game are heavily, heavily implied to be victims of sexual violence, as the man who makes them, Seluvis, exclusively makes puppets out of women and naked men, keeping some of them in his bedroom behind a magic door, and getting very personal with you the instant you find out about this. These are dead bodies that are meant to be read as the objects of sexual gratification to the one who made them that way.

Anna's puppet is in a secret room near Ymir's church. It is explicitly stated later that Anna is Ymir's "doll," further cementing the implications from the base game. Before even getting to the end of the questline, we have confirmation Ymir is a sexual predator who has murdered at least one adult woman, which puts his obsession with a deceased young boy further into question.

After the 2nd treasure hunt, you return to find Ymir crying at Yuri's grave. He tells you that Marika, the queen of the lands between, final boss of the main game, and mother of DLC antagonist Miquella, is a failure because she is a bad mother, and that Miquella is doomed because of a "rotten root." This brings up his other obsession, that of motherhood, and how Yuri would still be alive if he'd had a better mother. You can probably see where this is going.

Ymir gives you a third map, which tells you the church is already in a finger ruin desert, which is obviously untrue, as you can see it's not. So you look around and find a secret tunnel underneath Ymir's throne while he's at Yuri's grave. Underneath the church is a hidden finger ruin, with fingers jutting out of the sky and one more giant bell at the end.

Anna invades you here, though it's clear from before that she's been long dead and this is her reanimated corpse being used for Ymir's bidding. After defeating Anna, you get to the last bell, and instead of treasure, you're teleported to a sea of fingers and fight Metyr, Mother of Fingers. This is a fromsoft game, so you can use your imagination on what a boss who is themed around maternity and has a body made up solely of long, plump fingers looks like. Hint: phallic and unpleasant.

After beating Metyr, Jolan tries to kill you for ruining Ymir's plan, somehow? You just followed his maps and did what he asked, and this ruined his plan. He told you where to go, gave you the key item you needed to use, and asked you to do it for him. He drew you a MAP. But this ruined his plans? None of this quest was thought through beyond the cruelty it applies to real world groups, the writing makes literally no sense. Hate crime aside, the writing is just bad.

After fighting Jolan is when the other shoe drops and Ymir is summoned as the final boss of this sidequest. His title is Count Ymir, Mother of Fingers, and his purple priestess robe is now bursting at the seems with wriggling fingers. He says he will be "A true mother. The only mother." He fights by literally giving birth to fingercreepers, spewing them out of his robes as a projectile. Let me remind you of the phallic nature of this enemy, and of Gwyndolin, the other transfem-coded hate crime character Fromsoft made, who had snakes wriggling out from under her dress. This is a repeated theme in these games, of transfem-coded characters having dangerous, cylindrical objects under their clothes.

To be blunt, because I know not everyone is seeing this, having Ymir call himself a mother and then immediately be shown to be covered in penis-like fingers that were hidden under his robe this whole time, is an anti-tranny joke the devs are making. They made it with Gwyndolin, who we actually liked, so they went more explicit and made it again with an old man who kills women and children, sexually assaults them, and then tries to take sole ownership of the word "mother" because of his hatred towards women. The key item he gives you is designed to make the player feel violated. The entire quest is choked in phallic imagery, with Fromsoft practically screaming at the top of their lungs "PENIS ITS PENISES, HE HAS PENISES HE CAN'T BE A MOM BECAUSE OF THE PENIS!!! ISN'T HE GROSS, ISN'T HE SCARY??? PENIS!!!!"

It's fucking disgusting. It's detestable that they went through all of this trouble to show us how un-fucking-welcome we are in this game's community. This is some of the worst transphobia I've seen from a mainstream title in decades. This is Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp type shit. I would not be surprised if JK Rowling had a writing credit for this DLC. This isn't even getting into all the poorly thought-out incest they added into the main questline, either.

Fuck Fromsoft. I hope all the people who wrote this quest choke on air. It's fucking pathetic, I'm mad as hell, and any trans person who plays Elden Ring, or any other Fromsoft game, should be mad as hell, too.

[hunxi-guilai]

so I know that a lot of chinese names are references to specific poems. Is there a way to determine this (vs general auspicious meaning) and which poem specifically? I'd love to be able to figure this out for character names and I haven't been able to find any resources (in case it's helpful, I'd say I'm my understanding is maybe HSK4-level so I can clumsily make my way through the chinese internet with the help of a dictionary)

feel free to make this public so that others can benefit if you have any suggestions

oof... unfortunately I suspect that this, along with one's repertoire of chengyu, is something that one simply Just Learns with reading more. my personal repertoire of poetry is embarrassingly thin, so the horrible horrible process I've been going through is, well, throwing the name into a search bar and hoping for the best.

here's an example of how I (think I) went about doing this for Xiao Xingchen's name, way back when I wrote this post:

I went ahead and dropped "星尘 诗词" ("Xingchen poetry") into the search bar, which turned up this:

Generally speaking, I'll only put the name (minus the surname) because putting the character's full name into a search bar will probably turn up the character themselves, and if someone's name is being derived from a poem, it's usually independent of the surname anyway.

Xiao Xingchen's name is an interesting example because it doesn't quite come from a poem, but it doesn't not come from a poem. you can see that the search engine has automatically assumed that I am looking for poems about constellations, as "星辰" and "星尘" are homonyms, and one of these is more commonly seen. I usually consider that a solid indication that "星尘" (the name) is a novel formation of characters in a name, and not likely a poetic reference.

but! in for a penny, etc. I'm a huge fan of the first search result, gushicimingju, since it's a solid database of poetry and some prose. clicking into that listing informs me that gushicimingju is turning up. oh my. 119 possible matches:

note that these are matches for "星辰" (constellation), not actually our character's name. still! you can click in and peruse the selection if you'd like.

now that you're on gushicimingju's site, you can also use the search function within the site to search for more exact matches, without worrying that you'll accidentally activate the fandom itself.

looks like there's a few matches for "晓星," but nothing for the full name.

so! gushicimingju is a solid database I like to refer to most of the time. if for some reason I'm feeling particularly academically rigorous, I might also do some searches on ctext as sometimes names will come out of famous turns of phrases (a la Zhao Yun 赵云 / Zhao Zilong 赵子龙 from that post I linked earlier) rather than poems. searching the dictionary sometimes (Pleco, or zdic) doesn't hurt either. basically, I throw spaghetti at the search engine wall to see what results come back for these characters in this particular order to try and get the original referent (if any) to show up; I'll probably give up after a few permutations of search terms if nothing is actively jumping out at me

but back to the search results: sometimes, if your character is famous enough, straight up searching for "what poem is this character's name from?" will help you find like-minded people on baidu zhidao (basically yahoo answers):

although of course, take baidu zhidao result with all of the salt you would take with any yahoo answers (look for alternate sources to validate, good for a laugh most of the time)

best of luck!

[imustbenuts]

nuts reading trigun in japanese 6 - kaite's foreshadowing. plant synchronization's downside

remember in my part 3 and 5 i was talking about hierarchy? surprisingly, it continues past chapter 8 with kaite. and wolfwood. triangulating nyoom

(to be honest... ive been doing these read and analysis completely blind in a 1st JP read through. so its possible ill find new nuances, get things wrong as the context shifts and changes, so my stuff looks like its scattered all over the place. sorry about that.)

i think ill start explaining names and meanings. kaite's name in japanese is kaito. カイト. this can be a homonym with i think 怪盗 (kaitou) in this case, which means phantom thief. for trying to help Neon with stealing loot from the Sand Steamer.

left bubble next to neon: 道案内は的確だったかね！？ I trust your guide has been giving you clear instructions?

^the headaches with manga translations has always been to keep texts short and reasonable for flow and readability, so these simplifications can and sometimes must happen.

but, add dakutens, the " on 2 of those カイト katakanas and suddenly, kaito turns into. ガイド gaido. Guide.

so Kaite has been playing as a guide to lead vash to his death at the hands of Neon. this page is such a fucking whammy with the wordplay going on. if you just read this in japanese theres a moment of "oh shit, no way, Kaite, vash just told you to stop betraying people! what the hell!"

yet theres a level of trust going on already, so its not as bad as it seems

nightow really likes his worldplay. i really like this page.

kaite redeems himself by later charging into the boiler room and helps turn the valve to stop the sand steamer from running off cliff and killing everyone on board....

hm. a guide. and those sequences

we sure have a lot of guides here. one who appears in the manga later with a kansai dialect. and another in TriStamp, where he is younger than he appears.

when i spoke about hierarchy and the fact that vash is over 150, i was also kind of hinting that all of current humanity are akin to children in the system of JP hierarchy. that takes on extra meaning with a little change of context and language

wolfwood is filling in the shoes of kaito here in tristamp. and within trimax, kaito foreshadows him. incredible.

theres actually more going on with wolfwood and certain design/changes choices i wanna talk about with tristamp but ill save it for another day. maybe when i run into him in this read later

Plant Synchronization downside.

....so theres a bad downside to vash synchronizing with the plant that i didn't catch. which also answers what the fuck was going on in tristamp when that version of him hits the ground

nightow mentions this in an interview, link here posted and transcribed by xoxo-otome (thank you!) that he likes action flicks and has incorporated a lot of action into his work. and its true. there is so much action in the form of sound effects.

reading through the entire manga and paying attention to the sfx peppered around offers a lot more context to whats happening in half of the panels that seemingly doesnt make sense

like this one where the top panel has "DADADADADA" sfx. so they're stomping down the corridor with their guns crossed and facing each other. the "GO OH" in the bottom panel emphasizes the sudden burst into open air. unfortunately, anyone who values their life and sanity in this economy will not want to translate trigun's sfxs 100%.

i should have paid more attention when reading trigun in english. but i didn't so here i am. in the trigunbookclub tag now doing this.

why is it important? here. this. below. when vash does his plant thing with his sister:

see those heart panels? i tried searching real quick but nobody seems to have pointed this out. i havent seen this in EN fanfics. maybe i missed it. maybe im stupid:

thats Dokun, the sound effect of a heart thumping. as vash synchronizes, the heart panels with the same sound effect appear, but they gradually split apart further with ellipses "..." to signify his heart beat slowing down. and down. and down....

Dokun, do kun, do... kun....

then the wings comes out. and the panel below it:

sfx: PIIIIIIIIIII

breathes. a FLAT LINE.

aaaaaaAA?!

何かなんだかわかりません I'm not sure what's going on. とにかくプラントの動きは一切止まっています But the Plant's movement has completely stopped. 同時に男にも呼吸　心音ともに停止してます It's the same with that man. His breathing and heartbeat sounds like it's stopped with the plant too.

AAAAA?!!?! the も means vash is in the same state as the plant?

i.... um. um.,, ANYWAY-

AAAAAAAAAAAA?! HUH?! HUH??? HUH?!

is THIS why he has a metal grate over his heart? something happened and he an an operation on his heart???? by some engineer maybe? what? huh? am i reading this wrong? what? wait, hello? HEY!!!

what the fuck. okAY--?!

and then he just. pretends like nothing's happened. doesnt tell kaito anything. and he leaves the Sand Steamer.

and im going to have to sleep bc its 5 am now and pretend like i didnt just realize something this big right in front of my eyes during the first read.

[echo-bleu]

shine still brighter (2/?)

Chapter 1 | On AO3. Deaf!Artanis bullet-point fic.

And I'm back with some linguistics! I barely have an idea where I'm going, but writing this AU is a lot of fun.

Three weeks later, Arafinwë brings little Artanis to Fëanáro’s office. She’s immediately entranced by all the shiny gems and strange little contraptions that are everywhere and she tries to touch them, and Arafinwë is terrified that she’ll break something and Fëanáro will explode.

“Let her,” Fëanáro shrugs. “There’s nothing in there that I can’t afford to replace. It’s mostly old prototypes, anyway.”

Right. His twins are a year younger than Artanis. He’s used to little children running around and being curious.

He brandishes a sheet of paper. “This is just a very rough sketch, and sign language is terribly frustrating because you can’t really write it down, but I’ve thought of ways to go beyond the basic mimic gestures and into the symbolic, which is really what you need for a language to express complex thoughts. We can use spatial variation to express basic grammar, such as tenses. A flexible word order can also take us a long way. Using the entire body opens up an incredible number of fascinating options, think of facial expressions alone! A smile or a frown could be used to modulate any statement into a question or an affirmation, or even something else entirely! We could have a specific mood for reporting speech whose origin is doubtful, for example. And the potential for spatial morphology! I really need to talk to some dancers about this, they might have new ideas. Or theatre comedians, maybe. Oh, and I’ve also devised a signed alphabet based on my Tengwar, for direct translation. It won’t be immediately useful, of course, but you’ll be able to teach her to read and write more easily, and it can be used for names and maybe homonym disambiguation.”

Arafinwë has not understood any of that, except that Fëanáro is very excited.

Fëanáro has never been excited at him before.

It’s a very intense experience.

“…can you teach us?” he asks, a little winded.

Fëanáro once spent a decade learning the languages of various wild animals, one after the other, so he could in turn teach them to Tyelkormo. Of course he can teach them.

“It’s not a complete language yet,” he warns. “I can’t make a language for her. She’ll have to make it her own.”

“…okay.”

“I’m calling it Mátengwië.”

‘Language of the hands’. Fair enough.

He goes to sit cross-legged in front of Artanis.

She puts down the shiny brass model of a windmill she was playing with and looks at him.

She doesn’t instantly scream in his ear, which is a good thing, because Arafinwë has clear memories of Fëanáro excusing himself from meals because of the noise he and his siblings were making.

“Hello,” Fëanáro says, deliberately moving his hands into signs. “I’m your uncle and I’m going to teach you some signs.”

Arafinwë’s heart jumps at “uncle” (Fëanáro has never forgotten the “half” before, when he even bothers to acknowledge them as family).

Most likely he hasn’t invented a sign for “half” yet, but that seems like a strange oversight on his part, given his insistence.

Artanis is fascinated.

“We’ll start with simple words.”

Fëanáro is speaking slowly, because he’s not fluent with the signs yet, but he doesn’t baby-talk. Arafinwë isn’t sure what Artanis actually understands of this – she can recognize some words from their lip-shape, but not consistently, and definitely not whole sentences.

The signs don’t seem to look like anything, not like the ones Findaráto made up. Those were all easily understandable in context.

But within a few hours, Artanis and Arafinwë both have a handful of new signs for everyday items and tasks.

Fëanáro uses clever ways of mimicking and pointing to explain them to Artanis, and she seems to catch on immediately.

Then she spends the rest of the lesson pointing at various things around the office for Fëanáro to name.

Artanis’s signs are a bit sloppy and simplified, because she doesn’t have much dexterity yet, and Arafinwë’s are self-conscious (because doing literally anything in front of Fëanáro makes him self-conscious), but they’ve communicated more in one afternoon than they have in the last two years.

And it’s thanks to Fëanáro.

Ñolofinwë is never going to believe it.

And Fëanáro was bearable the whole time.

Scratch that, he was nice. He teased a little, but it was never mean, and never directed at Artanis. And he laughed at his own mistakes just as much.

Arafinwë actually had a good time.

They go back the next afternoon.

And the next.

And the next.

They get to basic grammar and full sentences.

Artanis is opening up again.

She still gets frustrated a lot, and she’ll slam the door and lock herself in her bedroom whenever that happens, but she retains and uses each sign that Fëanáro shows her.

Arafinwë does his best to keep up.

Findaráto is still not doing too well, but he notices the changes, and after a couple of weeks, he begs for permission to come with them.

Fëanáro seems a little doubtful at adding a teenager to the mix, but Findaráto, if he has sufficient motivation, is an excellent student.

He takes to signing like a fish to water, faster than Arafinwë, and faster even than Artanis, who doesn’t have the benefit of translation.

Within a few more weeks, Fëanáro and Findaráto, and Arafinwë to a lesser degree, are capable of basic conversation in the sign language, allowing Artanis, by imitation, to start moving beyond naming objects and easily demonstrable actions, and into the abstract.

It’s beautiful to witness.

It’s still not a complete language by any means. Fëanáro repeats that warning several times per session, though Arafinwë doesn’t completely understand why it’s important.

It’s important because as they make up more and more sentences, they’re starting to hit at the limits of what Fëanáro has built.

It is not long before Artanis and Findaráto are inventing their own words, at first by combining signs or miming things, but soon enough they’re using their instincts and coming up with brand-new signs. And sentence structures. And grammatical elements.

It’s fascinating to Fëanáro.

(Contrary to popular opinion, he’s not a prescriptivist. The thorn issue is specifically sensible to him because it relates to his mother and he’s entirely irrational about it, but he’s otherwise endlessly happy to watch language evolve and he’s tracked all of his sons’ linguistic progression from when they were born, with charts and all, well into their adulthood, recording all the teenage innovation that other elves tend to scorn.)

Findaráto’s innovations in sign language are mostly based on Quenya, making up signs to translate words from his mother tongue.

Artanis’s innovations are astonishing. Entirely new ways of expressing concepts, of stacking signs on top of each other, of using space and her body to explain abstract ideas.

She takes Fëanáro’s basic concept and elevates it in a way he would never have thought about.

He hasn’t felt the rush of shared creation since he was Mahtan’s apprentice.

He can feel it with Nerdanel when they try something entirely new that isn’t either of their fields (like, say, making children) but in his chosen fields, everyone else is too far below his level to follow him.

And now this tiny child, who is far from being able to keep up with his linguistics knowledge, is making leaps and bounds that he would have never imagined.

He is obsessed.

Arafinwë is getting a little concerned.

He’s also getting frustrated, because he was never good at the word invention games that many of the Noldor are so fond of, and now he’s getting left behind in his children’s learning.

Angaráto and Aikanáro are learning signs bit by bit, enthusiastically, uncaring about having atrocious grammar and form in the way only children can. Artanis frowns and corrects them with a serious face that’s absolutely adorable.

Eärwen is struggling because of her fatigue, but she’s better than Arafinwë at getting to the essentials, at mastering the phrases and signs that she needs first without getting into complex, abstract things. It means that she misses some of Artanis’s rapid development, but at least she can tell her daughter that she loves her

And to stop screaming in their ears to get their attention.

Generally, things are getting better. Findaráto is coming out of his shell, Artanis gets frustrated far less often, and astonishingly, Fëanáro is being nice to Arafinwë even outside of the lessons.

The lessons are really more of an excuse for Fëanáro to document Artanis’s progress, she doesn’t actually need his help any more, though she’s surprisingly open to his suggestions to make a turn of phrase more elegant, or a sign more economical.

Surprisingly, because she’s not taking anyone else’s advice.

On anything.

Being able to communicate hasn’t made her any less stubborn.

She insists on doing everything herself, and now that she has a language of her own, she’s started to resent people who don’t sign.

Findaráto’s translations, even though he tries hard, aren’t good enough for her.

She refuses to play with anyone who can’t sign to her satisfaction.

Understandable reaction—but unfortunately impractical, because she has little patience for anyone who don’t sign as well as she does, which means the only people she’ll voluntarily spend time with are Fëanáro, Findaráto and maybe Arafinwë, on a good day.

Fëanáro has shown an incredible amount of good will so far, but he’s very busy. Mátengwië may have become one of his special projects, it’s still only one of them.

Specifically, aside from his princely and fatherly duties, he’s working on ways to capture light inside gems.

He can’t spend all of his days with a child that isn’t even his.

Findaráto is about to start university and needs to focus on his studies, however much he loves his sister. And socializing exclusively with a child isn’t very good for him, coming out of several years of depression.

“Eärwen and I have been talking about tutors,” Arafinwë tells Fëanáro one day. “Artanis is more than old enough to need one now, but none of them can sign with her. And she doesn’t read or write yet.”

“Reading will be a challenge,” Fëanáro confirms. “She doesn’t know Quenya, she will need to learn an entirely new language and medium at the same time. But she’s very bright, she’ll pick it up.”

“But who can teach her? I tried to start, but didn’t make any progress, she lacks any patience for what she doesn’t understand.”

“That’s not strictly true,” Fëanáro chuckles, remembering hours-long conversations with little Artanis about subjects as varied as which of her brothers is the most intelligent and what should be the right hand-shape for the word “turtle”. “But this particular challenge is understandably frustrating. I will teach her.”

“Truly?”

“Yes. As for tutors, I suggest Tulcasar, once she’s proficient with writing.”

“The loremaster? They’ve always refused to tutor any of us, I know Father asked them.”

Fëanáro laughs. “They tutored me before you were born. They will only accept the brightest students, they dislike children who cannot keep up with them. They lasted two weeks with Findis.”

Arafinwë tries very hard not to feel offended. Fëanáro isn’t even saying it as an insult, he’s so confident in his own superiority that it doesn’t register to him that it might be belittling.

“They’re tutoring Morifinwë and Curufinwë part-time right now,” Fëanáro continues. “My eldest two were never as interested in academic pursuits. Tulcasar will enjoy the challenge of learning Mátengwië, and Artanis is bright enough to keep them on their toes.”

“Alright,” Arafinwë says carefully.

“In the meantime, for the other subjects, you might ask Nelyafinwë or Morifinwë. You know Nelyafinwë adores her. And Morifinwë could use the challenge. I think he’s been feeling a little inadequate since Turkafinwë was accepted into the Hunt and Curufinwë got me to promise him an apprenticeship. He hasn’t found his craft yet.”

“Does he even need a craft?” Arafinwë asks. “I don’t have one. Findaráto is showing no sign of choosing a single field, and neither has Findekáno. Or Father, for that matter.”

“He thinks he does, at least,” Fëanáro says. “Perhaps Nerdanel and I have encouraged that a little too much. He persists in learning to paint, thinking it will please his mother, but I doubt it will ever be more than a hobby. If tutoring Artanis could help him realize that his strengths are more in academia, I would be grateful.”

“Fine, I will ask him. On one condition.”

Fëanáro raises an eyebrow—they both know that Arafinwë isn’t the one doing him a favour, here. But Arafinwë persists nonetheless, because he’s been meaning to bring up the topic.

“Let Maitimo finish his apprenticeship with Ñolofinwë. You know Father is not a good teacher, and he dislikes statecraft, for all that he is the King. Your hang-ups with our brother are hindering your son.”

He fully expects Fëanáro to get angry, only hoping that he’s accumulated sufficient goodwill that it won’t be the end of what friendship they have managed of late.

But Fëanáro laughs.

“You have been away from court for too long, Ara. Nelyafinwë has been shadowing Ñolofinwë for years.”

Arafinwë frowns. “The change hasn’t been acknowledged.”

“Does it need to be?”

Maybe it doesn’t. Let Fëanáro keep his pride and his misplaced grudge intact. He’s been fairly quiet about Ñolofinwë lately, no need to push him into another bout of paranoia.

And so Artanis starts taking reading and writing lessons from Fëanáro in the morning and spends many afternoons with Maitimo or Carnistir. Arafinwë and Findaráto come along the first few times, but it quickly becomes clear that she’s in good hands, and that their presence is hindering her more than helping. Arafinwë starts spending more time at court, since the family are now in Tirion a lot more.

Fëanáro and Ñolofinwë are actually being polite to each other. It’s quite a sight to see.

Things are going quite well, really.

[tropylium]

Can confirm, I've looked into this once in some detail (back in just one discussion where someone else was doing the real heavy lifting, don't ask me for citations or anything), and it's not just "not reliable" in a sense of something like mere statistical problems in experiment design — a lot of it is absolute garbage up to and including "well this is the single study we have from this country with 50 ethnic groups so we're just going to assume it's generally representative, despite it coming from a study at a hospital for mentally disabled children".

any putatively reliable IQ data about ""Africans"" should be presumed to exist at most from US data; where there are also pretty clear reasons why black, or yes shall we say Black, people might not be a representative random sample of even their specific African source populations

Ok, I am... very hesitant to get into this discourse in any real capacity, and I am not a subject matter expert here. But I have a friend who is very interested in psychometrics, and he told me that due to economic issues and lack of testing infrastructure, there is almost no reliable IQ data of any kind for most of the continent of Africa. Recall also that Africa is the most genetically diverse continent by a wide margin. This puts obvious epistemic strain on the claims people perennially assert with great confidence about about race and IQ, and on the use of these claims to foment pessimism about the ability of African nations to achieve economic success.

[twopoppies]

Yeah like I’ve actually thought about offering to be a beta many times because I’m excellent with editing, grammar, spelling, vocabulary and overall just good at helping polish up any kind of writing. But I’m worried that I would accidentally discourage someone from writing by trying to help. I don’t know what the balance of helpful editorial input and cheerleading are. So I’ve never stepped up. Recently I did read a fic that mixed up all their homonyms (honestly all of them it was incredible) and I was like “oh man!” because they had sentences like “she just stairs.” I would love to help someone with their homonyms but I’d never want to step on toes or make someone feel bad about their writing.

Oh my god that would do my head in. I think that’s often because people aren’t writing in their first language, but that’s when you really need a beta.

I find that the best way to beta is to have a really clear conversation with the author up front about what they expect. I’ve worked with people who only wanted me to catch typos/grammatical errors etc. and I just kept my mouth shut about other issues with their story because that’s not what they wanted from me. I beta for @indiaalphawhiskey and have for years. I know that she wants me to tell her if a plot point isn’t working, or if a sentence is trite or cliche. We’re open enough with each other that it doesn’t hurt her feelings (obviously, I’m also kind about it) and I also know that it encourages her when I’m genuinely enthusiastic about things, so I make sure not to keep my excitement to myself. 😆

There are so many authors out there that would love an enthusiastic beta. You should give it a try.

[mumblesplash]

i think it would help if you wrote the rhyming pattern out, yknow like stereotypical poem style! because i didnt see the rhymes at first at all, and i can see some of them now, but i still feel like i dont completely understand where all the rhymes are/how the lines flow

oh good idea! so yeah if i rearrange the script that way you get this:

[secret life] [(post-session six) the secret keeper’s lair] “for the record, my death at the button wasn’t fair” don’t pretend you didn’t know you failed your real task. no new reds survived. “i did exactly what you asked!” technically. you’ll notice we’ve not forced you to reroll. still, you failed to-* “what, you think i wanted mumbo dead?” worse, we think this game has gotten out of your control. how about next week we let the new girl try instead?

*if grian hadn’t interrupted, the line would’ve been ‘still, you failed to carry out your designated role’

(which does kinda bother me, because i don’t like rhyming homonyms (‘roll’ with ‘role’), but considering it’s a line that was cut off and does not actually appear i managed to convince myself to let it slide)

one of the main reasons i'm so interested in how easily people spotted the rhyming is because i didn't intend for it to be super easy. it's supposed to read like a (somewhat) natural back and forth conversation at first, and then make you go back and read the lines again once you notice.

i honestly wasn't expecting the amount of variation in how easily people seem to pick up on it? and i'm not sure why that's the case, either, it's really interesting

[wyleong]

Homonym

"Lor" in this context gives a defeated tone, like an "oh well".

"Hwaah" is like the commonly used "fuiyo" popularized by Uncle Roger, as in being impressed.

"Hor" is a chinese equivalent of "isn't it". But of course, it sounds like something else in English.

"Aduh" is Malay for "ouch"

[watch-grok-brainrot]

The next time someone tells me "Chinese has too many homonyms" I'm gonna say, "Oh noes. the same English syllables are used in too many words. However will I tell the difference?"