Perennial fangirl. Over thirty-five. She/her. USian. Living somewhere with snow in winter. I tag the most common triggers and content, but if we're mutuals and you need something specific tagged, just let me know! Fundraiser pleas in my Ask box from strangers will be assumed to be from bots and reported as such. ...
Hey any actual humans thinking of sending me fundraising Asks: If we have not interacted directly previously and you send me a Tumblr Ask that’s a fundraiser plea, I will assume you are a bot run by a scammer. I will block and report your Tumblr account, and, if I have the energy, I will also report your GoFundMe or whatever on that platform as well.
but have you ever even heard of the fynbos biome ?!!?!?!?!
a biome so unique in south africa that it’s earned an entirely new biome classification for itself. so many plants are endemic to this area, and ofc it’s under threat of extinction.
It’s a wonderful place! I had the privilege of visiting the fynbos last year and it was as amazing as these photos show and more!
As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you’re constantly aware that you’re reading a “translation,” both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don’t hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don’t translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where “citizen,” “civilized,” and “Radchaai person” aren’t all the same word) and noting people’s registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don’t scan or rhyme–even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same “literal translation” style as everything else–because we aren’t hearing the actual words, we’re hearing Breq’s understanding of what they mean. I think it’s a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.
i had no idea there were english-language songs in these books! so i looked it up and found this interview with Ann Leckie:
[T]here are three real-life songs in Ancillary Justice. Two of them are (shockingly enough) shape note songs—“Clamanda” (Sacred Harp 42) and “Bunker Hill” (Missouri Harmony 19). They’re songs that, for one reason or another, I connect with these characters and events.
The third is older than these two by a couple of centuries, but it shares their military theme. It’s “L’homme Armé,” and it seems like every late fifteenth-century composer and their pet monkey wrote a mass based on it. I exaggerate—I don’t think we have that many surviving Missas L’homme Armé by pet monkeys. But it was a popular song in its day.
i’m sure someone somewhere has already matched these songs with lyrics in Ancillary Justice, but a cursory search wasn’t bringing it up, so i’m gonna do it here for my own reference. the song Breq sings in chapter 16 to calm herself right before leaving Justice of Toren forever
Oh, have you gone to the battlefield Armored and well armed? And shall dreadful events Force you to drop your weapons?
Oh! Have you ventured to the field, Well armed with helmet, sword, and shield! And shall the world, with dread alarms, Compel you now to ground your arms?
while the song sung by the Valskaayan rebels that Breq recalls in chapter 14
Death will overtake us In whatever manner already fated Everyone falls to it And so long as I’m ready I don’t fear it No matter what form it takes.
Death will invade us by the means appointed, And we must all bow to the King of Terrors; Nor am I anxious, if I am preparéd, What shape he comes in.
in chapter 21, Justice of Toren’s sleeper agent override is a Valskaayan song:
You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid. All around the cry goes out, put on armor made of iron. The person, the person, the person with weapons. You should be afraid of the person with weapons. You should be afraid.
which corresponds to “L'Homme Armé” (The Armed Man), written in Middle French:
L'homme armé doibt on doubter. On a fait partout crier Que chascun se viegne armer D'un haubregon de fer. L'homme armé doibt on doubter.
of course, Breq’s translation of “homme” is “person” instead of “man”. it would be interesting to see how that song was rendered in the French translation of Ancillary Justice.
Anything the media says that you disagree with is an obvious conspiracy, and anything they say that you agree with is clearly factual.
/pic id: bluesky post from Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher
“If you want to believe it, check it twice ::clap clap:: "If you want to believe it, check it twice ::clap clap:: Doesn’t matter if it’s awful Doesn’t matter if it’s nice "If you want to believe it, check it twice ::clap clap::” appended to the post from High Priestess, Low Patience user Cheriepriest.com
If the rage-bait works too well it might be fake ::clap clap:: If the rage-bait works too well it might be fake ::clap clap:: Look we’ve all been fooled before when a deep-fake makes us sore but kindly doublecheck your source, it might be fake ::clap clap::
“Dogs don’t know what they look like. Dogs don’t even know what size they are. No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused — “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo… Cats know exactly where they begin and end. When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, and pause, leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. They know you have to keep holding the door open. That is why their tail is there. It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship. Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters. When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish, and it may work, because the dog gets confused again — “I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me?” … A lot of us humans are like dogs: we really don’t know what size we are, how we’re shaped, what we look like. The most extreme example of this ignorance must be the people who design the seats on airplanes. At the other extreme, the people who have the most accurate, vivid sense of their own appearance may be dancers. What dancers look like is, after all, what they do.”
— Ursula Le Guin, in The Wave in the Mind (via fortooate)
This paragraph went in so many different directions before it ended. What the fuck Ursula
ALT
