i love you lab grown diamonds i love you slavery-free chocolate i love you community gardens i love you fact that the insulin patent was sold for $1 i love you locally produced meat and milk i love you streets turned into walkable parks i love you little reminders that Things Do Not Have To Be This Way and there are people working to build a better world!!
i love you smog tests for cars i love you clean air regulations i love you HEPA filters i love you dam removal i love you planting native gardens i love you monarch butterflies (up 64% in 2026!) i love you working for decades to bring the condors back from zero to 300+ in the wild i love you inventing little machines to pick up the plastic fishing nets and other trash in the sea i love you occupational health and safety regulations i love you environmental protection agencies i love you unions i love you social aid programs i love you food not bombs i love you sea shepherds i love you most countries stopping industrial whaling and more humpback whales now than ever before i love you saving the forests i love you little libraries i love you take what you need cupboards/fridges i love you secular food pantries i love you public bathrooms i love you all-ages playgrounds i love you museums i love you aquariums + zoos i love you restoring peregrine falcons to nyc i love you letting beavers fix the river i love you releasing wolves into the wild i love you bison recovery efforts i love you landback i love you reducing light pollution i love you freeway sound baffle walls i love you advertising bans i love you public outreach and education i love you maria montessori i love you queer clinics i love you people working really hard and succeeding at fixing the world and making it safer for all living beings!
theres definitely a line of thought ive noticed in liberal circles and in media and stuff where they think that bad stuff works and is true but is just bad for some moral reason.
but the thing is that this stuff is just factually wrong. eugenics doesnt work. race science isnt true. theyre morally wrong, yes, but theyre also factually incorrect, ideas that are deployed in service of monstrous ideology despite the fact that they simply arent true.
and its a major impediment to effectively combating these ideas, because if you concede their premises, you have already given ground to your enemies.
This is also true about fatphobia. It's not enough to combat fatphobes by saying "no matter how fat someone is, they are still deserving of love and respect". We also need to assert that diet culture is pseudoscience. For the majority of people, long-term weight loss is not possible. Obesity is caused by a variety of factors, including genetic and environmental. Health and weight loss are not synonymous.
Thank-you to all of my new Internet stranger friends for being so gracious about having my post shoved onto your dashboards. I loved reading all of your kind tags and comments! Both Martin and Bosco have been gone for several years now but for 24 hours, they felt very present in my life. I greatly appreciate this gift. â€ïž
cheetah in House perfec t size for put inside! inside very Soft and Comfort cheetah sleep soundly put cheetah in House. Put Cheetah In House. no problems ever in cheetah in ho use because good Happy and Satisfy for human where sleep. House yes a place for a cheetah put cheetah in house can trust cheetah for giveing good love to humans in house. friend cheetah
I mean, as someone who as worked in a zoo, this is fairly true.
Obvious disclaimer that you shouldn't have wild animals as pets.
But like, cheetahs are the only large cats that keepers will do free contact with. Hell, even most small cats don't get free contact. (Because small cats can be VICIOUS. They'll have a baby pallas cat wearing thicker gloves than when handling an owl. Because small cats can just be vicious.)
Like I think the only other cat at our zoo where I've seen free contact with was servals? Because I know they've used servals in shows to demonstrate their natural jumping ability. But I know servals can sometimes have a mean temper as well. Meanwhile they'll do the cheetah run and afterwards put the mic by the cheetahs and it's just like an engine with them purring. It's fascinating to watch when the message in every other large animal is "no free contact because it's dangerous even when they're born in captivity".
Legit if any wild animal could be adapted to a pet it would be cheetahs lmao. Only problem is they can be skittish and very anxious and that's why they're often raised around dogs in zoos to gain confidence.
#when you set out for revenge dig two graves#unless youâre hamlet#in which case youâre going to want to rent a backhoe (x) YOUâRE NOT LEAVING THAT IN THE TAGS BUDDY
Last March/April, I finally read Harrow the Ninth, and zeroed in early on a line that would shape my first (and only, so far, full) read:
âItâs enneameter. The traditional form. Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbardââ
âThatâs not nine feet of anything.â
âânever to draw it forth for the battle.âÂ
âHtN, âParodosâ
And thus began my quest for the entire book to figure out what the fuck enneameter was meant to look like. Astute readers who read appendices will note that we know it's dactylic enneameter, because Muir told us so. But she didn't say it in the text! So I had to work it out the hard way. Which was extra hard because Ortus has never once written a line of dactyls and only dactyls.
Anyway: what follows is a lot of scansion, thoughts about what Ortus is doing, and finally discussion of where it comes into play gloriously in the battle in the River.
We'll start with enneameter, because the book did: this word indicates how many metrical feet, or units of stressed and unstressed syllables, make up a single line of poetry. Because the Ninth House is fucking absurd and ponderous and goes way too hard on the branding, it's nine whole metrical feet to a line. For comparison, Shakespeare generally did five feet to a line. So when Harrow says "that's not nine feet of anything," she's criticizing the way he's structuring his lines, and also so so correct.
What's a Dactylic Enneameter?
ETA: Read the below but please also check the notesâthis is, it turns out, a meter with which people who know more about the classics are familiar! I'm only familiar with English verse forms so that was a big blind spot and apparently my early googling was particularly bad.
On with my original discussion:
Dactylic explains which metrical feet that line is made up of, in this case dactyls: units of three syllables, one stressed followed by two unstressed. If you put only dactyls in a line, you get kind of a waltz rhythm: BUM-ba-bum BUM-ba-bum. I'm mostly familiar with them through a silly poetry form called the double dactyl, about which more later as a bonus for reading all the way through.
I'm also going to briefly explain what a trochee is, because they'll come up. A trochee is another kind of metrical foot of two syllables, the same as a dactyl but with the last syllable cut off: BUM-bum.
Nine Feet Under: Scansion and Ortus
This is just going to be me going through the lines of the Noniad we get one by one and analyzing the metrical feet in them. If this sounds boring to you, feel free to skip, but also this may not be the post for you. I am going to be bolding stressed syllables and leaving unstressed unbolded. (D) is dactyl, (T) is trochee. The numbers are just numbering the feet 1-9.
Parodos:
Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard, never to draw it forth for the battle.
Those who are (D-1) | fit but to (D-2) | hold their (T-3) | blade in the (D-4) | scab-bard (T-5) | nev-er to (D-6) | draw it (T-7) | forth for the (D-8) | ba-ttle. (T-9)
So yeah this isn't nine feet of one thing; it's nine feet of mixed dactyls and trochees, constructed in a way that particularly gives you a stop-and-start "wait, what the fuck is going on?" problem with reading it out loud.
Sidebar: Harrow is so funny debating Ortus about his poetry and largely I'm kind of with her in her scathing opinions, but I generally prefer to Mostly Adhere to Meter. In Chapter 10, she says "it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two" and he defends himself with (1) his archaic style is on purpose to facilitate spoken performance and (2) "synizesis [two vowels pronounced as one for the meter] is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody." I think they both have some merit, but also: WHAT DO YOU MEAAAAN YOU'RE COMMITTED TO SPOKEN PERFORMANCE. I trip over my tongue so much on this line.
I do think there's a place for trochees to break up the headlong race you can get into if you stay in dactyls for too long, or to create emphasis in the middle of the line; there are some examples I'll mention this with later. But there is such a thing as doing this too much and ending up with a mess, imo, and as I told someone while reading, this first line we get is really impressively not nine feet of anything.
Chapter 5:
Then did the dire bone frenzy fall upon Nonius, the mightiest arm of the Ninth and its bulwark
Spasmed his veins with the death lust; his great heart roared like a black iron furnace, hungry for corpses...
Then did the (D-1) | di-re bone (D-2) | fren-zy (T-3) | fall up-on (D-4) | Non-ius, the (D-5) | might-i-est (D-6) | arm of the (D-7) | Ninth and its (D-8) | bul-wark (D-9)
This one is kind of fine once you work out how many syllables he means "dire" and "Nonius" to have. "Dire" is complicated by the trochee right after the foot it's in so it was like a three-car pileup in my mouth the first time I tried it. The trochees really do have the effect of making you Stop after them, which works great at the end of the line and so-so on frenzy; I don't think I'd want the speaker to pause in the middle of that phrase, but you do you, Ortus.
Spas-med his (D-1) | veins with the (D-2) | death lust; his (D-3) | great heart (T-4) | roared like a (D-5) | black i-ron (D-6) | fur-nace, (T-7) | hun-gry for (D-8) | corp-ses... (T-9)
Haha, fuck. I had to work backwards from the end of this line to work out what he was doing. It's because of great heart. Wrestling it into a trochee is VIOLENCE. Who says it "GREAT heart" except like, me pronouncing the name of Beauty's horse in Beauty by Robin McKinley. Wrestling it into a trochee you're using to break up your dactylic meter is. Why. Why would you do this, Ortus. The foot 7 and 9 trochees work great, though! Natural pauses and emphases!
Chapter 8:
Baleful the black blade struck at the shimmering stuff of the spectral beast, biting deep in its false flesh;
Shrieking, it flailed with its claws at the pauldrons and casque of the Ninth, yet his heart never faltered or failed him...
Bale-ful the (D-1) | black blade (T-2) | struck at the (D-3) | shim-mering (D-4) | stuff of the (D-5) | spec-tral beast, (D-6) | bit-ing (T-7) | deep in its (D-8) | false flesh; (T-9)
This starts off so nicely. I didn't have to stop and figure anything out until, like, the sixth foot at the earliest. Another one where I stopped mid-line and then worked backwards from the end to figure out which foot was which. Another tortured trochee in "false flesh," but it's clearly the last foot because "deep in its" is such a perfect dactyl.
But despite how awkward ending on false flesh specifically is, I do think you need the pause on the trochee at the end here, and the placement of the emphases is bringing the B and S alliteration forward, which I do like a lot. So while his meter does make me scratch my head and do math, I think he's doing something purposeful with it here. I think changing it to "biting deep into its false flesh" would alleviate 90% of my problems with this line.
Shriek-ing, it (D-1) | flailed with its (D-2) | claws at the (D-3) | pauld-rons and (D-4) | casque of the (D-5) | Ninth, yet his (D-6) | heart nev-er (D-7) | fal-tered or (D-8) | failed him... (T-9)
Ortus, you beaut, you've done it. This, I think, was long my hypothesized perfect line. While not fully in dactyls, it's only got one trochee right at the end which works quite well and none of the dactyls are forced. We love to see it. And he got a little of the alliteration in there again. Is it a stunning line, no, but it's certainly not tripping me up.
Chapter 10:
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thunder'd his voice as the black sea roars on the tomb gate of Algol,
Blazing his eyes with the fell light thrown from the Emperor's corpse-fires; answer he gave, and he told themâ
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thun-der'd his (D-4) | voice as the (D-5) | black sea (T-6) | roars on the (D-7) | tomb gate of (D-8) | Al-gol, (T-9)
What the fuck goes on here.
You can see where I started to work backwards, but what is "Then Nonius spake full wroth" three feet of? I think based on the argument in this chapter about Non-yus vs Non-i-us we're seeing the latter here, since we've seen the former. So foot 1 is "Then Non-i-us" (treating "then" as just kind of an extra syllable). But then you're left with "spake" (2 - literally 1 syllable) and then "full wroth" (3 - an iamb). I think once you get it's happening it's like....fine? A weird departure but clearly a weird set-off part of the sentence? But as is often my problem with Ortus' variation, I can't figure it out by moving forward, only by moving backward and literally diagramming the line.
Blaz-ing his (D-1) | eyes with the (D-2) | fell light (T-3) | thrown from the (D-4) | Em-pe-ror's (D-5) | corpse-fires; (T-6) | an-swer he (D-7) | gave, and he (D-8) | told themâ (T-9)
Again with the tortured fucking trochees ("fell light" is a nice phrase until you make it a trochee and then it loses the vibe), but "corpse-fires" is nice. I assume he means, like, pyres. Ooh, "Blazing his eyes with the corpse-light thrown from Emperor's pyres"?
Chapter 18:
My sister, I envy your fortune; fearless you forge yet ahead, through the cold grey flood of the River.
Fallen in war for the fame of the House is the death every Warrior fain would win at the finish;
Laggard I linger behind; hold fast on the far bank's beachhead! Blood shall repay your blood spilt.
I wince at getting three whole lines at once and then I remember there's eighteen fucking books of this and Harrow apparently knows most of it against her will. But I digress.
(My) sis-ter, I (D-1) | en-vy your (D-2) | for-tune; (T-3) | fear-less you (D-4) | forge yet a- (D-5) | head, through the (D-6) | cold grey (T-7) | flood of the (D-8) | Ri-ver. (T-9)
"Cold grey" is weird but there's only so many times I can yell about weird emphasis in the trochees/trochees that are basically two emphasized syllables in a row which MAY be a totally other foot that feels bad but which I will continue to read as trochees. Another instance of the leading extra syllable on a line! I don't hate that, it's not emphasized so it kind of fits into the rhythm. I wonder if the line before it ended in a trochee: that would make for a really easy flow between the two lines.
Fal-len in (D-1) | war for the (D-2) | fame of the (D-3) | House is the (D-4) | death ev-ery (D-5) | War-ri-or (D-6) | fain would (T-7) | win at the (D-8) | fin-ish; (T-9)
Tbh the clustered trochees at the end are almost as bad as never getting into the rhythm at all. Because you're moving confidently ahead and then just go, "what?" I do kind of think he's doing an alliteration thing again. Look at all those emphasized F's and W's. Actually, this look is focused on meter, but I do keep seeing alliteration on the emphasized syllables, see also: the line before this one with so many F's also. And I wonder if that's something traditional, too; I'm thinking of Middle and Old English alliterative verse, a bit.
Lag-gard I (D-1) | lin-ger be- (D-2) | hind; hold (T-3) | fast on the (D-4) | far bank's (T-5) | beach-head! (T-6) | Blood shall re- (D-7) | pay your blood (D-8) | spilt. (9)
I think? What a weird one. There's a lot of B's in this one but they don't really line up with the emphases either so...idk, man. What are you doing. <3
Chapter 29:
Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister! Ride we to death and the proving!
Ride we with heads held high; we shall bloody our blades in the foe's heart; death shall we bring to the foul onesâ
Death shall we win for ourselves, as the pride for our high deeds done on the ash-choked plains of the ravens!
I think there's enough textual evidence Muir was intentionally writing kind of crap verse that I don't feel so bad about saying that I Am About to Start Biting.
War-ri-or (D-1) | proud of the (D-2) | Third House! (T-3) | Ride forth T-4) | now as my (D-5) | sis-ter! (T-6) | Ride we to (D-7) | death and the (D-8) | prov-ing! (T-9)
I bet Ortus is so glad that warrior is a dactyl. The trochees line up nicely with the exclamation points. Yeah, you do want a pause there. Third House definitely isn't an iamb but it also Feels Bad in the same way as many of his mid-line trochees.
Ride we with (D-1) | heads held (T-2) | high; we shall (D-3) | blood-y our (D-4) | blades in the (D-5) | foe's heart; (T-6) | death shall we (D-7) | bring to the (D-8) | foul onesâ (T-9)
Figuring out how to read your stupid poetry shouldn't be a puzzle game I have to play on every single line, especially when it's supposed to be designed to be spoken aloud, Ortus.
Death shall we (D-1) | win for our- (D-2) | selves, as the (D-3) | pride for our (D-4) | high deeds (T-5) | done on the (D-6) | ash-choked (T-7) | plains of the (D-8) | ra-vens! (T-9)
"Ash-choked plans of the ravens" is pretty good but I've just realized that half these lines read like an engine revving and trying to start up over and over. Dun-dun. Dun-dun-dun.
Chapter 49:
"I am the Emperor's Hand; do not thou persist in this combat; matchless am I with the long bladeâ
Matchless alike in my magecraft. Fall to your knees and be glad that I spare thee; thy courage is mighty.
Mightier yet is thy folly if thou think'st yet to oppose me." The Lyctor spoke, and was silent.
Nonius, wounded full sore, spat blood and gave him a grim smile; nor did the sword in his hand shake.
Boldly, he answered the saint: "'Tis true that your power is great, o servant of masterful Canaan;
Nor may I hope to be counted your equal in skill, nor in craft, nor even in bodily vigour.
This is the long bit that Ortus and Harrow tag-team recite in the River bubble, and Ortus pronounces Harrow's enunciation nearly perfect, so I'm going to guess it's accurate even after Harrow takes over.
"I am the (D-1) | Em-pe-ror's (D-2) | Hand; do (T-3) | not thou per- (D-4) | sist in this (D-5) | com-bat; (T-6) | match-less am (D-7) | I with the (D-8) | long bladeâ (T-9)
Match-less a- (D-1) | like in my (D-2) | mage-craft. (T-3) | Fall to your (D-4) | knees and be (D-5) | glad that I (D-6) | spare thee; thy (D-7) | cour-age is (D-8) | might-y. (T-9)
Might-i-er (D-1) | yet is thy (D-2) | fol-ly (T-3)* | if thou think'st (D-4) | yet to op- (D-5) pose me." The (D-6) | Lyc-tor (T-7) | spoke, and was (D-8) | si-lent. (T-9)
*"folly if" could be a dactyl but "thou think'st" would be an extremely awkward trochee, and if that was acting as a foot alone there's no reason NOT to make it "thou thinkest," which would scan perfectly well. Lots of trochee-aided emphasis near the starts of lines here, too: the previous line also has a trochee at foot 3.
These lines are fine. I think the places the trochees come in work well for emphasis, the broken-up rhythm in that third line really works for me.
Non-i-us, (D-1) | wound-ed full (D-2) | sore, spat (T-3) | blood and (T-4) | gave him a (D-5) | grim smile; (T-6) | nor did the (D-7) | sword in his (D-8) | hand shake. (D-9)
I think???? Actually, this is where Harrow picks it up, so this might be where her "almost perfect" enunciation makes Ortus' meter look weirder than it is. The next two are also spoken by Harrow, with only a brief prompting from Ortus when she forgot how the next bit started.
Bold-ly, he (D-1) | an-swered the (D-2) | saint: "'Tis (T-3) | true that your (D-4) | pow-er is (D-5) | great, o (T-6) | ser-vant of (D-7) | mas-ter-ful (D-8) Ca-naan; (T-9)
Nor may I (D-1) | hope to be (D-2) | coun-ted your (D-3) | e-qual in (D-4) | skill, nor in (D-5) | craft, nor (T-6) | e-ven in (D-7) | bod-i-ly (D-8) | vig-our. (T-9)
Hm, just an observation. Not a rule, because there's actually a lot of exceptions, but I feel like a lot of the lines that make me happiest have the trochees dropped in at foot 3, 6, and/or 9.
And this is all of Ortus' poetry! I don't have a nice bow here beyond, well, you can see why I questioned for so long that I had the correct read on what enneameter was supposed to look like.
Why Am I Talking In Meter?
I'm not actually going to analyze all of Matthias' dialogue here, I just want to bring you back to my experience reading this, which was, after a full book of doing this every time poetry turned up, having Matthias turn up and going HELLO?????
"Ninth was my name," said the new arrival. "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland. Here I have come at your calling. None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me, why have I been drawn here?"
It sort of goes on a per-sentence basis: "Ninth was my name." / "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland." / "Here I have come at your calling." / "None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me why have I been drawn here?" But it's so immediately and palpably dactyl-based.
I don't know if I twigged from this very first piece of dialogue but I was definitely a glass case of glee until he said "why am I talking in meter" and I broke and messaged a friend. Even "Why am I talking in meter" is in meter!!! As I said at the time: "omg nonius from my poems" and "he cannot turn it off. obsessed."
Still deeply curious how the Matthias section hit other people, but for me it was the most GLORIOUS payoff of this buildup of extremely tedious poetry I was obsessing over. There are so many good punchlines after very long buildups in the back end of this book and this is one of them.
ETA: I forgot to come back to double dactyls!!! As a treat(?) for reading through all this, have a double dactyl I made about Ortus when I was yelling about this again in January.
Cold take but all languages are beautiful actually. Every single one. Every single human language on earth is a collection of stories interwoven into the very fabric of the words that are spoken.
âOh but this language sounds scary-â have you heard a child speak it while pointing at a butterfly?
âOh but this language sounds silly-â have you heard someoneâs grandma recite a recipe with such practiced ease it comes off as poetry?
âOh but this language is really weird-â and yours isnât? Everyoneâs language is weird, dumbass, it came free with your fucking humanity.
Every tongue that is spoken is a work of art. Every language a unique window into the world.
I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful
if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.
but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.
the eliding of âyou allâ to âyâallâ while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. âbear with meâ said exactly like iâve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.
hey quick PSA but âreading before bed to wind downâ only works if youâre normal about books btw. if you arenât you are going to end up awake at 2:52am after finishing the whole book just trust me on this one
