#the speech patterns i use and just the general writing doesn't feel the same (i mean obviously it's literally a different language

[ratgirrrl]

the silly thing about Language is that it will make you feel like a different person when you write something in not your native one

[cripplecharacters]

How to go about writing tics? I have tics but I never know how to write them naturally, especially cause I often forget I even have them. To me it's like describing blinking or something? But I of course want the character to notably have tics, even though my internal experience of tics isn't very noticeable to me? If that makes sense?

Hello!

Jerk, California by Jonathan Friesen is a book about a character (Sam) with Tourette's syndrome, written by an author who also has Tourette's. One of the things I really appreciated about the book was that it described Sam's tics in a way that made sense with how they felt as somebody with Tourette's.

In the book, Sam's tics are generally described when they're relevant. Usually, this is either to show that he's upset/otherwise worked up about something or as a way to build tension within the narrative itself. Although it doesn't necessarily mean that Sam isn't ticcing otherwise, it came across as the tics being more noticeable in those moments -- which I felt was a nice touch.

Consider the following passage from the book:

I glance around. My muscles don't jerk, and I close my eyes. I breathe deep, and like the third runner who finally catches up, the overtakes me. Slowly at first–a hard eyeblink. But that's not enough; there's more that has to work its way out, and my teeth grind. Movement spreads to my shoulder, and soon my whole body springs to twitchy life.

Even without the rest of the context of the scene, the description of his tics is enough to convey how he's feeling in the moment.

In the more mellow portions of the book, his tics aren't generally described at all, which helps it to feel more calm.

Another thing I liked it that they're described in the same way as any other action or movement.

This is another passage from the book:

The class groans, Heather swears, and my shoulder jumps. My elbow knocks my textbook to the floor with a thump.

Although the author doesn't explicitly say that Sam is ticcing, we as readers can get that idea from the way it's described. Essentially, this is to say that you don't need to explicitly specify when something is a tic or not – your audience will generally pick up on it.

With verbal tics (Especially ones that involve speech), it can be a bit harder. There's a kind of balance you want to strike between showing the tics and still making sure that the dialogue is readable.

While discussing verbal tics that occur outside of dialogue (i.e. Not interrupting the character's speech), I'd suggest marking the tic as such through dialogue tags. Words such as "blurted" or "exclaimed" can imply an unintentional aspect to the speech.

You could also describe how the character is experiencing the tic themself (If it's from their POV).

This is another passage from Jerk, California:

"No thanks, Jace. I'll stay with Sam." "Hah!" The word fires from my mouth. I purse my lips and bite my swollen tongue, but my vocal cords are locked and there's nothing I can do. "Stay with Sam! Stay with Sam!"

If you're writing in the POV of another character, you could describe how it looks from their perspective. Though I'd be careful with this, as it can come across as mockery if it's not done well.

With verbal tics that do interrupt dialogue, be careful to ensure it's not too frequent as it can make it difficult to read. I'd also suggest using some sort of formatting to identify tics vs general dialogue.

An example could be: (Note: This is not from the book)

"You know, I don't think–hey!–that would be a good idea."

That said, you would have to establish that the character has tics beforehand (And, ideally, establish this speech pattern as such), otherwise it can look more like an interruption or something similar.

I'd definitely suggest taking a glance through some books about characters with tics, just to see the format that other authors use. There's a wide range of options out there and the book I referenced here is just one of many ways to do it.

Cheers,

~ Mod Icarus

[eldritch-spouse]

Hey, how would Mervin react if he walked into the house to see us asleep with a bunch of papers around us. But the papers were just us charting his speech patterns so we can actually know what he means because his sin won't let him tell us what he actually wants to.

He genuinely feels bad.

Mervin struggles with his own nature at times. There are moments where he wishes he had fallen in love with anything but a human. Ideally another demon, one who at the very least knows the basics of his kind and has been exposed to prideful communication. Things would be so much easier...

He wouldn't hurt you as much as he can't help hurting you. All demons hurt their non-demonoid lovers, it is written that way, they are creatures of spite. Creatures of chaos and contradiction and very few have the will power to contradict their own natures no matter how many thousands upon thousands of generations come about.

He stands there silently, real emotions bleeding out in the form of his face sinking, sinking, softening, shoulders relaxing fully. Mervin hunches and drags a hand down his face, despair shining like crystal clear water- And while it may seem like an overreaction to anyone else, it is necessary. Anything that is bottled for long periods of time grows in proportion, secretly, genuine emotion becomes exacerbated. Perhaps that's why he keeps such a closed face to you.

What you would see otherwise would scare you.

Mervin picks up one of your markers, and although he doesn't write anything, he highlights sentences, parts of sentences, single words, then highlights the emotion you jotted down on a separate page. The demon then does the same thing with a differently colored marker. Over and over, until he thinks he's charted everything you discovered.

The purple monster looks at you closely for a moment, studying, then whispers in the gentlest tone he's never heard in his own voice.

" I love you. So. Fucking. Much. "

[ceilidho]

Do you have any advice or tips for writing dialogue? It's what I struggle most with 😩😩😩

haha I wish I did 😩 honestly this one sucks the most for me because I truly feel like I don't understand how people talk, or like, I'm really only beginning to get it. I remember spending most of my teenage years (I started writing fanfiction around age 13 or so) really not understanding how people talk to each other and being supremely confused about it.

Once again, the biggest help you're ever going to get is just watching a lot and reading a lot and paying attention to how people talk. I mentioned this in my other writing advice ask, so I'll just reiterate below and add some other observations I have on how people speak:

If you're writing fanfiction, watch or read the source material as much as possible, until you can almost hear the way the character sounds in your head. Take time to understand things like their accent and how they speak (do they talk a lot or very little? do they use slang or enunciate everything? do they speak quickly or slowly?). Here, you just want to concentrate on the cadence of their speech / their speech patterns. If they speak plainly or use lots of proverbs or turns of phrases, that sort of thing. If you have that down, you've honestly done half the work. Even I often reread my work and go "fuck, all of these people SOUND the same even though they're saying different things".

A super important point I should make before anything else is that dialogue is intrinsic to character. If you have a taciturn, sullen, aloof character, they probably won't be a very emotional or heartfelt interlocutor. The things (the content of their dialogue) they'll want to speak about will also reflect this - they might complain more often, might not offer praise as readily. They won't ask for help or share vulnerable parts of them.

A more positive character will be the exact opposite of that. They might be more eager to offer advice or praise. They might feel nervous or uncomfortable about confrontation or calling someone out if they're doing something the character doesn't like.

Essentially, when you're not sure what a character would say, think about:

Who is this person? What are their core attributes?

What is their end goal from this conversation? (or, if it's just chatter / conversation for conversation's sake, what kinds of topics might they be interested in?)

If there is a goal, how would this particular character achieve it (or would they be unsuccessful if they're too timid or mean about it)? Would they be blunt, circumlocutory, deliberately confusing, manipulative - would they get frustrated with themselves because even the character isn't able to say the thing they want to say?

Another thing you have to understand about the way people speak, even if this is VASTLY frustrating when writing because it takes you longer to get to the point, is that people rarely just outright say what they want. Sooommeeee people do, but even in your personal life you'll know those kinds of people to be blunt, straight forward, etc. Most people aren't like that. If you need to take the extra chapter or couple paragraphs to wrangle the truth out of someone, that's pretty natural.

I try to avoid clichés or anything corny in my dialogue unless it makes sense for that character (for instance, Price might be more likely to use like generic white guy colloquialisms like "you're barking up the wrong tree" or "let's rock and roll" lmaoo).

Anyway, I don't have much advice for dialogue because I also struggle with it, but one thing to keep in mind is that readers are very aware of characterization, even subconsciously. Don't sacrifice good characterization even if it means you need to redo a scene or take longer to get to something.

[m0nost4tic]

someone's gotta hear me out here;

octopath traveler ii apocalyptic au.

it has SO MUCH raw potential, no matter which route you want to take for it.

soooo.... prepare yourself for a ramble on potential ideas. do keep in mind i divided it up by sections only after writing most of it though 💔

-- general concept //

i've mentioned the idea to a handful of friends, and most of them assume i mean an apocalyptic au placed in a more modern setting. that in itself is interesting and a whole other concept to explore, but what i've *really* been thinking of is one set in solistia.

at first, i wanted to use the stereotypical zombie virus. but when i further thought on it, that wouldn't really make sense in ot2's context. i mean, yeah, it could be a situation like castti's - but how would a mutated virus tie back to an overlooming shadow the same way trousseau's poison does?

there were a billion different ways to create or sever that tie. the virus' mutation could have been caused by the darkness, or the virus itself originating from a creature of it, or something else among the lines of that. i couldn't really settle on just one solid idea - until i remembered osvald's final chapter.

osvald's final chapter features people who are "possessed" by this shadow magic. they are unable to speak and appear violent to *some* extent. plus, after you're able to free them from this trance, they seem to be unaware of what had only just taken place.

in addition to this, while playing the game, you have a set chance of encountering a monster who looks *just* like one of the others, save for its darker palette and shadow-themed battle scenery. this also appears in ochette's final. and temenos' final, when that magic mutates kaldena into some sort of monster? AND the darkblood blade causing a similar instance with mugen?? ANDDD the dark akala/mahina for ochette's final???? and not to mention trousseau using "poisonous shadow energy" to cause fatal illness. the perfect set-up for a zombielike concept is literally all RIGHT there

-- hikari //

HOWEVER. using the shadow as a direct cause of it brings up a few questions that need solving. if we go with a "the last of us" sort of concept, where the people who are infected are *alive* but serve as "hosts," then what would that mean for hikari??? there's a bunch of different ways to explore that. would he technically be born infected and, therefore, have partial immunity?? if so, how would his infected state affect not only him but the other travelers as well??? i imagine it functions pretty similarly to the original curse, maybe with a few sickly symptoms?

i think one of the key differences with hikari and other forms of the shadow is sentience. with the people from osvald's ch. 5, they're reduced to just making animalistic sounds in place of speaking. in hikari and temenos' finals, both mutated versions of bosses have a VERY limited speech pattern and seem to entirely lose themself. in ochette's story, it afflicted animals. on the flip side, when it comes to hikari's curse, we have this shadow within that can speak and think for itself. while it is a possibility this sentience is limited because most (if not all) of what it thinks about is violence, it's perfectly capable of interacting with people (...if it ever wanted to without hurting them)

so...maybe it wouldn't act like the other infected whenever hikari loses control of it? but it probably still has a strong lust for blood. PLUS, being that this is set in an apocalyptic setting, being around violence is going to be an incredibly common occurrence. hikari'll have to be dealing with it. a LOT. i feel like at some point the other travelers start to notice that something's up, depending on which representation of the curse you wanna go for. like, if it's just partial infection immunity, hikari could be bitten at some point, start feeling a faint bit sickly, and everyone's grieving and preparing for his loss, and then...it just. doesn't happen. or, if you wanna go for something like the shadow being recognized as something similar to the infected, there could be an instance where hikari is struggling against it, and the infected they were in the middle of fighting charge toward him, set to attack, and— then they just walk around him, as if he didn't exist at all. this would probably act similar to the whole smell disguise thing in the walking dead or like the zombies ignoring the ill in world war z

-- throné //

the shadow's relation to the apocalypse would also raise a few questions for throné. for instance, if this widespread infection is marking the beginning of vide's return and the end of time, what would this mean about throné being a 'vessel?' what about her own blood ties to d'arqest (and the ones she shares with hikari)?

since throné doesn't have 1-to-1 interactions with her dark ancestry (the shadow), i wouldn't go quite as far as hikari's concepts. like, i don't think she'd be immune to them. buuuuut, as she was born as a potential candidate as vide's vessel, i can see her being better at handling the infected. maybe it'd be something like a heightened sense or intuition of their actions. there could be more of an understanding that's beyond just empathy of the tragedy. after all, these things are technically vide's creation, and she's not so far off from being considered one too. i wouldn't go off into fantasy land and say she can talk to them or something, but i can see her predicting some of their behaviors. if they ever try to sneak up on the cast, both because of her assassin/thief history and this trait, she'd be the first to notice them and spring into action-- even before they're actually near the group. it's like a feeling of paranoia except, most of the time, it's true

ochette could perhaps possess a similar ability (though not quite the same) due to the orign of the beastlings, and because of her being basically pure light LMAO. even vide couldn't find a way to corrupt her

another note- i feel like traveler stories relating to vide would be much more rooted in cultism than they were originally. you've probably seen films or shows of post-apocalyptic scenarios. cults spresd FAST. and, speaking of which...

-- the moonshade order //

THESE GUYS. eugh i both love and hate them sm i'm gonna throw them

anyway. so, in this version of what i'm describing, the only main world change is the timeline order. long story short, these guys managed to pull a lot of the big bad strings way back, maybe even before some of the travelers were born (glances at agnea) but i haven't fully arranged it out yet

ALTHOUUUGH, as we know, there are circumstances that were only capable thanks TO the travelers. (ex. kazan using the ku civil war to retrieve the blade). i think this is EXACTLY why vide has yet to fully return. maybe they've managed to get 2 or 3 of the flames out (i'm not completely sure which ones are possible and which ones aren't. i'd have to look back at it later... it's currently 12 am at the time of me writing this, so there's zero way i'm checking atm </3). in this csse scenario, i see this like a weakening on the seal, and hence, allowing for the beginning of the end to start

otherrr than that, post-apocalyptic, i see them functioning as a cult. ..well, they technically already are, but a more influential one. like, let's take kazan, for example. he would definitely use the apocalypse as an opportunity to 'advise' the king and general mugen. ...iiiin other words, basically manipulating them.

!! subsection about ku because i rambled a bit //

since ku's so war-heavy, after the kingdom falls (and, geographically wise, they'd likely be one of the last standing), i envision them having a survivor group ran by the royal family. kazan would use the chaos and conflict to paint himself in to a higher, more influential role in this group. as hikari would be pretty young when the apocalypse began, i can picture kazan becoming his mentor in this au. he'd probably speak to hikari and other people of ku about vide and the end of the 'cruel and ugly world' and such, and, because most people are willing to listen to just about anything in this stats of emergency, they start believing in it, too. maybe not as deeply as kazan, but it might influence them in behaviors or habits, like serving to only worsen ku's war-thirsty nature or people of the group beginning to adapt a more "ah, well, it is what it is. this cruel and ugly world will end soon anyway" mindset

also, on kazan mentoring hikari, this would definitely be another manipulation tactic. enough people of ku know about the curse (and, in mugen's case, about hikari's mixed ancestral bloodline) for it to be expected that kazan is fully aware of it. i wouldn't even be surprised if part of the plan was to use hikari to, at last, fully free vide. orrr, maybe kazan treats hikari as if he's vide's intended vessel? either way, this would cause much deeper rooted psychological problems for hikari. like...ku's violence meter probably went WAAAY up due to the stress and panic of the apocalypse. and then you add in the blackouts associated with the shadow within that he's not fully aware of until adulthood. and also a lot of the similar event sequences to his original storyline.

i just really quickly fetched a few small hypothetical concepts i sent to a friend about post-apoc ku late october;

" hikari's upbringing would therefore likely have a lot more of kazan's involvement in it, as well as all those bad behaviors.

ofc, just like he strays from his family's history of violence in canon, hikari often strays away from the path kazan tries to set up for him. he disagrees with all the violence and a good amount of the questionable behaviors clan ku exhibits

in facctttt

one idea i had for this version of ku, was that they sometimes keep others hostage for bargaining, torturing for information, cult-like related reasons, etc. but this would be pretty rare because ku would fucking murder most of their hostages

there was one scene i imagined would perhaps make a tie between him and another character (most likely partitio due to ku and oresrush's proximities)

in this case, lets say there's been a group near their area that they've been struggling to "sniff out," and they finally happen to find one of the members of that group. if this was as a tie to partitio, then this would likely be one of his friends - nikki, joe, maybe even alrond, etc.

young hikari realizes he's roughly the same age as the hostage and, ofc, feels super fucking bad. and hence sneaks out at night to bandage the captive's wounds and maybe try to free him

during that whole interaction, i imagine him saying something along the lines of "it's okay," offering out his hand to show the bandages and his intent to help, "...i'm not like them."

if/when he frees this person, kazan would definitely have the suspicion it was hikari and eventually find the evidence it was (likely through manipulating hikari to spill), and young hikari would get *a ton* of shit for it

to mimic a lot of things that happens in hikari's story, another thing i did sort of want portrayed was his mother's death;

but i thought it more similarly to a twd character, where his father clings onto a zombified version of her (and this could serve as another reason for the occasional captive and excessive bouts of manslaughter)

until, one day, she's found fckin dead. wound indicates a sword to the head and all. hikari personally felt a sort of peace with the fact, because he saw it as her *finally* being allowed to rest properly. he knew and recognized that the walkers were anything but human, and while they once were, the person they were before was most definitely *gone*. (hence he'd be the type to go out of his way to put an end to walkers that're trapped or hung, because he wants those people to finally feel a sense of peace instead of being trapped in whatever sort of hell that was. if the shadow was to have a big hold on him, it would also contribute to this sympathy because he'd *know* some of the hell they'd gone through)

....however, the rest of clan ku would *not* see it that way and treat it as an assassination. and that's another pointer to hikari that things around him are kinda lowkey fucked up

....and because of the way he viewed it, and him being young and not yet really knowing that view was VERY frowned upon, a lot of the clan ends up thinking he was the one who carried it out. henceee more of the shit hikari receives. the shit w/ jin mei would also be connected 2 this "

!! back to moonshade //

mindt may cause something sort of like that among the church, or be able to spread the word of vide under the disguise OF the proper church of the sacred flame. people are 10x more likely to listen to official clerics instead of some rambling lunatic, right?

okay i'm getting too tired to keep writing tjis it just turned 1 in the morning and i didn' sleep yesterdah. 😭😭. i MIGHT come back and revisit this if anything else comes to mind!!!! most of my thoughts have pertained to hikari and thr ku kingdom, so if this post somehow manages to pique anyone's interest at all, i'm really open to hesring any ideas you might have for any of tje travelers or ot2 chatacters! orrr any input about things i've already thought up. i really wanna find some way to implement ships into this too but i haven't gotten to think on it much. i'm personally a sucker for partikari, castthroné, and knightlight/crimenos. but also just relationships in general, like the close-knit friendship between throné and temenos. .....this is making me realize how much more thinking and planning i have to do 😭

ps i'm newer to tumblr so i'm sorry if the formatting in this is god awful💔. i wanted somewhere to rant about my silly little slow work in progress apoc au in the middle of the might and thought you guys would be best suited lmfao

[olderthannetfic]

I've found in my own writing, when checking for SPAG issues without a beta that's good at that kind of thing, TTS tends to catch a lot more than grammar/spellcheck. It doesn't just catch the mispelled words, which aren't really as much of an issue for me (though they do still occur), but it also catches a lot of the stuff that gets mistranslated from brain to fingers as I'm typing. I have a brainweirdness that can cause odd speech patterns, and one of the things that sometimes happens is I'll type (or speak) a word that my brain thinks is the right one, but isn't, for example:

Killed -> killing/killer/kills (brain mistranslates one version of a word into a different one with the same root.)

Sing -> sink/singe/sin (brain mistranslates one word to another that looks similar at a glance, but isn't what I was trying to say.)

No -> know (brain gets mixed up with two words that sound the same in the inner monologue since they're homophones and sends the signal to type the wrong one [this example in particular is one I have done multiple times!].)

TTS isn't really helpful for the last one, but I have certainly avoided a number of embarrassing mistakes using it that, for some reason, didn't get caught by the checker? Even though I don't think that's an unreasonable addition to make to your average grammar/spellcheck?

However. I have still definitely had to use my best judgement with it, because if a character has a name that is even slightly less than recognizably English it WILL butcher it. Without fail. And if you're intentionally doing something grammatically incorrect, like doing thiiiiiiiiis in character dialogue, obviously it's not going to pronounce that right. And some words, like fang, it just pronounces incorrectly, at least with mine it consistently mispronounces that word.

Still though! I've also noticed that it helped in an area I wasn't even expecting, which has to do with how it pronounces punctuation. I was apparently using the wrong dash, which was causing the TTS function in my writing program to fuck up with one of my favorite ways of writing dialogue (characters getting interrupted/interrupting themselves with an action in the middle of a sentence, my beloved). (I don't use that specific one super often, but I do love putting actions between two parts of the same character's dialogue.)

I've also found that it helps when editing for other stuff too, areas where my eyes kinda glossed over and missed a bunch of repititions of the same word get caught by TTS, areas where the phrasing feels awkward or clunky but sounded nice in my head also get caught by it, and just in general, when I've been staring at a piece for too long it catches a lot of stuff I missed, which makes sense given that common editing advice is to read your writing out loud.

Anyway. I don't know if this would be helpful to anyone else since I've been using this tool mostly as a disability aid (if in a different way than it was probably intended for...), but if your program has a TTS function, it can't hurt to try it out. Bye!

--

[elfdragon12]

Can I ask which Tarantulas and Grimlock you’re referring to when you reference bad reinterpretations?? I’m assuming Tarantulas is either IDW or ES (since those are his other major appearances, but I haven’t seen either so I’m not sure how Tarantulas was done there lol) and since Grimlock is more common, I’m wondering what incarnation(s) you have in mind.

(Not hate, just genuine curiosity! Especially after the disaster that was Kingdom!Beast Megatron’s reinterpretation *shudders*)

I would use the word "boring" or "just like everyone else" more than "bad"... But that's kind of the same thing.

For Tarantulas, it's Earthspark. IDW1 is watered down, but still sticks to the general characterization of Tarantulas as originally written in Beast Wars. What makes ES Tarantulas an interesting or unique character? Really and truly? And, for me, it doesn't help knowing that the writer leans into the sad boy "he's a father! 🥺" woobification of IDW1 Tarantulas. I just don't think "sad scientist" Tarantulas is anywhere near as interesting or fun to watch as "mad scientist" Tarantulas. He's just like any other character. Oh he wants to leave the fighting behind! So do Optimus and Megatron, he's not special.

For Grimlock... It's more about the trend of making him "smarter" by going "look! He can speak with proper grammar! See! We made Grimlock smart!" It's also old hat by this point as Furman was writing that in the Marvel days. I do personally find Cyberverse Grimlock to be the worst of it. Him having this overly formal and hammy speech pattern puts me off so bad! And I love the choice of Keith David for Grimlock in Earthspark, but... What else is interesting about his character other than the trauma? He's simply another teacher/dad figure. (Also, Sunbow Grimlock is very sassy and not quite as stupid as people make him out to be, especially in the Call of the Primitives episode. I feel like we've lost this along the way.)

I will admit that a large part of the Grimlock thing for me is that there's a very specific character type that the instant I see it I'm in love. Huge, beefy, bestial figure of a man that loves the thrill of a fight, who doesn't really care what anyone thinks of them, gets bored or becomes disinterested in people who are weak-willed, and have a very particular kind of intelligence. Also toothy with wild hair. Grimlock is perfect for this! If folks weren't such cowards and leaned into how much fun characters can be if you get unconventional with them, it could be great! One of the best examples of the character type I mean is Rikiya Gaou from Eyeshield 21 (coincidentally, on a team called the Hakushuu Dinosaurs and receives lots of T-Rex imagery. Basically Grimlock if he were human).

He's not simply a brute. He's a smart brute. I love him. He's fun and single-minded. He's very talented and the main characters are appreciative of having his power on their side, but they find actually dealing with his personality difficult.

A more calm, measured, and "intelligent" Grimlock is the opposite of what I want! If I wanted a dramatic warrior poet dinosaur robot, I'd grab Dinobot (who is also a victim of being watered down). That but evil and I'd grab BW Megatron.

[musicforspaandearthquake]

the aesthetics of capitalism

This subtle incentivizing of certain kinds of content or expression over others in algorithmic capitalism has led to the formulation of certain broad aesthetics across individual platforms. Following the logic of Mcluhan's "the medium is the message," each platform, over time, seems to generate its own aesthetic through the slow rewarding of certain kinds of content over another. Jia Tolentino, for example, writes of instagram face in a 2019 post, and another writer writes of the melancholy spotify pop that came to ubiquity in 2018. Reminded as well of the instagram poster who posted mass tiles of everyone who posted the same thing.

An irony lurks here of millions, perhaps billions, of people each individually pursuing an individual vision and somehow all coming out looking homogenous, the same. I see metaphors in the example of millions of city inhabitants using individual light and ambiently creating light pollution as a byproduct. Or how in Los Angeles, or perhaps any suburbia, millions of people sought their private utopia of a home with lateral space and a yard and a pool and created a sprawling dysopia of creepy sameness and waste. Millions of people, pursuing their own individual ideas of art or expression or home, and without acknowledging what they have in common, create not only pollution and noise, but an odd kind of cultural homogeneity, each repeating the same patterns of the other, but without ever even realizing it.

*

It's not only on digital platforms in which algorithms organize, aesthetically, what flies and what doesn't. Capitalism more broadly has a surprisingly consistent and coherent aesthetic identity.

In particular, I'm interested in the music which advertising and retail spaces prefer, and am interested in the idea that within the realm of the market and consumerist spaces, capitalist aesthetics are organized around whatever might be thought of as the opposite of death.

Precisely this opposition between death, and its attendant spiritual or religious register of speech or existance, and capitalism, is highlighted throughout Don DeLillo's White Noise, in particular in Murray's grocery store speech about tibet and the grocery store.

An equally rich site for these reflections is John Berger's short essay 12 Theses on the Economy of the Dead. Just as in DeLillo's White Noise, there is a creative clash of registers in Berger's title alone: we do not often see the words "economy" and "dead" in the same sentence, much less often do we think about what economy the dead might traffic in.

In his essay, Berger posits a world in which the dead surround the living. The living and the dead are able to have intermittent moments of communication with one another. Religion, Berger writes, is the dogmatic attempt to ritually enact these communications. "Capitalism," Berger writes, stifles and does away with these communications, for in capitalism, we simply do away with the dead.

Here Berger is on to the mutual exclusion of magic, wonder, or the mysterious--and hyper-rationality of the marketplace, in which everything can be boiled down to a number or price.

Walter Benjamin, information, story.

Karl Ove, death is everywhere around us, and passage on the brands of the city in book 6.

*

I see in Brian Eno's liner notes for MFA, then, a stand being taken against capitalist aesthetics and their enforced, cheap cheeriness, their insistence on a deathless worldview, in favor of a worldview in which death exists. This world in which death exists, is, ironically, much more alive and humane. It is the world of consolation that Alain de Boton writes about. It is a pessimistic world, which, ironically permits connection and togetherness, through a shared sense of consolation. By contrast, the insistent cheeriness of capitalist aesthetics ironically inspire dread and anxiety, the very feelings they wish to expel. I never feel further from love, cheer, or hope then when I am forced to hear Counting Crows "Paved Paradise and Put up A Parking Lot" in any of the grocery stores where I shop, which ironically seems to be a perennial favorite of said grocery stores. Ironic because if there is a villain in Joni Mitchell's original song, it would be precisely such grocery stores which are now playing her song, with their ample paved parking lots out front.

[spectershaped]

I just remembered an interesting exchange I've been privy to once in a Discord channel, regarding a black character in a comic written by a white author who didn't "sound" black, and I've also remembered a different conversation elsewhere about white webcomic writers who end up making their black characters adopt typically "white" speech patterns out of apprehension about both employing a speech pattern that might be seen as stereotypical or othering and employing a dialect they do not have a bone-deep familiarity with. I think both the apprehensions and the criticism of them are pretty understandable - though, of course, I'm not exactly speaking from a neutral position here, if one is even possible -, but I also think they both speak to a certain awkwardness somewhat inherent to the mechanics of fictional portrayal as a thing and, on a deeper level, to the broader issue of cultural knowledge (to some extent, knowledge in general) and what the expectations of it ought to be on the part of people who were not immersed in and shaped by it (especially given that we don't exactly live in a world where there's anything resembling symmetry on terms of cultural understanding)

Writers often are expected, to some extent, to have a sense of curiosity about the world around them and an interest in understanding it, even when they write about nonexistent people and places and events; I believe the idea here is both that a) adding believable details, which is termed "versimilitude", to nonexistent things help make them believable or at least illuminate many interesting things about our own existence by contrast; and b) a writer should know what parts of what they write are invented and which are more or less real/realistic, as opposed to someone who writes things that are not really "invented" but more properly "cobbled together from vague/warped/prejudiced/bigoted understandings of how the world around them is and works"

Now, whiteness is infamously a very elusive yet ubiquitous thing; it's not really correct to say there is no such thing as "white culture" - though, as a white person from Brazil, my notion of what that is might differ in some respects from that of a white US American or a white Frenchperson -, but the fact of the matter is that, by its very nature, whiteness has everything to do with hegemonic power by the very nature of how it functions, so no part of that culture is wholly extricable from this power relation (other cultures aren't really untouched by the material relations of society, but we're specifically talking domination here). An inchoate mishmash of cultures gets tossed into the category of "whiteness" (and "the West" and whatnot), but the thing itself is probably something that would not really exist as such in a world without it being hegemonic (or at least vying for hegemony). When it comes to whiteness, this kind of glib blinkered-ness about its own ubiquity is kind of the point (see also: neoliberalism)

That said, though, what is to be expected (as in hoped for, not as in predicted) of a writer about another culture/subculture and the people in it - especially an individual writer as opposed to the dedicated crew of a TV production or such - is...very arguable. Just saying you feel a writer didn't understand something about an aspect of life you know a lot about doesn't necessarily carry negative judgment about it, but it would be foolish to say that there is no distinction whether said "specialized" subject matter is aerospace engineering or living as a filipine person in the US. And all of that then becomes bananas complicated by the fact that people within a culture are distinct from each other despite marinating in that same broth and trying to understand your own sense of self within a particular culture despite not being able to fully extricate yourself from it is one of the classic nightmarishly frustrating human experiences! The balancing act between seeing someone as an extension of their unfathomable Otherness and not assuming they are too much like you is super hard whether or not you're a writer!

Making up a fictional marginalized individual might not be the moral crucible some authors seem to build it into inside their heads, but it's very much something that can feel more Revealing(TM) than trying to write accurate aerodynamics. Leaving nonwhite people out of your story-world is very, very different from not having a book be set on a faulty airplane because you can't seem to wrap your head around all the gadgetry and physics of air travel no matter how much you try to look things up. And mishandling the portrayal of people whose individual and collective existence is bent and twisted in everyone's eyes by the same system you inhabit is not the same as bungling the workings of a made-up cockpit (without even going into all the endless weird nooks and crannies of what "representation" through fiction entails!)

I often wonder if maybe the defensiveness felt by people writing minorities they don't belong to who then get criticized might be less about wanting to "be a Good Person" and more about the harrowing, continuous realization that your very imagination, maybe even your very sense of self, is shaped and demarcated by this amalgam of cultural norms and notions and power dynamics and warped images and material conditions that are not unique to you. Like realizing you're some sort of cell in a large, viscous, pulsating organism or a link in a large, but not as viscous or pulsating chainmail piece

I dunno, this post has gone on for too long already but I just think this is a sort of dynamic that's both pretty interesting and worth thinking about

[reesiereads]

Hello good sir. Would you offer me some crumbs of bread? (Aka ramble about any oc you want. Idc what or who it is. I'm giving you the change go write a whole essay if you want)

Thank you so much for this opportunity! Seeing as it's Sol's birthday today (yes ey are named after the Summer Solstice, it's an important day culturally in Aries) I'll take the chance to ramble about em.

Under a read more because this got hella long :))

So Sol is one of four protagonists for my original story Mutiny. Out of the four ey're probably the most interesting at first glance because ey aren't new to The Eye like the rest of the protagonists. Writing em is a lot of fun too since ey have a lot of secrets to keep from both the other main characters and the reader.

One of Mutiny's main themes is expectations and specifically how harmful they can be. Each character struggles with a different kind of expectation (each partially based on my own struggles, because every writer knows you've got to pull from your own experiences) and Sol's type is mostly familial expectations.

As the second child of the current King and Queen of Aries Sol doesn't have as many expectations as eir older brother but ey are still expected to contribute both to the family and eir country. The problem really lies in Sol's lackluster leadership and strategy skills, something critical in politics. Being headstrong and impulsive has led em to plenty of mistakes and earning a very critical eye from eir Mother who often reminds em how lucky everyone is ey are "just the spare."

Another thing that makes Sol different from the other characters of Mutiny is how ey actively seek out more responsibility. Ey strive to prove themself capable of leading in hopes of gaining eir families' approval. Everyone in eir family is important or talented on some level except em. This "black sheep" sort of feeling ey struggle with and general insecurities lead em to take on more than ey can chew and in general be extremely reckless.

Eir arc is essentially about learning ey have worth inherently rather than having to earn it and that they are good enough as ey are.

Something else about Sol that's particularly fun to write about is eir speaking patterns. Because of eir upbringing, Sol is used to having to hide when eir uncomfortable or stressed- so when ey feel these things it's obvious because ey sort of put on this... formal front. For instance:

Stressed: “Apologies,” Sol says, forcing eir fists to relax and eir expression to fall flat. Setting eir shoulders back and making sure eir posture is straight ey meet Kenny’s gaze dead-on, despite the crawling sensation that crawls up eir spine. “It’s… not ideal, but we knew that would happen eventually. We’ll just have to choose carefully.”

Not Stressed: Scowling, Sol rolls eir eyes. “It’s the last chance to find new recruits, you know that as well as I do, Kenny.”

(Keep in mind those snippets are from a first draft so if they're a bit of a mess that's why)

In general, eir speech is more formal than most of Mutiny's cast, since Aries is an extremely formal country (especially among the nobles/rich/royals). It's a fun challenge to try and write in a way that's still casual enough to not be overly strange while still expressing Sol's roots. When writing so many main characters and perspectives it's important all of them have a unique voice. Dion who spends most of his time in poorer areas and skips school a lot can't sound the same as Sol who's spent eir entire childhood being trained in etiquette and politics in a formal setting.

Another interesting thing about Sol that I only discovered while writing the first draft is that despite not being very close to eir actual siblings ey act a lot like an older sibling to the other protagonists (who are all younger than em). I think eir desire for more responsibility as well as their wish of getting closer to eir family/siblings probably plays a part in this. For examples:

Dion: Sol opens eir mouth again before closing it, as if unsure of what to say. Eventually, ey open eir mouth again, seeming more sure of emselves as ey say, “You know it gets easier, being here. Obviously everyone wants to leave but-” ey rub the back of their neck and look away. “All I’m saying is that it’s not so bad; it could be worse.”

Vega: Should I even be holding them like this? It feels like it’s making it worse. Ey didn’t let go for fear that once ey did Vega would somehow manage to hurt themself, but guilt sat heavy in eir chest the longer it went on. Why did I even try to help? Sure they were crying but… that was probably better than whatever this is. Vega was fighting like they thought they were dying; maybe they did.

“Vega,” Sol tried again, not bothering to keep their voice quiet now. If Dion and Sabrina hadn’t woken up already they probably weren’t going to. “Vega, it’s alright. Calm down.”

Sabrina: “I can talk to her if you want,” Sol offers. If ey were being honest ey planned on doing it either way. Sabrina’s input only determined whether Sol would be telling Coral about this conversation or not. It makes something ugly stir in Sol’s stomach, hearing about someone ey roughly consider a friend going through what Coral has put Sabrina through; convinced her of. Sol wouldn’t stand for it whether ey knew Sabrina personally or not but now eir heart has a stake in the issue as well and ey can’t help but be angry on Sabrina’s behalf. Someone has to be, considering she can’t even seem to recognize that she wasn’t the one in the wrong.

Sol, to me, is kinda the definition of a person who is always trying eir best to do the right thing but just isn't very sure of emself, particularly when it comes to more emotional issues. A lot of eir interactions are based on my own struggles emotionally and I've played with the idea of Sol being autistic with low empathy (because mood).

Anyways, Sol is a very special character to me who I've spent the last three years or so developing. It's hard to comprehend that when I first thought of Mutiny ey were just a background character and now ey're one of the main characters with major stakes in taking down The Eye.

Happy Birthday, Sol! And thanks again Anon for asking for this essay <33

[pumpkinpaix]

hello there, hope you're having a nice day <3

so i've been reading a lot of fics lately, uk for sanity's sake, and i've noticed that in most of them, lwj doesn't use contractions (eg., says do not instead of don't)?? and i think he doesn't in the novel either but i don't remember lol so i can't be sure but anyway that made me curious - does chinese have contractions as well? does he not use it bc it's informal?

hello there! I’m doing all right, i started to answer this ask while waiting for a jingyeast loaf to come out of the oven 😊 many thanks to @bookofstars for helping me look over/edit/correct this post!! :D

anyways! the answer to your questions are complicated (of course it is when is anything simple with me), so let’s see if I can break it down--you’re asking a) whether chinese has contractions, b) if it does, how does they change the tone of the sentence--is it similar to english or no?, and c) how does this all end up with lan wangji pretty much never using contractions in english fic/translation?

I’m gonna start by talking about how formality is (generally) expressed in each language, and hopefully, by the end of this post, all the questions will have been answered in one way or another. so: chinese and english express variations in formality/register differently, oftentimes in ways that run contrary to one another. I am, as always, neither a linguist nor an expert in chinese and english uhhh sociological grammar? for lack of a better word. I’m speaking from my own experience and knowledge :D

so with a character like lan wangji, it makes perfect sense in english to write his dialogue without contractions, as contractions are considered informal or colloquial. I don’t know if this has changed in recent years, but I was always taught in school to never use contractions in my academic papers.

However! not using contractions necessarily extends the length of the sentence: “do not” takes longer to say than “don’t”, “cannot” is longer than “can’t” etc. in english, formality is often correlated with sentence length: the longest way you can say something ends up sounding the most formal. for a very simplified example, take this progression from least formal to absurdly formal:

whatcha doin’?

what’re you doing?

what are you doing? [standard colloquial]

may I ask what you are doing?

might I inquire as to what you are doing?

excuse me, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

pardon my intrusion, but might I inquire as to what you are doing?

please pardon my intrusion, but might inquire as to the nature of your current actions?

this is obviously a somewhat overwrought example, but you get the point. oftentimes, the longer, more complex, more indirect sentence constructions indicate a greater formality, often because there is a simultaneous decreasing of certainty. downplaying the speaker’s certainty can show deference (or weakness) in english, while certainty tends to show authority/confidence (or aggression/rudeness).

different words also carry different implications of formality—in the example, I switched “excuse me” to “pardon me” during one of the step ups. pardon (to me at least) feels like a more formal word than “excuse”. Similarly, “inquire” is more formal than “ask” etc. I suspect that at least some of what makes one word seem more formal than one of its synonyms has to do with etymology. many of english’s most formal/academic words come from latin (which also tends to have longer words generally!), while our personal/colloquial words tend to have germanic origins (inquire [latin] vs ask [germanic]).

you’ll also notice that changing a more direct sentence structure (“may I ask what”) to a more indirect one (“might I inquire as to”) also jumps a register. a lot of english is like this — you can complicate simple direct sentences by switching the way you use the verbs/how many auxiliaries you use etc.

THE POINT IS: with regards to english, more formal sentence structures are often (not always) longer and more indirect than informal ones. this leads us to a problem with a character like lan wangji.

lan wangji is canonically very taciturn. if he can express his meaning in two words rather than three, then he will. and chinese allows for this—in extreme ways. if you haven’t already read @hunxi-guilai’s post on linguistic register (in CQL only, but it’s applicable across the board), I would start there because haha! I certainly do Not have a degree in Classical Chinese lit and she does a great job. :D

you can see from the examples that hunxi chose that often, longer sentences tend to be more informal in chinese (not always, which I’ll circle back to at the end lol). Colloquial chinese makes use of helping particles to indicate tone and meaning, as is shown in wei wuxian’s dialogue. and, as hunxi explained, those particles are largely absent from lan wangji’s speech pattern. chinese isn’t built of “words” in the way English is—each character is less a word and more a morpheme—and the language allows for a lot of information to be encoded in one character. a single character can often stand for a phrase within a sentence without sacrificing either meaning or formality. lan wangji makes ample use of this in order to express himself in the fewest syllables possible.

so this obviously leads to an incongruity when trying to translate his dialogue or capture his voice in English: shorter sentences are usually more direct by nature, and directness/certainty is often construed as rudeness -- but it might seem strange to see lan wangji’s dialogue full of longer sentences while the narration explicitly says that he uses very short sentences. so what happens is that many english fic writers extrapolated this into creating an english speech pattern for lan wangji that reads oddly. they’ll have lan wangji speak in grammatically incoherent fragments that distill his intended thought because they’re trying to recreate his succinctness. unfortunately, English doesn’t have as much freedom as Chinese does in this way, and it results in lan wangji sounding as if he has some kind of linguistic impediment and/or as if he’s being unspeakably rude in certain situations. In reality, lan wangji’s speech is perfectly polite for a young member of the gentry (though he’s still terribly rude in other ways lol). he speaks in full, and honestly, quite eloquent sentences.

hunxi’s post already has a lot of examples, but I figure I’ll do one as well focused on the specifics of this post.

I’m going to use this exchange from chapter 63 between the twin jades because I think it’s a pretty simple way to illustrate what I’m talking about:

蓝曦臣道：“你亲眼所见？”

蓝忘机道：“他亲眼所见。”

蓝曦臣道：“你相信他？”

蓝忘机道：“信。”

[...] 蓝曦臣道：“那么金光瑶呢？”

蓝忘机道：“不��信。”

my translation:

Lan Xichen said, “You saw it with your own eyes?”

Lan Wangji said, “He saw it with his own eyes.”

Lan Xichen said, “You believe him?”

Lan Wangji said, “I believe him.”

[...] Lan Xichen said, “Then what about Jin Guangyao?”

Lan Wangji said, “He cannot be believed.”

you can see how much longer the (pretty literal) english translations are! every single line of dialogue is expanded because things that can be omitted in chinese cannot be omitted in english without losing grammatical coherency. i‘ll break a few of them down:

Lan Xichen’s first line:

你 (you) 亲眼 (with one’s own eyes) 所 (literary auxiliary) 见 (met/saw)？

idk but i love this line a lot lmao. it just has such an elegant feel to me, probably because I am an uncultured rube. anyways, you see here that he expressed his full thought in five characters.

if I were to rewrite this sentence into something much less formal/much more modern, I might have it become something like this:

你是自己看见的吗？

你 (you) 是 (to be) 自己 (oneself) 看见 (see) 的 (auxiliary) 吗 (interrogative particle)？

i suspect that this construction might even be somewhat childish? I’ve replaced every single formal part of the sentence with a more colloquial one. instead of 亲眼 i’ve used 自己, instead of 所见 i’ve used 看见的 and then also added an interrogative particle at the end for good measure (吗). To translate this, I would probably go with “Did you see it yourself?”

contained in this is also an example of how one character can represent a whole concept that can also be represented with two characters: 见 vs 看见. in this example, both mean “to see”. we’ll see it again in the next example as well:

in response to lan xichen’s, “you believe him?” --> 你 (you) 相信 (believe) 他 (him)? lan wangji answers with, “信” (believe).

chinese does not do yes or no questions in the same way that english does. there is no catch-all for yes or no, though there are general affirmative (是／有) and negative (不／没) characters. there are other affirmative/negative characters, but these are the ones that I believe are the most common and also the ones that you may see in response to yes or no questions on their own. (don’t quote me on that lol)

regardless, the way you respond to a yes or no question is often by repeating the verb phrase either in affirmative or negative. so here, when lan xichen asks if lan wangji believes wei wuxian, lan wangji responds “believe”. once again, you can see that one character can stand in for a concept that may also be expressed in two characters: 信 takes the place of 相信. lan wangji could have responded with “相信” just as well, but, true to his character, he didn’t because he didn’t need to. this is still a complete sentence. lan wangji has discarded the subject (I), the object (him), and also half the verb (相), and lost no meaning whatsoever. you can’t do this in english!

and onto the last exchange:

lan xichen: 那么 (then) 金光瑶 (jin guangyao) 呢 (what about)？

lan wangji: 不可 (cannot) 信 (believe)

you can actually see the contrast between the two brothers’ speech patterns even in this. lan xichen’s question is not quite as pared down as it could be. if it were wangji’s line instead, I would expect it to read simply “金光瑶呢？” which would just be “what about jin guangyao?” 那么 isn’t necessary to convey the core thought -- it’s just as how “then what about” is different than “what about”, but “then” is not necessary to the central question. if we wanted to keep the “then” aspect, you could still cut out 么 and it would be the same meaning as well.

a FINAL example of how something can be cut down just because I think examples are helpful:

“I don’t know” is usually given as 我不知道. (this is what nie huaisang says lol) It contains subject (我) and full verb (知道). you can pare this straight down to just 不知 and it would mean the same thing in the correct context. i think most of the characters do this at least once? it sounds more literary -- i don’t know that i would ever use it in everyday speech, but the fact remains that it’s a possibility. both could be translated as “I do not know” and it would be accurate.

ANYWAYS, getting all the way back to one of your original questions: does chinese have contractions? and the answer is like... kind of...?? but not really. there’s certainly slang/dialect variants that can be used in ways that are reminiscent of english contractions. the example I’m thinking of is the character 啥 (sha2) which can be used as slang in place of 什么 (shen2 me). (which means “what”)

so for a standard sentence of, 你在做什么? (what are you doing), you could shorten down to just 做啥? and the second construction is less formal than the first, but they mean the same thing.

other slang i can think of off the top of my head: 干嘛 (gan4 ma2) is also informal slang for “what are you doing”. and i think this is a regional thing, but you can also use 搞 (gao3) and 整 (zheng3) to mean “do” as well.

so in the same way that you can replace 什么 with 啥, you can replace 做 as well to get constructions like 搞啥 (gao3 sha2) and 整啥 (zheng3 sha2).

these are all different ways to say “what are you doing” lmao, and in this case, shorter is not, in fact, more formal.

woo! we made it to the end! I hope it was informative and helpful to you anon. :D

this is where I would normally throw my ko-fi, but instead, I’m actually going to link you to this fundraising post for an old fandom friend of mine. her house burned down mid-september and they could still use help if anyone can spare it! if this post would have moved you to buy me a ko-fi, please send that money to her family instead. :) rbs are also appreciated on the post itself. (* ´▽` *)

anyways, here’s the loaf jingyeast made :3 it was very tasty.

[sothischickshe]

4, 5, 12?

Thanks!

Ugh I just realised tumblr ate my tags on the original post 😭 why is it like this

4. Avoid repetition

So I'm gonna cheat for this one and repost the thing I posted some unit of time ago (#timeisfake), I was thinking about it (and how blanketly applying generic advice is a bit... Questionable, which is what led to the list!) as ever I am on mobile and incompetent so can't link to it like a normal

 Here's what I think writing advice about avoiding repetition means:

 Vary your sentence structures (if you have 17 lines in a row that start with 'he wants', is there a different way you can say/convey that?)

Listen to how it sounds (many words have multiple meanings so you may not clock that you've used them a lot, does the sentence actually need the word 'back' 5 times? The answer may well be yes but investigate!)

 Word repetition (especially in a block) can be powerful and also can highlight similarities and consistency (and irony!), if that's not what you're trying to achieve it might be worth looking for a simple and true synonym if there is one

Language is fun! Is there another way you can convey this that isn't the same way you've said it before and/or that doesn't feel a little cliché? (clichés aren't necessarily bad though!)

Making the same point over and over again can be...well, repetitive! Even if you've used different words, do you need to make this point again? (maybe you do! Is it clear to you why you're doing this?)

Word choices can convey mood very well, is there a slightly odd synonym you can use here instead that makes sense and helps convey the tone (or level of ambiguity) you would like to use?

Looking across your entire body of work, maybe you return to the same tropes or plots or language (is that intentional? Are there things you'd like to challenge yourself to not/use?)

 There might be an interesting (metaphorical?) way you can refer to the thing that's worth exploring rather than just describing it repeatedly as the thing (if you're talking about it a lot presumably it has significance? Otherwise... Do you need to keep talking about it?)

 Superlatives can be varied fairly reasonably a lot of the time

Characters' speech patterns vary (do you talk the same all the time? With everyone? In every mood?)

 Here is not what I think it means:

 There is a limit to how many times you can use a perfectly normal and pertinent word

You should start casting about for weird af synonyms for 'eyes' or 'table' and just fold them in willy nilly

Synonyms are interchangeable

Writerly tics are bad

You shouldn't foreshadow

You should use lots of weird synonyms for 'said'

Yea I stand by it!

5. Write every day

Psssssht noooooo 😂 I mean if you're a professional writer and/or you have the time, sure!

And the sentiment of it being a muscle you need to use? Sure!

But I have a full time job and I need to spend time being unproductive to relax, and I don't want writing to feel like a chore.

And I find that I need a break between finishing something and starting something! (I can only really work on one thing at a time though.)

I do think time thinking about a story is kinda writing work though!!

But still... Write every week, maybe. Even that feels rather draconian!

12. Never use a long word where a short one will do

Psssssht no 😂

Tbf Orwell did finish up that list with:

. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

But I am not sure I know what that means??

Tbf again, I don't think he was talking about fiction when he wrote that advice for effective communication or whatever, but I do see it quoted generally as well as for fiction.

I agree that fancy flowery language CAN stand out and be a bit jarring, but ultimately that CAN also fit if it melds with a character or an author's voice. Definitely not an automatic no. Also I don't think all long words are automatically pretentious, while short ones are not?? I mean that seems a bit unfair to any dull compound word?? #falsedichotomy

[anachronic-cobra]

If I might ask, are you only using sounds/letters from the English language for your name generator? Also are you only using sound combinations we have in English? -a curious linguistics student

I was almost done writing this and then my phone glitched, so here's explanation 2.0. It's long, fair warning. I could probably just have sent this privately but I'm tired so I'm just posting it instead

(To anyone who doesn't know, this is in reference to my eldritch name generator, where you either A) give me a number between 1-100 and a number between 1-200, and I give you a short two-syllable name, or B) you request a full name and I randomly roll a name from 1-5 words each of 2-5 syllables)

The sounds I use are all made up entirely as I go along based on what sounds like a good prefix/suffix for a name. The letters are all English, as I don't know any other alphabets well enough to incorporate their letters. The sounds themselves tend to fall into a few categories.

The prefixes can fall into the categories I'll label as "Uncommon to Nonexistent in English", "English Sounds with Non-English Spelling", "English Words with Non-English Spelling", and "Power-Invoking", and "Literally Just Eldritch-Sounding Words".

The ones that are uncommon to nonexistent in English are sounds that don't really have a direct way for me to translate the pronunciation for into English sounds. For example, the prefixes Hrot and Nwei.

English Sounds with Non-English Spelling refers to, as you can guess, sounds you would more commonly hear in English speech, but with altered spelling. Usually these spelling alterations involve non-English vowel combinations and less-typical consonant combinations, and "i" often replaced with "y". For example, Pelth and Waer.

English Words with Non-English spelling just refers to prefixes that sound like actual English words, but spelled so that they're practically unrecognizable as those words. For example, Ptyr ("tire") and Oe ("way").

Power-Invoking refers to made up sounds and visual words that I feel particularly felt like the name of some eldritch horror waiting to greet me in the night. These are prefixes like Xzyl ("zile") and Yeph ("yef").

Literally Words are just words that invoke the kind of feeling I believe an eldritch horror should emanate. These are words like Maw, Wyrm, and Yaw.

The only prefix that is intentionally already an existing prefix is "icth", as in icthyology, because I've always loved the sound of it.

Suffixes follow the same patterns, with one addition. There are Non-English Sounds (-zyrrh), English Sounds with Non-English Spelling (-byx), English Words with Non-English Spelling (-blyt/"blight"), Power-Invoking (-syx, -flyn), and Actual Words (-maul, -cur). However the suffixes also include Angelic suffixes. These are inspired by the fact that I was thinking about Eldritch Angels at the time, and because the idea of giving an unfathomable horror the name of an angel invokes some sense of intelligence, intent, and a sense of a greater picture than the universe itself. These suffixes include -iel, -rael, and -quel.

I find that Power-Invoking and Literal Word Prefixes with Angelic suffixes makes for fantastic angel names, like Yephrael, Kraaliel, and Xzyliel. You can also cheat with these ones, because I am a sucker for the two-syllable pronunciation of these suffixes, but either way is valid (i.e., YEF-rayl and YEF-righ-el).

Now, randomly-generated full names involve extra syllables. Therefore, I have a section for Intermediate Syllables. Every letter includes a set of six basic vowel syllables (for example, ga, gi, ge, go, gu, gy, or ia, ie, io, iu, iy, ii, as long as it remains one syllable). They also have syllables using the aforementioned guidelines. This means I have not finished past the "k"s yet.

Finally, there are some cases in which either a dash (-) or an apostrophe (') will be included. When you see a dash, it is separating a clunky set of syllables. For example, Ziikhkeil would become Ziikh-keil, indicating that the name is technically two connected words, but not two separate names, as it doesn't flow easily. An apostrophe represents a glottal stop, which can occur normally with one-letter prefixes (like C' or G') or between clunky letter combinations where a stop is more appropriate than the dash. This is mostly chosen for aesthetic reasons or to help the name flow off the tongue easier.

For example, G'niir (which can also be pronounced more fluidly as guh-NEER depending on preference) or C'aeyn (which must have a glottal stop, as it's not pronounced "cane" but "k-ANE").

Using these rules, I can make some pretty good names, like Zepheiraax or Wytaenhawl.

On the other hand, I can also make names like Yawyaw, Q'r, I'iii, and Wyrmbaths.

[echoheart0324]

*deep sigh* So...uh...about the November story update...*deep breath*. Damnitallholyshitwhatthefuckisallofthisinformation. I’ll provide my insight into this topic, along with the traitor talk once more (featuring ‘Darkness’ and their bullshit). I’ve been putting this off for so long, so...RIP I suppose.

Warning: Heavy KHUX spoilers will be discussed, featuring my thoughts and speculation. You have been warned. (Also there’s a lot of stretches and lousy evidence, but I wanted to bring this into light...)

Here’s my general opinion right now:

*yells loudly* I don’t think Lauriam’s on our suspect list!!!

Before y’all get a pitchfork and stab me to death until I bleed out or something (I dunno either), hear me out.

I’ll lend you what I got gathered here. It’s a mess, but it’s something, better than nothing.

()()()

For the KHUX story update that occurred during October, a mysterious figure approached the scenes, going by the name ‘Darkness’ (which is stupid. Who thought that name would be a great addition to the game???).

Although I have no experience with the Japanese language, a few Twitter accounts who I was able to stumble across by, were able to provide valuable information. I won’t be providing names, just in case the info’s false.

Anyways, ’Darkness’ has a specific speech pattern that is apparent, exclusively to the JP version. The figure uses the pronoun of ‘ore’, which Marluxia/Lauriam don’t seem to use, where instead they use ‘boku’? Though I think the other guys use ‘ore’. (So in all honesty, I had Lauriam crossed off my list for a while now, but today let it rest to bed.)

Even though I probably look like a Blaine stan (...I never thought I’d say that out loud...I’m never going to say that again...), I’m going to point the finger of blame, as the traitor and murderer of Strelitzia, at...*looks at smudged hand*...Brain. (Wow, what sort of timeline is this where I use his ‘official name’...oh well one step a time to sever bonds I suppose to spare myself the pain) It’s odd, I know, but hear me out.

()()()

*lifts up glasses* So, this is where I get into the nitty gritty, what-the-fuck are you on Echo, speculation things. This is more of a personal-level thing and I know Nomura’s going to do something to catch us off guard with the element of surprise. That’s why we’re going to think like him for a minute.

In all honesty, it could be Ven as the traitor right? I know a lot of people jumped onto this, as soon as Lauriam brought up the whole ‘sister’ thing (with the translations being all iffy. Maybe in a year we’ll find out, who knows). I can definitely see this happening, but I find it quite odd...

I’m aware of the fact that Ven didn’t seem to know what ‘Shift Pride’ was (and his reaction to it was kinda...unnerving). I’ve also already brought this up in the past, but:

(The Union Leaders all come in order, except for Brain and Ven.)

I don’t understand why they’d have everyone else in order, but huh. Something's off.

However, Ven does bring up meeting Master Ava (and I really hope it isn't him) and he was against 'Shift Pride', so I trust him.

()()()

Next up on our list, we have Lauriam. Since the story update for November introduced Elrena/Erlena (oh gosh it’s the Blaine/Brain situation all over again. I dunno what the official team’s gonna go for, but I have a bad habit of sticking with the ‘l’ names, so fuck y’all), we have...quite a batch here. Since the script was being vague and everything, we don’t know exactly who Strelitzia’s older sibling is.

I mean...if it was his own sibling, then Lauriam has to go to the time-out corner for murdering your own family member (if he did do it). If it was Elrena’s relation to Strelitzia, then that’s a different story.

Based off the subtle interactions we got, Lauriam seems to have some sort of relationship to Strelitzia, going to the extent of interacting with another fellow Keyblade wielder for the sake of it. I know it’s probably a far too gap to reach for, but I want to believe that these two are partners working behind the scenes to crack down who the traitor/murderer is.

()()()

This is where I bring up the official art (y’know, like an idiot who analyzes everything).

Interestingly, Ephemera (if you flip the image, he’s leaning to their direction and his eyes are focused over to their direction so shhh it counts), Skuld, Ven, and Lauriam are all looking the same way to the left! Meanwhile, Brain and the hooded figure (which I assume is Elrena) are facing the opposite direction. (I dunno how Chirithy fits in this honestly...so uh...)

This is the stretch of the century (and I’m 99.99% sure I’m wrong), but notice how the hooded figure is slightly looking downwards, their chin down. We can’t see what their eyes are focusing on too well (and I might as well be blind), but it’s possible that Elrena is looking down upon Brain (damn it. Or onto the flower...eh...). Maybe she knows that Brain has something to do with her/Lauriam’s sister’s ‘disappearance’.

To add onto the above further, it’s possible that the others do learn of a traitor in their midst. However, they’re all blinded by their own doubts and beliefs, making them face the wrong culprit. Meanwhile Brain faces the other direction and smiles widely (...I just noticed he's the only one with his mouth open), knowing they’ll assume it’s someone other than himself. (And then Elrena kicks his ass. I dunno.)

()()()

And just for fun, the other day (sometime back in filler hell) I scrambled up Brain’s name and got ‘Binar’. I was curious so I looked it up to see if it meant anything or if there was anything at least related. Well, *slides in* it’s possible that it could also mean ‘binary’ (just remove the ‘y’, just like Ephemer with the word ‘ephemeral’). ‘What the fuck does binary have to do with anything???’ you may ask. Heh...so it was recently confirmed that the Keykids are all linked to the data world, and y’all know what codes for data? Binary numbers...binary code to be more precise! (Maybe he has some sort of extra knowledge of the data in the worlds??? Or he could just be in complete control???)

I really dunno what else to add here, since it’s odd, but it may as well be a coincidence that I picked up on by mistake. Maybe we’ll bring this up again another day, once we have more information at our disposal.

()()()

Read up on this.

If you already read my little mess of speculation on nobility at the bottom of that post, then we’re good!

Anyways, if we follow the idea that Brain is the traitor, then what were his motives in the first place? For crying out loud, he really doesn't seem like he gives a shit about the meetings (as seen below).

Books, huh? Based off of this phrase alone, it's possible that he's looking for something, something related to information and possibly exclusive to the chambers. He's also seen being impatient and hurries to leave once he believes the case is settled, only to be stopped. (Or he just wants to read and avoid social interaction...mood.)

Maybe he wants something more than that. So what is 'nobility'? By definition it's: "the quality of being noble in character, mind, birth, or rank."

I already went over this in the previous post and I brought up that he could be of noble blood, but something most likely went wrong, horribly. Adding to the fact, that his name also means 'son of the judge' and/or 'high/noble'. So why would he have killed Strelitzia off? What could he have gained from that???

*tips hat* I...I'm not too sure either. There's countless possibilities (and we're dealing with Nomura for crying out loud). Besides information, I really don't see what else he can gain.

So how does 'Darkness' fit into this? I'm also not sure either, since we know barely anything of them in the first place. Maybe some undercover...

(I'm too tired and I keep forgetting where I'm trying to go with this...it's driving me nuts.)

()()()

Feel free to add anything, I was kinda in a rush while writing this, so I'm all over the place!

[seyaryminamoto]

I've started the process of writing my own love story. Its not a fanfic, but an original novel that I plan on completing someday. However, even though I already have the main story planned out, Im having a hard time with dialogue and coming up with ways for my characters to interact with each other(if that makes sense) I was just wondering if u have any tips 4 me. I know this doesn't have anything to do with gladiator, but im a huge fan of your writing style and would love to hear your advice.

Hmmm… well, dialogue is a little tricky. From what I’ve been taught in school, there are three different kinds of texts that can comprise a narrative text: action (the actual narration), description and dialogue. Action moves things forward, description somewhat stops time, and dialogue can achieve either thing, depending on how it’s used.

But dialogue also helps a lot when it comes to characterization. Dialogue is meant to convey information between characters, and characters, like real people, have different points of view, disagreements, points in common, and so forth. Each of your characters has had different experiences, and often dialogues are the best way to bring up those experiences (having a character talk about something that happened to them is often more dynamic than simply explaining it in descriptive or narrative text).

So, with that in mind, how to write dialogue? First things first: imagine yourself in the shoes of a character. Dialogue is the best empathy exercise I’ve ever done, because it really forces you to forget yourself and to picture yourself in someone else’s shoes for a moment (kind of like what an actor does). Two characters are unlikely to respond in the exact same way to the same events. Say that there are two characters in a sports game and one team scores: one of the characters cheers and the other grumbles in frustration.  You can know, just through dialogue, that one character supports the winning team and the other supports the losing one.

Dialogue can be difficult, but it’s a really good tool for characterization, too often better than description or narration. Yes, actions speak very loudly, but a character can be incredibly elegant in actions and appearance, only to swear like a sailor once their dialogue begins (then you’d get a pretty funny contradiction between appearance and behavior that makes for an amusing character). In short, dialogue is how a character interacts with the world around them, with their friends and enemies, with their family and strangers (characters also interact differently with each kind of relationship I mentioned here, the same way real people do). So when you write dialogue you give your character a voice, and as in real life, everyone has different voices.

You’ve said you’re writing a love story… dialogue, to me, is essential for romance. I don’t know what kind of story it is for sure, but whether your characters are instantly attracted to each other or absolutely can’t stand each other at first…? You need to bring up situations for dialogue to produce genuine bonding. Physical attraction alone isn’t enough to establish actual love, most fiction these days makes a deliberate effort to go beyond that, so dialogue is a must in your line of work. Dialogue is how you show chemistry between your characters, how you prove to your readers that these two characters have plenty to offer each other and can have a very special bond.

My advice is… generate situations where dialogue can happen between them. Push the plot so that they have no choice but to interact. Their first dialogues may not go too far in establishing meaningful bonding, but that’s where you’ll have to produce situations where they get to bond. Using Gladiator as an example, in chapter 9, when I brought Sokka to the Barge’s deck and he found Azula training there, they end up training together for the first time in the story. Azula’s warrior training shows, but she’s no expert with the sword. Because of this, the subject of why she never trained with Piandao came up, and this is the first time Sokka hears about her conflicts with her mother. Azula finds herself telling him about this, while obviously holding back a lot of information he didn’t need to know, but she’s still sharing something with him that she hasn’t shared with most people (namely… because nobody else has asked her about any of this before :’D).

That exchange is what I consider the first real bonding scene between them in the story, where they first truly respected one another and their many differences, while finding a little common ground, too. Knowing Azula wasn’t allowed to learn how to use swords gave Sokka the chance to offer to teach her, many chapters later. Teaching her becomes not only another perfect excuse for them to spend time together, but it strengthens their relationship because he’s somehow fulfilling one of her dreams.

And it all started with that dialogue!

So, allow your characters to have important things in their lives aside from their relationship (as it is here with Sokka, Azula, training, bending, swords and such). If they have common interests it becomes easier to weave in a romantic storyline. If they have diametrically different interests, you can weave in the romance anyways because of how they try to conciliate those differences. Give them more substance aside from their relationship (which is realistic, as people in real life tend to have much more going on in life aside from just romance), and soon enough you’ll have two characters who can interact at leisure. From casual talk, like what I explained above with Gladiator as an example, you can get a conversation that will move dynamically and organically through many topics. If it’s a meaningful conversation, it can come back sometime later, once one of the character brings it up like “hey, remember when you told me about *insert topic here*…?”, as it was with Sokka and Azula’s interest in swordsmanship, or when Sokka remembered later that Azula’s relationship with her mother wasn’t that good, knowledge he acquired thanks to this particular exchange.

In any case, this is what I recommend. But for other important things to note with dialogue:

Small talk is a thing: while some people will tell you that you should NEVER have empty, pointless dialogue in a story (because a story should be concise), people in real life can have some really pointless conversations. Yes, your dialogue, ideally, should always convey new information, but don’t be unforgiving with yourself if it doesn’t. Sometimes you need a few lines of empty small talk before you can get to the real meat of the exchange. The main thing to avoid, though, is turning a serious conversation into meaningless small talk, but I’ll expand on that in point 3.

People have different vocabulary: this is something that can cause trouble in some ways. It’s been a little complicated for me in recent times, I used to be better at it. But part of characterization is knowing what kind of words your character would use, and what kind they wouldn’t. You can have characters who are very eloquent with their dialogue (I try to do this with Ozai, because really, it takes some real weirdo to say things like “the universe delivers you to me as an act of providence”, canonically), others who are less so, and some who would just have absolutely no fancy words in their vocabulary altogether.Important thing to note: your characters, unless they’re meant to be you, or are educated exactly like you, probably won’t talk exactly as you do. One particular problem I’ve seen in some writers is that they can’t seem to change the speech pattern of characters, either they aren’t sure how or just don’t know how to do it, and it gives the feeling of mechanical dialogue, because it’s like you’re just reading the narrator’s voice rather than the character’s. Whether you’re making fanfiction or original fiction, your characters should have different speech patterns from yours/the narrator’s, unless there’s a very good reason for them not to have them (example, you can have a character who loves using literary quotes when talking, and you can also have a character who’s never read any high literature: by logic, the second character shouldn’t be able to use any of the quotes the first one uses in common dialogue).

Make dialogue meaningful when it has to be: I am a fan of small talk, of simple conversations between characters that can be pretty easy-going, casual, what have you. I don’t need every exchange between characters to be filled with “I AM YOUR FATHER!”-like revelations. But I recently watched at TV show that had just featured a “character death”, and it provided a perfect opportunity for the character’s best friends to talk about what happened (and to properly talk about how one of them was going to fill the “dead character’s” shoes from there on), and… the dialogue that should have been important was absolutely, entirely, meaningless. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t move either character in any direction. You barely even felt like they were affected by their friend’s “death”, that’s probably the worst part of it all (they shoehorned one of the characters getting tears in her eyes at random, despite the conversation’s emotional charge was equal to zero).In conclusion: when something big has happened, your characters will show emotion, will react emotionally, and if they don’t, there’s a chance they’re just bottling things up (and you should imply the bottling up through dialogue, which can be done). When caught up in awful circumstances, characters cannot simply indulge in small talk, or pointless conversations that lead nowhere. It’s in these cases where strong dialogue is needed. Anticlimactic dialogue is a very unpleasant thing to have in your story, as it can break all suspension of disbelief from your readers.

Don’t be afraid of having multiple characters in one conversation: I’m not a fan of big conversations in real life, but multiple voices in fiction have been ridiculously fun for me to write. Yes, you need to be versatile and switch positions with every new character you write, but for instance, I really enjoyed writing the Gaang talking at the cafeteria table in IHTBY. When you bring together characters from different backgrounds, different experiences, and have them interact with each other, you find yourself with all sorts of different chemistry between all of them: you can have characters who get along well, characters who like to bicker with each other, characters who have entirely different views in life, characters who have crushes on each other… you can have virtually anything. And that provides the opportunity for dynamic dialogue scenes that, for reasons beyond my understanding, a lot of writers seem to avoid like the plague. Granted I’m not saying you should make every single dialogue a multi-character dialogue, but I do recommend that you don’t run away from this, because I’ve seen people who do that and it only seems to hinder their stories in the end.

Your character will behave differently depending on whom they’re talking to: this is something I mentioned earlier, but I’ll mention it again: Azula doesn’t talk with Sokka with the same cautious respect she usually has to muster when talking to her father. When she threw that caution into the wind (as she did in a recent Gladiator chapter), not only was she terrified while doing it, but she took Ozai and everyone else around them by surprise. Likewise, she wouldn’t talk to any strangers the same way she talks to Sokka or her father.Characters will respond differently to other characters, depending on how guarded or how free they feel around the other person. Depending, too, on what sort of relationship they have with the opposite person: Sokka is Azula’s partner and lover, he has seen Azula for who she is, entirely, which means she’s at her most open when she’s with him. Toph, Ty Lee, Mai and others are Azula’s friends, they know she has a her softer side but they haven’t seen it nearly as often as Sokka has, so Azula is more reserved around them than around Sokka. Ozai is her father, due to her relationship with him she endeavors to NEVER show him her soft/weak side, so she’s VERY guarded when talking to him. Likewise, she didn’t show her soft/weak side to Zuko, her brother, until a little while before they parted ways, because she couldn’t let him see she wasn’t absolutely perfect, so she was very reserved with him, too, even if she would lower her guard just enough to torment him whenever she felt like it.An important example, with which I seem to break this rule (despite I kind of don’t…) is Sokka: he’s constantly horrifying people everywhere because of how he talks boldly to Ozai, apparently not holding back at all (truthfully, he holds back a lot more than most my characters seem to realize x’D). He doesn’t get a pass for this: everyone thinks he’s crazy for showing so little respect to the Fire Lord. Ozai thinks it’s amusing, sure, but most other people are horrified. If you have a character who talks to everyone the same way, regardless of authority or different positions in the world, other characters need to respond to it, especially if it’s as far out of place as it is when Sokka does it in Gladiator.

Let the character guide you: once you’ve established your character, dialogue can become a matter of impulse (as it happens to me most times). Only a couple of hours ago I had to backtrack on an exchange between two characters where one of them responded negatively to what the other character said. I couldn’t really write it differently, because the one character could only be offended by the other character’s words. I had to modify the full dialogue so that the response to the first line of dialogue wouldn’t turn a playful conversation into an argument.In short, you can’t force a character to behave or respond to situations in ways they don’t want to. If your character leads you in one direction, you can’t double down on them and make them act differently than they would. Once you feel characters moving by themselves in one direction or another you know for sure that you’ve been able to understand them… but that is a full compromise, so to speak. If you understand them, it means you understand why they respond to things the way they do, and you also understand why they wouldn’t respond any differently than how they do. So, if you’re faced with a problem like the one I described in the previous paragraph... change the situation, or the previous dialogues that can be altered (if changing the previous character’s dialogue disrupts their characterization too, you’ll have to rewrite from further back). Just, don’t force a puzzle piece where it doesn’t fit. That only harms your story further in the end. It takes away the life in your characters, because they feel less consistent and therefore, less believable.

I’m not sure if I can come up with anything else… but if you have any other specific questions about dialogue-writing that I didn’t answer here, just let me know and I’ll give you a hand if I can do so! :D