Stranger Things
todays bird
One Nice Bug Per Day
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
dirt enthusiast
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"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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Andulka
Cosimo Galluzzi
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
roma★
tannertan36
cherry valley forever
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Origami Around
izzy's playlists!
★
NASA
YOU ARE THE REASON
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@writingstrugglesaugust
IT'S HERE IT'S OUT YOU CAN BUY IT!
this book is about what if you loved your friends so much you were willing to damn the world for them? what if you were so scared to lose them that you were willing to damn yourself?
what if you regretted it?
what if you didn't?
(literature girl summer) we're back to finishing a book in two days
ab. 1860 Silk dress (skirt and bodice) (Hungary)
(Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest)
I love a sentient spaceship with Absolutely Zero Chill
PERFORMANCE RELIABILITY: 60%
sometimes i think about the progression of Tortall heroines' power levels and am super amused
Alanna: I have an incredibly powerful Gift of magic, a magic sword granted to me by the Old Ones, and the blessing of the Goddess herself
Daine: oh yeah? Well I have Wild Magic that allows me to sense and communicate with mortal and Immortal animals, heal them, and transform into any animal I choose. I am also a Demigod myself, the daughter of Weiryn, God of the Hunt, was once granted additional powers by the Graveyard Hag, and am under the protection of the Badger God. Keladry: ...i have autism
Tobe: “they shoulda had scouts, lady. we coulda killed their whole patrol.”
Kel, age 19: (shaking her head) “what a world, where mere boys know the ways of war…”
a good thread
One thing I love about Murderbot that I don’t see talked about much is how it literally translates everything it hears. I think it’s easiest to notice with swears. This is most obvious in Fugitive Telemetry with the crew of the Lalow. They say things like “that picker” and “penis move” and “pussing corporates,” some of which confuse even the Preservation humans. But it does it all the time.
In System Collapse, Tarik says “motherless” (as opposed to something like motherfucking) and the BE corporates say things like “lame-skulled” and while you could think those are just futuristic insults as a result of linguistic drift (which they could also be), I think they’re just literal translations. It becomes more noticeable when you see how religious terms are rendered: “oh high one! Oh deity!” Which is like…sure. They could literally be saying that. But imo it makes more sense if MB is translating something they’re saying in another language.*
I think the most notable case of this is when Thiago calls Amena “my daughter.” On first read I literally thought it was just a Preservation thing but then I realized it made a lot more sense to me (a 21st century American) if he was saying something like mija but MB was just literally translating it into its archive bc that’s how it processes language.
This is also the reason for Amena’s use of Second Mom and Third Mom. It sounds kind of clunky in English but Chinese does a similar thing which sounds perfectly natural in that language (e.g. da-ge, er-ge, san-ge for first/oldest brother, second (oldest) brother, and third (oldest) brother).
Anyway! It’s a fun little detail I really enjoy about MB. There are definitely way more examples but I didn’t have time to track them all down.
*Don’t ask me which languages. Linguistic drift ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The one that most obviously struck me as signposting this convention is Murderbot's constant use of the set phrase "humans and augmented humans". That's clunky as hell at face value, but it makes a lot of sense if interpreted as a diegetic translation artifact, with "augmented humans" being a literal translation of some word in whatever language Murderbot is "really" speaking which has no snappy English equivalent.
That's a valid interpretation of MB's use of the term, but there's another confounding factor to its use. Consider that no other character ever makes the distinction between human and augmented human- there's no real evidence that there's a coherent legal or social line anywhere else in the world (Rami or Maro calls it "spliced" in AC, and there's evidence that suggests MB's idea of augmentation is idiosyncratic)- rather, the term exists in its clunky as hell glory because Murderbot, specifically, really cares about the distinction: augmented humans are much more likely to catch on to unusual feed activity from a rogue SecUnit, so it has had to care about augmented humans as a distinct class from humans in general as a matter of survival. (Not my idea, for the record- I could take it or leave it, but Martha Wells asserts this in multiple interviews- I gather that's her own rationale for the "humans and augmented humans" term as a writing decision.)
Honestly, Murderbot doesn't just "translate" language, I would say it tends to genericize terms, and this is part of a broader motif around Murderbot's relationship with language. Aside from in translation, Murderbot also just uses generic terms to control its story and express its viewpoint better- there's "oh deity" and "Starchy Foods!!!!" as obvious places where this had to be translated in some way from something, but notice how it doesn't get translated into anything in particular in Murderbot's presumed Standard Whatever Dialect lexicon. Why? Because while details about food and religion are of critical importance to human culture, they're not important to our rogue machine intelligence protag. (Amena's "fried vegetable crunchy things" are another classic example.) You see this in action throughout the series: it never describes an animal by specific name ("avians," "fauna"), it barely describes the weapons it gets into fights with ("energy weapon," "armor piercing projectile weapon"- notice it never calls anything a shotgun or grenade let alone specific gun nerd terms), and it especially never uses a brand name or even a genericized brand name to describe an item or product if the most generic term will do ("feed interface," "transient rest tube" but not any term resembling iPhone or capsule hotel). And of course, it never names the company that owned it, explicitly replacing the name even in Bharadwaj's dialogue when she asks about it. Obviously, choosing to avoid the use of corporate names allows it to take back a little control over its own language from the likes of its former owners. Meanwhile, it'll name the systems it interfaces with to a high degree of specificity or panache: "HubSystem," "AdaColSys, "Asshole Research Transport," "hotelEnvironmentAccessAndMobilitySystem (MobSys for short)", etc.
We know from the company name conversation with Bharadwaj that MB, as writer of its diaries, does just change around the terms that other characters use in their dialogue if it suits it. Which details it chooses to express and which details it chooses to genericize are functions of its attention, interest, and agenda. As @grison-in-space says in another reblog, Murderbot's not just translating other languages into its own, but also translating the world it's experiencing into its own idiolect—taking back control of its own story through the words it chooses to tell it.
You know, if it's thinking in a machine language, it's also probably naming all its variables as it goes except the ones that are required to interface with other systems as name-connections (like, say, HubSys). After all, when I'm coding, I name my shit whatever the hell I want, because the structural meaning of the language is almost entirely about the syntax and the libraries I'm working with rather than the actual meaning of my variables. Consider the opportunity for self expression inherent there in being a creature that is fluent in code and absolutely barred from personal self expression in any other way.
I really think that murderbot's first and most comfortable language is a machine language, and that a lot of its idiolectical language choices stem from that. Which means that to be understandable in English, it's translating its own thought processes and internal dialogue to English as well as the human languages that are actually being spoken around it.
Thiago would have a field day.
Re-reading your own fic is wild.
Okay, that's a really good sentence. Typo. Typo. Huh, did I write this? It's actually not bad. Typo. Hm, I would cut out that part now, but it kind of works. TYPO. Oh, this part is really good. That is the wrong word, wtf? I'm enjoying this more than I thought I would. ANOTHER TYPO? FFS.
someone recommend me some good fantasy books that aren’t centred on a war, please, my crops are dying
The Greta Helsing novels by Vivian Shaw - practical doctor to the undead defeats mildly ominous interdimensional threats with the aid of domestic vampires and a demon accountant.
Sunshine by Robin McKinley - practical baker is captured by vampires, escapes, reluctantly teams up with better vampire to kill the bad one.
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - young hat maker ages 60 years overnight, proceeds to upend the life of a disaster wizard while learning self-confidence.
the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett - hard to encapsulate, but equally funny and hard-hitting, tackling race and gender and corruption and other forms of inequality while also, like, making fun of post offices and Hollywood and Shakespeare. Three or four tackle war, true, but there’s something like 35 others to choose from.
the Accidental Turn series by J.M. Frey - recent Ph.D of colour lands in the Fantasyland™ she did her thesis on, goes off about agency and diversity while recovering from the Dark Lord’s attentions and learning the truth about her fictional crush.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire - evil alchemist creates superpowered children to assist world takeover; children just want to be a family; family is complicated.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - young woman takes over family business, must outwit fairies with a love of gold.
the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede - princess runs away to become a dragon’s housekeeper, fights off rescuers, solves problems large and small, melts wizards.
the October Daye novels by Seanan Mcguire - Half-fae detective solves murders, finds missing persons, develops found family, can’t stop self from upending the social order.
The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker - A quiet golem, a tempestuous djinn, Gilded Age New York. Immigrants, identity, friendship, hope, and self-discovery.
An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard - A witch from an outsider House enters New York’s magical Hunger Games, to prove a point. The problems of magic were not intended.
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes - Part-time con artist gets hired to find two missing pop stars, with the help of the magical sloth on her back. Noir ensues.
Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica - Nature photographer lands on water-world, discovers lost family, tries to convince self magic is impossible.
Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips - Greek gods, washed up in North London, curse Apollo to fall for the cleaner. Existential crisis, meet rom-com.
Among Others by Jo Walton - Loner teen sent to boarding school, discovers science fiction, might know fairies and do magic.
Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton - Austenesque story except all the characters are dragons.
Every Heart a Doorway (and sequels) by Seanan McGuire - the children of portal fantasy end up in boarding school coping with being kicked out of their various worlds, then some of them start getting murdered.
The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan - the world is flooded, there’s a lady who works with a bear at a circus that sails to different places to perform, and a lady who is sort of an undertaker, and they fall in love
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees - there are fairies but no one talks about them anymore because That’s Just Not How We Are except this state of affairs cannot possibly last and people start getting lured to fairyland
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - fifth son of emperor who’s lived his whole life away from court abruptly becomes emperor when his father and older brothers are killed in an accident, spends entire book trying to make friends and figure how the fuck to do a) confidence and b) ruling ethically
The Various by Steven Augarde - girl spends summer at uncle’s farm, finds the group of “various” (no direct parallel, but think somewhere between gnomes and pixies) that live in the woods, mysterious history, flying horse, The Cat Is Evil (this is technically middle grade but it’s so good I can’t even)
Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan - working on the translation of an ancient text is complicated when it might have a huge impact on the public perception of a highly stigmatised group; subterfuge, found family, mythology, and the rejection of men who steal other people’s work.
So You Want to Be a Wizard or Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses by Diane Duane.
Tam Lin, Juniper Gentian and Rosemary, and The Secret Country by Pamela Dean (all different stories).
The Spellkey by Ann Downer.
Swordheart or Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher.
The Curse of Chalion or the Penric series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Green Year Dragonfly by Kaye Bellot.
If by “no war” you mean “no or not focused on violence”:
The Terrier/Bloodhound/Mastiff series by Tamora Pierce Teenage former street rat aspires to and joins law enforcement in pseudo-medieval fantasy land, proves to have moral code forged of adamantium and more determination than an entire battalion. Also talks to unquiet ghosts carried by pigeons.
the Winding Circle books by Tamora Pierce (with the exception of Battle Magic) Four teenagers are snatched from the jaws of peril, discover they have incredibly strong yet overlooked magical powers, slowly become a found family, survive an earthquake, pirates, forest fires, plague, and puberty.
The Keeper Chronicles, by Tanya Huff Magic user accidentally gets roped into running a boarding house in Toronto. The decor is from the 50s, the handyman is an incredibly handsome and pureminded myopic Newfoundlander, and there is a (literal) portal to Hell in the basement. The third book adds lesbians and a mall that eats street kids to the mix. (Enchantment Emporium and its sequels are in the same world btw)
——————————————————————
If by “no war” you legitimately just mean that war is not the driving plot force:
the Hawk and Fisher books by Simon R Green Fairytale-destined prince and princess decide that destiny is bullshit, ditch their kindgoms, become the only honest pseudo-cops in fantasy-Gotham because strangely being a prince/princess doesn’t actually give you life skills that are not applicable to being a mercenary. Buildings eat people, gods are murdered, street drugs turn people into animals, Hawk and Fisher are so very tired.
Oath of Swords and its sequels, by David Weber
Guy from a species generally (unfairly) derided by “civilized people” as barbaric and evil thinks he’s going mad, but actually he’s been chosen as paladin by a god and he’s just stubbornly refusing to listen. Continues to go off and do heroic shit while doing the equivalent of jamming his fingers in his ears and saying “LA LA LA”. This does absolutely nothing to dissuade the god in question.
The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner A thief’s prison sentence is cut short when he is sent on a mission to steal an important (and magical?) object for the King. BIG plot twist at the end. Imagine going on a fun road trip through the fantasy pseudo-Byzantine Empire, except that all your fellow travelers have their own secret agendas.
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Catherine Webb In this universe, there are a handful of time travelers – people who are forced to live the same life over and over, retaining their memories with each rebirth. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside with the following message: the end of the world is getting faster.
Dark Lord of Derkholm, by Diana Wynne Jones The citizens of a fantasy world are getting really tired of being overrun by non-magical tourists from our world. This year, the role of Evil Wizard falls to Derk, who wants nothing more than to be left in peace on his farm/magical genetic engineering laboratory. Derk’s 2 human children, 5 griffin children, and 1 enchantress wife feel much the same. Wouldn’t it be a shame if someone were to sabotage this planet’s shitty contract once and for all?
(For personal records)
Saved for later!
The Memoirs of Lady Trent, by Mary Brennan.
A five book series following Isabella, an upperclass woman in the fantasy-Regency era who decides to flaunt social expectations and become a dragon naturalist. Travels the world to study different draconic species and to answer the age old question of how the hell they could have evolved. Becomes more like hard scifi in places, but instead of focusing on tech it focuses on biology and anthropology. Turning Darkness Into Light is actually a standalone sequel so I would recommend reading the Memoirs first.
It is November of 1893. You have just killed a vampire. Exhausted and worn, you close your eyes and rest.
You wake up. It is May of 1893. You are on a train en route to Transylvania. Your diary says you have had queer dreams lately.
You try to believe it.
(An old woman puts a rosary in your hands. You accept it without question.)
You are a guest in a castle you have never been in before (you recognize every hallway and know without trying that every door is locked). Your host is a man you have never met before (you killed him you killed him you killed him he had turned to dust and there was blood on the snow).
One morning you cut yourself while shaving.
There is nobody behind you in the pocket mirror’s reflection.
You turn fast, and the razor is like a Kukri knife in your hand.
( uploading again because I realized I accidentally missed a page )
Hey OP hope you don’t mind me making fanart because uhhhh I went a lil feral over this
Big, big fan of when things are covered in moss or ivy. I just think it's neat.
Me and my bro in the 19th century inhaling and ingesting various chemicals just for fun
So, I looked this up because chemists are freaky, but they usually have a strong idea of what they're making, and I couldn't figure out wtf they mixed together to get chloroform that they thought would be fun to fuck around with.
Apparently, there were several concurrent discoveries of chloroform, but based on Samuel Guthrie being the only inventor to mention anesthesia or medicinal effect, I'm going with him.
What he did to synthesize it was dissolve chloronated lime in ethanol.
For those who are not aware, chloronated lime is the form of chlorine they put in pools. It's a sanitizing chemical. Ethanol is drinking alcohol, but generally 200 Proof in chem labs.
This motherfucker put pool chlorine in Everclear, thought he made di-chloroethane (a paint remover no longer available on the market due to toxicity), and DRANK IT????!?!?!? BY THE CUPFUL????!?!?!?!
I am fucking ASTOUNDED.
Further reading implies his firstborn son was his apprentice. More likely than not, he gave his son a cup to drink as well. What the fuck. Samuel. Samuel, what the fuck.
Actually, I just refreshed the page and noticed I missed the name Simpson in my incredulity. That refers, apparently, to James Young Simpson (1811-1870). Wikipedia has this to say about how they gained this knowledge:
In 1847 [correction mine... Wikipedia date had Duncan as an 8yo] he first demonstrated the properties of chloroform upon humans, during an experiment with friends in which he confirmed that it could be used to put one to sleep. Dr Simpson and two of his assistants, Dr George Skene Keith (1819–1910) and James Matthews Duncan (1826–1890), used to sit every evening in Dr Simpson's dining room to try new chemicals to see if they had any anesthetic effect.
Bro, what the fuck were they DOING?? Yeah, I'm just gonna drink a bunch of shit and see if I die or feel better. Are you crazy????? Are you insane???? Why are these people just DRINKING SHIT????
You know, I don't think I'll ever get over how that one post I made about women as knights in history, made it all the way to Reddit only for a bunch of redditors to argue that women couldn't actually be knights because:
- "the term is gendered" (it's not, and feminine equivalents were sometimes created specifically for the purpose)
- "they didn't actually do things as knights" (who didn't? The Hatchet women fought the Moors. A few other Orders had women as masters of arms. Both martial and formal examples)
...and a few other reasons that come down to "I don't like imagining my manly men in steel had women in their ranks, girls have cooties".
And the reason I say this is because recently, Wikipedia updated their page on "Knight", specifically adding a section about women with the title of knighthood, and what function they performed. And I know: "Wikipedia is not an academic source"--but every academic institution will accept the sources and articles used to back up wikipages, which confirm what has been said.
Knights were sometimes women. 🤷
I saw this and needed to answer.
The gendered versions of 'knight' come from Romance languages, and literally just change the word to fit the gender of the subject (within a binary). So it isn't like English, where a female knight has always been a 'Dame', but, using Spain as an example, the word for Knight in Spanish is 'Cabellero'. This is the default masculine.
The feminine word for Knight? 'Cabellera'.
Similarly in French: "Chevalier" becomes "Chevaliére".
In Italian, "Cavaliere" becomes "Cavaliera".
Outside of Romance languages, "knight" is just a title for a social rank, so even the English Dame is by default a knight by rank, but may not have the title (although not impossible).
So it's not a silly infantilisation, than using a word for the knightly class and gendering it in a binary, which means we can actually tell that, yes, women as knights existed, enough that the feminine form of the word pops up now and then, so we know it existed.
ooh, where one could read that original post??
Just a note about translations and ... well, patriarchal bullshit.
When you say "Hatchet women fought the Moors" I was like "hey, that seems to be part of my local history, how have I never heard about it?", and when I googled it ... I actually have heard about it, it's the Orden del Hacha from Catalonia (Orde de l'Atxa in the original Catalan). But ... there's something odd going on. Why the fuck in English they have translated like "Order or the hatchet"? You know, in Spanish and Catalan there's no really a difference between "Axe" and "Hatchet": There's a single word for them, "Hacha/Atxa". But in English, there's a difference. A Hatchet is a hand axe, pretty much the smallest one you can think of:
So It's pretty remarkable that whoever translated the name of the order to english first decided to use "Hatchet" and not "Axe". I'm pretty sure if this was a order of men warriors the name would have been pretty different. Specially when THIS was their coat of arms:
So dear academic-who-translated-this-first: Does that look like a hatchet to you, motherfucker?!?!?
Important inclusion I was not aware of, thank you very much friend. :)
I’m going to be chuckling over ‘Does this look like a hatchet to you, motherfucker?!?!?” for the rest of the day.
i like how writing realistic worlds and characters is so important for so many writers to the point where they agonize over it. meanwhile lemony snicket was just like “death to reality. im gonna write this whole ass series and with god as my witness, absolutely fucking NOBODY is gonna act like a person.”
Daniel Handler, after downing whatever the hell he was on: The baby has piranha teeth and can take a trained swordswoman in a fight.
All of us: Fucking genius.
readers: what time and place is this set in? Daniel Handler: Yes.
