#tolkien fan fiction survey

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

since people have been commenting in the tags on the poll for The Silmarillion to the effect that they’re “skewing the results”, I wanted to elaborate on my feelings on the “methodology” (as it were) of this blog.

in particular, taking this comment by sesamenom as a starting point:

the reblogs (even the early ones) do indicate the post reached multiple medium-to-large silm blogs, plus the original post is tagged w silmarillion. so this probably is less of a survey of general silm readership and more of an indicator that 32% (47% now) of this post's audience is the greater silm fandom.

this is obviously one of the core “problems” of running polls like this through the medium of tumblr: it will be impossible to get “accurate” / “scientific” results, because who sees the post is entirely determined by (1) who follows the specific blog (a self-selecting audience) and (2) who reblogs it and into which communities / networks. in this case (and others), it is clear from the notes that the post is circulating heavily within Tolkien fan networks on tumblr, and this is, indeed, likely to be “skewing” the results relative to the general population (whatever we take that to mean in this context).

however!

this blog and @haveyoureadthisscifibook are not intended to find information about a general population. rather, I’m interested specifically in the much narrower group of people who are habitual fantasy and/or science fiction readers. my goal is not to determine “what percentage of people have read The Lord of the Rings”, but “what percentage of fantasy readers have read The Lord of the Rings”.

for these purposes, the self-selecting nature of tumblr is actually an advantage! I can safely assume that anyone who’s choosing to follow a specialized poll blog for fantasy books identifies as a fantasy reader at least to some extent, and if they reblog a post they’re doing so because they anticipate that the book in question is or could (or should) be of interest to their followers — in other words, they do so because they expect their followers to also be fantasy readers, or at least fantasy-adjacent.

given that the poll for The Silmarillion appears to be circulating in specifically Tolkien-oriented fan networks here, it’s probably still true that the result is going to be disproportionate, but the disproportion relative to the target larger group of fantasy readers is also likely much less dramatic or significant than the disproportion relative to any general population. we’ve certainly had some amusingly misleading results in the past (notably (to me): a random recent Warhammer 40k novel getting >25% yes on the sci-fi blog; In the Hands of the Goddess getting only 40% yes vs. the rest of Song of the Lioness hovering around the 50% mark), but since I’m interested first and foremost in averages, a few individual disproportions will even out in the long run.

so. reblog away!

[tolkien-fandom-history]

Robin is a Tolkien and fan studies scholar, an academic, a fic writer ... and now retired. Which means she is finally able to write and share the fan studies work she's been doing for decades but couldn't publish because she was caught up in publishing for academia. (The great irony!)

Robin has a newsletter, and "Queer Intersections" is this week's edition, looking at 2008 survey data she collected but never published on genre preferences among readers (mostly women) of Tolkien darkfic. Robin's data looks at the genre preferences of a group of readers who enjoy two specific LotR-based darkfics, in terms of both Fictional Person Fiction/Slash (FPF/S) and Real Person Fiction/Slash (RPF/S). Her data finds, not surprisingly, that women who enjoy darkfic don't conform to what the literature suggests are genre preferences for women more generally. More surprisingly, there were distinct differences in their preferences based on whether the story was FPF/S or RPF/S.

The article also includes some essential history of slash and how slash has been discussed in fan studies scholarship. And of course the survey itself is more than ten years old now, so it is a snapshot of Tolkien fandom history.

And did I mention that this is part of Robin's newsletter?? In addition to her work on queer fanfiction, she also does fascinating work on the co-opting and use of Tolkien as a recruiting tool by fascist and alt-right movements ... fascinating, chilling, and very important work.

[dawnfelagund]

My paper Affirmational and Transformational Values and Practices in the Tolkien Fanfiction Community is up in the Journal of Tolkien Research! It is an open-access journal, so anyone can read it for free.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, this article really started with my first forays into fan studies, particularly those focusing on fanfiction. My fan studies texts are littered with marginalia proclaiming things like “Not true in Tolkien fandom!” and “Not Tolkienfic!” As a newcomer to fan studies, I assumed I was just missing the texts that described or were about us.

Years and many books later, I know that they don’t exist. Not in any significant sense. Tolkien-based fanfiction has been woefully understudied given its longevity and sustained popularity within the past two decades. The focus in fan studies has been toward media fandoms, yes, but even that doesn’t fully explain it. Harry Potter and Sherlockian fandoms--both of which have dominating bookverse communities--have received significant study and discussion. One cannot open a book on fanfiction--or even fandom that mentions fanfiction--and not see both discussed, whereas there are entire books on fanfiction that don’t even mention Tolkien-based fanfiction, with its six-decade history and 100,000+ fanfics.

(There has been scholarship done. I don’t want to sideline the scholars who have done this important work. There is a list of Tolkien fanfiction scholarship on “Tolkien Fanfiction” article on Fanlore. But for the size and duration of the fandom, there has not been enough done, and most has been done by Tolkien studies--not fan/media studies--scholars. Like me, incidentally.)

Anyway, over the years of thinking about why my own experiences in a major mixed book-media fandom don’t match with so much of what I read in the scholarship, I was led to obsession_inc’s affirmational/transformational theory about fandom. (Affirmational fandom tends to centralize canon and the original creator’s authority, while transformational fandom locates authority in the fan to manipulate and interpret texts according to their own interests, needs, and experiences.) And it started to click. This idea that fanworks are mostly transformational, which was being picked up and amplified in the scholarship also (or being discussed in similar terms, though not necessarily referencing obsession_inc’s ideas), simply was not my experience. Tolkien-based fanfiction relies significantly on affirmational fandom values and practices as well. With this, I set out to see if the evidence supported my ideas.

This paper uses data from my Tolkien Fan Fiction Survey, as well as primary fan history sources and Tolkien fan studies scholarship, to make the case that affirmational and transformational fannish elements exist in a much more balanced--if complicated--relationship for Tolkien-based fanfic than a lot of the fan studies scholarship asserts. Negotiating affirmational and transformational values shapes not only individual fanworks but the communities Tolkien fanfic writers have built, and it is far from a binary. Individual authors, as well as communities, may display affirmational values in one area and transformational in another in ways that, even after fifteen years in this fandom, still surprised me to discover.

The Official Abstract(tm) is posted below the jump. And here’s the link to the article, one more time. :)

Fanfiction based on the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien has existed for at least six decades and has been, within the past two, one of the most consistently active online fanfiction communities. Despite this, the fandom has been relatively unstudied by fan studies scholars. This paper considers how Tolkien-based fanfiction corroborates and complicates current theories of fanfiction, focusing especially on a theory proposed by obsession_inc that proposes two types of fandoms: affirmational and transformational. Current thought places fanfiction at the transformational end of the continuum. Using quantitative survey data of authors and readers of Tolkien-based fanfiction, this paper offers evidence that Tolkien-based fanfiction contains significant affirmational components that are an intentional and valued part of many Tolkien fanfiction communities. Authors and readers regard authority, critical functions of fanfiction, and reparative purposes for fanfiction differently than the more commonly studied media fandoms. Yet one cannot say simply that authors of Tolkien-based fanfiction are more affirmational than other fanwriters; instead, evidence shows that authors and readers of Tolkien-based fanfiction navigate transformational and affirmational elements in complex ways, and community cultures often center upon members’ values and practices.

[teitho]

Fan fiction survey! Please consider filling this out.

https://twitter.com/tolkiensurvey/status/1296519910986637312?s=21

[tolkien-fanfiction-survey]

If you have not taken the Tolkien Fan Fiction survey yet and wish to do so, please do so soon! We will be closing the survey to new participants on March 31!

Do you read or write fanfiction based on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien? Whether it’s for the original books, or the Peter Jackson trilogies, or any other media, we’d love to hear from you!

Readers and writers of Tolkien-based fanfiction are invited to participate in the second iteration of the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey. Initially run in 2015, we are running the survey again to see if and how our fandom has changed.

What is participation like?

If you choose to participate, we will collect basic demographic information and ask you about your beliefs and habits regarding reading and/or writing Tolkien-based fanfiction. Most questions are multiple choice, but there is also a space on each page where you can elaborate on any of your answers if you want to share more information with us.

Who can participate?

Both readers and writers of fanfiction are eligible, and all levels of experience and involvement with Tolkien fanfiction are welcome! We are hoping to hear from fans of the books, of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogies, and of any other Tolkien-related media. We're also interested in the responses of fans who are no longer involved with Tolkien-based fanfiction but who were in the past.

How long will it take?

The survey will take about 20 minutes to complete. The survey is entirely online, and no identifying or contact information is collected. You can skip any questions you don’t want to answer or quit the survey at any time if you decide you don't want to participate.

Who are you and what do you plan to do with the results?

Both researchers, Maria Alberto and Dawn Walls-Thumma, are members of this fandom ourselves: we both read and write Tolkien-based fanfiction as well as write about Tolkien fandom academically. Maria is a PhD student at the University of Utah, and Dawn is an independent scholar. We are conducting this survey to better understand how our fandom interacts with fanfiction, the canon, and one another as fellow readers and writers. We will aggregate survey responses to look for trends and changes since the 2015 survey. This data will be used in conference presentations, papers, and articles about Tolkien fandom and Tolkien-based fanfiction, but we will also share our data and findings in fandom spaces. We will also make data available to other researchers who want to do similar research.

If you have questions or concerns about this survey, you can contact either of us: lead investigator Maria Alberto at m.l.e.alberto@gmail.com or co-investigator Dawn Walls-Thumma at DawnFelagund@gmail.com.

Click here to start the Tolkien Fanfiction Survey!

[lovemesomesurveys]

January (Month Survey #1)

Warning: These surveys are long. Take at your own risk.

National Days

Jan 1. National Hangover Day: What’s the worst hangover that you’ve ever had? The one after the last night I ever drank. That night was horrible. I got so sick and it was embarrassing and ugh it just ended up ruining the rest of the night. I still trip out because I honestly don’t recall drinking that much, but I got really drunk. I guess the drinking games made me lose track or something. Thank goodness for my best friend at the time who took care of me. I couldn’t really sleep that night cause I got sick a few times and just felt like shit and the rest of the day I just did absolutely nothing. I didn’t even want to look at alcohol for awhile.

National Bloody Mary Day: Do you believe in the Bloody Mary folklore? No, but I still don’t mess around with that kind of stuff.

Euro Day: Do you have any Euros? No.

National Black Eyed Peas Day: Do you like listening to the Black Eyed Peas? How about eating them? The group was cool, I liked a few of their songs. I’ve never had actual black eyed peas.

Apple Gifting Day: What’s your favorite type of apple – red, yellow, or green? I’m not an apple gal. Well, when it comes to the fruit. I love Apple products haha.

New Year’s Day: How did you celebrate New Year’s? My mom had to work until 11PM and my brother was at a friend’s house and was spending the night, so it was just my dad and I. We got takeout and watched the New Year’s Eve shows, but he ended up falling asleep a couple hours before midnight. My mom got home just in time to watch some of the New Year’s Eve shows before midnight and then we watched the ball drop, so at least I wasn’t alone. My dad slept right through it lol. It was a very chill night.

Jan 2. National Buffet Day: Where’s the best buffet in your area? The only buffet I liked was Mongolian BBQ. You put your noodles, meats, veggies, toppings, and sauces yourself and then they cooked it right in front of you on a big, round, super hot grill, so I felt comfortable consuming it. Other buffets where the food is brought out for everyone to have access to... yeah, no thanks. 

World Introvert Day: Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert? Oh, I’m an introvert all the way.

Swiss Cheese Day: What meat do you typically eat Swiss cheese with? Ya know, I don’t think I’ve ever had Swiss cheese. 

National Cream Puff Day: Do you like cream puffs? Have you ever made them before? Yeah, they’re good. I’ve never made them, I just bought them from the frozen food section at the store lol.

Run Up the Flagpole and See if Anyone Salutes Day: Have you ever tried to climb a flagpole before? No. I couldn’t do that even if for some reason I wanted to.

National Personal Trainer Awareness Day: Do you have a personal trainer? Nope.

National Science Fiction Day: What’s the last science-fiction novel you’ve read? The Hunger Games series several years ago.

Happy Mew Year For Cats Day: Do you prefer cats or dogs? Why? I’m a dog person, personally. I’ve always had dogs and I just vibe more with them. Mine have all been so loving and sweet and silly and pure.

National Pet Travel Safety Day: Does your pet do well during car rides, or do they hate it? She doesn’t like them. 

Jan 3. National Drinking Straw Day: Do you use drinking straws at home, or only out at restaurants? I use a straw with everything I drink.

Festival of Sleep Day: Do you enjoy sleeping, or do you spend most of your time awake? I love sleeping.

Humiliation Day: When’s the last time you were humiliated? Why? Let’s not get into that.

National Chocolate-Covered Cherry Day: Do you prefer chocolate-covered cherries or chocolate-covered strawberries more? Strawberries. 

National Fruitcake Toss Day: Do you like fruitcake? No. It just doesn’t even look appealing to me.

J.R.R. Tolkien Day: Have you read the Lord of the Rings series? What did you think of it? Nope. I’ve never seen the movies, ether. Just wasn’t of any interest to me.

Jan 4. National Missouri Day: Do you know anyone who comes from Missouri? Well, not from there, but my dad lived there growing up and I have family out there now.

National Spaghetti Day: Is spaghetti one of your favorite Italian dishes? Yessss. Spaghetti and meatballs, specifically. 

National Trivia Day: Do you enjoy playing trivia games? Any in particular? Yeah, those like Trivial Pursuit and Scene It.

World Braille Day: Do you know anyone who can read Braille? No.

World Hypnotism Day: Have you ever felt hypnotized before? Can you describe it? No. 

Jan 5. National Screenwriters Day: Have you ever written a play or some other sort of script before? Nope. I’ve written short stories and fan fiction, though.

National Whipped Cream Day: Have you ever used whipped cream for sexual purposes? Nope.

National Keto Day: Do you or anyone you know follow a ketogenic diet? Not that I know of.

National Bird Day: What’s your favorite type of bird? Hummingbirds are neat.

Jan 6. National Thank God It’s Monday Day: Do you actually prefer Mondays to Fridays? Why or why not? The days are all the same to me now, but back when I was in school I always dreaded Mondays.

The Epiphany (Three Kings Day): Do you celebrate this holiday? No. I had to Google that because I had never heard of it before.

National Bean Day: What’s your favorite type of bean? (ie: baked, lima, green, etc) Refried beans.

National Technology Day: What’s your favorite piece of technology that you own? My laptop and phone.

National Shortbread Day: Have you ever eaten those Trefoil  Girl Scout shortbread cookies? Yep. I love shortbread cookies.

National Cuddle Up Day: Who’s the best cuddler you know? My doggo. 

Jan 7. National Bobblehead Day: Do you own any bobbleheads? Of who? I have a Chewbacca one.

National Tempura Day: Have you ever tried tempura before? Did you like it? I’ve had chicken and vegetable tempura, which is really good. 

Old Rock Day: Would you be interested in digging for fossils? Only when playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons haha. That’s part of my character’s daily routine.

Jan 8. National Argyle Day: Do you own any clothing with argyle print? Nope.

National Bubble Bath Day: When’s the last time you took a bubble bath? When I was a kid.

Male Watcher’s Day: Do you like to people-watch? It can be interesting. 

National Take the Stairs Day: Do you prefer the stairs or the elevator? I can only take the elevator.

National English Toffee Day: Do you enjoy eating toffee? I’ve had more toffee flavored things than actual toffee, but yeah.

Elvis Presley’s Birthday: What is your favorite Elvis Presley song? Can’t Help Falling in Love.

National Joygerm Day: How do you treat people with kindness? Do you typically have a positive attitude about things? I try to be understanding and openminded, I try to be a good listener, I don’t put people down or belittle others, I try not to be rude or impolite, and I try to help if I can. I don’t have a positive outlook when it comes to myself, but I can for others. We could even have the same issue and I’ll be able to see it differently for them than I do for myself. I’m forgiving when it comes to others and I’ll see the good in them, truly believing it, but I beat myself up all the time. 

National Winter Skin Relief Day: What do you treat your skin/lips with, when they are chapped? Ugh, I have that issue in the summer as well it’s so annoying. Anyway, I just use lotion and chapstick. I don’t use it as often as I should, though, for some reason. It would definitely help. I should also use a face moisturizer. 

Jan 9. National Apricot Day: Do you prefer apricots dried, in fresh fruit form, or the canned version? I don’t like apricots at all.

National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day: Do you have issues with people of authority? I have an issue with the bad ones who abuse their power.

National Static Electricity Day: When’s the last time your hair succumbed to static electricity? Hmm. I don’t recall. I remember doing that with a balloon when I was a kid, though lol.

National Balloon Ascension Day: Have you ever released balloons purposefully into the air? No, that was so sad whenever it happened. RIP to all the balloons I’ve ever lost. 

Play God Day: What would you do if you were in charge of the entire universe for the day? Noooo way. I will gladly leave that to God.

Jan 10. National Bittersweet Chocolate Day: What’s your favorite type of chocolate? White chocolate.

Save the Eagles Day: What are bald eagles symbolic of? Strength, freedom, bravery.

Peculiar People Day: Who’s the most peculiar person you know? Hmm. I don’t know. I use that word to describe things more often.

National Cut Your Energy Costs Day: What do you do in order to save energy? We wait to run the dishwasher and washer and dryer until after a certain time. I think it’s after 7PM.

National Oysters Rockefeller Day: Have you ever had baked oysters before? Did you like them? Nah, I’m good.

National Houseplant Appreciation Day: Do you have any indoor plants? How about outdoor plants? No indoor ones, but my mom has a couple outside.

Jan 11. National Arkansas Day: Have you ever been to Arkansas before? Nope.

Learn Your Name in Morse Code Day: Do you know how to use Morse code? No.

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day: Do you know anyone who’s been a victim of human trafficking?   Nooo. I can’t believe that goes on, horrific doesn’t even begin to describe it.

National Milk Day: Do you prefer white, chocolate, or strawberry milk? I liked strawberry milk when I was a kid. I could totally go for a strawberry milkshake, though.

National Girl Hug Boy Day: Have you ever been the one to make the first move? No.

National Hot Toddy Day: Have you ever made yourself a hot toddy before? Nope. I’ve never had one.

National Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day No question for this?

National Vision Board Day: Do you have a vision board? Have you ever made one before? What would be on it? Nope. I have no idea what I would do for one.

Jan 12. National Pharmacist Day: When’s the last time you visited the pharmacist? Uhhh, it’s been a long time. My mom or brother just pick up my medicine for me.

National Sunday Supper Day: Do you have big Sunday dinners with your family? No. 

Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day: Who’s a fabulous man that you know of? lol what an interesting day. Anyway, hmm. I don’t know.

National Marzipan Day: Do you know what marzipan is? Have you ever made it/had it before? I know what it is, but I don’t think I’ve had it. I definitely have never made it.

National Curried Chicken Day: Do you enjoy curry? Have you ever had it before? I’ve only had it once, but I remember liking it. It’s spicy, right? I can’t have spicy food anymore. :/

National Kiss a Ginger Day: Have you ever dated a redhead before? No.

National Youth Day: Do you know of a child who made a huge difference in society?   I’ve heard stories of kids who have done really awesome things for charity and to help their communities, especially during the pandemic. 

National Glazed Doughnut Day: What’s your favorite type of doughnut? Maple or glazed cake donuts.

Jan 13. National Rubber Ducky Day: When’s the last time you used a rubber ducky in the bathtub? When I was a kid.

Stephen Foster Memorial Day: Do you like any songs by Stephen Foster? I had to Google who that was, and the only song I think I know is Swanee River. 

National Peach Melba Day: Have you ever had a Peach Melba before? How was it? Nope. Had to Google that, too.

Korean American Day: Do you know any Koreans immigrants who now live in America? No.

National Gluten-Free Day: Do you know anyone who has to follow a gluten-free diet? Not personally, but a couple people I watch on YouTube have celiac disease. 

National Sticker Day: Did you like stickers as a kid? I loved stickers. Stickers are still awesome. Although, I never know what to do with them now, ha. I can’t commit to putting them anywhere.

National Clean Off Your Desk Day: Do you have a desk in your room? Is it organized? Nope. My desk is my bed, ha. It has my laptop and some other stuff that a desk would likely have. My bed is where I spend most of my time, so.

International Skeptics Day: Are you skeptical of anything? What? Yeah. Like when reading something online, for example. Or certain news stories.

Make Tour Dream Come True Day: Have any of your dreams actually ever come true before? Uhh well, I’ve had dreams about going to Disneyland and I’ve gone. ha.

Jan 14. National Dress Up Your Pet Day: Have you ever dressed up your pet before? In what? Yeah, she has a few sweaters and Halloween costumes.

National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day: What’s your favorite kind of sandwich? Deli sandwich with turkey, salami, Monterey Jack cheese, pickles, mayo, mustard, and oil and vinegar spread is my favorite. I’ll have that at home, too, but it always taste best when I get it from somewhere. I like bologna sandwiches as well.

Ratification Day: Do you remember the significance of the Treaty of Paris? Yeah.

International Kite Day: Have you ever flown a kite before? Nope.

National Shop For Travel Day: When’s the last time you went shopping for a vacation? Back in February before our Disneyland trip. I can’t believe we were in lockdown/quarantine about a month later. 

Jan 15. National Booch Day: Do you like the taste of Kombucha? I’ve never tried it and have no interest to. My brother loves it.

National Hat Day: What does your favorite hat look like? It’s rose gold and has a little white Mickey Mouse symbol on it that I got from Disneyland.

National Bagel Day: What kind of bagel do you eat most often? What do you put on it? I haven’t had a bagel in years, but I always just had a regular one with cream cheese. Strawberry cream cheese is really good.

National Strawberry Ice Cream Day: What’s your favorite flavor ice cream? Strawberry.

Museum Selfie Day: When’s the last time you went to a museum? Several years ago.

National Fresh Squeezed Juice Day: Have you ever made your own juice or lemonade before? How was it? Lemonade, yeah. It was good.

Jan 16. National Nothing Day: When’s the last time you did absolutely nothing all day? Everyday?

Appreciate a Dragon Day: Are dragons your favorite mythical creature? Nah, I’d go with fairies. 

National Without a Scalpel Day: Has anyone ever used a scalpel on you before? Yes, for surgical procedures.

Get to Know Your Customers Day: Is the customer really always right? Why or why not? Not always, that’s for sure. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from people I know who work in retail and yikes. People can be so rude. 

National Religious Freedom Day: Are you a religious person? Yes.

National Fig Newtons Day: When’s the last time you ate a Fig Newton? I’m not exactly sure, but I know it’s been yearssss.

International Hot and Spicy Food Day: What’s the spiciest food you eat? I can’t eat spicy food anymore D: I used to be obSESSED, though. I put hot sauce on just about everything and loved spicy chips and ramen and just everything.

Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day: Have you ever been on a diet before? Did it work? I’ve had to be on high protein and high caloric diets before and I’m supposed to be on one now, but gah. My appetite is a mess and I have other issues that affect my eating and yeah. It’s hard. Jan 17. National Bootlegger’s Day: Do you know anyone who makes bootleg DVD’s? No. I don’t really hear much about that anymore like I did back in the day.

National Hot Heads Chili Day: What do you like to eat in your chili? I can’t eat chili anymore, but back in the day I loved it spicy. 

National Hot Buttered Rum Day: Are you a fan of rum, or do you prefer another type of alcohol? I don’t like any alcohol.

Ben Franklin Day: Name at least one of Ben Franklin’s inventions. The lightning rod.

Michelle Obama’s Birthday: Do you miss when her husband was back in office? I don’t like getting into politics. 

Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day: How long do you keep your New Year’s Resolutions for? Do you even make them in the first place? I stopped making those years ago. 

Jan 18. National Winnie the Pooh Day: Who is your favorite character from Winnie the Pooh? Awww I love Winnie the Pooh, he’s my favorite. I really vibe with Eeyore, too. 

National Michigan Day: Do you live in Michigan? Nope.

National Gourmet Coffee Day: What’s your favorite “specialized” coffee drink? The winter drinks at Starbucks.

National Thesaurus Day: When’s the last time you used a thesaurus? Recently for something, I forget why.

National Peking Duck Day: Have you ever eaten duck before? No.

National Use Your Gift Card Day: Where would you like to get a gift card to? Hmm. BoxLunch would be cool.

Jan 19. World Quark Day: Have you ever heard of quark? Nope. I just Googled it, though. Doesn’t sound appealing.

National  Popcorn Day: What’s your favorite seasoning/flavor of popcorn? Good ol’ movie theater popcorn with salt and lots of butter. I also love this garlic parm seasoning I get at the store.

National Disc Jockey Day: Would you rather have a band or a DJ at your wedding. DJ.

World Religion Day: What is your religion? Do you have one? Christian.

National Tin Can Day: What’s the last can that you recycled? My family and I recycle our cans and plastic bottles. The last can I had was a Starbucks Doubleshot coffee energy drink.

Jan 20. National Cheese Lover’s Day: What’s your favorite kind of cheese? I loveee cheese. Various kinds.

Martin Luther King jr. Day: In what ways was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. influential? He was a huge influential leader in the civil rights movement and helped spark major changes. He was a very courageous and intelligent man.

National Buttercrunch Day: Have you ever made butter crunch before? Nope.

National Penguin Day: What’s your favorite thing about penguins? Their little waddle and how they mate for life. They’re so cute.

Jan 21. National Hugging Day: Are you a hugger? Not really. Like, I’m not one to initiate a hug. Hugs from certain people are really nice, though.

National Granola Bar Day: Do you eat granola bars? What’s your favorite flavor? I used to all the time. The Quaker Oats chocolate chip, peanut butter, and s’mores ones were my favorite. Sunbelt oats and honey granola bars are really good, too.

Squirrel Appreciation Day: Squirrels or chipmunks? Chipmunks. Aww, this reminds of Ty because he was squirrel and I was giraffe.

International Sweatpants Day: How many pairs of sweatpants do you own? Only 2. I’m a leggings gal, I have a shitload of leggings. I feel like a cartoon character when they show their closest lol.

National Banana Bread Day: Do you prefer your banana bread with or without walnuts? How about chocolate chips? Without walnuts, hands down. SO good. I’ve never tried it with chocolate chips.

National New England Clam Chowder Day: Do you like New England Clam Chowder soup? No.

Jan 22. Celebration of Life Day: Do you believe that abortion should be legal? Why or why not? I don’t like getting into political and touchy topics like this.

National Blonde Brownie Day: What’s your favorite type of brownie? Fudge brownies. Yum.

Library Shelfie  Day: How often do you visit your public library? I haven’t gone since I was in high school, so it’s been over 10 years.

National Southern Food Day: What’s your favorite Southern food/meal? Biscuits and gravy.

National Sanctity of Human Life Day: Do you believe that all humans have some sort of value? Yes?

National Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day: Do you talk to your pets? Of course! All the time.

Hot Sauce Day: How hot do you like your hot sauce? I can only handle a little mild hot sauce now. D: I used to be obsessed with spicy foods and hot sauces back when I could have it.

Jan 23. National Handwriting Day: Do you prefer printing or writing in cursive? Printing. 

World Spay Day: Are all of your pets spayed or neutered? Yes, my doggo is spayed. That was done before we could bring her home from the adoption shelter.

National Pie Day/National Rhubarb Pie Day: What’s your favorite type of pie? Cheesecake. That’s the only kind I like.

Measure Your Feet Day: How big are your feet? I have small feet. I wear a 6 in womens (US). I can wear a 3.5/4 in kid’s, too. That’s the size my Adidas are.

Jan 24. Beer Can Appreciation Day: What’s your favorite type of beer? Ew, none.

National Compliment Day: What’s the last compliment that you’ve received? I don’t even remember, it’s been a long time.

National Peanut Butter Day: What’s your favorite food that involves peanut butter? Reese’s. 

International Day of Education: Why do you feel that education important? There’s a lot of benefits to being educated. It helps you gain knowledge about the world around you, helps you build and form opinions, make better, well-informed decisions on certain things, helps you learn skills that will be beneficial for you... there’s a lot of reasons.

Global Belly Laugh Day: When’s the last time you laughed so hard you cried? It’s been a long time since I’ve had a good laugh like that.

National Eskimo Pie Patent Day: When’s the last time you had an Eskimo Pie? I’ve never had one.

National Lobster Thermidor Day: When’s the last time you ate lobster? I don’t eat lobster. Or any seafood.

Jan 25. National Opposite Day: Have you ever been attracted to someone that was the complete opposite of you? Yes.

Community Manager Appreciation Day: At your workplace, do you have a good manager/boss, or not? Are you your own boss? I don’t have a job.

National Irish Coffee Day: Have you ever had an Irish Coffee before? Nope.

National Seed Swap Day: What’s the last seed you planted? I’ve never planted any seeds.

National Florida Day: Do you know anyone who is from Florida? Not personally, but a few YouTubers I watch are.

Chinese New Year: What is your Chinese animal? (the year of the ___) Snake.

Burns Supper: Favorite poem by Robert Burns? I don’t think I’m familiar with his work.

Jan 26. National Green Juice Day: Do you drink any sort of health drinks? Nope. 

National Peanut Brittle Day: Do you enjoy peanut brittle? Nah, it’s too hard.

National Spouses Day: Do you hope to get married one day? Why or why not? I don’t plan on getting married.

Australia Day: If you were to go to Australia, what would you want to see/do first? I’d probably want to go to Sydney. 

International Customs Day: What do you think of the current level of border security in your area? Uhhh.

World Leprosy Day: Do you know anyone who has leprosy? No.

Jan 27. National Bubble Wrap Day: As an adult, would you still be interested in popping bubble wrap? Um, absolutely! You’re never too old for bubblewrap. 

National Chocolate Cake Day: Do you prefer chocolate cake or another flavor instead? I much prefer white, funfetti, strawberry, or red velevet.

World Breast Pumping Day: If you have a baby, would you breastfeed or formula feed? Why? I’m not having kids.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Do you know of any Holocaust survivors? Eli Wiesel, the author of Night, a book about his horrifying experience during the Holocaust and in Nazi concentration camps, came to talk to my sophomore English class.

Wolfgang Mozart’s Birthday: Do you like to listen to Mozart? I have an appreciation for a lot of piano pieces.

Punch the Clock Day: Do you have to punch in and out at work, or do you have a paper time sheet? I don’t have a job.

Jan 28. National Have Fun at Work Day: What is one fun thing about your work?

National Blueberry Pancake Day: Would you rather have blueberry pancakes or chocolate chip pancakes? Blueberry.

Data Privacy Day: Have one of your websites ever been hacked before? Yes, back in the day.

National Daisy Day: Are daisies your favorite flower? No, but they are pretty.

National Lego Day: Do you follow the building instructions if you have a Lego kit, or do you build your own prototype? I haven’t played with Legos since I was a kid, but I just made my own things for the most part. I do remember attempting to make some of the things they showed on the container the Legos came in.

National Kazoo Day: Have you ever played a kazoo before? Nope.

National Plan For Vacation Day: Where would you like to go on vacation? A lot of places. I wish I could just go on a vacation at all right now. :(

Global Community Engagement Day: How do you play a part in your community? Uhhh. I’m not involved in any community things.

Jan 29. National Corn Chip Day: Fritos or Tostitos? Both are good.

National Puzzle Day: How many pieces was the last jigsaw puzzle that you completed? I have no idea, I haven’t done a puzzle since I was a kid. I’ve actually been wanting to do one recently, though.

Jan 30. National Croissant Day: What do you like to put on your croissant? They’re just good on their own.

National Inane Answering Message Day: Do you leave voicemails, or do you hang up and try again later? If I’m calling my doctor I might leave a voicemail, but usually I’ll just try again later. I hate leaving voicemails, though. If I’m calling my parents, I’ll just call again or send them a text.

Jan 31. Inspire Your Heart With Art Day: What form of art would you be most likely to try your hand at? I like to color, but that’s as artsy as it gets for me.

National Backward Day: Can you walk around backwards without tripping over something? Well, I can wheel backwards.

National Hot Chocolate Day: Do you like hot chocolate? Do you prefer a certain flavor? Yes. I just like the regular kind with marshmallows and whipped cream.

National Big Wig Day: What type of job would you like to have that allows you to be in charge? I wouldn’t want to be in charge.

Eat Brussel Sprouts Day: Do you like Brussel sprouts? Nooo.

Brandy Alexander Day: Do you like to drink brandy? Nope. I don’t drink alcohol.

National Weeks

Folic Acid Awareness Week: Do you know anyone with a congenital disability? Yes.

Universal Letter Writing Week: When’s the last time you hand-wrote a letter to someone? I don’t even remember.

Diet Resolution Week: Have you ever gone on a diet before because of someone’s comments about your weight? Yeah, but it was to try and gain weight because I’m too thin. 

National Silent Record Week: Have you ever listened to a silent record before? No.

National Pizza Week: What do you like to eat on your pizza? White sauce, feta and ricotta cheese, spinach, garlic, crumbled meatballs, and pesto drizzled on top.

Home Office Safety and Security Week: Does your home have a security system? Yes.

Cuckoo Dancing Week: Do you like to dance? Sure. Well, by dance I mean head bobbing and maybe moving my arms and shoulders a bit. Oh, and sad attempts at TikTok dances haha.

World Kiwanis Week: Do you know what the Kiwani’s Club revolves around? No.

National Mocktail Week: What’s your favorite mocktail? When I was a kid I liked virgin strawberry margaritas. This one restaurant my family and I often went to had them for kids and they were so good.

Hunt For Happiness Week: Where do you find your happiness? At the beach watching the waves crash in and out, smelling the ocean air, and feeling that nice, cool breeze. I just get lost in it and it’s really relaxing.

National Healthy Weight Week: Do you feel that you are a healthy weight? Why or why not? No, I’m not. I’m underweight.

International Snowmobile Safety & Awareness Week: Have you ever ridden on a snowmobile before? Nope.

No Name-Calling Week: What’s the worst name you’ve ever been called? Who knows what people have said or thought about me that I’m not aware of, nor do I want to know, but the only things I know of are the things I’ve said and think about myself. I’m my own worst enemy.

International Hoof Care Week: Do you like any animals that have hooves? Giraffes. <3

National Catholic Schools Week: Did you ever go to a Catholic school before? No.

National CRNA Week: Have you ever been put under anesthesia before? How were you when you came out of it? Yeah, several times. I always felt sick, groggy, and really cold afterwards.

Meat Week: What’s your favorite type of meat? Or are you a vegetarian/vegan? Chicken.

National School Choice Week: Would you have preferred to be in a public school, a private school, or to be homeschooled? I was fine with public school.

National Cowboy Poetry Gathering Week: Do you know anyone who is a cowboy? Nope.

National Months

National Hot Tea Month: What’s your favorite flavor tea? Chamomile, peppermint, and spearmint.

National Oatmeal Month: What’s your favorite flavor of oatmeal? I like regular oatmeal with condensed milk, brown sugar, and cinnamon. 

National Slow Cooking Month: Do you have a crock-pot? Well, my mom does, but yeah.

National Soup Month: What’s your favorite kind of soup? I’m a ramen gal.

National Baking Month: What’s your favorite thing to bake? If I bake it’s going to be cupcakes or muffins. It’s been awhile since I’ve baked anything, though.

National Fat Free Living Month: Do you eat foods that are fat-free? How about drinks? Not usually.

National Bath Safety Month: Do you prefer baths or showers? Showers. I have’t taken a bath since I was a kid.

National Blood Donor Month: Have you ever donated blood? When was the last time? No.

National Hobby Month: Do you have any hobbies? Doing surveys, reading, and coloring. 

National Train Your Dog Month: Is your dog well-trained? Yeah.

Walk Your Pet Month:  How often do you walk your dog, if you have one? I can’t do that, but my dad or brother take her.

National CBD Month: Have you ever used CBD oil? Nope.

National Black Diamond Month: Do you own anything with diamonds – black or regular? No.

National Mentoring Month: Have you ever had a mentor before? No.

National Menudo Month: Have you ever had menudo before? Nope. It doesn’t sound appealing to me.

[a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse]

[ohsh1t2wksl8]

January (Month Survey #1)

Warning: These surveys are long. Take at your own risk. National Days Jan 1. National Hangover Day: What’s the worst hangover that you’ve ever had? National Bloody Mary Day: Do you believe in the Bloody Mary folklore? Euro Day: Do you have any Euros? National Black Eyed Peas Day: Do you like listening to the Black Eyed Peas? How about eating them? Apple Gifting Day: What’s your favorite type of apple – red, yellow, or green? New Year’s Day: How did you celebrate New Year’s? Jan 2. National Buffet Day: Where’s the best buffet in your area? World Introvert Day: Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert? Swiss Cheese Day: What meat do you typically eat Swiss cheese with? National Cream Puff Day: Do you like cream puffs? Have you ever made them before? Run Up the Flagpole and See if Anyone Salutes Day: Have you ever tried to climb a flagpole before? National Personal Trainer Awareness Day: Do you have a personal trainer? National Science Fiction Day: What’s the last science-fiction novel you’ve read? Happy Mew Year For Cats Day: Do you prefer cats or dogs? Why? National Pet Travel Safety Day: Does your pet do well during car rides, or do they hate it? Jan 3. National Drinking Straw Day: Do you use drinking straws at home, or only out at restaurants? Festival of Sleep Day: Do you enjoy sleeping, or do you spend most of your time awake? Humiliation Day: When’s the last time you were humiliated? Why? National Chocolate-Covered Cherry Day: Do you prefer chocolate-covered cherries or chocolate-covered strawberries more? National Fruitcake Toss Day: Do you like fruitcake? J.R.R. Tolkien Day: Have you read the Lord of the Rings series? What did you think of it? Jan 4. National Missouri Day: Do you know anyone who comes from Missouri? National Spaghetti Day: Is spaghetti one of your favorite Italian dishes? National Trivia Day: Do you enjoy playing trivia games? Any in particular? World Braille Day: Do you know anyone who can read Braille? World Hypnotism Day: Have you ever felt hypnotized before? Can you describe it? Jan 5. National Screenwriters Day: Have you ever written a play or some other sort of script before? National Whipped Cream Day: Have you ever used whipped cream for sexual purposes? National Keto Day: Do you or anyone you know follow a ketogenic diet? National Bird Day: What’s your favorite type of bird? Jan 6. National Thank God It’s Monday Day: Do you actually prefer Mondays to Fridays? Why or why not? The Epiphany (Three Kings Day): Do you celebrate this holiday? National Bean Day: What’s your favorite type of bean? (ie: baked, lima, green, etc) National Technology Day: What’s your favorite piece of technology that you own? National Shortbread Day: Have you ever eaten those Trefoil  Girl Scout shortbread cookies? National Cuddle Up Day: Who’s the best cuddler you know? Jan 7. National Bobblehead Day: Do you own any bobbleheads? Of who? National Tempura Day: Have you ever tried tempura before? Did you like it? Old Rock Day: Would you be interested in digging for fossils? Jan 8. National Argyle Day: Do you own any clothing with argyle print? National Bubble Bath Day: When’s the last time you took a bubble bath? Male Watcher’s Day: Do you like to people-watch? National Take the Stairs Day: Do you prefer the stairs or the elevator? National English Toffee Day: Do you enjoy eating toffee? Elvis Presley’s Birthday: What is your favorite Elvis Presley song? National Joygerm Day: How do you treat people with kindness? Do you typically have a positive attitude about things? National Winter Skin Relief Day: What do you treat your skin/lips with, when they are chapped? Jan 9. National Apricot Day: Do you prefer apricots dried, in fresh fruit form, or the canned version? National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day: Do you have issues with people of authority? National Static Electricity Day: When’s the last time your hair succumbed to static electricity? National Balloon Ascension Day: Have you ever released balloons purposefully into the air? Play God Day: What would you do if you were in charge of the entire universe for the day? Jan 10. National Bittersweet Chocolate Day: What’s your favorite type of chocolate? Save the Eagles Day: What are bald eagles symbolic of? Peculiar People Day: Who’s the most peculiar person you know? National Cut Your Energy Costs Day: What do you do in order to save energy? National Oysters Rockefeller Day: Have you ever had baked oysters before? Did you like them? National Houseplant Appreciation Day: Do you have any indoor plants? How about outdoor plants? Jan 11. National Arkansas Day: Have you ever been to Arkansas before? Learn Your Name in Morse Code Day: Do you know how to use Morse code? National Human Trafficking Awareness Day: Do you know anyone who’s been a victim of human trafficking?   National Milk Day: Do you prefer white, chocolate, or strawberry milk? National Girl Hug Boy Day: Have you ever been the one to make the first move? National Hot Toddy Day: Have you ever made yourself a hot toddy before? National Step in a Puddle and Splash Your Friends Day National Vision Board Day: Do you have a vision board? Have you ever made one before? What would be on it? Jan 12. National Pharmacist Day: When’s the last time you visited the pharmacist? National Sunday Supper Day: Do you have big Sunday dinners with your family? Feast of Fabulous Wild Men Day: Who’s a fabulous man that you know of? National Marzipan Day: Do you know what marzipan is? Have you ever made it/had it before? National Curried Chicken Day: Do you enjoy curry? Have you ever had it before? National Kiss a Ginger Day: Have you ever dated a redhead before? National Youth Day: Do you know of a child who made a huge difference in society?   National Glazed Doughnut Day: What’s your favorite type of doughnut? Jan 13. National Rubber Ducky Day: When’s the last time you used a rubber ducky in the bathtub? Stephen Foster Memorial Day: Do you like any songs by Stephen Foster? National Peach Melba Day: Have you ever had a Peach Melba before? How was it? Korean American Day: Do you know any Koreans immigrants who now live in America? National Gluten-Free Day: Do you know anyone who has to follow a gluten-free diet? National Sticker Day: Did you like stickers as a kid? National Clean Off Your Desk Day: Do you have a desk in your room? Is it organized? International Skeptics Day: Are you skeptical of anything? What? Make Tour Dream Come True Day: Have any of your dreams actually ever come true before? Jan 14. National Dress Up Your Pet Day: Have you ever dressed up your pet before? In what? National Hot Pastrami Sandwich Day: What’s your favorite kind of sandwich? Ratification Day: Do you remember the significance of the Treaty of Paris? International Kite Day: Have you ever flown a kite before? National Shop For Travel Day: When’s the last time you went shopping for a vacation? Jan 15. National Booch Day: Do you like the taste of Kombucha? National Hat Day: What does your favorite hat look like? National Bagel Day: What kind of bagel do you eat most often? What do you put on it? National Strawberry Ice Cream Day: What’s your favorite flavor ice cream? Museum Selfie Day: When’s the last time you went to a museum? National Fresh Squeezed Juice Day: Have you ever made your own juice or lemonade before? How was it? Jan 16. National Nothing Day: When’s the last time you did absolutely nothing all day? Appreciate a Dragon Day: Are dragons your favorite mythical creature? National Without a Scalpel Day: Has anyone ever used a scalpel on you before? Get to Know Your Customers Day: Is the customer really always right? Why or why not? National Religious Freedom Day: Are you a religious person? National Fig Newtons Day: When’s the last time you ate a Fig Newton? International Hot and Spicy Food Day: What’s the spiciest food you eat? Rid the World of Fad Diets and Gimmicks Day: Have you ever been on a diet before? Did it work? Jan 17. National Bootlegger’s Day: Do you know anyone who makes bootleg DVD’s? National Hot Heads Chili Day: What do you like to eat in your chili? National Hot Buttered Rum Day: Are you a fan of rum, or do you prefer another type of alcohol? Ben Franklin Day: Name at least one of Ben Franklin’s inventions. Michelle Obama’s Birthday: Do you miss when her husband was back in office? Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day: How long do you keep your New Year’s Resolutions for? Do you even make them in the first place? Jan 18. National Winnie the Pooh Day: Who is your favorite character from Winnie the Pooh? National Michigan Day: Do you live in Michigan? National Gourmet Coffee Day: What’s your favorite “specialized” coffee drink? National Thesaurus Day: When’s the last time you used a thesaurus? National Peking Duck Day: Have you ever eaten duck before? National Use Your Gift Card Day: Where would you like to get a gift card to? Jan 19. World Quark Day: Have you ever heard of quark? National  Popcorn Day: What’s your favorite seasoning/flavor of popcorn? National Disc Jockey Day: Would you rather have a band or a DJ at your wedding. World Religion Day: What is your religion? Do you have one? National Tin Can Day: What’s the last can that you recycled? Jan 20. National Cheese Lover’s Day: What’s your favorite kind of cheese? Martin Luther King jr. Day: In what ways was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. influential? National Buttercrunch Day: Have you ever made butter crunch before? National Penguin Day: What’s your favorite thing about penguins? Jan 21. National Hugging Day: Are you a hugger? National Granola Bar Day: Do you eat granola bars? What’s your favorite flavor? Squirrel Appreciation Day: Squirrels or chipmunks? International Sweatpants Day: How many pairs of sweatpants do you own? National Banana Bread Day: Do you prefer your banana bread with or without walnuts? How about chocolate chips? National New England Clam Chowder Day: Do you like New England Clam Chowder soup? Jan 22. Celebration of Life Day: Do you believe that abortion should be legal? Why or why not? National Blonde Brownie Day: What’s your favorite type of brownie? Library Shelfie  Day: How often do you visit your public library? National Southern Food Day: What’s your favorite Southern food/meal? National Sanctity of Human Life Day: Do you believe that all humans have some sort of value? National Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day: Do you talk to your pets? Hot Sauce Day: How hot do you like your hot sauce? Jan 23. National Handwriting Day: Do you prefer printing or writing in cursive? World Spay Day: Are all of your pets spayed or neutered? National Pie Day/National Rhubarb Pie Day: What’s your favorite type of pie? Measure Your Feet Day: How big are your feet? Jan 24. Beer Can Appreciation Day: What’s your favorite type of beer? National Compliment Day: What’s the last compliment that you’ve received? National Peanut Butter Day: What’s your favorite food that involves peanut butter? International Day of Education: Why do you feel that education important? Global Belly Laugh Day: When’s the last time you laughed so hard you cried? National Eskimo Pie Patent Day: When’s the last time you had an Eskimo Pie? National Lobster Thermidor Day: When’s the last time you ate lobster? Jan 25. National Opposite Day: Have you ever been attracted to someone that was the complete opposite of you? Community Manager Appreciation Day: At your workplace, do you have a good manager/boss, or not? Are you your own boss? National Irish Coffee Day: Have you ever had an Irish Coffee before? National Seed Swap Day: What’s the last seed you planted? National Florida Day: Do you know anyone who is from Florida? Chinese New Year: What is your Chinese animal? (the year of the ___) Burns Supper: Favorite poem by Robert Burns? Jan 26. National Green Juice Day: Do you drink any sort of health drinks? National Peanut Brittle Day: Do you enjoy peanut brittle? National Spouses Day: Do you hope to get married one day? Why or why not? Australia Day: If you were to go to Australia, what would you want to see/do first? International Customs Day: What do you think of the current level of border security in your area? World Leprosy Day: Do you know anyone who has leprosy? Jan 27. National Bubble Wrap Day: As an adult, would you still be interested in popping bubble wrap? National Chocolate Cake Day: Do you prefer chocolate cake or another flavor instead? World Breast Pumping Day: If you have a baby, would you breastfeed or formula feed? Why? International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Do you know of any Holocaust survivors? Wolfgang Mozart’s Birthday: Do you like to listen to Mozart? Punch the Clock Day: Do you have to punch in and out at work, or do you have a paper time sheet? Jan 28. National Have Fun at Work Day: What is one fun thing about your work? National Blueberry Pancake Day: Would you rather have blueberry pancakes or chocolate chip pancakes? Data Privacy Day: Have one of your websites ever been hacked before? National Daisy Day: Are daisies your favorite flower? National Lego Day: Do you follow the building instructions if you have a Lego kit, or do you build your own prototype? National Kazoo Day: Have you ever played a kazoo before? National Plan For Vacation Day: Where would you like to go on vacation? Global Community Engagement Day: How do you play a part in your community? Jan 29. National Corn Chip Day: Fritos or Tostitos? National Puzzle Day: How many pieces was the last jigsaw puzzle that you completed? Jan 30. National Croissant Day: What do you like to put on your croissant? National Inane Answering Message Day: Do you leave voicemails, or do you hang up and try again later? Jan 31. Inspire Your Heart With Art Day: What form of art would you be most likely to try your hand at? National Backward Day: Can you walk around backwards without tripping over something? National Hot Chocolate Day: Do you like hot chocolate? Do you prefer a certain flavor? National Big Wig Day: What type of job would you like to have that allows you to be in charge? Eat Brussel Sprouts Day: Do you like Brussel sprouts? Brandy Alexander Day: Do you like to drink brandy? National Weeks Folic Acid Awareness Week: Do you know anyone with a congenital disability? Universal Letter Writing Week: When’s the last time you hand-wrote a letter to someone? Diet Resolution Week: Have you ever gone on a diet before because of someone’s comments about your weight? National Silent Record Week: Have you ever listened to a silent record before? National Pizza Week: What do you like to eat on your pizza? Home Office Safety and Security Week: Does your home have a security system? Cuckoo Dancing Week: Do you like to dance? World Kiwanis Week: Do you know what the Kiwani’s Club revolves around? National Mocktail Week: What’s your favorite mocktail? Hunt For Happiness Week: Where do you find your happiness? National Healthy Weight Week: Do you feel that you are a healthy weight? Why or why not? International Snowmobile Safety & Awareness Week: Have you ever ridden on a snowmobile before? No Name-Calling Week: What’s the worst name you’ve ever been called? International Hoof Care Week: Do you like any animals that have hooves? National Catholic Schools Week: Did you ever go to a Catholic school before? National CRNA Week: Have you ever been put under anesthesia before? How were you when you came out of it? Meat Week: What’s your favorite type of meat? Or are you a vegetarian/vegan? National School Choice Week: Would you have preferred to be in a public school, a private school, or to be homeschooled? National Cowboy Poetry Gathering Week: Do you know anyone who is a cowboy? National Months National Hot Tea Month: What’s your favorite flavor tea? National Oatmeal Month: What’s your favorite flavor of oatmeal? National Slow Cooking Month: Do you have a crock-pot? National Soup Month: What’s your favorite kind of soup? National Baking Month: What’s your favorite thing to bake? National Fat Free Living Month: Do you eat foods that are fat-free? How about drinks? National Bath Safety Month: Do you prefer baths or showers? National Blood Donor Month: Have you ever donated blood? When was the last time? National Hobby Month: Do you have any hobbies? National Train Your Dog Month: Is your dog well-trained? Walk Your Pet Month:  How often do you walk your dog, if you have one? National CBD Month: Have you ever used CBD oil? National Black Diamond Month: Do you own anything with diamonds – black or regular? National Mentoring Month: Have you ever had a mentor before? National Menudo Month: Have you ever had menudo before? [a-zebra-is-a-striped-horse]

[scifigeneration]

How to build a 'perfect' language

by Bettina Beinhoff

A document in Tengwar, the script of the Elvish languages invented by JRR Tolkien, Dozza, Italy. Luca Lorenzelli via Shutterstock

It’s well known that JRR Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings cycle to create people to speak the languages he had invented. But, in the television age, artificially created or invented languages – we call them “conlangs” – have been gaining increasing attention with the popularity of television series such as Star Trek and Game of Thrones, and films such as Avatar.

Fantasy and science fiction are the ideal vehicles for conlangs. Marc Okrand, an American linguist whose core research area is Native American languages, invented Klingon for Star Trek, while Paul Frommer of the University of Southern California created the Na'vi language for Avatar.

The fantasy series Game of Thrones involved several languages, including Dothraki and Valyrian, which were created by David J Peterson, a “conlanger” who has invented languages for several other shows. Most recently, fantasy thriller The City and The City featured the language Illitan, created by Alison Long of Keele University in the UK.

I teach how to construct languages and one question my students usually ask is: “How do I make a perfect language?” I need to warn that it’s impossible to make a language “perfect” – or even “complete”. Rather, an invented language is more likely to be appropriate for the context – convincing and developed just enough to work in the desired environment. But here are a few things to bear in mind.

Who will speak this language and why?

It is very important to be clear about the aims of the language and its (fictional or real) speakers. When conlangs are created for a specific fictional character, the aims and speakers are determined by the story, the author or producer.

In some cases, fragments or descriptions of the language do exist. This was the case for Illitan, which was described as having “jarring” sounds in the novel The City and The City and there were a few Dothraki expressions in the first Game of Thrones novel. But what if there are no instructions? In a survey I ran a few years ago, many language creators pointed out that a sense of aesthetics and beauty guided them, along with the need to make the conlangs sound natural and a very pragmatic sense of how easily the languages could be pronounced.

There is also a strong link between language and culture, where some languages attract a large fan base because of the culture and community this language represents. A good example is Na’vi, which attracts many learners because of its welcoming community of speakers. In some cases the language itself has developed a strong culture and community, as is the case for Esperanto, which aims to bring people together regardless of their background and supports a strong sense of solidarity.

Start with sounds

The sound system is typically the starting point for language creators. This makes sense, given that sound is usually the first thing that we encounter in a new language. Do we want our conlang to sound harsh, alien or even aggressive? In the Klingon sound system this effect is achieved as follows:

Fricative consonants – like the initial sounds in the words “chair”, “show” and “jump” or the final sound in the Scottish word “loch”.

Plosive consonants – such as “t”, “p” and “k” – ideally produced with a stronger puff of air than is customary in spoken English.

Sounds that are unusual – at least to the ears of English speakers, who are typically the primary target audience. So imagine a consonant that sounds like a “k” that is produced far back in the throat (a sound which exists in Modern Standard Arabic) or a “g” that is produced more like a “gargle” and exists, for example, in Modern Greek and Icelandic.

These sounds all contribute to Klingon’s alien quality. On the other hand, Tolkien’s Elvish languages of Sindarin and Quenya were developed to sound aesthetically pleasing and – according to Tolkien himself – are intended to sound “of a European kind”. So Tolkien’s Elvish languages have systems which are much closer to those of European languages such as Welsh, Finnish and Old English, all of which influenced Tolkien when creating these languages.

Words and customs

Once we know how our language sounds, we can develop words. Here, the link to the culture of the speakers is important in establishing the most important words and expressions. For example, the Na’vi are deeply connected to nature and this connection is ingrained in their words, metaphors and customs. For example, when the Na'vi kill an animal they speak a prayer to show respect, gratitude and humility.

In contrast, the Dothraki – nomadic warriors relying on horses – literally say: “Do you ride well?” when asking: “Are you well?”

Grammar

Now we need to put our words together in a sensible way, including expressing tenses and plural forms. We can do this by adding different endings – so, for example, Esperanto uses the verb ending -as to express present tense, -os for past and -is for future, as in amas (love), amos (loved) and amis (will love).

We also need to decide on the word order and sentence structure. English has a typical structure of Subject-Verb-Object, but an alien-sounding conlang like Klingon may use a more unusual structure like Object-Subject-Verb – for example, the book (Object) – my friend (Subject) – reads (Verb).

Writing systems

Writing systems are bound to the culture of the speakers – and not all languages are written. Cultures with purely oral traditions, like the Dothraki, do not write. However, where such writing systems appear, they are often an artistic endeavour in themselves. The most famous example is Tengwar, one of the scripts Tolkien developed for the Elvish languages.

The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in JRR Tolkien’s Tengwar script (transcribed from English). Alatius/Wikimedia Commons

Klingon maintains its alien quality through very spiky characters and Esperanto, developed to be learned easily, contained some symbols which have subsequently been changed as they were too cumbersome.

So, like natural languages, conlangs change and develop (for example, all conlangs regularly acquire new words). What is important, though, is to keep the speaker community active, otherwise only fragments of your conlang may remain, as is the case for Sauron’s Black Speech in the Lord of the Rings. But given what we know about the evil Sauron, perhaps that is just as well.

About The Author:

Bettina Beinhoff is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and English Language at Anglia Ruskin University

This article is republished from our content partners over at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

[jeannereames]

hi if it's not a too personal question to ask how did you come to be interested in history/antiquity/alexander..? I mean did you always like it as a child? or how did it start?

It’s not too personal, and in fact, I LIKE to tell this story, as I’m the definition of coming in the back door, which might encourage others.

Understand, I’m a chick from the other side of the tracks. My generation was the first to get a college education, and I’m among the few to go on to grad school, especially not professional *(e.g., law or med school). I was lower middle-class growing up. My father is from one of the two poorest families in Jackson County, S. Illinois before (and after) WWII. My mother was better off, her father a successful farmer and carpenter, but the Brouillettes had been Catholic (even if he wasn’t), and (worse) they had Indian blood.

There was no silver spoon in my mouth. I had better: wonderful parents who cheer-leaded me all the way. So if you disbelieve a father as great as Amyntor could exist? That’s MY parents. Amyntor-Berenikē are real, and their names were Ed and Idalee. Rise is dedicated to my father. Some of us get that lucky, and I’m HUGELY aware of my fortune, especially as I aged and realized my fellows didn’t have parents like mine. So Hephaistion’s desire to share his father with Alexandros? That was me. All my friends came to my house to visit my mother.

My love of history owes entirely to HER. She loved history, and understood it was about the stories of people. But my elementary and junior high history teachers made it about “kings-n-things” with lots of dates, etc.

So I HATED history.

I hated it all through regular school, then my tenure at UF, where (despite being a humanities major) I AVOIDED all history classes except one, an elective on the history of the Early Church. I think it’s pretty much a crime that a humanities major anywhere can graduate without a history class. WTF?

Yet it’s all the fault of poorly taught history. Plus, yes, younger students are less inclined to understand why it matters. Not all, but a substantial portion regularly return surveys saying history doesn’t matter because it’s the past, not the future.

Back to my clever mother. Instead of teaching me history, she told me about my family: the story of my ancestors, my people, including my tribe (Miami-Peoria). I was routinely hauled around to cemeteries as a kid, shown where my people were buried, and then told stories about them. Respect for Elders and the ancestors is a native thing. Yet I became fascinated, constructed family trees, and tried to trace back their stories, as most of my mother’s family were French who came in the 1600s/early 1700s, or Native Americans. My father’s family were more recent immigrants, but it all made a wonderful puzzle.

The story of me.

That’s history. The story of us, more broadly.

And so my clever, sneaky mother taught me to love history by coming in the back door.

Yet as a teen and undergrad, my interest in other cultures were largely Celtic and Scandinavian. I was introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien as a teen and remain a HUGE fan. My “home” fiction genre, insofar as I have one, is SFF (science fiction and fantasy), where a number of my friends publish. So I resisted the whole “Classical” field until quite late. Latin was the most popular language at my HS (Lakeland Dreadnoughts), and had the most active student group… so of course I refused to join! Never was a follower. I took German instead. In college, I took RUSSIAN, just to be different.

My undergrad degree was a BA in English, with a concentration in creative writing and a minor in acting. My M.A. was in theology and early church history. While at the Candler School of Theology, Emory, I kept hearing about this dude, “Alexander the Great.” I had NO idea who that was. (That’s how bad my previous history education had been.) Yet as he seemed so pivotal in cultural transfer, east to west and west to east, I wandered over to the Emory library to check out a couple of bios.

By chance, they were N.G.L. Hammond’s King, Commander and Statesman, and Peter Green’s (original, Thames-on-Hudson, later re-released by U. Cal Press) Alexander of Macedon.

I literally couldn’t have picked two more different bio’s if I’d tried.

AND HE FASCINATED ME. Who was this KID, who conquered most of his known world by 32, but generated such different evaluations, positive to negative?

Like Alexander, I’m a bit inclined to … obsess?

So I kept reading, and reading, and reading (articles, not just books), and then got into Macedonia (which then in the 1980s, was mostly articles).

By the early 1990s, I’d decided I wanted to study him professionally, not just to write a novel about him, so on the urging of Judy Tarr, I called Gene Borza at Penn State. He was my #1 choice to study with (in the US) as I’d admired his honesty to reply to those who disagreed with him, not just ignore them. So Gene asked me what I’d read, and I started reciting my list, until he said, “Stop, stop! You’ve already read more than most of my current PhD students!” He encouraged me to apply.

Ergo, if my BA was in English, and my MA in Theological studies, and I’d originally intended to go on to a PhD in the latter, I sent off ONE application—to Penn State—for history.

Guess which one offered funding (e.g., a graduate assistantship).

I wound up at Penn State, studying Macedonian history with “Aristotle” (e.g, Gene Borza, whose resemblance to the philosopher is a wee bit uncanny). It was, I think, the best choice I could have made. I remain Gene’s “academic daughter,” and Book 1, Becoming, is dedicated to him due to Aristotle’s prominence, while book 2 is dedicated to my father, Ed Reames, because he’s the model for Amyntor.

So yes…there IS a backdoor for those of us determined enough. But be aware, the handicap never goes away. I face it every single day. My Latin and Greek wasn’t “good enough,” and I don’t have the extensive reading in Classics that someone with a BA in Classics would have. But I DO bring my diverse previous experience. I have a background in bereavement counselling and ER on-call duty that allows me to look at Alexander’s mourning and such events as the Philotas Affair with experience most of my colleagues (however good their Greek and Latin) don’t have.

So be prepared to justify your existence to your colleagues who had Latin in high school and pursued a BA in Classics or ancient history. Don’t apologize.

And those of you who DO have the above, remember, there are a couple of us out there, scrappy and “previously untrained” who loved the field enough to work our asses off to get a degree, and eventually, a job. So unlike some of my colleagues at Penn State, don’t snort and look down on your unusual fellows. Help them out.

I’ll also note that of the students I entered with? Only two of us received the PhD. Tim Howe, my academic brother who came with better prep, teaches today at St. Olaf’s in Minnesota. But dammit, I fought my way through. And I finished, and I’m at a uni that, with my colleagues, created an Ancient Mediterranean Studies Program at the BA/BS and MA level. I’m damn proud of that.

The field has changed since I applied to grad school in 1991, I won’t lie. Tenure-track jobs in the US, especially in ancient history and Classics, have turned into unicorns. Other countries are different.  But if you are determined enough, and damn stubborn enough, you might be able to carve your own path, as long as you keep an eye on the current state of the field. I won’t lie to anybody about how few ancient history and Classics jobs are out there on H-Net these days. BUT don’t let the afternoon-tea set make you feel less than them: “imposter’s syndrome” for pursuing a PhD in ancient history or Classics. Some of those Classics blue-bloods won’t get a job, at the end of the day.

I am THE definition of an “imposter’s syndrome” faculty member who succeeded. And I don’t give a good goddamn what anybody thinks of me. I excel at what I do, and I’m proud of it.

[how2to18]

DURING THE POSTWAR PERIOD, the genres of the fantastic — especially science fiction — have been deeply intertwined with the genres of popular music, especially rock ’n’ roll. Both appeal to youthful audiences, and both make the familiar strange, seeking escape in enchantment and metamorphosis. As Steppenwolf sang in 1968: “Fantasy will set you free […] to the stars away from here.” Two recent books — one a nonfiction survey of 1970s pop music, the other a horror novel about heavy metal — explore this heady intermingling of rock and the fantastic.

As Jason Heller details in his new book Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Exploded, the magic carpet rides of the youth counterculture encompassed both the amorphous yearnings of acid rock and the hard-edged visions of science fiction. In Heller’s account, virtually all the major rock icons — from Jimi Hendrix to David Crosby, from Pete Townshend to Ian Curtis — were avid SF fans; not only was their music strongly influenced by Heinlein, Clarke, Ballard, and other authors, but it also amounted to a significant body of popular SF in its own right. As Heller shows, many rock stars were aspiring SF writers, while established authors in the field sometimes wrote lyrics for popular bands, and a few became rockers themselves. British fantasist Michael Moorcock, for example, fronted an outfit called The Deep Fix while also penning songs for — and performing with — the space-rock group Hawkwind (once memorably described, by Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilmister, as “Star Trek with long hair and drugs”).

Heller’s book focuses on the “explosion” of SF music during the 1970s, with chapters chronicling, year by year, the exhilarating debut of fresh music subcultures — prog rock, glam rock, Krautrock, disco — and their saturation with themes of space/time travel, alien visitation, and futuristic (d)evolution. He writes, “’70s pop culture forged a special interface with the future.” Many of its key songs and albums “didn’t just contain sci-fi lyrics,” but they were “reflection[s] of sci-fi” themselves, “full of futuristic tones and the innovative manipulation of studio gadgetry” — such as the vocoder, with its robotic simulacrum of the human voice. Heller’s discussion moves from the hallucinatory utopianism of the late 1960s to the “cool, plastic futurism” of the early 1980s with intelligence and panache.

The dominant figure in Heller’s study is, unsurprisingly, David Bowie, the delirious career of whose space-age antihero, Major Tom, bookended the decade — from “Space Oddity” in 1969 to “Ashes to Ashes” in 1980. Bowie’s 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a full-blown SF extravaganza, its freaky starman representing “some new hybrid of thespian rocker and sci-fi myth,” but it had a lot of company during the decade. Heller insightfully analyzes a wide range of SF “concept albums,” from Jefferson Starship’s Blows Against the Empire (1970), the first rock record to be nominated for a Hugo Award, to Parliament’s Mothership Connection (1975), which “reprogramm[ed] funk in order to launch it into tomorrow,” to Gary Numan and Tubeway Army’s Replicas (1979), an album “steeped in the technological estrangement and psychological dystopianism of Dick and Ballard.”

Heller’s coverage of these peaks of achievement is interspersed with amusing asides on more minor, “novelty” phenomena, such as “the robot dance craze of the late ’60s and early ’70s,” and compelling analyses of obscure artists, such as French synthesizer wizard Richard Pinhas, who released (with his band Heldon) abrasive critiques of industrial society — for example, Electronique Guerilla (1974) — while pursuing a dissertation on science fiction under the direction of Gilles Deleuze at the Sorbonne. He also writes astutely about the impact of major SF films on the development of 1970s pop music: Monardo’s Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk (1977), for example, turned the cantina scene from Star Wars into a synth-pop dance-floor hit. At the same time, Heller is shrewdly alert to the historical importance of grassroots venues such as London’s UFO Club, which incubated the early dimensional fantasies of Pink Floyd and the off-the-wall protopunk effusions of the Deviants (whose frontman, Mick Farren, had a long career as an SF novelist and, in 1978, released an album with my favorite title ever: Vampires Stole My Lunch Money). Finally, Heller reconstructs some fascinating, but sadly abortive, collaborations — Theodore Sturgeon working to adapt Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Wooden Ships” as a screenplay, Paul McCartney hiring Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry to craft a story about Wings. In some alternative universe, these weird projects came to fruition.

Heller’s erudition is astonishing, but it can also be overwhelming, drowning the reader in a welter of minutiae about one-hit wonders and the career peregrinations of minor talents. In his acknowledgments, Heller thanks his editor for helping him convert “an encyclopedia” into “a story,” but judging from the format of the finished product, this transformation was not fully complete: penetrating analyses frequently peter out into rote listings of albums and bands. There is a capping discography, but it is not comprehensive and is, strangely, organized by song title rather than by artist. The index is similarly unhelpful, containing only the proper names of individuals; one has to know, for instance, who Edgar Froese or Ralf Hütter are in order to locate the relevant passages on Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, respectively.

That said, there is no gainsaying the magisterial authority displayed in assertions such as: “The first fully formed sci-fi funk song was ‘Escape from Planet Earth’ by a vocal quartet from Camden, New Jersey, called the Continental Four.” And who else has even heard of — much less listened to — oddments like 1977’s Machines, “the sole album by the mysterious electronic group known as Lem,” who “likely took their name from sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem of Solaris fame”? Anyone interested in either popular music or science fiction of the 1970s will find countless nuggets of sheer delight in Strange Stars, and avid fans, after perusing the volume, will probably go bankrupt hunting down rare vinyl on eBay.

While Heller’s main focus is the confluence of rock ’n’ roll and science fiction, he occasionally addresses the influence of popular fantasy on major music artists of the decade. Marc Bolan, of T. Rex fame, was, we learn, a huge fan of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, while prog-rock stalwarts Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer managed “to combine science fiction and fantasy, fusing them into a metaphysical, post-hippie meditation on the nature of reality.” What’s missing from the book, however, is any serious discussion of the strain of occult and dark fantasy that ran through 1960s and ’70s rock, the shadows cast by Aleister Crowley and H. P. Lovecraft over Jimmy Page, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and (yes) Bowie himself. After all, Jim Morrison’s muse was a Celtic high priestess named Patricia Kennealy who went on, following the death of her Lizard King, to a career as a popular fantasy author. Readers interested in this general topic should consult the idiosyncratic survey written by Gary Lachman, a member of Blondie, entitled Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius (2001).

Heller does comment, in passing, on an incipient musical form that would, during the 1980s, emerge as the dark-fantasy genre par excellence: heavy metal. Though metal was, as Heller states, “just beginning to awaken” in the 1970s, his book includes sharp analyses of major prototypes such as Black Sabbath’s Paranoid (1970), Blue Öyster Cult’s Tyranny and Mutation (1973), and the early efforts of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. This was the technocratic lineage of heavy metal, the segment of the genre most closely aligned with science fiction, especially in its dystopian modes, and which would come to fruition, during the 1980s, in classic concept albums like Voivod’s Killing Technology (1987) and Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime (1988).

But the 1980s also saw the emergence of more fantasy-oriented strains, such as black, doom, and death metal, whose rise to dominance coincided with the sudden explosion in popularity of a fantastic genre that had, until that time, largely skulked in the shadow of SF and high fantasy: supernatural horror. Unsurprisingly, the decade saw a convergence of metal music and horror fiction that was akin to the 1970s fusion of rock and SF anatomized in Strange Stars. Here, as elsewhere, Black Sabbath was a pioneer, their self-titled 1970 debut offering a potent brew of pop paganism culled equally from low-budget Hammer films and the occult thrillers of Dennis Wheatley. By the mid-1980s, there were hundreds of bands — from Sweden’s Bathory to England’s Fields of the Nephilim to the pride of Tampa, Florida, Morbid Angel — who were offering similar fare. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos inspired songs by Metallica, Mercyful Fate, and countless other groups — including Necronomicon, a German thrash-metal outfit whose name references a fictional grimoire featured in several of the author’s stories.

By the same token, heavy metal music deeply influenced the burgeoning field of horror fiction. Several major 1980s texts treated this theme overtly: the doom-metal outfit in George R. R. Martin’s The Armageddon Rag (1983) is a twisted emanation of the worst impulses of the 1960s counterculture; the protagonist of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat (1985) is a Gothic rocker whose performances articulate a pop mythology of glamorous undeath; and the mega-cult band in John Skipp and Craig Spector’s splatterpunk classic The Scream (1988) are literal hell-raisers, a Satanic incarnation of the most paranoid fantasies of Christian anti-rock zealots. The heady conjoining of hard rock with supernaturalism percolated down from these best sellers to the more ephemeral tomes that packed the drugstore racks during the decade, an outpouring of gory fodder affectionately surveyed in Grady Hendrix’s award-winning study Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction (2017). Hendrix, himself a horror author of some note, has now published We Sold Our Souls (2018), the quintessential horror-metal novel for our times.

Hendrix has stated that, prior to embarking on this project, he was not “a natural metal fan”:

I was scared of serious metal when I was growing up. Slayer and Metallica intimidated me, and I was too unsophisticated to appreciate the fun of hair metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Twisted Sister, so I basically sucked. […] But I got really deep into metal while writing We Sold Our Souls and kind of fell in love.

The author’s immersion in — and fondness for — the genre is evident on every page of his new novel. Chapters are titled using the names of classic metal albums: “Countdown to Extinction” (Megadeth, 1992), “From Enslavement to Obliteration” (Napalm Death, 1988), “Twilight of the Gods” (Bathory, 1991), and so on. The effect is to summon a hallowed musical canon while at the same time evoking the story’s themes and imparting an emotional urgency to its events. These events also nostalgically echo 1980s rock-horror novels: like The Armageddon Rag, Hendrix’s plot chronicles the reunion of a cult outfit whose breakup decades before was enigmatically fraught; like The Scream, it features a demonic metal band that converts its worshipful fans into feral zombies; like The Vampire Lestat, it culminates in a phantasmagoric stadium concert that erupts into a brutal orgy of violence. Yet despite these pervasive allusions, the novel does not come across as mere pastiche: it has an energy and authenticity that make it feel quite original.

A large part of that originality lies in its protagonist. As the cock-rock genre par excellence, its blistering riffs and screeching solos steeped in adolescent testosterone, heavy metal has had very few notable female performers. But one of them, at least in Hendrix’s fictive history, was Kris Pulaski, lead guitarist of Dürt Würk, a legendary quintet from rural Pennsylvania that abruptly dissolved, under mysterious circumstances, in the late 1990s, just as they were poised for national fame. Kris was a scrappy bundle of nerves and talent, a kick-ass songwriter and a take-no-prisoners performer:

She had been punched in the mouth by a straight-edge vegan, had the toes of her Doc Martens kissed by too many boys to count, and been knocked unconscious after catching a boot beneath the chin from a stage diver who’d managed to do a flip into the crowd off the stage at Wally’s. She’d made the mezzanine bounce like a trampoline at Rumblestiltskins, the kids pogoing so hard flakes of paint rained down like hail.

But that was eons ago. As the story opens, she is staffing the night desk at a Best Western, burned out at 47, living in a broken-down house with her ailing mother and trying to ignore “the background hum of self-loathing that formed the backbeat of her life.” She hasn’t seen her bandmates in decades, since she drunkenly crashed their tour van and almost killed them all, and hasn’t picked up a guitar in almost as long, constrained by the terms of a draconian contract she signed with Dürt Würk’s former lead singer, Terry Hunt, who now controls the band’s backlist. While Kris has lapsed into brooding obscurity, Hunt has gone on to global success, headlining a “nu metal” outfit called Koffin (think Korn or Limp Bizkit) whose mainstream sound Kris despises: “It was all about branding, fan outreach, accessibility, spray-on attitude, moving crowds of white kids smoothly from the pit to your merch booth.” It was the exact opposite of genuine metal, which “tore the happy face off the world. It told the truth.”

To inject a hint of authenticity into Koffin’s rampant commodification, Hunt occasionally covers old Dürt Würk hits. But he avoids like the plague any songs from the band’s long-lost third album, Troglodyte, with their elaborate mythology of surveillance and domination:

[T]here is a hole in the center of the world, and inside that hole is Black Iron Mountain, an underground empire of caverns and lava seas, ruled over by the Blind King who sees everything with the help of his Hundred Handed Eye. At the root of the mountain is the Wheel. Troglodyte was chained to the Wheel along with millions of others, which they turned pointlessly in a circle, watched eternally by the Hundred Handed Eye.

Inspired by the arrival of a butterfly that proves the existence of a world beyond his bleak dungeon, Troglodyte ultimately revolts against Black Iron Mountain, overthrowing the Blind King and leading his fellow slaves into the light.

One might assume that Hunt avoids this album because the scenario it constructs can too readily be perceived as an allegory of liberation from the consumerist shackles of Koffin’s nu-metal pablum. That might be part of the reason, but Hunt’s main motivation is even more insidious: he fears Troglodyte because its eldritch tale is literally true — Koffin is a front for a shadowy supernatural agency that feeds on human souls, and Dürt Würk’s third album holds the key to unmasking and fighting it. This strange reality gradually dawns on Kris, and when Koffin announces plans for a massive series of concerts culminating in a “Hellstock” festival in the Nevada desert, she decides to combat its infernal designs with the only weapon she has: her music. Because “a song isn’t a commercial for an album. It isn’t a tool to build name awareness or reinforce your brand. A song is a bullet that can shatter your chains.”

This bizarre plot, like the concept albums by Mastodon or Iron Maiden it evokes, runs the risk of collapsing into grandiloquent absurdity if not carried off with true conviction. And this is Hendrix’s key achievement in the novel: he never condescends, never winks at the audience or tucks his tongue in cheek. Like the best heavy metal, We Sold Our Souls is scabrous and harrowing, its pop mythology fleshed out with vividly gruesome set pieces, as when Kris surprises the Blind King’s minions at their ghastly repast:

Its fingernails were black and it bent over Scottie, slobbering up the black foam that came boiling out of his mouth. Kris […] saw that the same thing was crouched over Bill, a starved mummy, maggot-white, its skin hanging in loose folds. A skin tag between its legs jutted from a gray pubic bush, bouncing obscenely like an engorged tick. […] Its gaze was old and cold and hungry and its chin dripped black foam like a beard. It sniffed the air and hissed, its bright yellow tongue vibrating, its gums a vivid red.

The irruption of these grisly horrors into an otherwise mundane milieu of strip malls and franchise restaurants and cookie-cutter apartments is handled brilliantly, on a par with the best of classic splatterpunk by the likes of Joe R. Lansdale or David J. Schow.

Hendrix also, like Stephen King, has a shrewd feel for true-to-life relationships, which adds a grounding of humanity to his cabalistic flights. Kris’s attempts to reconnect with her alienated bandmates — such as erstwhile drummer JD, a wannabe Viking berserker who has refashioned his mother’s basement into a “Metalhead Valhalla” — are poignantly handled, and the hesitant bond she develops with a young Koffin fan named Melanie has the convincing ring of post-feminist, intergenerational sisterhood. Throughout the novel, Hendrix tackles gender issues with an intrepid slyness, from Kris’s brawling tomboy efforts to fit into a male-dominated world to Melanie’s frustration with her lazy, lying, patronizing boyfriend, with whom she breaks up in hilarious fashion:

She screamed. She broke his housemate’s bong. She Frisbee-d the Shockwave [game] disc so hard it left a divot in the kitchen wall. She raged out of the house as his housemates came back from brunch.

“Dude,” they said to Greg as he jogged by them, “she is so on the rag.”

“Are we breaking up?” Greg asked, clueless, through her car window.

It took all her self-control not to back over him as she drove off.

Such scenes of believable banality compellingly anchor the novel’s febrile horrors, as do the passages of talk-radio blather interspersed between the chapters, which remind us that conspiratorial lunacy is always only a click of the AM dial away.

While obviously a bit of a throwback, We Sold Our Souls shows that the 1980s milieu of heavy metal and occult horror — of bootleg cassettes and battered paperbacks — continues to have resonance in our age of iPods and cell-phone apps. It also makes clear that the dreamy confluence of rock and the fantastic so ably anatomized in Heller’s Strange Stars is still going strong.

¤

Rob Latham is a LARB senior editor. His most recent book is Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings, published by Bloomsbury Press in 2017.

The post Magic Carpet Rides: Rock Music and the Fantastic appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[longlivefeedback]

Why People Don't Comment: Data and History from the Tolkienfic Community

by @dawnfelagund

A quick summary: 

Commenting is a learned skill

Many people avoid commenting not because they didn’t want to comment, but because they didn’t know how to comment. 

Commenting is also a matter of confidence

Even among readers who are authors themselves, many aren’t sure what to say or how their comment will be received. 

A sense of community encourages commenting

People who feel more connected to the community, perhaps because of personal friendships and a sense of community built through other platforms and forms of communication, seem to have a greater desire to comment. After all, one feels less pressure when writing to a friend than an author to whom one feels little or no connection. 

Why People Don’t Comment

The other day, in response to @longlivefeedback‘s initial post about increasing feedback on AO3, I reblogged the post and shared some of my own data and research around the topic. I am a Tolkien fandom historian and own the archive the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild. In 2015, as part of my research, I conducted a survey of Tolkien fanfiction readers and writers. The survey was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the university where I was a grad student at the time, and was administered using Google Forms. There were 1,052 total participants; 642 of them were authors, and 1,047 were readers. As I came out of the survey overwhelmed with data and unsure where to begin, a key area of interest among my fandom friends was commenting, so I have recently been looking closely at the survey items related to commenting, which brought me to @longlivefeedback’s post.

In addition, I am an archive owner myself, contemplating a major software change in the next year or so. Like probably every archive owner ever, I’d like to increase the amount of commenting and interaction that happens on my site. Therefore, I had been considering many of the same questions as @longlivefeedback about AO3 but on a smaller scale for my own archive. They asked me to share some of my research and conclusions from the past several months of crunching data and discussing what it means with other members of the Tolkienfic community.

Under the jump: Commenting as a learned skill, commenting and confidence, the 3Cs, and a case study in the Tolkienfic community.  

Commenting as a Learned Skill

Participants in my survey valued commenting. 78% agreed* with the statement, “I think it’s important for readers to leave comments and other feedback on the stories they read.” Interestingly, 78% also agreed with the statement, “I want to leave comments and other feedback more often on the stories I read.”

*When I say a participant agreed with a statement, I mean that they chose either the option Agree or Strongly Agree on the survey. When I say a participant disagreed, they chose either Disagree or Strongly Disagree.

So readers want to leave comments and want to do it more often. What’s stopping them??

The survey included two items about perceived barriers to commenting. Having discussed commenting in great depth and with many people as I’ve released my data over the past few months, I know that there are many reasons beyond these two, but one in particular caught my attention, both because the data were surprising to me and also because they suggested action that, as an archive owner, I could take.

78% of participants (again!) agreed with the statement, “I sometimes want to leave a comment but am not sure what to say.” Among those participants who agreed that they wanted to leave comments more often, the number who also agreed that they struggled to know what to say jumps to 86%. This number is hard to ignore. It suggests that there is a multitude of readers out there, wanting to speak with authors but running into a skill barrier: They simply don’t know how to distill the welter of emotions one feels after reading a great piece of fiction into the black-and-white words needed to express the enormity of those feelings to the author in a way that does them justice.

These data really triggered a change in thinking for me. To this point, I had discussed commenting with the intention of goading readers into doing something I assume they could do but just weren’t. I had never stepped long enough out of my own point of view to consider what commenting required of many of those readers. I have an MA in humanities, have worked professionally as a writer and editor, and now teach humanities; I have been critiquing and discussing fiction and literature daily since I was an undergrad. I assumed that kind of thinking and writing was as second-nature for everyone as it was for me; with these data in hand, it seems foolish that I never considered that it wasn’t, that the skills I brought to the process were just that: skills that had to be learned.

In my non-fannish life, I am a middle-grades humanities teacher, so I teach literacy and writing through the lens of history, cultural studies, and the social sciences. As an educator, I understand that each form of writing has to be taught, and my data have caused me to believe this about comment writing as well. It is a unique form of writing and one that even people who are highly competent in other forms of writing (such as technical writing or even fiction writing) might find challenging, especially given that comment-writing is performed in public and often directed at a writer whom one admires.

In education, we use the term “scaffolding” to describe how to teach a complex skill, like a challenging form of writing. Scaffolding begins with a lot of supports and entails the gradual release of responsibility until independence is achieved. Obviously, fandom is not a classroom, but ideas like comment templates, comment starters, and checklists fit the scaffolding model and could help draw out that 86% of readers who want to say more but often stare at that comment form and just don’t know how.

Commenting and Confidence

Another survey item asked participants to respond to the statement: “I sometimes want to leave a comment but think that my comment might not mean much to the writer.” 55% of participants agreed with this statement, which again surprised me because authors have been pitching a fit and begging and pleading for comments as long as I’ve been in the fandom.

I was also interested in a particular group of participants: fanfiction authors who do not leave comments. 13.5% of authors in the survey stated that they did not leave comments. This seemed counterintuitive to me: As an author, who knows firsthand how much a comment can inspire and encourage one’s writing, wouldn’t authors want to help other authors in this way? And presumably as the recipient of comments, wouldn’t one feel the pull of reciprocity to also respond to another author’s work? And many of the reasons I was hearing about why people don’t comment–they’re not writers themselves, they’re not comfortable writing in English, they don’t have access to technology where they can write at length with ease–clearly don’t apply to this group either. So why aren’t they commenting?

Once I began to look closer at this group, I detected a theme: confidence. This is where the 55% who want to say something but don’t because they think the author won’t care also come in.

Demographically, authors who don’t comment are very similar to authors overall who participated in the study. They are a median 23 years old; authors as a whole are a median age of 24 years. They have a median three years of experience writing Tolkien-based fanfic, compared to four years for authors as a whole. Where they differ is the rates at which they publish their fanfiction. Only 12% of authors had written but not published at least one Tolkienfic. Among non-commenting authors, that total more than doubles to 28%. 57% of authors had published the majority (81% or more) of what they wrote. For non-commenting authors, this number drops to 40.5%.

The survey also included an item stating, “Writing fan fiction has helped me to become a more confident writer.” 91% of authors overall agreed with this item. Among non-commenting authors, the number drops to 84%.

The 3Cs: Community, Connection, and Commenting

There is more to the picture of non-commenting authors, though. These authors, in general, feel less of a connection with the Tolkienfic community than do authors as a whole.

85% of all authors agreed with the statement, “Comments from and interactions with other fans encourage me to write fan fiction.” Less than 5% disagreed. But for authors who do not leave comments, comments and interactions offer far less encouragement: only 66% agreed, and 12% disagreed.

78% of participants agreed with the statement, “I think it’s important for readers to leave comments and other feedback on the stories they read.” Only 60% of non-commenting authors agreed with this same statement, however, and again, twice as many (8%) disagreed with the statement as among participants as a whole (4%).

92% of authors agreed with the statement, “Commenting on stories is a way to give something back to the authors.” Among non-commenting authors, however, only 79% agreed.

76% of authors agreed with the statement, “Writing fan fiction has helped me to make new friends.” Only 58% of noncommenting authors agreed.

48% of all participants agreed with the statement, “Commenting on stories I’ve read has allowed me to make new friends.” Among authors who leave comments, that number is much higher: 69% agreed. Among non-commenting authors, however, that number plummets to 18% (perhaps not surprisingly, since some may have never left a comment at all).

Taken together, these data suggest that non-commenting authors don’t feel as deep of a community connection as Tolkienfic authors and community members in general. As noted above, 78% of participants want to leave comments more often on what they read. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the above, for non-commenting authors, that number drops to 63%. This suggests that, in addition to confidence, a community connection fosters a desire to comment.

A Case Study in the 3Cs, or Tolkienfic Community History and Commenting

The Tolkienfic community provides an interesting case study for commenting since it has had steady–often high–levels of fanfiction activity since 2002. Tolkien fanfiction itself is even more venerable, with the first documented fanwork written in 1958. Online fannish activity began in 1991. (See this timeline on Fanlore for a detailed breakdown of the history of Tolkien fandom.) As the graph below shows, even fifteen years later, the bump in fandom entry when the Lord of the Rings trilogy first entered theaters still shows. While activity dropped between the film trilogies, the Tolkienfic community has nonetheless remained active since its inception.

This means that we can look at commenting across that time. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily cut-and-dried: The fandom has changed in major ways in the fifteen years since the first rush of fans excited by the LotR films started entering the fanfiction community, and those changes make an apples-to-apples comparison difficult or impossible. But putting together the various data to which we have access, a picture of how commenting has changed over time emerges.

The Tolkienfic community gained its foothold on email lists–eventually, this came to be dominated by Yahoo! Groups–and LiveJournal. In addition, the Tolkienfic community opened fiction archives at a high rate. Fanlore lists sixty-one of them. The first archive, the Least Expected slash archive, opened in 2001, and 2002-2003 saw a rush of archives appear online, covering ground from the highly specialized, focusing on a single group of characters or pairing, to the general. These general archives were widely used by Tolkienfic writers for sharing fanfiction. They also included a social component, and all of the major general archives from this time either included an associated Yahoo! Group and/or LiveJournal community for discussion or included a discussion forum within the site itself. Use of FanFiction.net also remained high during this time period.

When the LotR film trilogy concluded, activity diminished but did not stop–far from it. Several new archives opened between 2004 and 2011 and activity remained high on Yahoo! Groups and LiveJournal, until poor administrative decisions from the owners of those platforms began to drive fans away. While activity slowed on FanFiction.net, it did not die. The Tolkienfic community, however, tended to remain isolated from the rest of fandom, which included adopting new technology at a lower rate than fandom in general.

The release of the Hobbit trilogy and another large influx of new fans forced the community’s hand in many ways. Widespread use of Tumblr by Tolkien fans began in 2012, as near as I can tell, and activity shifted also onto AO3 and away from the large Tolkien-specific archives. While some of the smaller archives began to close in the lull between film trilogies, the arrival of the Hobbit films began to impact the larger archives as well. Of the major archives opened during the LotR film trilogy years, all have either closed, opened to multifandom stories, or activity has dropped to almost nothing. Those archives that do remain active are those that were founded between the trilogies. Several LiveJournal communities remain active, and others have moved to Dreamwidth; with the exception of those communities and the few remaining archives, however, Tolkienfic community activity resembles that of any other fandom: largely concentrated on Tumblr and AO3.

As an archive owner and fandom historian, I have been hearing from community members for some time now that comments have been decreasing in the Tolkienfic community. This certainly seems to be the case for me: As a relative unknown in 2006, having only started publishing Tolkienfic six months prior, I received far more feedback on my work than I do now as an archive owner, well-known author, and published scholar in my fandom. And activity is higher than ever in the Silmarillion community of which I’m part. (I compare my 2006 and current comment data here.)

Because Tolkien fanfiction was posted across such a wide array of sites–and many of those sites are now gone or do not make data collection easy–documenting the drop in commenting is challenging. The one site that has remained consistently active in the Tolkienfic community is FanFiction.net (FFN). The first Tolkienfic was posted there in 2000, and it has remained a site popular with Tolkienfic writers. I decided to use the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to look at comment data for past years.

Unfortunately, FFN does not make click/hit data public. Also, because they use a paginated format with twenty-five stories per page–and the Wayback Machine often does not archive beyond the first page–it is again difficult to compare apples to apples. I settled on using two methodologies to try to overcome this obstacle.

Methodology 1 was my preferred methodology. I located the first story posted two weeks after the archive date. I then looked at the review counts for that story and the next nine stories posted earlier. (I did this since recently posted stories often don’t have a lot of comments for the simple reason that people haven’t had the chance to read and comment on them.) I looked only at one-chapter stories.

If I could not access enough stories to follow Methodology 1, then I used Methodology 2 and looked at the comment counts for the ten oldest one-chapter stories on the page.

I looked at the Silmarillion section, which is less likely to show impacts based on the films alone. I included only English-language stories. All averages are median.

While the data are very limited, they mostly show a steady decline in commenting, aside from a slight uptick among the most recent set. (Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine doesn’t have the Silmarillion section archived between 2004 and 2009, or between 2009 and 2013.) In essence, it confirms what authors who have been around for all–or most–of these years have been saying: that commenting in the Tolkienfic community is on the decline.

(Nor do I believe it is a change in activity in FanFiction.net that is causing the drop. The Silmarillion section has remained fairly active; on 29 November 2004 and today, 31 December 2017, a median of two stories were posted per day, looking at the first page of stories. In 2009, on the other hand, less than one story was being posted to the Silmarillion section per day without a drop in commenting.)

So what caused the drop in commenting? Note that in 2003, at the height of fanfiction activity during the LotR films, commenting was at its highest, despite a much smaller Silmarillion fandom.  When The Hobbit films were released in 2012, shouldn’t this have also spurred more commenting? It certainly seems to have spurred more activity on the FFN Silmarillion section in general, as well as in the Silmarillion fandom in general. So what happened?

In addition to 2012 as the year The Hobbit hit theaters, 2012 was also the year that the Tolkien fandom widely adopted Tumblr. As discussed above, before Tumblr, most Tolkienfic activity occurred on Tolkien-specific archives and discussion groups that were located on those sites, on LiveJournal, and on Yahoo! Groups. All of these provided a very different setting than Tumblr: smaller and more intimate. One interacted with fewer people but knew those people more closely than tends to be the case now. As part of a fandom history paper I’m currently writing, I looked at some of the discussions that were happening on my site’s Yahoo! Group in 2007, between the film trilogies. I was surprised, looking back, at how personal these discussions often felt. People shared and commiserated about their lives, cheered each other on, teased each other, celebrated together, and asked questions that showed personal knowledge of each others’ lives and writing. It was obvious that they both knew and cared about each other.

I do not mean to imply that deep friendships cannot be formed on Tumblr or that people cannot connect with others on that platform. But in the Tolkienfic community, Tumblr has changed how we talk to each other in major ways, and I do believe that it has had a collateral impact on commenting. The data in the section above show that people who comment feel stronger social connections with the fanfiction community. If those deeper connections atrophy, it is not unreasonable to assume that people will feel less comfortable and compelled to comment. Returning to the idea of commenting as a skill–and a skill that requires a measure of confidence in oneself–I believe that social media used in the Tolkienfic community before Tumblr lowered the barrier in these regards somewhat. After all, one feels less pressure when writing to a friend than an author to whom one feels little or no connection.

Nor do I mean to disparage Tumblr unequivocally. Tumblr has benefited fandom, and the Tolkienfic community specifically, in many ways. Fanworks other than fiction and meta now reach a wider audience. The isolationism and partisanship that once plagued the Tolkienfic community has receded a lot. But I also can’t deny that the shift onto Tumblr–and for everything, even content for which Tumblr is ill-suited, such as discussions–has also taken an important element from our community and how we used to interact with each other.

As I’ve been pondering how to raise comment levels on my own archive, I keep coming back to the notion of commenting as a skill, yes, but maybe even more importantly than that, to the idea that commenting is a natural outgrowth of community and connection, and without them, increasing comment counts will be an uphill climb–and a destination we may never reach in a satisfactory way. For a small archive like mine, adding features that allow people to reach out more easily and comfortably to each other is a relatively small task. For a large archive like AO3, it becomes a much heavier lift, making me wonder if the answer doesn’t partly lie in the older archive-discussion group dichotomy.

Note from the @longlivefeedback moderators: Thank you so much for sharing your data in this guest post. Moderator edits include the summary at the top, bolding for emphasis on key points, and replacement of personal blog links with the longlivefeedback blog. Everything else is written by @dawnfelagund. 

[aiweirdness]

The first line of a novel, by an improved neural network

Earlier this month, I tried training an algorithm called a neural network to generate the first line of a novel.

It didn’t go so well. A neural network learns by example, looking at a database of things (paint color names, craft beer names, halloween costumes) and trying to figure out how to imitate it. The problem was, I didn’t have many example first sentences to give the neural network, and supplementing with winners from a worst opening sentence contest didn’t help matters. An example:

Stop! I caused the Narguuse man who was new on Alabama, the screaming constipated eggs.

So, I asked my readers for help. I asked people to enter the first line of any novel or short story they had handy, even their own. And folks, you have made me and the neural network so very happy.

Total # of entries: 11135

Here were the most frequently-entered lines:

It was a nice day. (27) Shadow had done three years in prison. (21) In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. (17) The primroses were over. (17) The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. (16) We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. (16) The body lay naked and facedown, a deathly gray, spatters of blood staining the snow around it. (15) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. (14) All children, except one, grow up. (14) It was a pleasure to burn. (13) Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. (13)

And the most frequently-entered authors:

Terry Pratchett (268) Neil Gaiman (99) Douglas Adams (87) Arthur Conan Doyle (81) Diana Wynne Jones (76) Isaac Asimov (61) William Gibson (55) Lois McMaster Bujold (54) Philip K. Dick (53) Stephen King (51) Jack Vance (51) Jane Austen (50) Charissa Johnson (50)

(Note that misspellings and variations aren’t counted; Ursula Le Guin and J. R. R. Tolkien would have easily made the list if their spellings were more standardized.)

This crowdsourced database was quite wide-ranging indeed: from Star Wars stories to Chuck Tingle to a surprising amount of My Little Pony fan fiction. The latest version of the database is here. With my original dataset added, I ended up with 10096 unique lines (except for typos). 

I used the same neural network as last time, an open-source neural net that (somewhat unusually) uses syllables as its building blocks.

The first results showed, if not promise, then at least evidence of the high number of My Little Pony stories in the dataset.

And town go the resions with the the as to the vicered the whatboat, fluenza the of the his mix.ing the think'

What or the the not of un the the in you conple a tonight fire on the of of the at mouning and she trouror" the fash no the the which they to, an of the the all stood ponyville at es that ev the.

The neural net soon made some improvement, and once in a while would produce a grammatically correct sentence as long as it was very short.

It was an hour of the night.

The waves - there, and a class that glass of the wall of a dull place.

Something 17514.

I know they are from the mountain.

Her emlage were playing the three of the fible of the Sinnia Ously of St, in the hole is his life in a moist king.

Aliens were reared by the steam of a drought of a good ears, the young wall of the water, but she was going upon a over and had been stolen to chapter the Irish of the ratred of the building star is in Coats-and-La is a flash of dewy and big enough.

It learned eventually how to begin a book by talking about the weather - although not always successfully.

There was the snow of a perfect custom sea and early gusts from the back of the bay.

The sky was dead.

The night was very a moonless story in a mountain-10 years.

The night is like a wounded carpets from the Crumzon.

The first day of the world was born in the year 1985, in an old side of the world, and the air of the old sky of lemon and waves and berries.

And it developed a curious fondness for a line by Jacqueline Carey about not being a cuckoo’s child. Everything, for some reason, was a cuckoo’s child.

I am a cuckoo’s child of the monster.

I am not a simple person, I am the truth, and I am a cuckoo's child and the first thing you've never be blamed to be born.

"I am a cuckoo's man," said the man who had found the tapes when he had been in the door.

Many lines, especially the shortest ones, almost made sense.

The morning room came to the deep camp.

"I have no question,” I said, as I had been ringing from Inniwhite.

The farmer was born on one side.

"You are even much!"

It was a good day that had once been any thing.

It is a man trick.

The night was over.

There began with the dead end of the wind.

The telephone was coming.

With Mr. Bilbo had always been so much procision

The sky has gone.

Here was a grey one.

The sun was coming.

"She's no acterity," said the hoarse man.

There was a very high slacks for our house 2g19.

The first thing you know is not a good idea.

I am not a king.

I was surfing for my table.

There was just a man who was able to be sick.

It was god.

This is the worst thing, in an old old man of baker and bay.

A noise is a good recruit.

And some were actually rather intriguing. I might read these books.

The silence was unlike a place.

"I am forced to write to my neighbors about the beast."

Her mother was packing by the black anthill.

The sun was probably for his wife.

I am a story that was not a truth.

"I am not the door!"

I don't know what is a combined life.

This is the story of a certain man who had invented a young man.

The sky was at the door.

Alice is a story of interest.

The question was enjoying himself.

This is a story of a man in the morning.

The world was born to say that I was lost.

I saw the last of a man, who was dead.

The old man was the first of us of the beginning to the sky.

Longer sentences, though? Still a problem. Grammar is hard.

"Bleeeck, “You are clearly out of my uncle Christmas Eve, I am a cuckoo's advice and at the day that I can tell you to be a man," but he had no children to remember to the boars of the ancient girl (or Claudius the Idiot."

The year of the island is discovered the Missouri of the galaxy like a teenage lying and always discovered the year of her own class-writing bed and implored the creation of his head, and the constant final ones in the back of the high water of the stock of the dark.

All the light of the smallest man’s body in the ocean in an old angle of a giant mountain and exclaimed that the sky was the gunslinger caught over the pale of the great kitchen floor.

I knew how felt my father being to our interested to the baseing and so walter along her hours, and the holy summer of the world with the sea of the m and the exvitions of the light of elephant novice, and the top of the phenomwhere, and the witch of the world was firmer and slid and an invisible company of the year and the ancient head of the square, the song of the day of the interest note, a large zzzzzz for a very mind, and a wizard of chess.

Want to see what the raw neural network output looked like? This project is my entry for NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generating Month) which means that I generated 140,000 words’ worth of first lines, also available at GitHub.  Unfortunately, due to a prank in the input data that I didn’t catch till after I trained the neural network, 37,000 of them are the word “sand”.

I’m posting the crowdsourced dataset here on GitHub, in spreadsheet form on Google Docs, and I’ll leave the original survey open as well. Thanks again, everyone.

[dawnfelagund]

So. Big news: I have finally made all of the data from the Tolkien Fan Fiction Survey available. I’ve blogged about a lot of it over the years, but there were survey items I hadn’t even looked at much less run the numbers for, so at last, everything is done and available in one place.

It is termed “First Edition” because I will keep working with and looking at this data and will issue further editions once I get enough updates to be worthwhile. If there’s a particular avenue you’d like me to explore, my ask box is open.

The data is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license, which means that nonprofit work that uses my data is fine as long as I’m credited. I hope other fans and researchers will use and discuss it.

[elrondsscribe]

In which I Really Need To Learn To Shut Up.

This post was inspired by @anthropologyarda‘s post on the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, which you should read here!

WARNING: talk about Christianity, biblical texts, and personal faith journey disclosure. If you don’t want to be bothered with anything of the kind, don’t read below the cut.

Very personal disclosure:

Currently I am a student at a Christian college working my way through the oral, written, and translated, and canonized history of the biblical texts. I am beginning to see something of a parallel with certain aspects of Tolkien’s ‘histories’ and the stories in the biblical text.

I came up in a fairly fundamental environment (not nearly as much so as others I’ve heard of, but still pretty evangelical), and thus was trained to regard every word of the biblical text as literal written history (or science or life rules or whatever the text happened to be dealing with). Any other interpretation was nothing short of unfaithfulness to the Bible and unfaithfulness to God. My relationship with the Middle-Earth canon worked much the same way: every part of the text was meant by Tolkien to be the literal history of the fictional world of Middle-Earth.

However, I’m also the kind of person who believes that everything a human being does or says has a context, and of course contexts change with time and place. As a teenager, I began to feel that even the Bible must have some context: after all, it hadn’t fallen out of heaven, leather-bound and printed in King James English with a ribbon down the middle. (Nothing against such Bibles, of course. My dad gave me one for Christmas as a kid and it remains one of my most treasured possessions.) However, it has taken me a number of years, and two college-level survey courses, to even start to really unpack what it means for the biblical text to have a context.

For example: Recently I had to read that really weird story in Genesis 9 (right after the Flood story) where Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent. (I’m sure college students can’t relate to that at all.) One of his three sons, Ham, goes and looks at him and mocks him; the other two sons, Shem and Japheth, are more respectful. And after Noah wakes up, he curses, not Ham (who did the Bad Thing), but Canaan, one of Ham’s sons.

Now if you know much about Israel’s history with the Canaanites throughout the Old Testament, you know that the Canaanites are one of the most frequent “bad guys” whom Israel is always either killing, getting killed by, or getting in trouble with God for not killing. It’s been suggested that this particular cursing-of-Canaan story is less about History 101 and more about “see kids, this is why them Canaanites is baaad news and they goin’ dooown.” Stories were the foundation of how the world operated in the Ancient Near East; if you wanted to explain why rain fell from the sky, or why humans die, or why We Ought To Kill Those Weird People Who Are Not Like Us, you explained by telling a story. Israel doesn’t seem to have been an exception to this. (Neither are we, actually.)

But here’s the thing: As a modern reader, opening yourself up to the possibility of the cursing-of-Canaan story being propoganda rather than literal history permits you to try to read between the lines of the biblical text. And when you do that, you learn something about the values and assumptions of the people who actually lived behind (and wrote) the text. You experience a little piece of the ancient world in a way that simply reading the story as ‘History’ doesn’t really allow.

My point? That a story such as the Noah/Ham/Canaan story (or the Abraham story cycle) could be said to function in the Bible not unlike a story such as the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth (or the 144 Elves by Cuiviénen) function in Tolkien’s world. What if reading these stories as fairytales and/or propoganda instead of literal history actually tells us something about the world from which they came?

Reading between the lines of the text (while doing honor to the world from which it came) is an art form that takes humility, imagination, knowledge, good sense, and a willingness to examine your own assumptions. This is true in reading the Bible and Tolkien’s legendarium. Frankly, it’s my suspicion that the kind of Tolkien fans who believe that every single scrap of Tolkien’s writing is literal Middle-Earth history are probably (young) evangelicals who feel the same way about the text of the Bible.

Hey, I’m not pointing fingers. That was me. Some days, that still is me.

TLDR: Christian girl sees parallel between OP’s reading of the Athrabeth ah Andreth and the way in which she is herself learning to read biblical narratives.

[fantasy-cartography]

Loved the brickworks video, but what are some of your favorite maps?! Sorry if you've already answered this I just found you

Don’t worry, I haven’t answered this question before. Besides, this series is only about a month old so you still definitely count as an early adopter :)

The question of what my favourite maps are is actually kind of tricky, because it isn’t exactly the same question as what my favourite fantasy novels are. I mean, I love The Book of Lies, a YA fantasy book by James Moloney, but the map in that book is almost totally perfunctory. I strongly suspect that a lot of authors only really bother with a map because Tolkien did it – you don’t need them as often as you might think (try reading some Jasper Fforde novels for an example of how to stretch the geography of a story to its limits without ever actually getting it mapped out for you).

I can definitely say what kind of fantasy map is my favourite – it’s a map which is well-integrated with the story, where the scale and features of the map have a clear and present impact on the events of the plot. Lord of the Rings actually pulls this off in the context of a journey, even if the geology is kind of nonsense – about half of that book is ‘we need to cross this mountain range/swamp/forest/whatever, what’s the best route to do so?’ A Song of Ice and Fire manages to integrate its map into the world’s politics pretty well – even with the use of carrier ravens at a bit of a literary cheat, the time it takes to deliver news and cross the continent plays into the story again and again (it’s one of thousands of things that the TV show has forgotten about). Heck, The Book of Lies technically pulls this off, with geographic restrictions to travel being an integral part of the story – it’s just that there are only about 4 locations on the map to restrict the travel between.

To be honest, I’m not sure that my ‘favourite’ fantasy map actually exists – I think I must have such high standards that nobody’s actually managed to reach them. I’m not really a fan of the map as an objective representation of the ‘real’ fantasy world handed from author to reader without passing through the hands of the protagonists. I like stories that use sketches built out of limited knowledge, where the protagonists can be actively or passively deceived by a bad map. Honestly the best book I’ve read with this kind of beat in it was a small side moment in a thriller* called Operation Red Jericho by Joshua Mowll. That book included both a sketch of the tunnels in the bad guy’s fortress drawn by an escaped prisoner and an accurate rendition of those tunnels drawn by a survey team a few decades later – the protagonists fall into a trap because the inaccuracy of the sketch causes them to miss a turn. So honestly that little sketch has to go down as my favourite map, and it isn’t really even a fantasy story. Oh dear ;)

*More specifically, I’d throw that series into whatever bucket you put Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Matthew Reilly’s books etc. -- it’s a little bit slower and more thoughtful but still hits a lot of the same notes, digging through the magical or pseudo-magical remnants of fictional ancient civilisations. What shall we call that genre? Archaeological thriller? Alternate archaeology?

P.S. I quite like ‘brickworks’ there – autocorrect error? :P

[ramajmedia]

Peter Jackson's Movies, Ranked By Rotten Tomatoes | ScreenRant

Peter Jackson is one of the most renowned directors working in Hollywood today. He might be most famous for bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth to life on the big screen (in true George Lucas fashion, he did it perfectly with one trilogy and then divided fans with a prequel trilogy), but he’s directed a bunch of movies besides that.

RELATED: 7 Things in Lord Of The Rings Canon That Peter Jackson Ignored

He actually got his start in the “splatter” subgenre of horror as a young filmmaker in New Zealand. Some of his movies have fared well with critics; others haven’t done so well. So, here are Peter Jackson’s Movies, Ranked By Rotten Tomatoes.

14 The Lovely Bones (32%)

Peter Jackson has only ever made one major misstep in his career, and The Lovely Bones is it. It’s about a teenage girl who is lured into a weird shrine by a pedophile (who couldn’t look more like a pedophile with the thick-rimmed glasses, greasy hair, and creepy smile) and then murdered.

She then wanders the Earth as a lost soul, watching her family as they reel from her death. It could’ve been a powerful work of teary-eyed young-adult coming-of-age drama in the right hands, but Jackson just didn’t strike the right tone and the movie failed as a result.

13 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (59%)

It spelled trouble the second Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema decided to adapt The Hobbit as an eight-hour Lord of the Rings-style trilogy, because the book isn’t suited to that. It’s basically a fairy tale.

The Lord of the Rings encompasses three giant volumes, but The Hobbit can be read in an afternoon – where did the producers get the idea to adapt both of those to the same length? (Well, of course we know where: the promise of billions of dollars.) The third Hobbit movie focuses on “the Battle of the Five Armies,” an event that has absolutely nothing to do with any of the main characters, leaving them to be sidelined.

12 The Frighteners (63%)

In this horror comedy, Michael J. Fox plays an architect who finds himself able to communicate with ghosts and spirits following his wife’s death. This leads to a run-in with the specter of a mass murderer and the Grim Reaper himself.

One critic has described The Frighteners as a cross between Ghostbusters and Twin Peaks, but it doesn’t have the heft of either of those projects. Tonally, that description is right on the money, but whereas those two can be watched over and over again and never become tiresome, this one runs out of steam before the end of the first viewing.

11 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (64%)

It wasn’t too long after The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hit theaters that fans started calling it The Phantom Menace of Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth saga. As the first installment of a prequel trilogy to a beloved and almost perfect cinematic saga that overuses CGI effects, has too many cheesy comedic characters, and ultimately fails to live up to the original, it’s fair to say that that’s an accurate description.

RELATED: 5 Reasons Why The Hobbit Trilogy Wasn't As Good As The Lord Of The Rings (And 5 Why It Was Better)

Sitcom star Martin Freeman has too much of a cynical, wink-to-the-audience quality to carry the weight of one of these trilogies on his shoulders. The Fellowship of the Ring, this ain’t.

10 Bad Taste (68%)

Peter Jackson’s directorial debut certainly lives up to its title. It combines horror, science fiction, action, horror, and a healthy dose of its titular tastelessness for a delightful, if gut-wrenching romp.

Like most first-time directors tackling an indie feature, Jackson leaned into his low budget and made a big-budget movie on a low budget for a rough, messy, but endlessly fun moviegoing experience. The plot sees an alien fast food chain coming to Earth to grind up human beings into meat for their burgers, and it only gets more absurd from there. Surprisingly, Bad Taste put Jackson on the film industry’s radar.

9 Meet the Feebles (71%)

Moviegoers enjoyed the novelty of Jim Henson-style puppets appearing in an R-rated movie with tons of swearing, sex, and graphic violence a couple of years ago in The Happytime Murders. However, Peter Jackson had reveled in this gimmick – and with much more effective results – years earlier with his film Meet the Feebles.

The black-comic tone of the film might not be to every viewer’s tastes, but with catchy musical numbers and a perverse puppeteering style, Meet the Feebles expertly uses juxtaposition to its favor. It’s an adult-oriented delight for people who grew up on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show.

8 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (74%)

If The Hobbit had been adapted as a two-part film as Guillermo del Toro intended and not stretched out to a trilogy, it would’ve been another story.

In The Desolation of Smaug, scenes that last a paragraph in the book and never should’ve been included in a film adaptation in the first place, due to their lack of consequences and relevance to the plot, are dragged out into half-hour set pieces. In Peter Jackson’s quest to make The Hobbit films as grand and epic as The Lord of the Rings films, what we got are movies that don’t feel grand or epic, but are really lo-o-o-ong.

7 King Kong (84%)

Since the original King Kong is one of cinema’s most revered classics, Peter Jackson took on a practically Herculean responsibility when he signed on to remake it. Jackson has said that he was struck by how much the original made him care about the titular ape, so that’s what he strived to do with this remake.

And it’s fair to say, since he used the motion-capture technology he pioneered with The Lord of the Rings trilogy and cast his Gollum, Andy Serkis, to play Kong, he managed it. We’re never on Carl Denham’s side – we see that the ape is just a fool in love.

6 Braindead (86%)

In his early days as the “splatter” king of New Zealand, Peter Jackson made this hilariously gory horror comedy about a man living with his mother who gets into trouble when he beds the wrong girl and a rabid rat-monkey turns the town into a horde of the undead.

Although it wasn’t a big box office success on its release, Braindead quickly became a cult classic, and in Time Out’s survey of the horror genre’s foremost actors, directors, and writers, Braindead was determined to be the 91st greatest horror film of all time. Simon Pegg also noted it as a huge influence on Shaun of the Dead.

5 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (91%)

Peter Jackson was shooting all three Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back, so if the first one didn’t hit, he would’ve been in a lot of trouble. The first chapter had to make such a strong impression on audiences that they’d be willing to commit to two more movies over the next couple of years.

Thankfully, The Fellowship of the Ring made that impression. It introduced audiences to characters they could root for – Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, the whole gang – and successfully sold the weight of what was at stake with a stunning prologue and an ensuing narrative to back it up.

4 Heavenly Creatures (92%)

Heavenly Creatures was Peter Jackson’s cinematic dramatization of the Parker-Hulme murder case, which rocked Christchurch in 1954 and has continued to echo throughout the New Zealand consciousness – in books, plays, novels, and of course, movies – ever since. The shocking case saw a 16-year-old girl and her 15-year-old friend murder the 16-year-old’s mother.

Until then, Jackson was known as the “splatter” guy – this movie proved he was a real filmmaker. This was the movie that gave Kate Winslet and, to a lesser extent, Melanie Lynskey (best known as Charlie’s stalker Rose from Two and a Half Men) their big breaks, and earned Jackson and his co-writer Fran Walsh an Oscar nod for Best Original Screenplay.

3 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (93%)

The closing chapter of Peter Jackson’s big-screen adaptation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy ended things in such a satisfying way that the Academy gave it a record number of nominations, and then when it won every single award it was up for, it also set the record for most wins.

RELATED: Everything We Know (So Far) About Amazon's Lord Of The Rings Series

And bear in mind that it’s unheard of for the Academy to even consider awarding a fantasy movie. Shooting the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy back-to-back was a monumental and ambitious undertaking, but it’s clear from The Return of the King that Jackson was up to the task and then some.

2 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (95%)

The second part of a trilogy tends to be the best – The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, The Godfather Part II, The Road Warrior, the list goes on – because it doesn’t have to set anything up and wind anything down. It’s a stepping stone; it’s all action.

However, most Lord of the Rings fans would consider The Return of the King to be slightly better than The Two Towers, because it’s the epic finale and, against all odds, it’s actually a satisfactory conclusion to the story. But then again, The Two Towers has the breathtakingly cinematic Battle of Helm’s Deep sequence that the MCU attempts to top three times a year.

1 They Shall Not Grow Old (100%)

The most impressive achievement of this World War I documentary is the colorized imagery. Peter Jackson took grainy, black-and-white photographs from 1914-1918 and gave them a splash of color and a touch-up to make them look like they were taken today by an HD digital camera.

As a tribute to all the young men who fought in the First World War, many of whom gave their lives, They Shall Not Grow Old is a powerful and poignant study that more than earns its rare 100% rating. The fact that the doc was released in 2018, exactly 100 years after the conflict ended, is the icing on the cake.

NEXT: David Fincher's Movies, Ranked By Rotten Tomatoes

source https://screenrant.com/peter-jacksons-movies-ranked-rotten-tomatoes/