Of interest to no one but myself: my recurring themes and tropes

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I have a ton of stories and characters that I come up with that I never write down (mostly because, hooo boy, Mary Sue and self-insert ahoy, wow.) I’m including those in these, because, well, I can. It’s my site. ;)

At nothing else, you can use this as a reason to get lost on the TV Tropes site for a few hours. I’ll be adding stuff as I think of it, basically so I can then get it out of my head and preferably stop making the same list over and over again.

  • Villain Protagonist I love writing villains and bad guys, so I tend to write more of them than heroes. It does mean some of my other recurring themes get some Unfortunate Implications because every time I write that kind of character it’s a bad guy.
  • Morality Kitchen Sink, Even Evil Has Loved Ones, Even Evil Has Standards, Blue and Orange Morality. It’s hard to write an absolutely evil character when you’re in his head (although I manage if the situation calls for it). And, well, complicated characters are more fun.
  • Mind Hive. I like to write characters who have a couple of people living in their heads. Unfortunately, this is one of the ones that bugs me, because right now all those characters are bad guys right now. And I do believe in Healthy Multiplicity so I want to fix that (The one good thing is that those characters are generally complicated and are more grey morality than black. So, that helps. Still need to fix it though.)
  • The Sleepless. Several of my characters have weird or irregular sleep schedules that don’t impact them poorly. For some of them it’s to emphasize that they’re odd. Some of the others it’s just the way they are.
  • Tall, thin men in nice suits. Yeah, it’s Author Appeal. Also cat people, barefooting, and a bunch of things that don’t need to be mentioned here.
  • Superpowers. Mutants. Spandex. Yeah, I read too many X-men comics as a kid and now I read too many Batman comics.
  • Hurt / Comfort. Sometimes without the comfort. (aka Whump)
  • Masks and Scars. Partially goes with the superhero stuff. Partially just because masks are cool. Sometimes goes as far as Full Body Disguise, especially for superheroes (I’m not a big fan of the domino mask…)
  • One True Love. Which is silly, because it’s not something I believe in real life. At least when I write it, it doesn’t mean that the relationship will be easy. Usually combined with some sort of soul-link thing (I rarely go as far as telepathy. Because telepathy is highly overrated).
  • Nearly instant language learning or Universal translator. Generally through some sort of telepathy or magic.
  • Older than they look. I keep writing these characters that are practically immortal or have a healing factor that keeps them looking young. (yes, alright, I read too many comic books, okay?)
  • Characters with mental illnesses or personality disorders, usually things that don’t exactly match up with anything real. I did mention too much Batman, right?

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Fantastic fic idea that I can’t write

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There are about five people in the world who will get this, but:

Somebody* vs Casanova Frankenstein and Tony P and his Disco Boys (from the Mystery Men movie). They’re finally defeated and it turns out they were the mentors of Tigerlily Jones (from Skinhorse), who unleashes the power of funk in the form of a giant mecha.

Tip, Unity, and Sweetheart have to show up. Preferably Zeta and Foot wander through.

Like I said, I can’t write it. I’m not awesome enough. If you write it and it’s fabulous, I would honestly marry you. Not even kidding.

* I was originally thinking Cumberbatch!Sherlock, but on further thought there’s probably too much of a tone mismatch there. I think it would be better if whoever it was more low-key (so not, like, the Gurren Lagann crew… or even Sailor Moon). Batman could be great. Superman would probably be better. But somebody minimally powered – where they’re using their brain and not superpowers, would be so sweet.

On the other hand, the Creeper or Freakazoid could be really awesome.

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Interest of the moment: Monograms

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One of my favorite parts of buying old linens and handkerchiefs is seeing the monograms. And because I love lettering, I like to design them too. It’s this dance of ‘how decorative can I get this before it’s undecipherable?’ Which is really fun. I have probably hundreds of pictures that I’ve found on the web that I use as inspiration. My preference is for the ones with interlocking and interweaving letters.

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Here are my three most recent ones:

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I need to work on my script lettering. It’s not my strong point at all.

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And then my initials, if not my style:

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Link Dump – Linguistics Edition

Sorry, this is going to light on pretty pictures and heavy on things that are of limited interest to most people. You don’t like it, there are thousands of other blogs you could be reading.

Teach yourself linguistics

From all things linguistics:

Other Things

From Aveneca.com, host of the new CBB (aka the conlang board I’m on)

Linguistics lessons for language learners. Includes IPA, phonology, morphology, syntax, historical linguistics, sound change, and more. (from Nativlang, which also has some free lessons in different languages and published some books on Amazon and Lulu that look interesting)

It’s ‘not’ history – how negation usage changes in a cycle through languages. (from the University of Cambridge)

Lexique Pro – a free program for creating a lexicon for your conlang (or natlangs). I wish it was portable. Windows only.

How many languages did Tolkien make?

From Frathwiki.com, one of the conlang wikis:

  • Conlang Terminology – common jargon like lostlang, sketchlang, relex, ANADEW (Another Natlang Already Did it Even Worse).
  • Software Tools – a lot of the links are outdated, unfortunately, but there are word generators, several conlanging guides, sound change appliers, and more.

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Progress Report 1 – Camp Nanowrimo, April 2013

Hey, how about an excerpt? No context necessary.

Many came to visit Conya when she was free, for the witch woman wasn’t needed to heal often. She passed her time preparing herbs and collars, sharing stories with anyone available to listen. When they drank, they were merry. He had seen fights spill into streets in the Empire and the fighters hauled away by armored police. He had seen wealthy men drinking, staring sullenly into their glasses.

This reminded him of home, of drunken warriors holding trials of strength in firelit rooms or dark fields lit with wavering touches. Or of hearing the songs of farmers weaving their way home from the fields and homekeepers singing in front of their homes. The Thurzin were free people, free from the Empire’s laws. The homekeepers and farmers worked long hours and rested equally well, while the warriors fought in the Rajah’s wars to keep them free.

He wanted to go home, to his mother’s warm kitchen, where his grandmothers helped her cook bread-wrapped meat and the thick stews that kept the warriors and farmers working. To the longhouses of the warriors, where it smelled of steel and leather and wool, where there was always the clang of weapons and curses. To the trees where the young warriors would perch to watch the farmers work and trade stories of their training and compare wounds.

He could go home. If he was strong, if he was brave, he could go home. They would conquer this place, sell it to the Rajah or build warrior longhouses and family roundhouses here, and he could go home. Even with no honor, ever if he’d be reduced to a farmer or homekeeper, when the Thurzin conquered here, he could go home.

I reduced my goal to 15k words, but I’d still like to make it to 25k. My current count is 5k, but I have more to get typed up today.

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My goals for Nyjichun

In no particular order:

  • To get to 500 words / lexicon entries, not counting affixes (I currently have 371 lexicon entries, but that’s including affixes)
  • Write up a working grammar
  • Sketch out the culture beyond ‘they live in the forest’
  • Make a map of the area
  • Fix all the words I’ve marked as needing change
  • Redo the family words
  • Translate the Babel Text and at least two other long passages (I’m not sure what).
  • Write up enough lessons that I can pick it back up when I want to

After that, I’ll probably be burnt out on conlanging for a while, but if not, I want to fix up one of my other languages (something simpler, sheesh – probably Ylis, which is basically the English of Thundera) and then working on splitting Ŋyjichɯn into two dialects, which will mostly just be vocabulary changes.

I know probably no one cares, but I’ve uploaded a new version of the tiddlywiki. As always, and more visibly now, it’s a work in progress.

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Conlanging – Nyjichun

Okay, I’ve finally uploaded the Ŋyjichɯn tiddlywiki*. I’ve also updated lesson one there, with more stuff and assignments (working with the idea that it’s meant to be a textbook). As any conlanger would tell you, it’s very much a work in progress and pretty much everything is subject to change at any time. But now I can go to the conlang forum and ask for input without having to rewrite things. Which is what I’m going to do next.

Notes for using the tiddlywiki: You can navigate from the Table of Contents or tagCloud. Links open below in the same window. I’ve got it set up so the last 20 or whatever links you follow show up on top. And no, you can’t edit it.

*  I should do a blog post about tiddlywikis. They’re very awesome.

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Vintage Write-Up – Swanky Swigs Kiddie Kups

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Swanky Swigs are decorated tumblers that were originally sold by Kraft, starting in 1933. They had Kraft cheese spread in them and were sealed with metal lids with rubber gaskets. They’re 4 1/2 inches tall and were hand-decorated with stenciled patterns. Kiddie Kups were released in 1956 and I haven’t found any online sources with all the designs, so here you go. If you can find them, they usually go for fairly cheap and are some of the more common Swanky Swigs.

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Each cup has a different animal on each side, facing a toy version of itself. Around the top on each side, in white, is a duck, deer, bunny, pig, bird, rooster, and dog, which matches one of each of the designs.

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In red, a bird and an elephant.

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In orange, a dog and a rooster.

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In green, a bunny and a kitty (the green is a bright spectrum green).

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In blue, a teddy and a pig (and the pig is the only design where the real animal is to the right of the toy).

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In brown, a deer and a squirrel (it’s a chocolate brown, which didn’t show up well in the picture).

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In black, a duck and a horse.

Like any screen-printed glass, you can’t put these in the dishwasher because it will dull and scratch the design. I love my glasses. Only one is chipped (unfortunately not one of the ones I have three of). The black and the brown are my favorite.

Sources:

http://antiques.about.com/od/madeofglass/a/aa062101.htm

http://www.mountainstatescollector.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=132

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/1956-kiddie-kup-swanky-swig-set

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Conlanging – Ŋyjichɯn – Lesson 1

As I said last time, this is one of my languages that I made for Thundercats fandom. Specifically, this one is the one that Wilykit and Wilykat speak, along with one of my original characters, Felino. First of all, I haven’t seen all of the 2011 revival, so all of this is from the original series and the 80s comics. Second, my personal theory is that Wilykit and Kat are adults, but that their clan don’t get as tall as other Thunderians and grow up slower.

None of that is incredibly relevant to the language itself, to be honest. This post will cover phonology (the sounds of the language) and colors. Here we go.

Phonology

IPA / Trans labiodental alveolar post-alveolar velar
nasal ɱ m n n   ŋ ŋ
plosive   t t   k k
affricative     tʃ dʒ ch j  
fricative f v f v s z s z    
approximant       ɰ w
tap ⱱ β ɽ r    
lateral approximant   l l  

The International Phonetic Alphabet notation is given in red. The standard transcription is given in black. Honestly, the only reason I use β is because the IPA symbol doesn’t show up in my browser. It looks better than β, but what are you gonna do?

My accent is Standard American English. Since this is a conlang, it honestly doesn’t matter that much if you pronounce things incorrectly, but I’ll be giving approximate sounds based on my accent, with heavy help from Wikipedia.

The majority of consonants should not give students trouble, although Ŋyjichɯn speakers may detect an accent on the ‘m’ and ‘w’. If you wish to prevent that, pronounce ‘m’ against your top teeth and ‘w’ in the back of your throat.

  • ‘ŋ’ is equivalent to ‘ng’ in ‘sing.’
  • ‘r’ should be pronounced cleanly and shortly, a tap at the top of the mouth, like the ‘d’ in ‘rider’.
  • ‘β’ is similar, a short tap against the upper teeth.
IPA / Trans front near-front central near-back back
close i y       ɯ ɯ
near-close   ʏ i   ʊ u  
mid     ɜ o    
open a a       ɒ ɒ

The pairs ‘i’ & ‘y’ and ‘ɯ’ and ‘u’ are primarily distinguished by how rounded the lips are. Vowels are most likely to give students trouble, but the approximations below will generally be sufficient.

  • y as in free
  • i as in bit, but with the lips rounded
  • a approximately as in cat
  • o approximately as in strut
  • ɯ as in boot but with the lips very rounded
  • u as in hook
  • ɒ as in hot but with lips very rounded

(If I don’t have IPA available or it’s too much hassle, I cheat and use ‘h’ for ‘ŋ’, ‘B’ for ‘β’, ‘x’ for ‘ɯ’, and ‘p’ for ‘ɒ’.)

Doubled vowels are pronounced twice as long. Any vowel may combine with another to form a diphthong, and are pronounced long. On the occasion that a vowel is meant as a syllable it is written with apostrophes separating it. For example ro’ɒ’ryi, za’yr’ta, ny’i’an, kyo’yt.

And now for some fun stuff.

Colors

Color words in Ŋyjichɯn are heavily associated with nature and the exact color meant is heavily context specific. The pictures below give a sampling of the hues associated. If you’ve checked out the link dumps, there was a long article about how different cultures see color. Wikipedia also has a fair overview here.

jpxw

hafnxh jasakyijio     kixklyasim kouch

To reference the color itself (or to create new color terms), the color is incorporated into chanyki, thus chajɒɯwnyki, white; chawaovonyki, fire colored (waovo, fire), etc. Native speakers would say that metal terms would fall under lyasim, even if the shade itself might fall under ŋafnɯŋ or kiɯk.

You’ll note that most of the words have meaning beyond colors. Words will be given in Ŋyjichɯn alphabetical order.

Modern Ŋyjichɯn English Notes
chanyki skin, surface, color  
jɒɯw day, to be daytime, white, light  
jio water, to be wet, to be liquid, juicy, black, brown, blue, green, blue For colors it describes deep cool colors like black, brown, green, and blue. The base color is black/brown. May also be used how we would use ‘tomato red’ to evoke the flavor
jasa fruit, flower, pink, red, magenta, purple References flowers and describes anything from pale pink to vibrant purple
ŋafnɯŋ child, unripe, green, raw, yellow, pale When used as a color it’s the color of unripe fruit, early morning sky, young shoots and grass, and can cover white, yellow, and light greens
kyi ripe, adult, mature, full-size, green, blue When used for colors it means the green of ripe vegetables, or noon-sky (vibrant greens and blues)
kiɯkjio red-brown Given as an example of combining colors. From kiɯk and jio
kiɯk blood, red, orange Describes the color of blood.
kouch night, dark, black Describes the dark, usually blue and unsaturated colors, you would observe at night.
lyasim stone, grey, beige, pale, yellow, tan, off-white Primarily inorganic colors (the color of stones), but also pale bark, the yellow of wheat, etc

I’m creating all this using a combination of Excel, Tiddlywiki (basically a wiki in a single file. It’s awesome), and various text files. At some point I’m going to write up an in-character description of Ŋyjichɯn, but I have to figure out how I want to approach it. And probably the next post will be simply ‘I’ve changed this in the tiddlywiki, here’s a link!’ rather than making it work in WordPress, which is somewhat of a pain. I have to get the tiddlywiki uploaded.

(Editted 2-18-13, because I screwed up when I derived kiɯkjio.)

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WTF is a Conlang?

What is Conlanging?

Conlang is short for constructed language. Conlangers make up languages, whether that’s basically an English cypher or something as involved as Tolkien’s Quenya and Sindarin or Klingon created by Marc Okrend, which has taken on a life of its own. Generally, it’s done by people who love language for their own pleasure. It may or may not end up being used in stories (it seems most conlangs made up for as background are fairly skeletal). Some might be little more than a phoneme inventory, how to build words (morphology), and a bit of grammar. Some are as involved as any real language. There’s way too many different ways to do it for me to explain it, but the wikipedia page and the links at the end are a good start.

Why do you do it?

I like language. I unfortunately don’t have the knowledge necessary to be good at conlanging (I only learned IPA1 last year, for instance). It works my brain in different ways. I tend to work in spurts, which makes going back to things a challenge, but I have fun anyway. Pretty much all of my languages started as background for writing. My first (really bad one) was for a bunch of stories I started writing in junior high, I think, and was basically an English cypher. Several of them I came up with a phonetic inventory during class when I was supposed to be paying attention and did pretty much nothing else with it. I have a tendency to use mostly affixes and to create a writing system for each one.

When the Thundercats fandom was a lot more active in the 90s and early 00s, I started several Thunderian languages. Most of my languages started from that. They’re mostly going to get applied to other things (specifically the world of the White Knight, because creating a language is obviously easier than translating something into a real language /sarcasm). Some of my newer ones I take more inspiration from other, real languages, as you’ll see.

Some of my languages, in no particular order:

  • Herlanian: My first conlang. Objectively terrible. It was supposed to be the result of mixing a ton of real languages together, but it’s basically an English cypher. It just wasn’t very good at all and we shall never speak of it again.
  • Tusir: something I’m going to go back to at some point. A proto-language2, to then evolve into at least four other languages (theoretically). I was going to take inspiration from Arabic and Sanskrit. Currently just a phonetic inventory.
  • Nyazchyn: The name is probably going to get modified a little. Previously called Ochyn. One of my Thunderian languages, and probably the language I have the most done on right now. Previously SOV3 and isolating4, now highly synthetic, edging into polysynthetic. It takes some inspiration from Iroquois and other Native American polysynthetic languages, but only a tiny bit. Verb heavy and pretty much anything can be turned into a verb. This is the one I was working on most recently. I’m kind of lost on it right now (I stopped in the middle of things) so it’ll take some floundering to get going on it again. I need to do a ton of translations for it.
  • Lepadi: Playing with gender and another Thunderian language. The gender of a word determines the placement of the accent and the pronunciation. Phonemes have different sounds based upon gender. Noun-heavy with few verbs. I actually have a few passages translated, which is rather remarkable for me.
  • Okelen: Another Thunderian language, this one I was mostly dealing with the writing. It’s logographic like Chinese, but I was trying to avoid having any pronunciation info in the characters. VOS and supposedly agglutinating5.
  • Tynthna: Another Thunderian language that I did a fair bit with. Inspired by Japanese, with a syllabulary writing system and honorifics. That one was fun.

1 International Phonetic Alphabet

2 A language that will evolve into other languages. Latin is the proto-language for Romance languages, for example.

3 The word order of a language. English is subject, verb, object. There are six possibilities (I leave figuring them out as an exercise for the reader, or you could look at the link at the beginning of this).

4 A language is isolating, like Chinese, when the majority of words can’t be broken into smaller meaningful parts (aka morphemes). Synthetic is the opposite of that.

5 A form of synthesis, where you just keep adding bits (as opposed to fusional, aka inflectional, where the bits added mean multiple things)

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Sick – No post today

This doesn’t count. I’ve got a cold and my brain isn’t working, so don’t expect posts for a bit.

Last week I had an overwhelming urge to draw The Shadow in my Silver’s Kids style. You can consider this a preview of when I start doing those write-ups.

the-shadow-silvers-kids-style

I stole the pose from this issue:

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Theoretically I could ink and color it, but I probably won’t.

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Ben-Day Shots – Detective Comics #33

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Detective Comics #33

1939 November, Golden Age
Cover Price: 10 cents
The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom

Characters: Batman, Bruce Wayne, Thomas Wayne, Mrs. Wayne, the Wayne’s killer (unnamed), silly red dirigible, the Scarlet Horde, Professor Carl Kruger, Travis, Bixley, Ryder, Bat-plane

(Edited October 2013) (CN: character death, fictional terrorism, mental ableism)

We start with a cover that has nothing to do with the comic, so I’m not including it. We really start with a cool image of Batman in the Bat-plane in the clouds looking at a red rocket-ship looking dirigible (which is a hard word to type). However, the story actually starts with Batman’s origin, which we all know by now.

“Some fifteen years ago, Thomas Wayne, his wife, and son, were walking home from a movie…” Why Bruce’s mom doesn’t get a name, I don’t know. Then, “Days later, a curious and strange scene takes place.”

Not to make light, but, Bruce have you considered perhaps that you read too many comics?

Read more

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2012 and 2013

This year I wrote 135,000 words of fiction on six stories. I made a fool of myself here by posting a rough draft. I survived that with my self-esteem mostly intact. I won NaNoWriMo and got halfway through Camp NaNoWriMo. I’ve discovered booze I like and started a hell of a liquor cabinet. I tried to get readers here and mostly failed (blog catalogs don’t seem to work, triberr helps only a little). I posted here 56 times, on average twice a week, mostly.

On a more personal level, I moved into my own place, finally getting my stuff out of storage after about three years (although I still have quite a bit still packed because there’s no place to put it, or in a severely disorganized state). I’ve had the same boyfriend since approximately March. I’ve made several new friends and not been a complete hermit. I’m starting my third year working at the same place, where they seem to like me quite a lot and I have lots of free time (or I could do this on my breaks if I would actually remember to take them).

I’ve accomplished less than I would have liked to and more than I thought I would. I spent way too much monkey-clicking around the internet and napping.

So, next year, let’s try to do better! I have a plan (that I probably won’t stick to)!

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