why are we here? just to buffer?

i'm like if an omniscient narrator didn't know shit. you can call me cal / 30s / friendly neighborhood cruciverbalist. [ID: avi is a close-up of a woman looking unimpressed from the thomas anshutz painting "a rose" (1907). header is a slaps roof of car meme i have edited to read "moi, lisant le dico: *gifle toit de langue française* ce truc de dingue peut contenir tant de mots de ouf dedans" /end ID]

[coquelicoq]

everybody tells children of divorce that it's not their fault their parents got divorced but you know what? if your parents never got divorced that's not your fault either. you were a child. you could not have made that happen even if you wanted to. if they stayed together, that's a choice they made and it doesn't matter if their reasons were about you. you were not and could not have been responsible for that. free yourself. you are blameless.

[coquelicoq]

really harshing my style today to not be able to reply to replies. everyone just imagine my like means that i found what you said interesting and wanted to have a conversation about it but was tragically deprived by the cruel vicissitudes of fate. like a real romeo and juliet style prologue up in here.

[coquelicoq]

now i'm just drafting posts about divorce and then deleting them because i don't want to offend the people from unbroken homes. checking my divorce privilege. listening and learning

[coquelicoq]

what's funny is that thinking about blood type & divorce in the same thought-train has now caused me to make some funny recontextualizations of my own family patterns. but i can't tell you what they are because idk if blood type combos are specific enough to be bad opsec lol.

[coquelicoq]

so i'm reading oo.furi for the first time and the character profiles at the beginnings of each volume have been at a really low background level stressing me out. which was strange because character sheets are always nice, now me i like information, etc. so what could be the problem? the main thing that was standing out was that they include the character blood type, but that's not upsetting me it's just striking me as so so so funny, like i don't know why i need that information but i'm just treating it as some kind of personality-type zodiac system i don't have the context for. so that's not it. but i just realized what it is and actually maybe (hopefully) it's just a misinterpretation on my part but the thing that's bugging me is the list of family members. ARE NONE OF THESE PARENTS DIVORCED??? like. that's a 1-sentence horror story to me. but it doesn't say "people in household" it just says "family members" which could mean maybe they're all divorced, it doesn't say they're not. so until i am given evidence to the contrary i'm just going to have to assume every one of these characters is from a broken home. for my own sanity.

[coquelicoq]

still thinking about assassin's quest chapter 38 verity's bargain. almost the first thing that happens in the chapter is that fitz and verity psychically spy on molly (fitz's girlfriend) and burrich (fitz's father figure) right as they are deciding to sleep together for the first time. almost the last thing that happens is fitz and starling sleep together for the first time. (the actual last thing that happens is that nighteyes reminds starling that he's privy to all of fitz's intimacies--something that molly was never made aware of--and starling doesn't really mind.) these two sexual encounters bookend The sexual encounter of the chapter, when verity (fitz's king, uncle, and father figure) uses fitz's body to sleep with kettricken for the last time, while fitz desperately tries not to know anything about it.

at first i was going to say something about the development of fitz's relationship with sex over the course of this one chapter, but now that i'm writing it out, what's jumping out to me is the women. molly doesn't know that nighteyes and verity could feel (and contribute to!) the sex she had with fitz, and she doesn't know that verity and fitz are watching when she goes to burrich. kettricken doesn't know that she had sex with fitz's body, and she's almost the only one who doesn't (starling is the only other person who definitely doesn't know; verity, fitz, nighteyes, and kettle are all aware, and the fool is not told but probably has enough information to put it together).

it's starling, who has been sexually assaulted multiple times, and who has no idea of the violation that fitz has just experienced--it's starling who has the only, i don't know how to put it, completely consensual sex of the chapter? she knows who she's having sex with. no one is watching her without her knowledge. she offers it freely to fitz, "[i]n gentleness and friendship" (p 812), not to make an heir or as an expression of love or commitment. "'To chase a memory away'", as she says. so that he can "'[s]top thinking, just for a while.'" she's reusing her own words from when she asked fitz for the same, after telling him of the violations she had experienced:

"Be with me," she said simply. "Just for here and just for now. With gentleness and friendship. To take the...other away. Give me that much of yourself." (ch 30, p 664)

[coquelicoq]

i want to better understand fictional teen baseball player abe takaya. so i have put sun tzu's the art of war on hold at the library.

[parkchanwoohoo]

This kid is so fucking good holy shit. I love how into it the audience is, too

[megalodont]

yeah dude

[coquelicoq]

[Description: TikTok video from @/diabetic4one in which a kid is standing in front of a microphone in a school gymnasium holding up bird plushies and very precisely imitating the sounds each bird makes, as the audience of other children becomes more and more excited and impressed. Below it is a still from the video of a kid in the front row turning around and making a "mind blown" gesture. /end description]

[liquidstar]

yknow its interesting how something can impact one demographic in a completely different way than everyone else. in the exorcist when the demon starts speaking in greek, to most people its creepy. but if youre greek and you suddenly start hearing the demon speak perfect fucking greek its genuinely the biggest scare of the movie. you just do not expect to ever hear your language in american movies so it catches you so badly off guard, it feels like the movie is talking directly to you

[liquidstar]

the first time my dad saw it, it was with his american friends. and when she started speaking greek he turned to one of them and was like "re malaka did you hear that in english?"

[straycatj]

hello mr j! i think you and kofu are very cute

[straycatj]

Can you say one of your younger friends or family who is rude, rascal and violent is cute because of their appearence even if they were adult!?

[straycatj]

Please imagine;

You are around 60 years old, and your son in law around 25 years chases you at full speed then bites and beats you every day, can you say he is cute!?

[kipbip]

[ID: A screenshot of the original ask, but "and kofu" is scratched out. /End ID]

[coquelicoq]

i'm excited because a book on gender-inclusive french came in for me at the library and i'm gonna pick it up today...yay this should be super interesting assuming i can understand it at all. we are going to have a little check-in on my ability to understand academic french. the progression goes like this:

15 years ago: minored in french in college. one presumes i was exposed to academic french here though my memory is shit so i couldn't tell you in what capacity

the next 10 years: didn't do anything ongoing with french whatsoever. sometime during this period my boss asked me to extract data from a scientific article written in french and it was so far beyond me i had to ask my buddy who was in the middle of getting a master's in france to help me. i did get the sense that it did not meet inclusion criteria and she agreed with me, so i hadn't totally lost it. but it was pretty bad

5 years ago: took some refresher french classes

3.5 years ago: started reading french every day, but usually fiction which is a completely different beast in my opinion. however several of these novels do have academic commentary in the front/back (always the hardest part because i swear academics aren't even trying to be understood)

3 years ago: translated an 18th-century manuscript on mollusks from french for my friend who was writing a book. i felt pretty good about it, but i later found out it was originally written in german and i was reading a french translation. not sure if that made it easier. maybe germans write shorter sentences with fewer subordinate clauses, idk

fingers crossed but we shall see

[coquelicoq]

okay circling back to this now that i have read the book twice. lol. it was pretty doable! the preface especially was in a very clear style, i assume because it's the most outward-facing part of the book (intended as a response for non-specialists who deride the rise of gender-inclusive language), but the rest of the book was also readable. did not seem to have academic syntax disease! wow. a clearer world is possible.

before reading i was interested to see if the nonstandard use of language would make it harder to follow, and for the most part it didn't; the first time the author used a new word, they had a footnote defining it, and the common words ("al" as the neuter subject pronoun, "lu" as the neuter definite article, "an" as the neuter indefinite article, etc.) quickly became more or less totally natural. perhaps this is because i'm still learning french, so i'm particularly open to incorporating new french words i've never seen before? but there was still an adjustment period for the little function words like articles and object pronouns.

i still found it a frustrating reading experience at times. at times the author seemed to be saying logically inconsistent things, but i don't have enough confidence in my french to say if this was my fault or theirs. and there were a LOT of typos, which is much harder to deal with in my second language where i have less trust that my own instincts are correct. so sometimes that was very distracting. but this book only printed 300 copies and you have to make some allowances for how much polish you expect from a book that is not intended for a wide readership. really annoyed me at the time though.

[coquelicoq]

Si l'on comprend le français inclusif comme une variation diaéthique, la plupart des objections que l'on entend formuler à son égard tombent d'elle-mêmes : des plus grotesques (que deviendrait l'œuvre de Proust réécrite en français inclusif ?) aux plus angoissées (on ne m'obligera pas à m'exprimer ainsi !). Puisqu'il s'agit d'une simple variété disponible du français, personne n'obligera quiconque à en faire usage. Le fait qu'il existe des normes impératives dans certains contextes - par exemple dans le cas de ce député qui refusa d'utiliser l'expression « Madame la Présidente », préférant « Madame le Président », et qui écopa d'une sanction - est parfaitement indépendant de la question de l'existence et de la nature des formes du français inclusif. On pourrait même défendre le français inclusif tout en refusant qu'il soit jamais imposé nulle part. Le problème est ici d'une autre nature, comparable aux questions relatives à la parité par exemple : faut-il ou non fixer des normes, et éventuellement des sanctions si elles ne sont pas respectées, pour que les mœurs évoluent ? Dans le cas des langues, l'efficacité de ce type de volontarisme est franchement douteuse : les normes linguistiques se fixent d'une manière difficilement prévisible et résultent de phénomènes collectifs qui échappent presque toujours aux tentatives de contrôle. L'émergence du français inclusif fait d'ailleurs partie intégrante de ce type de phénomènes.

Monneret, Philippe, « Préface », in Grammaire du français inclusif, Alpheratz, Vent solars, 2018, p 10

[boudicca]

if you want to actually help people affected by the attacks in belfast but aren't from the area, these are some organizations that support refugees and immigrants in belfast & northern ireland who will be needing increased resources in the coming weeks

BOMOKO NI (Northern Ireland Refugees and Asylum Seekers Women Association)

City of Sanctuary Belfast [donate here]

Embrace NI

Migrant Centre NI

Starling Collective

Anaka Women's Collective are running a Chuffed fundraiser:

Support people and groups impacted by racist attacks

We are raising funds to support people who have been attacked, displaced and traumatised in racist attacks in Belfast.

[scissorsaint]

nice wound. Could use some salt though

[brevarden]

no actually I need to say this in its own post. do you ever think about "call her the ancillary again and I'll rip your tongue out or die trying"? do you ever think about how "I'll get you for what you did to her or die trying" was what Breq vowed to do for Awn. do you.

[brevarden]

she's the ancillary and she's a weapon and she's a machine for killing and she's a servant and she's a thing and she's dead and she's no one. and seivarden stays with her and seivarden changes for her and seivarden yells at the lord of the fucking radch for her. and she gets it a little wrong but she does it for breq, and she even does it for justice of toren. see? see?????

[chaos-lioness]

"Murderbots I See in the City"

This fanart was inspired by one of my favorite ever art projects, @imgdist0000 's incredible "Drawing People I See in the City" series. And of course also by listening to a scene where Murderbot has to take a crowded train while I was on the train home from work. Picturing it in such a mundane situation just possessed me and this was my best thought on how to express it. Also, Naja's mobility aid thing is a space segway in my heart :)

Thanks to @tiredtransgal for checking name spellings so I, currently in the middle of the audiobook, neither looked like an idiot nor got anything important spoiled

[documentary-of-a-rogue-secunit]

Tbh I'm not sure collapsing down your ribcage is normal for SecUnits. I think Murderbot used its freedom to become the SecUnit version of hypermobile. Three spends too much time with Murderbot to register this as weird I think but one day MB is gonna take a finger off to inch it under a door to open a lock in front of a different rogue and it's gonna be like "what the fuck is wrong with you."