tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57678823723994806212024-03-11T04:21:30.018+01:00CD CovingtonSFF writer, linguistUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger298125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-90242870667833942202023-08-21T11:28:00.004+02:002023-08-21T17:38:32.379+02:00Critiques and consultations<p> In my <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/931069802/a-writers-guide-to-linguistic-worldbuilding?ref=87vczr" target="_blank">Kickstarter</a> (185% funded! thank you!), I'm offering the usual set of books and ebooks, but there are a few tiers with big price tags, and I want to talk about them a little bit.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYJmu7qxqp7s19IkRCFfdi5AJqLaluNbDr19qXpFaKh-sII9BjGg3eCO8jv1rvZNpWEnIbCSVt3rT74waGCags1D2laPQx34Vu4FpepfacYoxm-edJkGI6dQ_M4BBexIeYzIo0s3bLHY0tPlgkgX_1xw_kDkJUh6vTQbOZ7C_KyGLxwiBPJ61yQ_XWtx2G/s925/rewards%203.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="limited quantity rewards: photo of Cislyn Smith: critique of flash fiction or poetry, 100€; photo of Jordan Shiveley: critique of horror short, 350€; photo of CD Covington, personal worldbuilding consulation 250€; chat w/your writing group 500 €" border="0" data-original-height="925" data-original-width="795" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYJmu7qxqp7s19IkRCFfdi5AJqLaluNbDr19qXpFaKh-sII9BjGg3eCO8jv1rvZNpWEnIbCSVt3rT74waGCags1D2laPQx34Vu4FpepfacYoxm-edJkGI6dQ_M4BBexIeYzIo0s3bLHY0tPlgkgX_1xw_kDkJUh6vTQbOZ7C_KyGLxwiBPJ61yQ_XWtx2G/w275-h320/rewards%203.png" width="275" /></a> <br /></div><p></p><p>Two generous friends are giving <b>critiques</b>. </p><p>First, <a href="http://elushae.org/" target="_blank">Cislyn Smith</a>, writer, poet, and co-editor of <a href="https://smallwondersmag.com/" target="_blank">Small Wonders Magazine</a>, is offering three critiques of flash fiction (up to 1500 words) or a packet of poetry of any length for your contribution of 100 €. (One is already taken!) Cislyn's writing has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Diabolical Plots, Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, and other places. She is especially interested in getting speculative poetry, because she wants more to exist in the world.</p><p>Second, horror writer <a href="https://www.jordanshiveley.com" target="_blank">Jordan Shiveley</a> is offering one critique of horror fiction up to 5000 words for your contribution of 350 €. Jordan's writing has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, the Horror Writers' Association Poetry Showcase Anthology, Baffling Magazine, and others.</p><p>Both tiers include all digital rewards.</p><p>I'm offering two types of <b>personal consultations</b>.</p><p>First, for 250 €, I'm offering ten reviews and discussions of your linguistic worldbuilding. This can range from a brainstorming session (up to 2 hours) to sending me your notes and receiving feedback (with a ~1-hr discussion). I can also answer a specific question you may have. You can get an idea of what you'd be getting <a href="https://cd-covington.tumblr.com/tagged/linguistic%20worldbuilding" target="_blank">here</a>. I would give you a much more detailed answer, of course, with citations as needed. </p><p>Second, for 500 €, I'll talk to you and up to four friends/writing group members for 1-2 hours. It could be a Q&A, a presentation, or a combination of the two. I have a presentation I've given at a couple conventions with several types of linguistic worldbuilding and some examples of each one, plus tips on incorporating it into your work.</p><p>Both tiers include all digital rewards (x5 for the second one).</p><p>Once again, thank you if you've already backed my <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/931069802/a-writers-guide-to-linguistic-worldbuilding?ref=87vczr">campaign</a>! Keep sharing with your friends!<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-87263770689090501102023-07-17T12:32:00.003+02:002023-07-17T13:00:10.250+02:00A Writer's Guide to Linguistic Worldbuilding: The Kickstarter<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="A castle sits on a hill. On the left, a dragon head is saying 'hello'. On the right, a princess says 'welcome'" border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNs-NGSmdEBXsl7_bzUiz37dNAeKbxno66zsc5YPF35u_SeiNGM00SRPM83nDwpN-xzqtlu4hzoiKY4CMa4PNAYUnmiKRy_LmyTHnMGLAYSI4Lpr-P5dtcKcH7ciCdGWu6clIDzvEOYXxLf7A97nBI2k8ZSwZEHDFiQu0A87rZb9wts_I5orWwTaVAKnh/w492-h247/fantasy%20characters%20talking.png" width="492" /></div><p></p><p>What <i>is</i> linguistic worldbuilding? It's all the little details, like how people, places, and things get their names and what sounds can be combined into words, but also broader strokes, like how characters from different cultures or subcultures talk, or whether there's a dominant language imposed by an empire. It's all the things that exist in the real world but fly under the radar for many of us. <br /></p><p>This project has taken a long time to get off the ground. Around the
time when I started writing for tor.com, when I started paying careful
attention to the use of language and linguistics in genre writing, I
decided I wanted to write a guide on how to do good linguistic
worldbuilding. I initially tried it via Patreon, but I never had enough
backers to focus on it, so that never went anywhere. (If you ever backed
my Patreon, you will get a free ebook, and we can discuss other rewards
depending on how much you contributed over time.)</p>Now I've decided to self-publish it, but I have to write it first. For that, I need your help. <p></p><p>I don't want to give everything away before launch day, but here are some things that will be included:</p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>How sound works and how to extrapolate from human vocal tracts to non-human ones</li><li>How you can do first contact without a universal translator</li><li>How you can give your characters problems using language and intercultural communication<br /></li><li>How to make up culture-specific proverbs and cuss words</li><li>Examples from books I love </li><li>Current linguistic research and theory<br /></li></ul><p>I have about 15,000 words written, and I expect it'll be somewhere between 60,000 and 90,000 when I'm finished with it. </p><p>The Kickstarter is going to launch on August 15, so follow <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/931069802/a-writers-guide-to-linguistic-worldbuilding?ref=87vczr" target="_blank">this link</a> and sign up to be notified! Rewards start as low as 3 €, and I have some limited-quantity rewards that I can't wait to reveal!<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-25475380473416804932023-05-04T10:24:00.002+02:002023-05-04T10:24:20.104+02:00Upcoming convention appearances: Metropolcon (May 18-20, 2023)<p> I'm going to be at the inaugural <a href="https://metropolcon.eu" target="_blank">Metropolcon</a> here in Berlin in 2 weeks. I'm only on two panels this time, so I'm actually going to be able to attend some panels other people are on!</p><p>Friday - 09:30 - Atelier 1 - Translation: What gets lost and what is gained. (CD Covington, Julie Nováková, Cora Buhlert; Mod: Claudia Rapp)</p><p>Saturday - 12:00 - Atelier 3 - Linguistic Worldbuilding (presentation)</p><p> There are a lot of interesting-looking panels (mostly in German, but some will be in English, too). Mary Robinette Kowal is giving a keynote and running her MICE quotient workshop. Maybe I'll see some of you there!<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-70885667627959894892023-03-13T12:22:00.002+01:002023-03-16T10:56:53.421+01:00Upcoming convention appearances: Flights of Foundry (April 14-16, 2023)<p>With the new year comes a new convention season. Since I'm in Europe now, I miss out on all the cons in North America, because I can't afford to fly over multiple times a year. I'm not quite connected enough here yet to find out about European cons (and also too broke to travel anyway), so I'm so glad that Dream Foundry continues to run the best online con so far, <a href="https://flights-of-foundry.org/" target="_blank">Flights of Foundry.</a> I'm on approximately a million panels this year and running a workshop (please sign up in the lottery!)</p><p>Because FoF operates round the clock in all timezones, panel times are given as slot numbers, so here's my (probably final) schedule, given with time in UTC.</p><p><b>Regular sessions</b> <br /></p><p>0 (5-6 pm UTC 14 April) Language politics in the arts industries (<b>new time</b>) <br /></p><p>1 (6-7 pm UTC 14 April) How to Find Translators</p><p>15 (8-9 am UTC 15 April) What makes a work a good candidate for translation?</p><p>17 (10-11 am UTC 15 April) Feminist translations</p><p>41 (10-11 am UTC 16 April) My first translation (mod)</p><p><strike>44 (1-2 pm UTC 16 April) Language politics in the arts industries</strike></p><p>45 (2-3 pm UTC 16 April) Reading - come hear the beginning of my "Waffle House in space, asexual lesbian SF romance" novel (aka "the DS9 coffeeshop AU novel")<br /></p><p>46 (3-4 pm UTC 16 April) Linguistics primer for creatives</p><p>49 (6-7 pm UTC 16 April) What's the word? How to get unstuck as a translator</p><p><b>Lotteried sessions</b></p><p>3 (8-9 pm UTC 14 April) chill n chat (come hang out with me! I'll probably ramble about verbs or something)</p><p>20-24 (1-5 pm UTC 15 April) (4 hours; max 16 ppl) Linguistic world building <i>Want your world's made-up words and names to sound realistic and
internally consistent, but don't know your glottal stops from your
lateral fricatives? Want to ensure your nonhuman species can actually
make the sounds you're putting in their vocal tracts? In this workshop,
you'll learn basic concepts of phonetics and sociolinguistics, as well
as how to apply them when creating your setting and the characters who
live in it. This is not a workshop for creating a conlang.</i></p><p>See you (virtually) there!<i> <br /></i></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-86139931549856239382022-12-20T12:21:00.000+01:002022-12-20T12:21:59.428+01:00"That's too expensive": a mini rant<p> I've been too burned by The Discourse on twitter not to include the following disclaimer for something so incredibly obvious it shouldn't need to be stated: the following discussion does not refer to people on limited budgets.</p><p>So. There's this habit among Germans to look for the best Preis-Leistungsverhältnis, which literally translated is roughly the relationship between cost and what you get out of it. Price-performance ratio, maybe. Cost-benefit analysis isn't quite right, but you get the drift.</p><p>This isn't limited to the Germans, of course! I think everyone who buys something wants to get the best value for their money. But I've encountered the specific attitude I'm irritated about far more here in Germany than back in the US, and I grew up with a single mom who was a secretary. (i.e. we were working poor. A lot of things were out of our budget.)<br /></p><p>I adopted a cat from Ukraine, so I've been looking for all the cat things I don't have anymore. I wanted to get a name tag for her collar (and a collar), and I ended up searching at Amazon, where I also looked for a couple other things that were useful for me. (I personally prefer to avoid Amazon if at all possible, but sometimes it's the easiest option because of the extreme siloing of German stores. Which is another mini-rant in itself.) I forget what specific item I was looking at, it might have been eyeglass cases because mine broke and I wanted to replace it, but there were always reviews for the items that were "It was 5 Euro too expensive" or "I wouldn't pay that much again for this."</p><p>Granted, on Amazon, a lot of what you'll get is cheap plastic crap, and sometimes the cheap plastic crap is overpriced for something that'll break in five minutes. And the reviews mentioned above also included phrases like "cheap plastic crap." But not everyone was so displeased with the same thing, so I ordered the glasses case that one guy complained had "lumps in the outside material already when it arrived" so it was basically shit. (There is indeed a bit of lumpiness around the hinge, but who cares? It's not structural.)</p><p>So some of the Preis-Leistungsverhältnis can be chalked up to different definitions of value for the money. Does it hold my glasses? Great. Does it keep them from getting smashed in my bag? Excellent. I got what I paid for.</p><p>I'm going to add a caveat here that it's not exactly true anymore that more expensive equals better quality, especially for clothing. My old roommate in Georgia is a fashion studies PhD student, so I've heard so much about the fashion and textile industries, especially the $$$$ brands. But it's still true often enough that I expect a $150 pair of shoes to last longer than a $15 pair of shoes. (Obligatory "Sam Vimes Boots theory of economics" reference here.)</p><p>The following situations are not made up. I either witnessed them first-hand or was a participant in them.</p><p>Last year, I got a little into hiking, and my regular gym shoes weren't cutting it anymore. I'm not a hardcore hiker or anything; I'm not going to the mountains on a regular basis and definitely not in the snow. So I wanted to get low-end, quality hiking shoes. There's a sporting goods chain here called Decathlon, which is sort of like Dick's, so I poked around their website for their options. They have their own store brands, which are inexpensive, but I wasn't sure about the quality. So when I saw that they stocked a Merrell hiking shoe, and it was only 78 Euro, I snapped it up. I've always had good experiences with Merrell, and their low-end hiking shoe was well suited to my needs ("hiking" in Berlin is actually "going on long walks in the forest," because it's very flat here.)</p><p>Then I brought them home and mentioned it to my then-roommate, who said that was really expensive and promptly showed me the Lidl-brand hiking boots she'd acquired for 35 Euro (and which lived in their box in her shoe cabinet). Sure, they were warm and insulated and supported the ankle by being boots, but they're cheap plastic crap.</p><p>Earlier this year, I went to o-hanami with a friend (there's a cherry tree avenue that was planted by NHK) and we went into a shoe store afterward because there was a particular pair she wanted to try. I <i>really like</i> shoes, and I ended up leaving with a pair of not-exactly-olive-green leather peep-toe sandals with an ankle strap and a slight heel for 100 Euro. (The brand is Think! and they follow sustainable practices to make their leather.) That's a pretty normal price IMO for a pair of slightly dressy sandals, and I think it's half what I paid for my Danskos <strike>ten</strike> fifteen years ago. I have a pair of Keen sandals I bought when I started my MA program in Georgia, and I wore them to death. They were my "dress" sandals, the ones I wore when I was teaching and a pair of Tevas wasn't appropriate. I think they were $90 in 2016. I still have them! They were in storage until recently, so I haven't worn them in a while, but they still work.<br /></p><p>Then I wore the new sandals and left them on the shoe mat by the front door, and my then-roommate once again said, "Think! sandals! Weren't they really expensive?" I was just like "sure, I guess?" because I didn't want to have to deal with it or her.</p><p>(I have six pairs of Fluevog shoes. I bought them on sale, but they were still a lot of money. And one pair was preorder only, so I paid full price, which was about half a new smartphone. One pair of boots I wear so much I had to get them resoled. And I just spent 300 Euros on a pair of knee high winter boots. So that's my footwear baseline. I grew up on Payless shoes, okay, and those are absolute shit, kill your feet in five minutes, have to replace them every nine months. Shoes are my fashion vice, and I would rather pay more for shoes that don't hurt my feet. And Fluevog makes 2-3" heels that I can stand in for hours, so fuck yes, I'll pay $200 for them, thanks.)</p><p>My ex-roommate also said things like "I bought a frozen pizza at the store and it was 4 Euro and that's too expensive. I also think paying 10 Euro for a pizza in a restaurant is too expensive." (I am so glad to be out of her apartment, for so many reasons.)<br /></p><p>Just last week I was at a winter market where people were selling their handmade goods, from art prints to ceramics to fiber arts. A friend from roller derby is a ceramic artist, and I wanted to get two more little tart ramekins for my tart ramekin army. (I have 4 now; I want to have a set of 6 eventually. They're really cute, little pastels with polka dots like some 50s retro cuteness. They're 10 Euro each.) A guy comes up and looks at her plates. He picks one up and asks the price. It's an 8" or so plate, handmade, with a hand-painted design on it. It's 25 Euro. He asks about a different plate, a dinner plate, and it's 45 Euro. He makes some comment about the bigger plate not being twice as big as the smaller plate, as if they ought to be priced by the square centimeter or something. Then he says it's too expensive and wanders off.</p><p>So now we reach the point of this entire post: "it's too expensive" means "I don't think you, the artist or person who created this item, deserve to be paid fairly for your work. I don't believe you deserve to eat or pay rent or buy your materials." It also means "I don't believe factory workers deserve a fair wage, and I definitely don't believe the price should include external costs like environmental costs. I believe that the cost to me should be as low as possible, no matter who gets fucked along the way." [Please see obligatory disclaimer at the top of the post. Thank you.]</p><p>Modern society (and capitalism) has got us so far separated from the source of our things that we don't truly understand that there are <i>people</i> on the other end of the equation. Our comfort is the only thing that matters, not that some factory somewhere is employing people for a dollar a day and dumping waste into the local river so we can get our 35 € hiking boots.</p><p>The only way to change this attitude is to change society, and I unfortunately don't see that happening any time soon, what with Amazon inventing a holiday for the sole purpose of getting people to buy things they don't need (Prime Day). <br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Berlin, Germany52.520006599999988 13.40495424.209772763821142 -21.751296 80.830240436178826 48.561204000000004tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-26165612224921297132022-08-05T11:01:00.002+02:002022-08-05T11:01:17.772+02:00The Batman (2022)<p> I took a trip back to the US to visit friends and family, and one of the entertainment options on my flight was The Batman. Of the people I know who have similar taste as me, most of them said it was good, and I figured I could plug my headphones in and watch it before it was time for me to nap. (My number-one transatlantic flight tip is "sleep as much as you can," and I stand by that.)</p><p>The plot was basically any old Batman movie, with villains and Dick Gordon and Alfred and bat-gadgets and all that shit. Bats has to figure out who's targeting prominent politicians and police folks and why, and the villain (Riddler) leaves him clues at every murder scene. He's also trying to help Selina Kyle find her friend, without letting her know he's Bruce Wayne. (not-a-spoiler: The Gotham PD is corrupt.)<br /></p><p>What makes it different is a couple things. First, Bruce Wayne is clinically depressed. He has stopped giving a shit about basically everything except being a vigilante. Alfred tries to help him out of it, with limited success. You might think this would make for a bad/boring/whatever Bats movie, but it adds to the noir ambience. Robert Pattinson is a better actor than a lot of people give him credit for, and he really made Bruce a haggard vigilante who had no more fucks to give.</p><p>Second, and I think most importantly, the film explicitly depicts what happens when you get a vigilante going around: more vigilantes. The film shows how easy it is for someone (Riddler) to radicalize a group of disaffected white men over the internet. It's the alt-right/Jan6/Q conspiracy milieu in clear text, on screen. When Bruce realizes the role he played in this, he has a moment of crisis.</p><p>Normally I complain about how movies these days are all grey and dark, but I think in this case it worked. The noir ambience and all. (I do miss bright color in film, though. Bring back the gaudy colors of Pacific Rim!)</p><p>Anyway, I liked it and would like to watch it again on a bigger screen.<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-84148210046338421362022-05-17T15:00:00.001+02:002022-05-17T15:00:00.206+02:00Some books I've read and liked recently<p>Because word of mouth is the best advertising for books, I'm going to talk about some books I've read and enjoyed.</p><p><i>Clutter</i>, Jennifer Howard (2021). Nonfiction. This is part memoir, part history of consumerism. Howard had to clean out her parents' home after their deaths (or moving into assisted living, I forget), and she weaves her story in with the modern history of consumerist capitalism. It's the type of book that if done wrong would end up being preachy and judgmental, but fortunately it didn't turn out that way. There are strong indictments of industry and consumerism, yes, but not of the people who live under it. She also casts a side-eye on the organizational products industry, because clearly the solution to having too much stuff is to buy more stuff to store the stuff, rather than ... stop accumulating so much stuff.</p><p>When I read this book last year, my mother had recently died, so my sister and I were dealing with all the stuff in her house and what to do with it. I was also frantically sorting and reorganizing my worldly belongings as I prepared to ship them to Germany (or shove them in my checked luggage). It was a very timely read for me, and I had a lot of moments of recognition as I read it. With the popularity of Marie Kondo and the growing number of Gen Xers whose Boomer parents are downsizing or dying and who are being stuck dealing with huge pieces of furniture that they don't have space for (for example), it's a very relevant and timely read for pretty much anyone.</p><p>(Note: I learned about this book from the blogger/podcaster Gin & Tacos, aka Ed Burmila, and it was an insta-buy, because I liked the last book he recommended, which was <i>Combat-Ready Kitchen</i>, which was a history of how the military-industrial complex led to pretty much all our modern convenience foods. Powdered cheese was invented to be sent to soldiers and reconstituted in their field rations. It didn't work very well, but it turned out to make a great sauce if you mixed it with liquid and fat. Cling wrap, granola bars, improved canning techniques... all of it stems from military research into feeding soldiers more efficiently. Great book.)</p><p><i>Das Doppelte Grab</i>, Margarethe von Schwarzkopf (2021). This is an amateur detective novel set in Cologne, where the protagonist, an art historian, stumbles upon a grave in her deceased godmother's basement while she's renovating the house to be sold. Then, once that one is taken out of the basement by the police, they find ANOTHER, much older skeleton - from the Roman era. Family history, conspiracy theories, the Teutoburger Forest, monks, coin thieves, and double dealing -- this book has it all. I bought it because I wanted to read something not-serious that wasn't translated from English, which an unfortunate majority of YA & SFF books are. Germans LOVE detective novels, and there are tons of them written in German. Judging by the little postcard that was in the book, there are detective novels set in [insert your favorite city here], and you can get a list of titles by sending in to the publisher.</p><p><i>Son of the Storm</i>, Suyi Davies Okungboye (2021). Twitter was all about this book last year, and I added it to my ebook collection at some point. I didn't get around to reading it until the end of the year (literally; it's in my book log as December 31.) I didn't write down anything useful about the plot in my book log (gj, past me), but I noted that there were themes of colorism (all the MCs are black, but people's social value is based on the shade of their skin) and how people react to oppression. The MC, Danso, is a scholar, and he's engaged to an heiress to a rich/prominent family. He is of mixed heritage and is therefore lower in social status. But he's really interested in what's outside the borders of their empire, and he ends up getting tangled in a mess of forbidden magic and secrets the priests don't want people to know. I'm looking forward to the sequel!</p><p><i>The Unbroken</i>, C.L. Clark (2021). This was another of the twitter-buzz books of 2021, but it was on my wishlist until there was a sale. (I don't really have any steady income. I am really bad at the freelancer hustle.) So anyway. This is a military fantasy set in an empire. The MC, Touraine, was stolen from her family as a child, as the empire does when they need conscripts for their army. Touraine is from a desert region subjugated to the empire, and her unit is taken there to suppress a nascent rebellion. Her unit, which is made up entirely of people who were stolen from this desert as children, taken to the heart of the empire, and inculcated with imperial values. Touraine believes in the empire and wants to be a good soldier, get promoted, and take care of her unit - but she faces prejudice every step of the way.</p><p>Shortly after they arrive in the desert and escort the princess (who is dealing with her own garbage uncle's usurpation) into the garrison, Touraine thwarts an attempted assassination. As a reward, the princess has Touraine be the executioner (I know, some reward), but one of the rebels recognizes her. This haunts her and eventually leads to her confronting a childhood she barely remembers. Then Touraine is framed for murder, and she has to convince an imperial military that is prejudiced against her that she's innocent.</p><p>It's a profoundly angry book, in a good way. Touraine's naïveté repeatedly runs up against cold reality until she understands that no, the empire will <i>never</i> accept her. She has to balance her desire to protect her unit, her growing anger at the empire and ties to the rebels, and her love affair with the princess. I can't wait for the sequel.</p><p><i>Iron Widow</i>, Xiran Jay Zhao (2021). I saw early promo of this on twitter that compared it to a lot of things I like, so it was on my radar. Then Zhao made a little TikTok where they said that the battle scenes read like DragonBall fights with mecha furries, and I was like "lol wtf, I definitely need to read this." So I put myself on the waiting list at the Berlin public library. </p><p>The army uses giant robots to fight other giant robots from the enemy country. These robots are powered by two people, always a man and a woman (his concubine). The man is the main pilot, but he draws additional fighting power from the woman, who stands a good chance of being killed in the process. The MC wants to get revenge for her sister, who died in this way. So she signs up to become a concubine and intends to kill the pilot who killed her sister. She's about to stab him when there's an emergency scramble, and she has to go with him to his robot. She does dragonball magic stuff and kills the pilot. This gets her branded an Iron Widow - a concubine who is stronger than her 'husband' - and paired with the most deadly pilot in the system, because the hierarchy (patriarchy) can't have a powerful female pilot going around and disproving all the sexism they've built into the pilot system.</p><p>It's a cracking great read. It's got everything: wuxia tropes, giant robots, feminist rage, a love triangle, and one hell of a cliffhanger ending. I need the sequel, like, yesterday.</p><p><i>The Chosen and the Beautiful</i>, Nghi Vo (2022). <i>The Great Gatsby</i> is out of copyright now, so it's legal to publish retellings, which this is. The narrator is Jordan Baker, Nick Carroway's socialite girlfriend from the original. In this version, she was adopted from Vietnam during the French-Indochine war, so she faces anti-Asian prejudice, which is to a small extent mitigated by the fortune she has at her back. A one-sentence summary could be "<i>The Great Gatsby </i>but queer and with magic." This is both an accurate summary and one that understates the book. Vo's writing is gorgeous. Go buy it, you won't regret it.</p><p><i>A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking</i>, T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) (2021). A girl whose magical power is baking stumbles across a dead body in the bakery one morning and gets embroiled in politics. Someone is killing people with magic, and she's on the list. She has to figure out who's killing people and why and then save the city. But, as she repeatedly says, she shouldn't have had to. The Duchess should have handled it before it got that far. It's a YA story and a bit dark. Not horror-dark, and the protagonist wins and almost everybody survives, but well. It starts with a dead body.</p><p><i>Starfall Ranch</i>, California Dawes (2019). This was recommended by a friend as an example of "cozy SF" and described as "Stardew Valley in space." So I naturally had to get it. Shy Kerridan is a rancher on a remote moon. She's a loner and really doesn't like other people. Thisbe Vandergoss is the heiress to a vast corporate empire who runs away from her parents, changes her last name, and signs up to be a mail-order bride for Sean Kerridan on the remote moon. But she ends up on the wrong hemisphere and lands on Shy's doorstep just as an electrical storm blows in that knocks out communications. There's one tiny problem: Thisbe has to check in at Sean's ranch and be married to him within a week of arrival, or she will be fined, made to pay for the transportation to the moon, and deported back to Earth. It was a lot of fun, and the dark moments are resolved by ... people being adults and talking to each other. Imagine that.</p><p>I've got a bunch of books in my TBR, so I might write about those later. Or I might not. We'll see!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-24151839736731747782021-08-22T14:11:00.018+02:002021-08-22T14:20:01.564+02:00Updates from Germany<p> Hello! It's been a minute, eh?</p><p>About 2 months ago, the EU added the US to its "safe" zone, then Germany opened their border to tourists from the US (previously, it was open only to people with an urgent need). So I got my plane tickets for August 1 and spent all of July sorting and packing basically everything I own.</p><p>Now I'm in Berlin, subletting a furnished room from a Croatian woman. I live really close to the Grunewald park, which is a great place to get some exercise when it's not raining. I went there yesterday by train (it's only 2 stops, but it's a good 40-minute walk to get there, and I wanted to maximize my park-time) and "hiked" (Berlin is a very flat city) 3.6 miles in a little under an hour and a half. I had a refreshing Apfelschorle (apple juice mixed with mineral water), a pizza, and an absolutely delicious melon salad at a beer garden by the train station. The salad had cucumbers marinated in some sort of peppery dressing, chunks of watermelon, and a heap of feta on top. The flavor and texture contrasts were amazing, and I complimented the chef on my way out.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbjopS5TuAUZsdlcJFeD3im54ygaGp3raU9p0MEo8bSohH7hD-ahQA0yabCIxnm38jpe8kBiV-Y7HDRvBLLo3gQIE-VOFMs2R0_e4cXszB31iAIpmlps45iAAazhap-KhYF_33-I59VsHO/s4032/PXL_20210821_101742562.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="a photograph of a salad bowl with a layer of cucumbers topped with a layer of watermelon, all topped with a heap of crumbled feta and a sprig of mint" border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbjopS5TuAUZsdlcJFeD3im54ygaGp3raU9p0MEo8bSohH7hD-ahQA0yabCIxnm38jpe8kBiV-Y7HDRvBLLo3gQIE-VOFMs2R0_e4cXszB31iAIpmlps45iAAazhap-KhYF_33-I59VsHO/w150-h200/PXL_20210821_101742562.jpg" title="Watermelon salad from Waldmeister Beergarden" width="150" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZza8vRPDXPlFnqw8i19j5O9AFG_kZtD40c77GLz-gO_h2FopnUZYAdjcgJhm29W1ubtfW5Mc5KrmxUendEVHzg_yUrfy0-pzhiWyIft4wjCbJYCOXjuXlLjaqqmCx-d86X5KQkpDAvG0M/s4032/PXL_20210821_090206307.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A photograph of the Teufelssee in Grunewald Park in Berlin" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZza8vRPDXPlFnqw8i19j5O9AFG_kZtD40c77GLz-gO_h2FopnUZYAdjcgJhm29W1ubtfW5Mc5KrmxUendEVHzg_yUrfy0-pzhiWyIft4wjCbJYCOXjuXlLjaqqmCx-d86X5KQkpDAvG0M/w320-h240/PXL_20210821_090206307.jpg" title="Teufelssee with the Teufelsberg listening post in the background" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><p></p><p>I've finally had some time to write, since I'm just about settled in now. I've had to get a few things, like sheets, pantry stock, and plants, but I haven't had to spend half the day taking the bus or subway to a store and back in about a week. I went to one store to get a printer (they had back to school specials) and carried it in its box on the bus, then down the street and up a zillion stairs. Then it wouldn't connect to the WiFi for a reason I couldn't make heads or tails of (and it was in English), so I had to go buy a printer cable the next day, because of course they don't come in the box anymore. I decided to go to a different electronics store and left with a 3-Euro printer cable and a 15-Euro rice cooker. This is basically how I've ended up spending way too much money in the last 3 weeks.</p><p>At least groceries are cheap. I'm still managing to spend a bunch of money on groceries, even though a lot of things cost about half what they do in the US. A 250-g can of store-brand chickpeas cost 39 (Euro)cents! I have 7 in my cupboard. (I used one of them already.)</p><p>The way people are handling covid over here is so much different than in the US. You can't go into any businesses or get onto public transit without a medical-grade mask. (No cute cloth masks here!) You see people walking down the street with a mask around their forearm so they have it ready when they need it. It's the latest in pandemic fashion! When I went to see The Green Knight in the theater, I had to show my vaccination certificate to get in, and I was obligated to fill out my contact info when I bought my ticket online. One thing this theater did was block off the seats around you(r party) when you reserved your seat(s), so nobody from unrelated groups was next to each other. They didn't require you to wear your mask during the show, but I did (except when I drank my soda), and so did the other woman in my row.</p><p>The movie was trippy as fuck, and I kept getting distracted by the German subtitles and thinking how I would have used different words to give it the same "feel" as the sometimes-lyrical English, which didn't help at all.</p><p>I'm making the I-hope-final edits on my indulgent NaNoWriMo project, which is a retelling of the Germanic Siegfried legend from the women's perspectives, and I hope to start querying that by the end of this month. I'm <i>also</i> working on a nonfiction book on linguistics in SFF (for writers), whose sample chapter I need to finish and whose proposal outline I need to make shinier. The last project I queried got no bites, so I'm setting it aside for now and will rework it in the future. I think it's a good story; either the writing itself or the query wasn't landing.</p><p>So, that's it for now. You can also follow my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ0iWE_V1WZxa9sbO1TOOhA" target="_blank">YouTube channel</a> and/or support my <a href="https://patreon.com/practical_linguistics" target="_blank">Patreon</a> (payments currently on hold until I get my tax situation and work permit sorted).</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-22705603838183134282021-06-03T18:00:00.437+02:002022-10-19T10:06:47.206+02:00Where do I start with the mecha franchises? Part 3: Gundam (non-UC)<p>There are fewer entries outside the UC canon, and I've seen most of them. Like many anime fans my age, my first Gundam was Wing, back when it ran on Toonami in the early 2000s. I got sucked into y fandom and mailing lists (back on ye olde YahooGroups) and even wrote fanfic. (No, I'm not telling; it may be on the internet somewhere, but I have no idea.) I haven't watched Wing since it aired on TV 20ish years ago, and I'm nervous about doing that, but I'll get around to it someday, now that I'm old and crotchety.</p><p>Some of the non-UC series are divisive among a particular type of US fan. Wing, for example, is the one with the pretty boys that caters to girls. When Orphans was airing, I had to block a dude on tumblr who kept commenting that it sucked on my posts.</p><p>Many of these series are available through streaming sites, some on multiple sites as of June 2021. The ones I know of, I'll include. Which one to start with depends on the type of story you like, so I'm listing them in order of how much I like them.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">My favorite: Iron-blooded Orphans</h3><p style="text-align: left;">This is a 50-episode series that ran in 2 seasons from 2015 to 2017. (There was a gap between them.) Of all the non-UC series, this is the most original-Gundam-like, and its tone is very similar to 08th MS Team. Most Gundam shows involve child soldiers (because the target audience is teenagers), and they're portrayed as normal. This one shows how fucked up that is.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Our protagonists are teenagers who are indentured to a military contractor, CGS, on Mars. As part of their indenture, they are implanted with cyborg hookups on their spines which connect to their robots and allow them to pilot better. The procedure is painful and frequently deadly. The oldest and leader is Orga Itsuka, who is all of 19 at the start. CGS is contracted to escort a rich Martian girl to Earth, but shortly after she arrives, they're attacked by Gjallarhorn. The adults of CGS send out the kids and use them as decoys while they run away. When Orga finds out and gets back to base, he and his cadre of older kids take over the company. They rename it "Tekkadan," the iron flower group.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Orga's mission is to give his family a peaceful future, which they have to fight for, because society literally considers them garbage. Some characters are referred to in the series as "human debris." Orga's quest leads him to make deals with the devil because he sees it as expeditious. He runs into a space yakuza group and joins them. There are strong anti-capitalist themes. There is mention of child abuse and child sexual abuse. It gets extremely dark (for a Gundam show, for sure) more than once, and there's a high protagonist body count.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I highly recommend this show. It's a real 21st-century one. The story and script are by Okada Mari, and it was directed by Nagai Tatsuyuki.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Where to watch: hulu, Netflix, crunchyroll, funimation.com; Amazon Prime (for an extra fee); Blu-Ray</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Also good: 00</h3><p>Gundam 00 is a 50-episode series that originally aired from 2007-09. It's set about 300 years from now, in the real-world timeline. The protagonists are four Gundam pilots in a group called Celestial Being, whose purpose is to stop conflict as it happens. They're kind of terrorists, you could say. But they're very powerful, so the other factions on Earth unite to oppose them. There's a magic supercomputer that calculates where conflicts will crop up, so CB can be on site to intervene. Then some super-powered people called Innovators (the Newtype analogue) show up.</p><p>Season 1 is better than Season 2, and the movie is ... absurd. (Sentient crystals from Jupiter.)</p><p>Where to watch: hulu, crunchyroll; Blu-Ray</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Worth seeing</h3><h4 style="text-align: left;">G Gundam (1994-95; 49 episodes)</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Every four years, there is a Gundam fight tournament to determine who is president of the world for the next four years. One group wants to rig the tournament so they win, and they have an overpowered super gundam, which is Devil Gundam in Japanese, but Dark Gundam in the US dub. The mobile suits are piloted in a unique way: the pilots wear clothes that sense their motion and translate it into robot motion. So the robots do the martial arts that the pilots do, which makes for interesting fight scenes.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There are a lot of Problematic(tm) things, like the national stereotype Gundams. Tequila Gundam wears a sombrero. There's a windmill for the Netherlands. These are mostly not main characters, but they still exist.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Chibodee Crockett, from Neo-America, uses his shield as a surfboard and has boxing gloves. Nobel Gundam from Sweden is Sailor Moon. The French Gundam has roses. It's absurd, which is part of its charm.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Where to watch: crunchyroll; Blu-Ray</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Gundam Wing (1995-96, 49 episodes)</h4><p>Five pilots from the colonies at the Lagrange points are sent to Earth to destroy the Earth Alliance, which oppresses the space colonies. They don't know about each other, but the old scientists who sent them and gave them Gundams know each other. They form a little sentai squadron and go around being terrorists. The Earth Alliance has mecha, too, and they fight each other. But there's a side faction on Earth that wants to take over for its own reasons, and things get complicated.</p><p>Where to watch: hulu, crunchyroll; Blu-Ray/DVD</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Gundam Seed (2002-03, 50 episodes)</h4><p>There are genetically-modified superhumans called Coordinators, who escaped to space colonies to avoid hate crimes from the Naturals. There are a few factions on Earth, including one Naturals-supremacist group. War breaks out between Earth and space. One space colony is neutral, and they get pulled into the war when space forces attack.</p><p>To be honest, I haven't watched this since it came out, but I liked it at the time.</p><p>Where to watch: hulu, crunchyroll, funimation.com; Blu-Ray</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">They're ok, I guess</h3><h4 style="text-align: left;">Gundam Seed Destiny (2004-05, 50 episodes)</h4><p>This picks up where Seed left off, but it focuses on a new character. The new character is fine, but the heroes from Seed are brought back as overpowered gods, basically, after fans wanted them back. *yawn* It's not terrible. Parts of it are actually rather good. But it goes downhill about halfway through.</p><p>Where to watch: crunchyroll; Blu-Ray</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Gundam AGE (2011-12, 49 episodes)</h4><p>I watched this when it came out and don't remember much about it, beyond that it existed. The 3 seasons of this are each from the perspective of a member of a different generation of the same family, which is kind of neat. Unfortunately, the execution was kind of a mess. The best part is season 2, because the protagonist is the coolest. Or maybe it was parts of season 3 because of the pirates? Like I said, I don't remember this very much, and wikipedia has you covered.</p><p>Where to watch: not available streaming in the US; Blu-Ray</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Do not watch: Reconguista in G (2014-15, 26 episodes)</h3><p>This show is just bad. I watched all of it, and I can't tell you what happened, even with the wikipedia article open. The biggest problem is that there was way too much going on in way too little space. If it had had 50 or 52 episodes, it would probably have been fine, but it's difficult to keep up with all the factions and characters and backstabbing and side changing when there's an entirely different plot every other episode.</p><p>On the plus side, the mecha and character designs are pretty cool. The mecha and character designers from Overman King Gainer were involved.</p><p>Where to watch (if you must): crunchyroll; Blu-Ray</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Haven't seen</h3><p>I haven't seen Gundam X or Turn A, so I can't comment on those, and neither appears to be available for streaming in the US.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Other</h3><p>There's a meta series which starts with Build Fighters that takes place in an alternate-here, where a magical space particle lets people imbue their gundam models with magic energy that lets them fight while the model builder pilots it. It's Angelic Layer but with gundam models, and its entire purpose is to sell model kits. Even more so than the usual gundam series.</p><p>That said, it's a lot of fun. The protags are middle schoolers who enter a tournament. There are powerful groups that have dedicated money to improving their build quality (Gundam Academy) and all the stuff you'd expect from a tournament show. The characters are archetypes, but they've got a bit more depth than just "the protag" or "the rival" or "the nerd." It's <b>fun</b>, and it lets Gundam nerds geek out (both on and off screen) about the various kits used. There's even a bit of kitbashing!</p><p>This isn't a good place to start if you want to understand all the in-jokes. If you don't mind not getting the references, or you just really like tournament shows, fire it up!</p><p>Where to watch: crunchyroll</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-22620460439377610212021-06-02T18:00:00.012+02:002022-10-19T10:06:58.252+02:00Where do I start with the mecha franchises? Part 2: Gundam (UC)<p> The first Gundam series aired in 1979-80 and had 43 episodes. The show inspired a lot of future anime and manga creators, and there are a lot of references to it in shows like Genshiken and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. For something as superficially mundane as a show about giant robots in space whose purpose is to sell plastic models and model kits, the cultural impact it had is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_Gundam" target="_blank">immense</a>. There is a <a href="https://www.japanvisitor.com/japan-city-guides/gundam" target="_blank">full-size model of a Gundam in Odaiba</a>. It used to be an RX-78, as seen in the previous link, but it was changed to a <a href="https://en.japantravel.com/tokyo/unicorn-gundam-statue-in-odaiba/41317" target="_blank">Unicorn</a> recently.</p><p>Gundam's influence reaches outside Japan, inspiring Guillermo del Toro to make Pacific Rim. This is the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-zCQGA4fdY" target="_blank">cutest damn video of all time</a>, when during PacRim promos, a Japanese morning show took him touristing and to see the Odaiba Gundam, which he didn't know they were doing. The look on his face when he sees it! That is a man having a religious experience. (Obligatory PacRim side note: I love that movie, and the sequel doesn't exist.)</p><p>So, what's Gundam about, other than giant robots in space? Each individual series has its own plot, naturally, but there are a few essential elements to make something a Gundam show, other than the robots. There is a conflict between usually a large federated space navy and a smaller faction. Sometimes the space navy is the good guys; sometimes it's the bad guys. But neither side is ever all-good or all-bad. There are corrupt bigwigs in the space navy, and there are peaceniks in the rebel factions. The lead character is an ace pilot; sometimes there's a group of ace pilot leads. The lead antagonist is an ace pilot. They pick each other as their rival/nemesis/whatever. At some point, one of the leads gets stuck behind enemy lines and this changes his outlook on the war. Fighting continues; eventually someone wins.</p><p>There are a handful of conventions that originate from 0079. The (or A) main antagonist is a blond who wears a mask and pilots a red mobile suit. This is because of Char Aznable, the Red Comet in 0079. Some Char-clones don't strictly fit the mold, but that's fine; a Char is a Char. The hero Gundam is primary colors (red, yellow, blue, white). There is a post-human type of person who has super skills with piloting and sometimes psychic powers.</p><p>Gundam and Macross are about the same age as franchises, but there are way more Gundam shows than Macross, and I haven't seen all of them. (There's a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundam" target="_blank">LOT</a>! And some are really bad, and some are extra bleak.) The easiest way to break it up is to divide them into UC timeline and non-UC timeline. I'll start with UC. The UC timeline is the largest, with over 30 TV series, movies, and OVAs spanning the years 0068-0260.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Universal Century</h3><p style="text-align: left;">Humanity has built colonies in space, mostly at La Grange points. They call them "sides." Side 3 declared independence from the Earth Federation, called itself the Principality of Zeon, and launched a war, which killed half of humanity. Eight months into a bloody stalemate, the EF Space Force (EFSF) is at Side 5 picking up their new battleship, White Base, with Zeon ships hot on their tail. Amuro Ray is a high school student whose dad is a class-A jerk and an engineer on the Gundam project, and he gets sucked in to piloting the ship and drafted into the EFSF. The ace pilot on the Zeon side is Char Aznable, who has plans of his own. This is how Mobile Suit Gundam (aka 0079) starts.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The general through plot is that Zeon Zum Deikun wanted to make/keep peace with the Feddies, but he was assassinated. The Zabi family takes charge of Side 7 and uses Zeon's name to promote their cause. Because of the pressure of living in space, some humans have evolved into Newtypes (yes, what the long-running Japanese anime magazine is named for). The Zeons want to harness the power of Newtypes to make space free from the Earth-bound government. The Feddies think Newtypes are dangerous and want to eliminate them.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The One Year War is fought to a truce in the year 0080, but politics and all that means that wars happen again and again, in 0087, 0088, 0093, and 0096. The One Year War provides a setting for a lot of side stories, most of which I haven't seen. And I will confess that I primarily know Z, ZZ, Char's Counterattack, F91, and Victory from playing the Gundam Musou games. I hear that F91 is terrible, and Victory is depressing, but not as bad as War in the Pocket (which I have also never seen, because I hear everyone dies.)</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>0079</b> exists as the 49-episode TV series and 3 compilation movies. The compilation movies get you the gist of the story, and if you want to start with a UC series, you could do worse than the movies. These are all available on Blu-Ray in the US, and the TV series is streaming on Funimation.com as of June 2021.</p><p style="text-align: left;">My favorites of the UC series are the 08th MS Team and 0083: Stardust Memory. Of the two, 08th MS Team is better as far as plotting and pacing go, but Anavel Gato of 0083 is my favorite villain.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>The 08th MS Team </b>(1996-99)<b> </b>is a wonderful entry point. It's a 12-episode OVA series (there's a 13th episode that was a 10-year-anniversary special, but it's not good; it's from the POV of the most annoying character) about a half-dozen Federation soldiers and their fight to defend their part of Earth from Zeon. Shiro Amada and his team are sent to reinforce a base. The local Zeon commander has a mobile armor (a really big robot, which isn't particularly mobile, because it's that huge), which is piloted by someone Shiro knows. Once this is discovered, Shiro is arrested for treason (which is the plot of the mid-series recap movie Miller's Report.)</p><p style="text-align: left;">It's moderately gritty, but not, like, Full Metal Jacket levels. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_PKgztP0zw" target="_blank">OP animation</a> gives you a good idea of it, though it's a little cheery. This show also serves as the basis for my favorite AMV of all time, which the creator to the best of my knowledge has never uploaded, so there are only low-res uploads on YT. SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE THING AHOY. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxfzGE6htfk" target="_blank">Tenth Man Down</a> (It also introduced me to Nightwish, so double win.)</p><p style="text-align: left;">This is available in the US on Blu-Ray and DVD via your favorite retailer.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><b>0083: Stardust Memory</b> (1991-92) is a side-story which is never mentioned in the rest of UC canon (for reasons explained at the end of the OVAs.) Zeon ace pilot Anavel Gato steals the prototype Gundam GP-02A, and Feddie pilot Kou Uraki is assigned to get it back from him using the GP-01. The engineer from Anaheim Electronics, Nina Purpleton, had a relationship with Gato in the past, and that causes Trouble, of course. Gato's fleet has a plan for the GP-02A, which is equipped with a nuclear warhead.</p><p style="text-align: left;">As I recall it, the pacing is a bit off, but I like it anyway. The OP and ED songs are extremely 1991. Shoji Kawamori (of Macross) did the mecha designs.</p><p style="text-align: left;">This is also available on Blu-Ray in the US via your favorite retailer. (The DVDs are 4x as expensive, so I suspect it's out of print.)</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-46890386121705894972021-06-01T18:29:00.003+02:002022-10-19T10:07:06.501+02:00Where do I start with the mecha franchises? Part 1: Macross<p> A person I met at a con recently asked where the best place to start with Macross and Gundam is. That's not an easy question! Let's dig in.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Macross</h3><p style="text-align: left;">The Macross franchise started in 1982 with Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, which ran for 36 episodes. If you're my age, or maybe a little younger, you may have seen the heavily edited version called Robotech in your cartoons. I won't be getting into the gigantic licensing nightmare between Tatsunoko/Big West and Harmony Gold & Carl Macek, because it's very complicated and I don't know all the details. But fans rejoiced in April when they <a href="https://www.funimation.com/blog/2021/04/08/big-west-officially-recognizes-macross-license-by-harmony-gold/" target="_blank">announced that the license dispute was resolved</a>, and we'll be (eventually) getting legit Macross over here.</p><p style="text-align: left;">So. SDF Macross. In 1999, a city-sized alien spaceship crashes on a remote island on Earth (the setting for 2002's Macross Zero). Naturally, human scientists want to reverse engineer the hell out of it, and they make transforming fighter jets using the technology they found. They rebuild the ship, but at its launch, the alien Zentradi attack. It turns out that the ship has space-folding technology, so they use it to escape ... and bring a whole mess of civilians with them. And then the fold tech breaks. The story revolves around the inhabitants of this new spaceship colony getting back to Earth under conventional power while not being blown up by the Zentradi (all male) or the Meltran (all female). To keep the population entertained, an idol contest is held, and Lynn Minmay is one of the contestants. Her songs become surprisingly popular among the Zentradi, which causes a major cultural shift. It seems like the statute of limitations on spoilers for a 30-year-old show should be up, but I won't say any more. The plot is on Wikipedia if you want all the spoilers.</p><p style="text-align: left;">I don't know how readily available the 2002 AnimEigo DVD release of SDF Macross is, but that was the last legitimately licensed Macross in the US. Hopefully this will change quickly!</p><p style="text-align: left;">If you can get your hands on it, honestly, this is a fine place to start. You could probably watch Frontier or Delta and enjoy them, but the big reveals at the end might not mean anything to you, other than "something huge is going on here."</p><p style="text-align: left;">The other Macross with a real US license (lapsed or not) is Macross Plus (1994-95). If you don't have the stamina or level of interest to watch a full 36-ep series, this OVA series (or its movie compilation) is a good place to start. The music is by Yoko Kanno, and Shinichiro Watanabe (of Cowboy Bebop) directed. The easiest summary is that it's Top Gun with transforming fighter jets and a holographic AI idol singer named Sharon Apple. It had a US release by Manga Entertainment in 1999, which may or may not still be in print.</p><p style="text-align: left;">There are a few other entries in the franchise, which I'll touch on here, but all the information is available on Wikipedia.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Macross 7 (1994-95; 49 episodes) is one of those shows that people love or hate. It starts off really rough (like season 1 of Babylon 5 rough), and it's a lot more goofy than the rest. The action is on the 7th Macross fleet in the year 2040. There's a band called Fire Bomber, and for some reason, their music creates some sort of harmonic resonance that makes the enemies attacking them stop attacking. The lead singer and guitarist is Nekki Basara, and he doesn't want to fight. But to get their music to the enemy ships, Fire Bomber has to go out in transforming fighter jets. Basara pilots his with a guitar, and he doesn't fire ammo; he launches speaker pods, which take his song directly to the enemy pilots.</p><p style="text-align: left;">You really shouldn't think about it too hard. (Well, you shouldn't think about any of this too hard.) I like it because it's goofy and knows it, and I like Fire Bomber's music.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Macross Zero (2002) goes here; it's an origin story that only makes sense once you've seen Frontier and Delta.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Next up is Macross Frontier (2008, 25 episodes), set in 2059. The Macross fleets are expanding across space, and pop idol Sheryl Nome visits the Frontier. Ranka Lee is a contestant in an idol contest, and she and Sheryl are linked in a way that neither suspects. The attacking enemy this time is the Vajra, and Ranka and Sheryl sing at them to make them go away.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Delta (2016, 26 episodes) is set in 2067. There is a mysterious plague on some colony worlds that sends people berserk. But an idol group's music can calm them. There are mysterious ace pilots from another part of the galaxy who want to overthrow the government of UN Spacy.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Naturally, the creators want the new series to be attractive to new fans who weren't alive when SDF or Plus or 7 came out, so the stories are fairly well self-contained, except for a lot of callbacks to earlier series (pineapple fucking salad). In Frontier, Ozma Lee is a Fire Bomber fan. The bassist of Fire Bomber is the daughter of 2 ace pilots from the original series. One of the members of Delta squadron is a granddaughter of the ace pilots. And a lot of things make more sense if you've seen everything up to that point. There's an overarching plot for all of it.</p><p style="text-align: left;">What should you expect from a Macross show?</p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>transforming fighter jets</li><li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxnC6jkJyEM" target="_blank">cool dogfights</a> with the <a href="https://macross.fandom.com/wiki/Itano_Circus" target="_blank">Itano Circus</a></li><li>pop music that makes the enemies stop fighting</li><li>a love triangle (usually between 2 women and a man but sometimes 2 men and a woman (Plus, 7 sort of)) that involves at least one idol singer and one ace pilot. I don't think they're ever resolved, and one of them you could resolve into an OT3 without breaking canon.</li><li>it's really cool when the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG5HDoy7RTI" target="_blank">ENTIRE DANG SPACESHIP</a> transforms (because of course it can)</li></ul><div>Next time: Gundam (in what may be a multi-part series; I have a lot of opinions.)</div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-23099900953290867722021-04-20T18:26:00.004+02:002021-04-20T18:26:26.422+02:00Apropos of a conversation on twitter...<p>I made a spreadsheet with the list of anime I need to watch or rewatch, and it's a lot.</p><p><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ER8nu1U3E8Ms1zA79RhaSBMgl6YbXIEt9MTeOTta8jQ/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Take a look</a> for yourselves, and talk to me about what's on your list!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-22511291919636161802021-04-08T23:36:00.001+02:002021-04-08T23:36:10.657+02:00Upcoming events<p>Just about the only good thing to come out of this pandemic is a whole lot of online conventions. I've been able to attend more cons than usual, since there's no travel expenses and all that.</p><p>Next weekend, April 16-18, I'm going to be at <a href="https://flights-of-foundry.org/" target="_blank">Flights of Foundry</a>, where I'll be moderating a panel on <a href="https://sched.co/iPDi" target="_blank">Multi-Lingual Creativity</a>, with panelists Aliette de Bodard, Anna Martino, Nina Niskanen, and Sofia Rhei. Registration is free/donation accepted, and there's a lot of great programming lined up. This is their second year, and last year's con was very well run, so I'm expecting good things. I hope to see you there!</p><p>Then the next 4 days, I'm going to be at the LingComm conference, which has a pretty good <a href="https://lingcomm.org/conference/schedule/" target="_blank">schedule</a> lined up. I really missed academic conferences last year (my university was hosting the Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference in the beginning of April, and that obviously did not happen), so I'm looking forward to learning a lot at this one! I'm going to have a poster in the first poster session, and I'm on the discussion panel "finding your niche."</p><p>I've just made a new post on my Patreon, where I link to a <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/49799733" target="_blank">video</a> about the word "burn." I've also added some new tiers to the Patreon, so check those out, too!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-22405599704213444022020-10-14T01:29:00.000+02:002020-10-14T01:29:00.905+02:00Book review/recommendation: The Four Profound Weaves<p>I bought an e-copy of RB Lemberg's <i>The Four Profound Weaves</i>, and I had a chance to read it last night. It's about an old man and an old woman who go on a journey - a quest, even - to find the old woman's aunt, from whom the old man wants to receive a name and the old woman wants to learn the final Profound Weave: to weave a cloth from death.</p><p>It's part of their Birdverse series, which includes these three stories.</p><p><a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/geometries-of-belonging/">Geometries of Belonging</a></p><p><a href="http://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-desert-glassmaker-and-the-jeweler-of-berevyar/">The Desert Glassmaker and the Jeweler of Berevyar</a></p><p><a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/grandmother-nai-leylits-cloth-of-winds/">Grandmother nai-Leylit's Cloth of Winds</a></p><p>And it is related to the third of these. The nameless old man was a protagonist there.</p><p>This story/book is about so much more than the plot. It is, at its root, a profoundly trans and queer story. Both protagonists are trans (spoiler, I guess?), and the nameless man spends time thinking about what it means to be a man and his people's traditions of masculinity and femininity. Among the nameless man's home culture, it is the norm for groups of women (3 seems common, but I don't know if that's a requirement) to form an oreg, a group of lovers who go on trading journeys together. Men remain inside a separate, locked quarter, where they are scholars and artificers.</p><p>It's sad, in many ways, and angry, but also incredibly hopeful. The final chapter hit me right in the feels, in a very similar way that <i>The Song of Achilles</i> did: that queer place, where there is hope and anger and sadness, lost family and found.</p><p>Lemberg's writing style is poetic without being impenetrably dense, and it reminds me of Ursula Le Guin's prose at its finest. (I'm sure RB would be pleased with that comparison! I know that "Stone Telling" is meaningful to them.)</p><p>I highly recommend this book. You can find it at all the usual suspects.</p><p><a href="https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-four-profound-weaves">kobo</a></p><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Four-Profound-Weaves-Birdverse-Book-ebook/dp/B082BC4C5H/">bezosland</a></p><p><a href="https://bookshop.org/books/the-four-profound-weaves/9781616963347">bookshop.org</a> </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-9310077494822519482020-06-09T16:30:00.006+02:002020-10-14T01:22:06.499+02:00Practical linguistics for writersI'm launching a Patreon today that combines my talents: writing and linguistics. I'm going to be writing a book about the basics of linguistics that are useful for writers, especially of speculative fiction - phonetics, morphology - and how to use these things for good in your writing. How the shape of your aliens' vocal tract affects which phonemes they can produce. How to make a logical set of sounds in your secondary world, if you don't want to just use English or faux French.<div><br /></div><div>Please share with your friends and colleagues! <a href="https://www.patreon.com/practical_linguistics" target="_blank">Practical Linguistics for Writers</a></div><div><br /></div><div>This was supposed to automatically publish in June, but it didn't. WTF. So here it is, 4 months delayed.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-36030101128796755072019-12-15T23:36:00.000+01:002019-12-15T23:36:03.524+01:00Award eligibility postThe monthly column I've been writing at tor.com since June is, I believe, eligible for the Best Related Work Hugo award. If you haven't read any of them, <a href="https://www.tor.com/tag/sff-linguistics/" target="_blank">here</a> is the archive.<br />
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I have no fiction published this year.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-80968793752752928882019-02-25T15:00:00.000+01:002019-02-25T15:00:03.611+01:00*dusts off blog*Has it really been 2.5 years since I last updated? The academic life has been pretty overwhelming, especially because I decided I wanted to get 2 MAs in 3 years, which resulted in my taking 4 graduate level classes a semester for a year while teaching. Needless to say, I haven't had much in the way of time to write since I started school.<br />
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My short story "Debridement" was finally published around September 2018 - that's the one my last post was about. It's in the anthology <a href="https://www.lethepressbooks.com/store/p453/Survivor.html#/" target="_blank">Survivor</a>, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj and JJ Pionke. That was my VP17 application piece, and it finally found a home.<br />
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Since I last updated, I've actually been to Dresden and seen the opera house - it's definitely quite the piece of architecture. When I eventually have time again, I should update my "where to go in Germany" stuff, since I can add a handful of places now.<br />
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I'm in my last semester of grad school (FINALLY) and writing my MA thesis on a very specific group of verbs in German. Once it's finished and approved and all that, I'll work on a summary for non-linguists and share it with the like 2 people reading this (ha). As long as that doesn't violate some sort of academic publishing thing, I guess. I'll ask my advisor.<br />
<br />
Anyway, anyone still here? Hi.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-76629919987047863752016-12-09T20:54:00.002+01:002016-12-09T20:54:55.708+01:00Story sale!My short story "Debridement" will be published in the anthology <i>Survivor</i>, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj and J.J. Pionke.<br />
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It'll be out around September 2017, I'm told. You can preorder <a href="http://www.lethepressbooks.com/store/p453/Survivor.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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"Debridement" was my Viable Paradise application piece, and I'm thrilled it's finally found a home. It's a magical realism-ish story about a WW1 surgeon in Dresden, with a hell of an opening line. I hope you love it as much as I do.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-92063411589603891372016-04-22T22:26:00.000+02:002016-04-22T22:26:11.519+02:00Now it can be told!I've been accepted to the German Studies MA program at the University of Georgia for this fall! I'll be focusing on the linguistic aspects of the language (language change and variation).<br />
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I'm not going to get to very many (any?) cons over the next couple years, because of classes and all, but I currently intend to get the new novel WIP outlined before the semester starts and take a couple hours every weekend or something and work on a draft.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-4053107050882800512015-12-30T20:02:00.000+01:002015-12-30T20:02:40.501+01:002015 in review2015 hasn't been terribly eventful.<br />
<br />
I ran another Shatterdome Atlanta, which happened and people had fun. I went to my brother-in-law's wedding on Orcas Island, which took literally all day to get to from here (we had a 7 am flight and landed in Seattle at 1:30 pm and rented a car and drove 2 hours to the ferry, waited another hour + for the boat, then took the half-hour ferry to the island, and then had to drive to the other side of the island to the location, so we arrived around 9:30 pm, which felt like midnight to us, after a really long day.)<br />
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I started taking Russian at UNC. It's an interesting language, with a few bits of grammatical WTFery for speakers of Germanic languages (which includes English). A friend said I shouldn't learn it because it's too hard, but I said "pfff" and am doing it anyway. I got an A in 101, and I expect to get one in 102 as well. Going to the class eats 10-12 hours a week, plus another 4-5 of homework. I live half an hour from campus, but I use free parking that's not exactly close to campus, so I take a bus from there.<br />
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As to the goals I mentioned in <a href="http://obligatedtoexaggerate.blogspot.com/2014/12/2014-in-review.html" target="_blank">last year's review</a>... I accomplished two and a half. I ran a 5k (36:15), successfully chaired a convention, and made a small dent in my reading backlog. I have not sold a story (not for lack of trying...37 submissions, 37 rejections), and the novel is not in anything resembling a shoppable state (which is entirely my fault; I started learning Russian, which eats up a lot of time.) I'm working on it over winter break, but I still don't think I'll get it ready before classes start again.<br />
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I taught <i>some</i> German this year; after May, there was a lot of summer travel, so my whole 3 students and I said we'd reconvene toward fall. And there wasn't enough interest to make a class, so no class.<br />
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I read more. I even read books that were published this year! Naomi Novik's Uprooted, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Mercy, and Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown. I liked the first one a lot, the second one a lot, and the third one OK.<br />
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For 2016, I'm going to keep trying to sell these stories, keep finishing this damned novel, and start figuring out the next one.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-54690553135459712112015-07-14T21:09:00.000+02:002015-07-14T21:09:14.727+02:00Whirlwind summerI've been busy this summer. I spent 4 days in Atlanta for Shatterdome Atlanta 2 (jaeger boogaloo), was home for two days, then flew out to Seattle for my brother-in-law's wedding on Orcas Island, whence his wife hails, to be gone for five days. So we were gone nine of eleven days.<br />
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The con was fun, and the wedding was in a lovely location.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZhKjxxQxUehtPme5xNiB7laHoqoMGgTO94qfo1La_9WukQh_GBn4Gkam8vF5-V2ct57HOnhhaLFRuCi5xbX2zmgnOPgU72pY6oT-OqK_SryDucZErvCuIzGb-ZrQb9UBoM6RUSIxmrte/s1600/IMAG2352.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sunset over Doe Bay" border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZhKjxxQxUehtPme5xNiB7laHoqoMGgTO94qfo1La_9WukQh_GBn4Gkam8vF5-V2ct57HOnhhaLFRuCi5xbX2zmgnOPgU72pY6oT-OqK_SryDucZErvCuIzGb-ZrQb9UBoM6RUSIxmrte/s320/IMAG2352.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
After that, I spent a blissful two weeks without any travel at all, doing my usual things, like sleeping and running and going to trivia. Then it was off to Boston for Readercon.<br />
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I had a lovely time at Readercon, seeing my VP17 folks and people from the internet and meeting new people. I didn't get enough sleep, but I never do at cons. I liked having conversations about books and writing and reading and all that stuff, which I don't generally get to do with my local friend group.<br />
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I bought three books at the con: <i>Hild</i> (I'm catching up on books I needed to read two years ago that have sequels in progress), <i>My Real Children</i> (on the recommendation of several friends), and <i>The Goblin Emperor</i> (so I can have it forever and also get Ben to read it.)<br />
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I went to several panels, some of which I even managed to take notes on. I tend to find that I plan to go to a bunch of panels, then I get waylaid by excellent conversation in the hallway or consuite or bar. Either way, I have fun, eh?<br />
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Here are links to the Evernote notes I made of the panels I went to. Hopefully they work...<br />
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<a href="https://www.evernote.com/l/AOfY4uGhSY9Hm67aNmFalmCokNjua3v-vYU" target="_blank">Drift-compatible Characters in SFF</a><br />
<a href="https://www.evernote.com/l/AOelLus2_9hCxbzgICEeU69q2i533NWX24g" target="_blank">Writing in the anthropocene</a><br />
<a href="https://www.evernote.com/l/AOeoECVF0mZDPJdnbMNUWs5FHsMtmNnt5Ak" target="_blank">Language and Linguistics in SFF: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly</a><br />
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They are very note-y, as I was typing them with my thumbs on a tablet, and also trying to pay attention to the speakers. The anthropocene panel had mic issues, so I may not have heard everything properly.<br />
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Anyway! I may be able to make it to ReaderCon next year, or I may try to go to 4th Street instead. (I can't afford both.) It depends on a lot of things, like how my summer travel plans shake out and when SATL 3 happens. That kind of thing.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-37002531966633425172015-03-18T18:23:00.000+01:002015-03-18T18:23:26.495+01:00Time marches on(it's a pun. laugh.)<br />
<br />
Right, then. I have the physical certificate for the teaching course in hand, so I am all official on this thing. Woot! I'm teaching my third class at the language school, and it seems to be going well.<br />
<br />
My sister had a baby about a month ago, so I have a niece. I crocheted a blanket for her, and it worked out well. My sister texted me a picture of the baby on the blanket.<br />
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I have a short story that I'm thinking of self-publishing. I can export it as an epub in five minutes with Scrivener, but I need a cover and all that. I'm also thinking of making some copies at kinkos and selling a print version at cons I go to. It's 5000 words, so it would be folded letter-size.<br />
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But I'll deal with that later. Right now I'm supposed to be finishing the revisions on this novel (the one that expands "Something There Is"). My original goal was this Friday, but I have 10 chapters left, and that's looking highly unlikely. Next Friday, then. And then it's off to beta readers. Yay.<br />
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Shatterdome Atlanta 2: Jaeger Boogaloo will be happening in three months (oh god).<br />
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After I finish novel revisions, I'm working on a secret project (secret because I don't want to talk about it too publicly in case nothing comes of it; a lot of you probably already know what I'm talking about anyway) and con planning, and when I have spare brain cycles, figuring out what the next novel I'm writing is about AND working on the synopsis & query letter and researching agents for the current one.<br />
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But that's a ways off yet, so I'm not thinking about it too hard at the moment.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-62711249054674311252014-12-31T21:19:00.000+01:002014-12-31T21:19:08.826+01:002014 in reviewIt's been quite a year, and not even for writing!<br />
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In February, I went to Mannheim, Germany, for a little over 2 weeks for a practicum in my German-teaching-certificate program, then I visited a friend in Stuttgart, and we went to see Hertha play VfB (and win).<br />
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March saw my first personal rejection for a story. April saw two sick cats, one of whom we lost in August.<br />
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In May, I successfully chaired a <a href="http://shatterdomeatl.org/" target="_blank">convention</a>, and we're doing it again in 2015, this time with more staff huzzah.<br />
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I spent the last two weeks-ish of June in Berlin, then watched Germany win the World Cup. After that, it was building armor for DragonCon and having a cat die.<br />
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I started teaching German at a local language school in mid-September, and I'm cramming to finish the last module I need to get my certificate by Feb 1. (I have until April 1.)<br />
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In November I went to World Fantasy Con, met a lot of new people, and saw a bunch of my VP17 classmates. I won NaNoWriMo with a rewrite of my current novel (which I intend to finish a draft I can give to people to read by March 1).<br />
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This month involved a lot of baking, planning my next German class (German 2, starting next Tuesday), and visiting my family in Maryland. And crocheting a blanket for my sister's baby, which I finished just in time for her shower.<br />
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I didn't read nearly as much fiction as I wanted to, partly because I was either planning a convention, building armor, or reading about the theory of foreign language instruction in German.<br />
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For 2015, I want to sell a short story (at least one, preferably more than one; I only have 3 at the moment), get the novel to a state where I can shop it to agents, teach, successfully chair another convention, and run a 5k. I want to make a dent in my to-read backlog (much of which is electronic, thankfully).<br />
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I wish you all a happy new year and einen guten Rutsch.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-60044755207969915832014-12-15T15:00:00.000+01:002014-12-15T15:00:02.672+01:00NaNoWriMo follow-upSince I blogged that I was going to revise my novel during the November NaNo period, I figure I should say something about how it went.<br />
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I got 50,000 words (51,600 or something, actually). I hit the target before Thanksgiving, which was good, because I had company that whole weekend and had minimal time to write. Some may call it cheating a bit, because I was revising; however, I had to rewrite a LOT of scenes, and I threw out a lot of what I had and basically changed the last half of it entirely. So only kind of like cheating.<br />
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It was very difficult, and I had to skip a lot of things I usually do (or needed to do, like make lesson plans). I have not yet finished it; I've had a hard time getting momentum to get back into it. I wrote the last scene, yes, but there are a lot of things I need to go back and fill in (interludes of fake documentation, letters, that sort of thing; a lot of description and emotions, especially in the second half/final third), which I will likely do in January, once it's had a little time to sit, and when I've done a bit more research into official documentation.<br />
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The next couple weeks I'm devoting to finishing the final module of my teaching-German course, and I'll take the last exam the first two weeks(ish) of January (the school is closed from 12/24-1/6). Assuming I pass, I'll get a nice shiny certificate by spring. Hooray. I also need to make lesson plans and find resource materials for my German 2 class starting in a few weeks. (I need to have enough ready so I don't have to do it while spending 2 hours a day on an exam.)<br />
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Once I get back to making a Finished First Draft of the novel, I probably won't dive in as much as I did during NaNo. I would like to get it to a state where I can send it to beta readers by February 15, but that's a target, and we'll see how it goes. I have to give myself a deadline, because otherwise I'll put it off indefinitely.<br />
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So that's the state of The Novel (which needs a title, and I am rubbish at titles, so lord knows what it'll ever end up being called). I have a couple short pieces out on submission at the moment, and a piece of experimental flash I want to revise before sending back out. If I make a sale, I promise I'll tell you all here ;)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5767882372399480621.post-78733454443396975972014-12-08T15:00:00.000+01:002014-12-08T15:00:03.470+01:00"There has to be a word for that in German."There's a meme that German has a word for everything, and I'm often asked what the German word for some complicated phrase is.<br />
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My answer is usually, "There isn't one, but I can make one up for you." (Occasionally there actually <b>is</b> a word for that, like Kummerspeck, weight gained from emotional overeating (literally "grief bacon"), but not most of the time.)<br />
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It's very true that German has a lot of long compound words, but the vast majority of them (especially the 5- and 6-word conglomerations) won't be in the dictionary. Yes, Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän is a word, and it has a Wikipedia entry that is largely composed of its usage in machine translation problems and examples of artificial and fictive words composed from it. (I am still of the opinion that it should be Schiffahrt, the Rechtschreibreform be damned. Three f's in a row look ridiculous.)<br />
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The German language has a very useful and convenient property that allows for the building of compound (or composite) words, known in German as Komposita. All you need is a stem noun and another noun, an adjective or adverb, or sometimes a verb, which you glom onto the front of the stem noun (sometimes with modifications). Each subsequent addition makes the thing more specific.<br />
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Let's use Kapitän as a first example, since we've got the lovely Komposita up there. You have a Kapitän--a captain. You can have a Mannschaftskapitän (a team captain; two nouns) or a Schiffskapitän (a ship captain). Bastian Schweinsteiger is currently the Nationalmannschaftskapitän (national team captain; adjective and two nouns, and the adjective makes the first noun more specific).<br />
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Another example: Teller (plate). You can have a Gemüseteller on a menu, and it will be a plate of vegetables. Or you can buy a very nice Porzellanteller, which is a plate made of porcelain. You don't always just smush words together. You wouldn't have a Grünporzellanteller, but you would have a grünen Porzellanteller, if it's green.<br />
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It is very convenient to make compound words in German where we would have two words or sometimes a phrase in English. But it's a myth that words for every esoteric concept exist in German. You won't find it in a dictionary, but if you're nice, maybe a German speaker will make one up for you.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2