Difference between revisions of "Backup:Imzy"

Revision as of 18:08, 9 July 2017

Comments

Conlang

How Do You Talk About Beverage of Choice

I shamelessly borrowed the prompt from meme, so I'm gonna fish out my answer from there for the language I did this exercise on.

In Tatan:

Where "blooded" means member of their clans and "unblooded" means not a member of their clans.

1. Would you like some tea?
2. (polite, unblooded)
   1. M'lakega patai aij schashat?
3. A little, yes.
   1. Schasheda.
4. A full cup, please!
   1. Schasheta.
5. (unmarked formality, unblooded)
   1. M'lakega patai atschash?
6. (informal, blooded)
   1. Tai m'lakega aischash?
7. Yes. (would I?)
   1. Jeh.

Jeh is a bit of an odd construction. They call it an intensifier and it can be translated, "You think," "Would I!", etc. sarcastically, enthusiastically, or angrily depending on context. This language has no words that literally mean yes or no.

"How would you answer that you don't want tea? Politely."

Of course, I left my numbers at home, but basically, zero tea, maybe with a thanks on the end.

Kanrashash is some tea (lit. four tea), and I can't remember zero, but it's formed the same way, so Ecanraschash, if that's actually zero instead of one. No, danre is one, so ecanre must be zero. I'll go with:

Ecanraschash. Narega kai.

(zero - tea). (make gratitude) (I).

No tea, thank you.

Lexember 01

My word for the day is

ruk|lo • no blood, i.e. no violent action that would draw blood or cause death a verbal noun construction, from ak|lo, to bleed

Language: Akachenti

Lexember 02

/a:gi/ • parent or aunt/uncle, whether related biologically or simply acting in that relationship a noun of direct address with undecided orthography for the long vowel

Language: Akachenti

Characters

Skylight

1. Comment 1
   1. Too many things! Okay, the one that keeps happening when I'm supposed to be working on other things is about a superhuman post-military operative and... I'm all over her timeline, what am I saying? It's a bit literary and character-oriented, but she's also embroiled in a mess of active stuff so I might manage a plot trying to tell her story of figuring out how she fits into a world after where she came from.
   2. Skylight is the character and is fascinating to me, which is how I got into the mess of writing this unnecessary story instead of something else already started in the world. (Okay, so the world is bigger than the project and I've been embroiled in it for years now.) I like her because she's stoic but not actually that quiet and she's a total goner on a quiet guy who's sentimental and she loves it. She's dominant and "punches holes in the world" and doesn't like to touch people because she could make them vanish permanently if she's not careful and works too hard and is harsh and ruthless and not all that merciful, but she's loyal, loyal, loyal and she cares more than she knows how to let on.
   3. One cool thing... The things I find cool aren't usually what anyone else does. I think the coolest thing in this world, Kingdoms and Thorn, is probably the teams and how they operate. They're half family, half professional and they have their own culture and subcultures that I can't seem to get enough of exploring. It's kind of a half and half world, because I started it set in the real world and decided that was a powderkeg and demanded too much research, so I made it its own world, and the worldbuilding after that decision has all these new cultures and languages interacting, but the worldbuilding before is more like ours with higher tech. The way the teams are insular and use foreign languages as private languages between themselves and fit into multiple cultures but have their own and are loyal to each other more than to anyone else, including their birth families once they meet them again is just super fun to work with and create.
   4. The first idea is both preserved and moved past because basically, I split it. The original idea was twelve kids get genetically modified by the military, break out, and start their own culture/society in a jungle. Came a long way from there. The culture that developed out of that initial story (when I was what? eight years old ish) became a secondary world SFF, Vardin. The variation where they stayed military until they were teenagers and eventually destroyed the military program that had made them grew into Kingdoms and Thorn and changed a whole ton of a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. I originally wasn't going to write both worlds, just stick with Vardin so there wouldn't be duplication of characters/powers, but then someone prompted a tiny ficlet and went, OMG, I love it, and next thing I know I've written more for Kingdoms and Thorn than anything else ever.
2. Comment 2
   1. I've been pondering this since it popped up as I was heading into bed. I don't think in terms of conflict, being rather fond of characters as people with very complex lives and relationships, and not being much of a plotter. By which I mean, I generally commit fic with the intention of reaching a particular emotional moment and commit short stories by deciding the beginning and ending emotional states of the characters. Which is story and a plot by some definitions, but definitely is interesting when thinking of central or external conflicts.
   2. Which is to say, Skylight has struggles, plenty of them, but she's largely resigned to or at peace with herself and who she is, so I'm not sure if she's at conflict with herself, but I don't know. I haven't used that term in so long, I'm not sure I'm defining it right.
   3. Her primary struggles are with fitting and belonging I think. In specific, the opening of her story always comes to me as the moment Math told her she punched holes in the world and that was her special ability. Realizing that she was that dangerous was something she did not really make peace with. Part of her training so hard and so long and sometimes almost too much is an attempt to master herself to the level that she won't hurt the people she loves.
   4. Her leader made her practice her ability on people and had to pull rank to do it. That had a pretty dramatic effect on Skylight in that her belonging to Wolf and her team is associated with her choice to follow Wolf. Because she belongs there, she adheres to their rank and obeys Wolf. At the same time, I'm not sure how conscious it is that obedience equals belonging, more a case of she is absolutely loyal to her team and will not even allow Wolf to push aside rank in favor of the personal when it comes to making big decisions. Wolf's decisions go. That's how Skylight lives.
   5. Then her roommate, Arc, is one of the very few team operatives who remembers her family. Being able to remember put it more strongly in Skylight that she wanted to know her own family. Skylight was one of the majority though, in that she does not remember and also that she was an orphan in the first place. When she finds out later, after the Rebellion, that she was midadoption process when she was taken and does have family, even if surrogate, she wants very strongly to find her place with them. Balancing her closeness with her team and her closeness with her family though is sometimes difficult, and I'd say her biggest struggle is that, figuring out how to have both and find a life that works for her in keeping both and near her if possible.
   6. She constantly worries at the front of her relationship with Math if she's giving enough to it or expressing care/love enough since she's stoic, harsh, merciless, ruthless, and works waaaaaaay too long and hard and has insomnia so does not even choose to share rooms with him even after she marries him. She spends time in his room and has him in hers enough, but she doesn't usually sleep with him, and in their team work, she outranks him and keeps the personal personal and the professional professional.
   7. So in short, she struggles with balance and is aware of her struggle with it. And it shows up strongest in wanting her relationships to be strong and to care for people, but not knowing how to show it. They are pretty strong though anyway, but they probably wouldn't be if the people she cares about weren't as understanding in general or of her in particular. She had to work very hard to earn a relationship with any but two members of her adopted family because she's stoic, she's reserved, and she doesn't really know how to, or even think to try to, make people trust her.
   8. That's a pretty long answer, and I'm not 100% sure if I hit what you were really asking, but I hope I came close.
3. Comment 3
   1. Immediately following the Rebellion, she definitely "retires", but she misses her team and ends up rejoining Wolf in quite a bit of active duty after she'd basically gone active on her own on behalf of her adopted mother (long story), but then comes back to "retired" for a while afterward. I think she'll always been in and out as long as there are people who can call her in when they need her. She's not the kind of person to stay inactive and when she's out, she's basically training other specials in how to control/use their abilities.
4. Comment 4
   1. I don't even know. The problem with Skylight is I'm all over her timeline. I've seen her as student, as mentor, as leader, as follower, as lover, as killer, as friend, as sister, as enemy, as daughter. Not mother. She doesn't want kids and Math agrees with her (they don't want to pass on their genes, but Skylight admits she doesn't really know that'd she want them even if it weren't an issue). I don't know how to fit all the pieces together yet into her story, but she's a team person. I have characters that operate on their own but she doesn't and doesn't care to.

Posts

Fic

Prompt 1. Sweet

Original, superhumans, not sure how well it even stands alone

Math was staring at her oddly.

Skylight cocked her head slightly in question.

"That was sweet of you," he said slowly, glancing back toward the girl she'd just been working with. "You were gentle with her. A student?"

"Yes." Skylight glanced back as well. "She's not like us. She doesn't know what she's doing or even if she wants to, but she knows she has to learn."

Another young girl saddled with a power she'd never asked for and the ability to hurt the ones she loved without trying.

"She's just a child."

Math and Skylight, they were never children.

Prompt 6. Fall

Fandom: Legend of Korra Pairing: Kuvira/Bataar Jr.

When people talked about falling in love, he was pretty sure they didn't mean like this.

Bataar Jr. had been up in the tree for good and legitimate reasons, the scouting of locations for wires Bataar Sr. wanted laid down, when he caught sight of the new girl. She was wearing new clean clothes, her hair in a long braid, and she was smiling.

Make that smirking at him where he'd literally fallen at her feet.

"Kuvira." He scrambled to his feet and brushed himself off.

"Hello, Bataar."

He blinked at her, struck that she knew his actual name. "Hi."