#gracelessace

[astriiformes]

6 and 10?

6 - For Charles Bronson - The Mountain Goats

You asked songs high up on the list so these are, of course, more Fjord songs. Re: this particular one, I remember when I was working on the playlist I found myself going “Oh come on, there has got to be a Mountain Goats song for Fjord” given... everything about his character, But while a lot felt close-ish to what I wanted, it took a while to land on the right one. Ultimately love this choice though, I still think the opening lines of the song set the tone for the start of the playlist pretty perfectly (“Catch a lucky break, try to make it last / Rig a blanket curtain up between the present and the past”)

10 - The Rising Tide - The Killers

I love The Killers. I love Battle Born (almost definitely my favorite album of theirs). I love this song. Even if it weren’t for my playlist-forging this year, it probably would have gotten a fair number of listens. HOWEVER -- look. Look. It’s a Fjord song. Do I even have to explain the many, many ways it’s a Fjord song. Of course this happened.

[criticalrolo]

hadestown ends at the end of wait for me ii and there are NO OTHER SONGS

F A C T S

[throwaninkpot]

i have never heard of qt before following you but now i kind of want to read it now. also eugenides sounds like a son and a boy and i am already fond of him so i hope he's ok tomorrow

A son and a boy, aye, indeed. Thank you, if he's not okay, I will be weeping for the rest of this month.

You should definitely read them! I actually meant to respond to your reply the other day, but tumblr wouldn't let me @ you and I got distracted before I could send you an ask.

If you like twisty plots, if you had an Ancient Greece phase, if you swoon for kickbutt lady characters, if you froth at the mouth over Lore and Myths and Symbolism(tm) (you have a mechs icon, so probably you do), and if you just want to cry over precious son boys, do read these books! The first one is The Thief, and it follows a snarky child who brags about how he can steal anything and then immediately gets arrested.

[oathofwhimsy]

dnd characters!! i play a silver dragonborn pact of the tome archfey warlock and he's an absolute sweetheart, a drow tempest cleric pirate who is so much fun to play and i can't wait to see how they grow, and a rock gnome assassin rogue and she is a terrible little bastard anarchist and i love her. i also have made a half-elf college of lore bard who used to be a criminal and is trying to be a good person but she doesn't know what that is, but that game hasn't started yet. i love my kids

The Archfey is my favorite warlock patron! Fuck yeah :D Also, bless sweetheart warlocks, they just make me very happy. Drow tempest cleric pirate also sounds absolutely amazing, like, damn. I totally wanna meet both of them :D

And playing characters who wanna be good but don’t rly know how that works always make my heart ache, so like. I salute you for your amazing tastes in ocs. I feel like your babes might get along splendidly with some of mine :D

Thanks for sharing!

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Hello! I had a weird question- I know you're a Presbyterian minister, and I'm a baby Presby. Me, another Reformed friend, and a Lutheran friend were talking about doctrinal differences, and I started thinking about predestination. What's your take on it? For me, it's my main problem with Reformed theology. I also just wanted to say: thank you. You and the stuff you do here helped me stay Christian through a dark time, which I ~think~ I'm out of

Hiya, i remember you! So, Predestination is something i also struggle to wrap my head around; luckily my seminary professors say you can be Presbyterian without really “getting” it. Based on what i now understand of it, i don’t really “believe” in predestination the way Calvin described it; but i do agree with the idea that God freely gives salvation to us, rather than it being something we “earn,” which is an aspect of the whole predestination thing. i just don’t vibe with the idea of God only giving this gift to some “elect” people; it feels so arbitrary to me. Which i mention in the second link below. So, perhaps instead all of us are elect – as the first link explores.

i’ve got two posts for you. One is older, and based on a book on Reformed Theology…

and one is pretty recent, based on my notes from my Presbyterian Heritage class.

Let me know if you still have questions after checking those out! 

[dedalvs]

Hello! I'm a newbie conlanger (and a big fan!), and I was wondering about your word-building process. When trying to come up with a root word that will have derivations, do you usually start with a verb or a noun? Like, what is the more important concept: book or to read? Is a book a read-thing or do you 'book'? (does that make any sense? Sorry if it doesn't) Thank you for your time!

Let’s step back a couple of assumptions here. First, if you’re creating a naturalistic language, you’re going to be doing things differently. If you’re not, you can actually decide if you want all your bases to be nominal or verbal or both (leaving function words out for the moment). I don’t know a lot about Lojban, but I’ve heard that everything is basically a verb, so rather than having a noun that means “bird”, it’s a verb that means “to be a bird”. Pretty simple to imagine how the rest of that goes.

Anyway, when it comes to roots for concepts, it depends on how you want to do it modulo your language and its culture. What is derived for some is basic for others; what is nominal for some is verbal for others. Neither of the words you gave as examples are likely to be basic (i.e. “book” or “read”). Both are far more likely to be derived. Provided your speakers evolved the way humans did (or close enough), they will have developed spoken languages ages before every inventing writing and reading, let alone books as we think of them (remember that writing existed for quite a while before anyone ever put together a book).

In general, there is no correct answer for any given concept; just what is more likely. I don’t think the stats we want have ever been done, but what you’re looking for is something like this:

rock: 98% likely to be a noun; 89% likely to be basic.

boy: 98% likely to be a noun; 65% likely to be basic.

Etc. Since nothing like this exists, you just have to use your intuition (based on your own research) and your artistic license to make the decision.

Hope that helps!

[criticalrolo]

small thing but i've only been familiar with the fjord/caduceus ship name as 'fjorclay' and in the 24 hours since i've started following you you have introduced me to 'teahaw' and i want to thank you for my life. it's so cute which is good bc so are they

I am literally obsessed with the shipname Teahaw like what an adorable name 💗  welcome aboard the ship lmao

[astriiformes]

when is erwyn's birthday? and does he have a favorite thing to nerd about (besides planar arcana)?

Erwyn’s birthday is the 19th of Naitmés (the eighth month of the primary calendar in our setting), which is also the Winter Solstice! He’ll be 124 this year when it rolls around, though the game is still set in midsummer at the moment.

As for other things you can get him to infodump about, plants and animals would be your best bet. He knows a lot about nature (...mechanically he has a +8 to it because I took the UA Naturalist feat, plus his decent Intelligence) and gets really excited about neat bugs or frogs or other interesting critters he comes across. Mostly he stays a little quiet about it, but he knows how to talk to animals and will sometimes just chomp on edible plants on the side of the road, so there are certainly some opportunities for starting a conversation.