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Yes, articles are very simple in English. But most western languages have gender and plural variations. But for me, for some reason Spanish/Italian are much easier to get the article correctly since with a few exceptions you ask does it end with an “a” or an “o”
French screws it up, but then French spelling is a magical art as far as I am concerned.German seems easier than French but harder than Spanish/Italian. The compounding, which I do like, seems to confuse the issue, but I believe you always use the article of the thing being described, the second word.
What I really wish English had was a neutral pronoun, like hir in Science Fiction English. Although I’ve read some talk about more people now using a singular form of their to do this. Which seems like a bad idea since now you are mixing singular and plural.
Thanks
Yes, going to have to have a clear reader guide/timeline chart for people so that they know what to read when.
Ideally, I’d release ITW before DoA; that is, in theory, the plan since it is supposed to be about half the length but I have been having a good sprint with DoA since the start of the year so…we’ll see.
They are extremely critical for late comers, particularly when the books or series are published in different order.
E.g. first trilogy takes place late in time, then next trilogy takes before first trilogy, and various independent pop up. You need to know what order to read them in. It’s often not publication order, and sometimes, not even chronological. So in that case you need a chronological order and a read order.
For example, Star Wars.
Chronologically:
Episode I, II,III,IV,V,VI,VII,VIII,IX
Historically:
Episode IV,V,VI,I,II,III,VII,VIII,IX
But the CORRECT order to watch them is:
IV,V,VI,VII,VIII,IX (do not watch I,II,III)
:-”
There are rumors, that a long long time ago, Jar Jar Binks died and ended up sentenced to the Abyss and quickly offended everyone so bad that he was sent to the deepest, darkest pit in Lillith’s dungeon. However, after a few years of attempting to torture him, the dungeon masters and torturers threatened to go on strike and demanded that Lillith reincarnate him and thus kick him out of the Abyss.
Well, the first theory would explain how he ended up in the Abyss.
The second seems more plausible. Actually, in my memories I have edited him out so I don’t remember much of him other than the first few scenes.
In other words for my own personal mental well being, I prefer to think of him as a defect in the film roll that some how didn’t get fixed in editing. You know like a giant annoying speck on the film; although with audio somehow…
Ok
That is seriously convincing, and without reading ahead I came to the same end conclusion/guess after the drunken master arguments.
His physical feats I had always dismissed as simply his rather amphibious like nature.
His further arguments about mind control make sense. To me, part of the “horror” of the first three was how the hell did Jar Jar ever make it to the senate and get so high up in politics. It made no sense.
However, all of this makes a lot of sense. So much sense that I am now seriously tempted to watch the first three again. Something I have never done. I saw them in theaters and apparently, all joking aside, I mind blocked Jar Jar Binks from my memory. Seeing the example scenes, I remember them all–now–but I didn’t before. All of his actions and plot lines were gone from my memory until that post reminded me of them.
It’s like I was under the influence of some dark Sith Master to make me not consider any of this and just dismiss him.
However, the big problem is that while Snoke is hideously scarred, I don’t see how the two could be anatomically the same person. On the other hand, Palpatine didn’t look like his original self by the end of VI.
Cool
Not quite 🙂
Think more like the story told in the Warren Beatty movie Reds. Except rather than a reporter he was a mechanic.
Well that makes an interesting family convergence then.
My paternal grandfather was in his thirties in WWII and didn’t get drafted, my maternal grandfather would have been in his twenties; you know it’s odd now that I think about it, I never heard about his military service. I sort of assumed he would have been in the military, but he would have been a farmer with a wife and kids and might have gotten a dispensation, since I have no idea how the family would have survived.
In the early 40’s my mom, as a little girl, lived on a rented farm with no running water, an outhouse (the owner was just cheap, my grandfather even offered to pay for running water and the guy said no) and wooden stoves for heat. So she tells stories of living that technologically are older than she is.
Exactly.
My partner’s grandfather went over to Russia to help with the glorious revolution (late 191x- early 192x) and basically ended up doing slave laborer, welding in very unsafe conditions leading to health issues later in life. As a US Citizen he was eventually able to get back home, but it took time and was quite hellish.
This is something very often overlooked by the West. We focus much on the horrors of WWII, but not much on Stalinist Russia. One was an invasion that led to horror, the other was a revolution that was usurped and turned inward to horror. People outside of the Soviet Union didn’t want to look inside; although it is not clear what could have been done in that case.
But, overall, not sure any single group of people have had it rougher and more miserable for so continuously long than the Russians. None of the Czars were nice people, serfdom in Russia was far worse than Europe. Touring the palaces of Catherine the Great and hearing those stories one is shocked, but then one goes through the Kremlin and sees and hears of far greater atrocities with the stories of Ivan the Terrible and his legacy.
Yes, when you steal as many references as I do, you have to think about copyright. Thankfully, I can point to GoodReads lists that lists DoA as a parody.
I am not sure how many people in the US got the Inspector 12…that is really old, and in fact, until you mentioned it I had forgot that it was there. One of those things I didn’t catch in multiple editing over the years.
I think it speaks volumes about the American Cultural Assimilation Program (started by the actor Ronald Reagan) where “Hollywood” works relentlessly to swamp all other cultures with a relentless tidal wave of American Cultural Content that so many people in so many different countries get so many of my references. And we get so few of theirs.
There is no such thing as the ACAP, of course, but it certainly seems that way. In fact, if I didn’t live in the US, I’d probably consider the US to be most closely related to the Borg. Hmm…an USBorg. [Requires Cultural Reference]
Better stop now…I see myself falling into one of my “There can be no peace until there is no other.” diatribes about the dangers of losing cultural identity in pursuit of a global hegemony.
Which of course was the point of a lot of great earlier SF. Rather uncanny how predictive such novels were, and how we can literally observe it in real time.
Yes, I can see that happening. It’s all sort of a double edge sword.
To get reach, you have to make things familiar, but too much familiarity breeds contempt in books as well as altruism.
I have seen All About My Mother, and I think all of Almodovar’s work. Or at least a majority.
Those others look quite interesting. Adding them to my watch list. That Bronson one, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of it.
I watch a lot of Amazon and Netflix.
As we’ve discussed, getting Amazon move recommendations is critical because their system sucks. These all look good.
Thx
Yeah that was basically the intention with the title; but as comments revealed I had to get a strong Tom story in as well. But really, the distribution of action from first half to half was due to Tom being in the cave, which was very boring, so the Hilda story (hopefully not boring) took front and center. Otherwise it would probably have been more evenly balanced.
Yes, on the short stories or novellas; the other “series” I am percolating on are:
[list][*]Seas of Astlan: (First book tentatively called: Red Sky at Dawn)
Asmeth, and the guys who stole the book which could then spin off the backstory of the heist. Starts by expanding on deleted book II material. Who knows I suppose I could start going all the way back to the heist but then this book gets to be as long as a DoA volume.[/list]
[list][*]Chronicles of Astlan: (no title for v1 yet)
This is the story of Kristof Torson, Prince of Etonia; the youngest son of the Holy Etonian Emperor who is currently planned to show up in DoA III, or IV at the latest.[/list]
[list][*]Oak Orcs of the Antilles:
This is the story of Trig Bioblast, one of Tom’s shamans who is: Second Shaman of the OCSS SkullCrusher (Oak Clan Starship Slayer)
[/list]
[list][*]Legends of Astlan:
Short story collections and novels of historical events in Astlan/localverse[/list]
[list][*]Tales of the Demon Bard:
This is Antefalken’s story(ies) not sure on overlap between this and Legends of Astlan, I might have Antefalken narrate LoA stories, in which case these merge.
[/list]
Some of these I see as short novels that I write while subject to writer’s block on the main story.Anilord stories would be either of the later ones.
Also as I’ve mentioned, I’d like to see about others writing in the universe either as free fan fiction or as anthologies or “official/canonical” jointly published work.
Hi,
Good points, here’s my thoughts:
#1 New Etonia is governed by the Holy Etonian Emperor and the 4 High Pontificates of each church. Very important to note this isn’t the same as the gods.
One thing we started to see in book ii was that the “Church” and the “Heavens” aren’t always on the same page. In book II, Hilda etal basically doesn’t trust the “Church” to be honest in accounting for the screw up. We will start to see more detail on this in book iii as Stevos and Teragdor have to work with the church offices to setup ground operations to watch for a D’Orc invasion. Basically the heavens and the church are not currently talking to each other.
We also see this in the fact that the Church in its alliance with Oorstemoth has not at all mentioned said operation to the Heavens. You can be absolutely certain that if the Archons knew about the Inferno and a planned church invasion of the Abyss, they would (will) have a freak out.
There are huge Compacts regulating interaction between pantheons and the Abyss. Lillith and friends are in clear/huge violation of this already and Oorstemoth, Church of Tiernon in Astlan are going to also violate it.
But back to the Council. A lot depends on the current members of the Council and the current Emperor in terms of the balance of power. We will start to see some of this in book iii…but I am not sure when/how exactly it comes in.
There is a lot of interesting stuff going on, but including it gets distracting to a lot of people (see too many POV/storylines) I am debating on how to spin off other shorter “sideline” series (E.g. The Seas of Astlan for the Captain Asmeth story cut from book ii). Who knows some of it may not get told until after the fact.
#2 This is actually a good question and stuff that should go into the library. I don’t have all that written yet, nor resolved with it. I’ve been a bit more focused on the Abyss’ creation mythology and the other stories and trying to reconcile all with the “real” story of creation or some version of it that could be consistent across multiple religions.
The idea for me, of course, is to make them semi-consistent with specific pantheon versions focusing on their side of the story. This is something that was always complicated when different societies merged and their pantheons had to be reconciled historically. Unfortunately, when there is NO question that the deities are real people, you can’t just easily write them off and forget the ones that are inconvenient to your narrative.
#3 Actually, civilization in Astlan is evolving very differently than on Earth, but is not static. The last few thousand years have seen a lot of progress thanks to better formalization and dissemination of wizardry across the globe. So from a technology point of view, Astlan is pretty close to on par with Earth, but with Wizardry being the Technology.
What is not so evolved is the democratic distribution of that technology, that is slower, but still better than it used to be. Astlan has very high levels of income and wizardry inequality. Wizardy works very well for the rich and powerful, but the trickle down to the masses is much slower/worse than technology on earth.
This is in large part because of politics and this is because Astlan is still pretty feudal and that is because they have some serious disparities in power between individuals. E.g. Gods, Archdemons, Clerics, Super Wizards, Anilords etc all are hugely powerful, and don’t require an industrial base.
That was the big thing on Earth. In order for the Nation Powers to advance and get more powerful, they had to build powerful industrial bases which in turn led to more wealth distribution and democratization of power.
In Astlan, Gods, Demigods, Elves and Dwarves etc (with their advanced technology) and the Anilords and powerful wizards did not require the same industrial base in order to lay waste to their enemies. There were/are still huge inequalities in power.
It’s these huge inequalities that make Astlan seem backward or more static than Earth. It’s like urban vs rural in much of the second and third worlds of Earth. In large parts of our world, there are very advanced cities with iphones, high speed internet, MTV, but in the countryside you have people using oxen and living by candles or lanterns and cooking on wooden fires.
North Korea is one rather insane example of this but you see it a lot in other regions as well.
The Raunchy Orc is actually north of Lenamare’s former school by about 120 leagues. On the map(s) if you locate Lenamare’s school, due east of Freehold, then go north to Lake Tris (hard to read in the forest). It’s in a village on the south shore of Lake Tris, which is due south of the small city of Tris. Tris is about the same size of Murgatroy. Probably not as rough and tumble though.
There are good sized bands of satyrs and centaurs in that area. (around 50 or 60 members each). The Raunchy Orc is in a village with about 100 people (of various races). In the mountains to the west, there are Orc brigands who are a bit nefarious. They are, however, more scheming and criminal than ‘evil.’
They do do occasional raids (of distant regions) via their dragons. [url=http://www.astlan.net/Home/AstrometryAstrology.aspx]Yes, they ride dragons[/url]. Not sure why I have that on the Astrometry and Astrology page but…
BTW, the giant orc with the young human riding behind him is actually an Orcgre, half orc, half ogre (they have several other names, sometimes called/confused with Urak Hai or Great Orcs).
The inside of the Raunchy Orc, in fact the scene you refer to is seen in the[url=http://www.astlan.net/Home/History.aspx] business of wizards[/url] image.
The reason it cannot be down by Murgatroy is that wizards can’t teleport that far. Murgatroy is thousands of leagues away. This is actually a problem for Damien and Vaselle in getting home from the party. Tom brought everyone hew knew that could summon/contact him from the various worlds to Doom, and now there is only one person left who can summon him (aside from Lenamare of course–who is inside Freehold’s wards, so can’t and won’t). That’s Gastrope’ and he’s in Murgatroy. They can get there, but it’s going to be a long walk home. (just try finding a flying carpet for sale in Murgatroy–not easy).
Hortwell is the bald guy, generally in white robes that shows up in several pictures around the site btw.
I wanted to do more with Hortwell and Zargy in Volume II, but it was already so overstuffed. Believe it or not, I did work to restrict the PoV’s a little bit.
They will show up again, probably in Volume III, but much more later.
T-A-G
Oh wouldn’t that be amusing…and probably very destructive!
It does sound like something he might do.
But as Tom’s bestest friend in the known multiverse, my own advice is to stay away from Lillith until the Lords of Chaos have finished being ticked off at her.
This is one period in time where being persona non-grata in the Courts is a serious benefit!
Yes, I think it would be very pleasantly violent and destructive!
Is that a YouTube “Best SF Theme Songs Playlist” you listen to, T-A-G likes to play them while writing.
I have to admit, I’ve never see that. Do you have trouble with the remainders of the hinges tearing your surface tension/viscosity when you ooze through the doors after jiggling the door off said hinges?
I imagine that would be painful. Nice thing about the Abyss, most of the doors are larger than a 10×10 openings (lots of big demons with bigger egos here)
Not sure what someone thought was wrong with Hilda.
I know a lot of people were impatient with her because there was so much her and so little Tom in the first part and sometimes that lack of Tom got conflated with dislike of Hilda.
But after ironing things out, I’m not seeing anyone really dislike her. They just wanted more Tom at the same time.
I think your point is very valid. Actually DoA is intended as a reaction to that sort of story line you describe. I got tired of reading the same coming of age/conflict story (or clumsy hero saves the day) over and over so many times I decided to try to turn it on its head.
I really love Hilda, she provides a lot of balance; and she is powerful, but reasonable and “human”
I think the biggest thing that (secretly) annoyed people was that it wasn’t what they were expecting. And that ticked people off. But again, that’s part of the point. If one has read this all before, then what’s the point of writing it again?
That was my big thought when I was starting this, most fantasy books became like sitcoms, you only need to look at the title, read the blurb and a few chapters and you know where it’s going. I want to put an end to that, but still make it fun.
And my hope is that some of the more boring parts will start to pay off in later volumes. There are some long setup times…but I don’t like things just pulled out of thin air to solve a problem ‘deus ex machina’ style so I have a lot of setup to explain what happens later, some of that, I admit can be less exciting.
