This is only the beginning of my yapping about Voyage of the Damned by Frances White. Buckle in and get ready for the rambles of someone who is procrastinating the literal capstone of their degree that's due in three days.
(Minor spoilers)
This is largely because the impossibility of fully 1:1 translation + the way language literally shapes how you perceive the world, etc is like, my Thing, but I'm so so obsessed with the subtle lore of languages in this book. It wasn't just a one-off thing, which I expected since that's usually the trend in fantasy these days, but it was a thing consistently mentioned and I am now gnawing at the bars of my cage about it.
TLDR: in this book, language = recognizing the humanity in someone + intimacy/ genuinely understanding and seeing someone (always has been, babey), and I talk about it for way too long. Please go read this book if you haven't, it's incredible.
First off, each province's cultural language is illegal for the sake of "unity" and only exists through oral stories/songs in people's homes, basically - and specifically in the lower provinces, at least from what we hear? I think about this constantly in real life with languages dying out or losing so many of their words/the culture around them due to colonization, and that was such a tangible thing in the book, especially with the demonization of anyone openly speaking said them (like the one-off line of Ermines speaking in a "devil-tongue", which is deadass how real life indigenous languages have been described by colonizers).
It also makes it so poetic that Dee is good at picking up languages; he's like Lysander in his own way, he brings people together just on natural instinct and sees them, this is the case with every single character on the ship (Eska and Nirgüi seek Dee out to be honest and present the "true" verisons of themselves + Dee notes immediately that the "devil-tongue" is just like his own language, etc).
Also, Dee's mom refusing to speak to him in their language (the indicator of their extremely close bond) as her way of isolating him more???? Oh my god??? Shattered my heart and instantly gave me a million headcanons about Dee trying to listen for it when walking through town or talking to himself to be sure he didn't forget it or forget how it feels to speak it.
Speaking of which, imagining how the languages sound/feel is fascinating to me, because that's suchhhh a struggle with learning new languages but it's also my favorite part because it's so unique and tangible. Anyway, Ravi speaking the Crow language is described as "his tongue dancing over lyrical syllables", which is vague, but makes sense with birds, I guess? Though crows aren't the most musical but I like it.
In a similar vein, there's a quote about the Crab language being "gutteral noises - somehow harsh and lyrical at once." And Dee describes it as being, "Like the wild. All the terrible parts - storms and hurricanes. But the good parts too - sunrises across empty plains, trees that grow so high you can't see the top."
Just- aaaaaAAAAAA. The descriptions are literally of the other places, specifically the lower provinces (Fish, Bear, Grasshopper), showing that the Crabs are just as human as any of them???? Dee literally sees a part of himself reflected in them, which can be found in every single language because language is such a very human thing, gahhhhh-
Which leads into the bit about Dee genuinely seeing the Crabs, not only by treating them with basic respect, obviously, but actively communicating with them and like, recognizing the humanity in them through language? (Ironically I can't find the words but you get it.) The others view the language as like, animalistic noises, but he's the only one to actually go "no these are words, they're people like us, they talk like us". Even the Grasshoppers didn't really communicate, but Dee goes one step further than feeding them and actually wants to know their story, to know them, he wants to understand in a different way than anyone else.
(Bigger spoilers I guess) but this makes it so agonizingly good that Ravi specifically asks for details about what the Crab language sounds like when Dee is telling that story to Wyatt. Like Ravi gradually drops the act over time but this is one of the earlier indicators, because he is so desperate to know anything about that part of him. Dee was always the only one to know that side of Ravi, the only one to see him - which is why I'm screaming again about them teaching each other phrases in their forbidden languages, the intimacy in being one of the only people to know that lens through which to understand someone??? - so now he knows both the Crow and Crab side of Ravi. That's the part of Ravi that Dee encourages to bloom through these gifts of small info because Ravi cannot suffocate that part of himself, no matter how hard he tries.
In summary, the way this book does language is the bar I am setting for fantasy worlds with cultural languages now. Like, it's clever from a writer's standpoint to have them suppressed so you don't have massive language barriers and they're not constantly present and taking attention away from the story you're trying to tell, but they're still very intimate cultural ties for each character. It's background, but it's still significant and tangible. They're very good metaphors, as language barriers always are, and they're great ways of demonstrating traits of the characters in everything they do. It's very yummy.
This is way longer than I was expecting but this is fascinating, I'm begging everyone to go read this book. There's a reason I blazed through it in one night.
...so guess who read Voyage of the Damned by Frances White in like less than 6 hours and made playlists for these two because they're rotting my brain and my partner hasn't finished reading it yet...
For a while he was the only non-female in the adventuring party, he's just one of the girls fr.
Bela (astral elf arcana cleric, left) is such peak oldest sister pastel lesbian who's done with everyone's shit and is actually the scariest member of the party, and Nailah (human bard/illusion wizard, right) is absolute peak youngest sister who's so aggressively pansexual and making a milllion problems for anyone unfortunate enough to come across her.
And Kano loves them both so much lmao, especially Nailah, he's taken so many unnecessary hits in combat because he gets worried about her (even though she has more hp than him I think). I really need to draw them together more.
Ife! She's an earth genasi Way of Dance monk/ Pact of the Genie warlock
she's in Kano's dnd party and they're the ultimate bisexual slowburn
one of my favorite characters to draw actually, her outfit is NEVER the same and I do her hair different basically every time because in game she has a different hairstyle/makeup look every day
I realized that I rarely actually post my art on here, so to start off, here are my favorite NPCs from a cowboy dnd campaign I ran last summer! Ki'nissi is a blood hunter earth genasi and Lloyd is a good ol' shotgun gunslinger. I am actually obsessed with their little sideplot lol
one of my favorite tropes in chinese literature is when a guy’s wife is clearly a ghost/demon/fox fairy and he just can’t see it. i’m reading a story where this guy keeps getting arrested because his wife will just magically steal steal shit out of sealed boxes and give it to him as a present, and whenever someone is like dude i think something’s up with his wife he asks her and she’s like i’m literally normal. so he turns around and says yeah guys she’s literally normal
i love when characters are liars. i love when they're vain. i love when they don't know how to communicate, or simply refuse to. i love when they cause problems for themselves and also other people that could've easily been avoided. i love when they're too stubborn for their own good and end up making things worse. i love when they're consumed by guilt and grief. i love when they want to die
been stewing on an analytical approach to fiction which I call "is this book afraid of me?" and in order to answer this question you determine how hard the book is trying to make sure you don't come after the writer on twitter
Please keep making art. Please make it for yourself. Please don’t let everything become even more of the same flat general appeal nonsense that doesn’t seem to have anything to say
