#babel points

[bookwyrminspiration]

the visceral reaction I am having even several days later. these six words hurt in a way I will never recover from

#babel rf kuang #babel an arcane history #babel or the necessity of violence #there are so many horrible things that happen to undeserving innocent people #but these six words. encompass so much #(significant spoilers ahead mutuals) #everything to do with robin's name. it being taken from him with the creation of 'robin' #and returned to him upon robin's death...I am unwell #he's leaving 'robin' behind now. all the grief and pain that came with it #he's free of it #he has his name now #GOD I am so fucking unwell about these six words #unironically my breaking point

[dearreader]

people upset or confused at love songs about joe on the acceptance playlist are missing the point, she’s accepted it’s end and can come to terms with it and part of that is acknowledging the feelings of love. once again, in the wise wise words of maisie peters:

the way i loved you, i won’t be embarrassed of that, i should’ve just known when to quit

#kelly babels #maisie peters #the tortured poets department #taylor swift #if i had a nickel for everytime i’ve had to use maisie peters to explain points to swifties i’d have two nickles

[crystal-mouse]

Thinking about what would've happened if the TOS crew had witnessed/gone through first contact plot instead... given he's related to Solkar, Spock (pre-v'ger) would've been so embarrassed lol

Go off grandad 🖖🖖

#first contact day #first his dad constantly kissing his mum in journey to babel...now his literal grandpa making out during the pivotal point in human history #smh #star trek #tos #tng #mouse rambles #meanwhile kirk and bones are just smirking and joking 😏😏

[whales-are-gay]

if you liked babel: an arcane history by rf kuang you might like escaping eurocentrism: fieldwork as a process of unlearning by david gil

#THIS IS A JOKE #highly recommend both to any linguistics student #[redacted] maybe i cant complain abt u bc these other papers assume everyone reading will have an understanding of german orthography #and like i do. but that's not the point. #maybe you were right to use orthography instead of the ipa but sadly it does not change the fact i cannot read ur work #linguistics #shitpost #babel an arcane history #babel or the necessity of violence

[lady-joker]

god babel hurt me more than i thought it would. i went into it knowing absolutely nothing about apart from what i read in the blurb and that absolutely did not prepare me. it was so beautifully inevitable. nothing they could have done would have changed the final outcome. robin's story ended where it began. we don't know his name. ramy, poor sweet lovely ramy and oh god victoire, choosing to live not despite it all but because of it all. and letty. her fate was always decided from the start wasn't it? she was always going to betray them. god my stomach hurts when i think about them 😭

#babel #babel an arcane history #babel rf kuang #rf kuang #babel or the necessity of violence #babel spoilers #this book has irreparably destroyed me #as an immigrant from india everything in this book was absolutely justified #a lot of people call kuang's writing style as too in the face but babes that's literally the point #enough of the metaphors and allegories. say it how it is and this book did exactly that. #also the footnotes were super useful bc i know nothing abt translation and much of it was explaining that?? #griffin u have my heart and soul #also to the ppl saying there was no character development #look me in the eyes and tell me that robin stayed the same throughout the book #absolutely not there's no way that's true

[sharlsainz]

when my posts about babel get kudos or reblogged just know that ill be heartbroken again for what's happened.

#babel an arcane history #babel rf kuang #babel or the necessity of violence #babel #royal institute of translation #they're becoming my roman empire at this point #robin swift #griffin harley #ramiz rafi mirza #ramy mirza #victoire desgraves

[july-19th-club]

it's VERY sad because i truly went in with an open mind and wanted to like it a lot, but i have to side with the haters on Babel, or at least the disappointed-it-couldn't-have-been-more-ers. finishing Babel, all i really felt was the desire to reread the bartimaeus books, which definitely do most of the things Babel does - Magic England, boy apprentice rebels in ways that are destructive both to himself and to the institution that molds him, themes of exploitation, imperial decay, and the nightmare of colonial conquest - but might do them better. and i feel sad about this, really, because i wanted Babel to be more than what it is, which is a thesis more than a novel...or rather, a thesis stuffed into a novel casing that is just a little too thin to contain it. it's tough to accurately say stuff about this book, because you can't approach it from a position where it is at all divorced from the author; authorial intent is necessary to every single page. if it had BEEN a thesis, and not a novel, then that thesis could've been stronger, because as it stands, it's not ironclad. if kaung had been writing an academic work or a nonfiction book, she would have been able to better interrogate what she had there and make adjustments where necessary, but because it must have a plot, it sometimes twists itself up trying to emphasize what it's About, which means characters don't develop internality, because they are foremost broad-spectrum representations rather than individuals.

so the characters are both too broad and too thin, and their language is too contemporary - ironic, for a novel about linguistics and the power and corruption of how we say what we mean to say, that there's almost a fear of using period lexicon to describe things when our current words for those things are more acceptable. what i mean by that is, nobody wants to see slurs in the pages of a historical novel, that's not what i'm talking about, but the dialogue barely scans as Of The Past most of the time, and that undermines the whole edifice of this being a serious novel about linguistics.

and maybe i'm just not the audience. or maybe the book needed to lean heavier either to the fantasy side or the academic-tone side, because where it sits, uncomfortably attempting to straddle a fence that shouldn't be this wide, isn't working. i've seen reviewers say that the fantasy elements suffered and felt rushed or incomplete in the book's anxiety to impress its themes and message on the reader, and i think i agree with that. i also think that the theme - confident as it is - isn't ironclad. other reviewers have pointed out that the silver magic system makes it very easy for the characters to pull down their empire, and yet at the same time does not significantly alter the world it's been placed into to an extent that they would actually be able to do that.

and finally - this one is just petty, but still - the footnotes just weren't as fun as i thought they would be. i love footnotes. this book's footnotes were only too often just redundancies of the text, rather than new and exciting comments on it (the exception being the linguistics-themed ones, which were always cool). kuang is for sure a very enthusiastic and dedicated and probably a brilliant scholar. but she's also definitely a better scholar than a novelist.

#and ive seen some really racist reviews of this book so maybe some of the readers DO need spoonfed #but those readers weren't going to like it anyway. which is half the point of the book #you know. that no matter how you bend over backwards to appease and appeal to the oppressor they will never actually respect you #but..............i dont know. as a Topic and a Concept it works. its maybe not as nuanced as it could be but it works #as a novel...not so much #babel #q

[linisiane]

Been thinking about a Modern!Babel AU centered around colleges aimed around Silicon Valley

Immigrant kids being funneled into CS because it’s the field where the money is (linguistics? Where’s the money in that? You want to starve?).

International students coming to America because all the Big Programming Languages and their documentation are in English, because translations of documentation is to err and to betray, because English is the programming lingua franca, because if you don’t know English then you’ll be “trailing edge.” Source

“As an American and native English-speaker myself, I have previously been reluctant to suggest this, lest it be taken as a sort of cultural imperialism. But several native speakers of other languages have urged me to point out that English is the working language of the hacker culture and the Internet, and that you will need to know it to function in the hacker community.” Source

So they come to America to improve their English because you have to be fluent to be taken seriously. Or maybe they’re born in America and can feel the rot of their native tongue as they grow up, even as they learn more and more programming languages.

Java, C++, Ruby, XML, Python, Swift, PHP, etc.

It’s funny, but programmers, even as they’ve decided on English as the one true language, they create more and more programming languages to suit their needs/problem solving efficiency:

Source

[ID: XKCD comic that is titled "How Standards Proliferate (See: A/C chargers, character encodings, instant messaging, etc.)" It reads,

Situation: There are 14 competing standards. Cueball (stick figure): 14?! Ridiculous! We need to develop one universal standard that covers everyone's use cases. Ponytail (other stick figure): Yeah! Soon: Situation: There are 15 competing standards.

End ID]

(transcript taken from the ExplainXKCD wiki)

And of course, the students from countries on the Indian subcontinent are acutely aware of the unbalanced nature of the work they do, the way they’re expected to do export IT work, despite the digital divide in India, Bengal, Pakistan, etc. Especially since it’s a sign of being well-educated (wealthy) to speak English fluently thanks to the history of British Imperialism on the subcontinent.

Chinese IT students sink or swim thanks Mandarin monolinguism making it difficult to learn English. Americans programmers struggle not to link choppy English with choppy code, even while being monolingual themselves!

Not to mention the heavy sexism in the IT field! Female programmers taking on nicknames on emails and resumes to pretend to be men, so they’ll be taken seriously. Despite the history of women like Ada Lovelace being foundational to computers.

And of course we gotta bring up the ethics of AI, how it’s a march towards the inevitable that only Luddites would oppose. Despite the millions who’d lose their jobs once implemented into the workplace.

Commercial transportation sector lost to self-driving cars.

Digital artists lost to DALL-E.

Manufacturers automated.

But can’t they tell that progress is inevitable? That this is the future and to try to stop it is foolish?

As Anand Giridharadas put it in Winners Take All:

“In [Silicon] Valley, prediction has become a popular way of fighting for a particular future while claiming merely to be describing what has yet to occur���

Elon Musk is a genius. Bill Gates is so charitable. Bezos is customer obsessed, and they’re the future, don’t you see? Infinite growth forever and ever.

Tower of Babel? Valley of Silicon.

Unfortunately I suck at STEM, and I’m an uncultured Asian American, so I don’t know programming languages well, nor do I know enough about other cultures to do Ramy, Victoire, Robin, or Letty justice. Just the bare bones to see the structure of this AU and put it out in the world to see if anybody would like to play with it or add on.

#babel or the necessity of violence #babel #babel an arcane history #babel rf kuang #my thoughts #infinite growth is the silver #or maybe crypto as silver lol #Silicon Valley is babel #tech progress is our version of the inevitable empire #okay now this is the part in my notes where I ramble #Silicon Valley shined so bright but I feel like we’re reaching the point where it’s bloating everything #not everything can be solved by programming #AHEM NFTs are a nonsense solution made by tech bros to scam money under the illusion of useful technology #bc we want that infinite growth baby #I don’t hate AI but I do think the way it’s being implemented right now is unethical #and that said unethical-ness is being buried under the idea of ‘pragmatism’ or ‘progress’ #the way a certain type STEM major considers feelings to be ‘irrational’ and therefore to be ignored #honestly that gives me repressed Robin vibes #I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with there necessarily being a lingua franca for STEM fields #I get that it’s useful for international communication #but also it’s like a colonialist elephant in the room that could be explored through creative liberties

[bookwyrminspiration]

oh my god robin just killed lovell. oh my god. ive wanted lovells ass to die all book but holy shit i wasnt expecting it to actually happen. holy shit. robin is totally justified but also my guy you are on a ship. how the fuck are you going to get away with this.

!!! I had the same reaction, just a moment of "holy fuck he actually did it." It becomes real in that moment. It's the turning point of the book. It seals their fates, it can't be taken back. Now all they can do is follow this new, sudden, terrifying path.

But I don't think I'll ever get over the shock of that moment. Because I knew Robin had that silver bar, I knew it would come into play. But for him in that split moment to decide to kill Lovell? It's like...being disillusioned. Because up until that moment you're kinda going along with the fake life and persona Robin has built. Things suck, but he's got Oxford. He's got his studies and his discontent, but it's not really tangible. He's not truly acting until suddenly he is. And now he has to continue to act or be swept away if he hesitates.

Wishing you luck on the second half of this story, because my god does it only keep going from here

#quil's queries #camelspit #babel rf kuang #babel: an arcane history #babel or the necessity of violence #babel spoilers #you're reading babel and sorya's reading acod peace and love on planet earth oh my god #that scene is one of the scene's of all time #there's another towards the end that is THE scene of the book. and you will know it when you get there #but yeah. this is the catalyst for what the book becomes. in a way #it's the turning point #where it's like. okay. Look At What I Have To Say #tw death

[dearreader]

thinking about “i broke my own heart because you were to polite to do it” and “once the flight had flown/with the wilt of the rose/i slept all alone/but you still wouldn’t go”

like the opening lines of is it over now feel like it’s something from red… but that’s not the song, it’s not a red song it’s a 1989 song so it keeps going on and on and on and she doesn’t know if she can be her usual heartbroken self because he won’t go away! he leaves then comes back and she can’t figure out if it’s over and she can mourn it, if he’s finally breaking her heart or if he’s going to come back again. so she ends it emotionally to save herself

#and then she becomes a shrouded mystery and then he wants her so bad #but she’s done #but that’s not the point of the post #kelly babels #song analysis #surburban legends #is it over now?

[beneaththegildedmoon]

Look, maybe if I had read it by itself and not interleaved with the other books im reading atm it would have fared better, but y'all had me convinced The Secret History was some modern classic and I will not forgive you for it

#i know babel was published long afterwards but i just keep reading sections and thinking “Babel did this so much better” #its giving Catcher in the Rye if the pov character was even more insufferable #its giving the Steven Moffat school of writing intelligent characters #and honestly worse than the piss-poor attempt at some kind of commentary is that its so fucking BORING #a solid 70% of the book is just richard & the gang talking inanely about classics with the air of people who have literally never read them #and the other 30% is stilted dialogue about how woefully difficult it is to cover up the murders they did #and i understand that their insufferability is part of the loosely-defined point but thats not made well enough to justify all this #your characters can be boring assholes or your plot can move at a snail's pace but for the love of all the gods dont do both #the only thing running through my head the whole time is how little investment i have in anything thats happening in this stupid book #how did *this* become the inciting incident for the dark academia aesthetic/subculture?? #how did this jumble of meandering run-on sentences masquerading as a novel become such a Tumblr darling that dozens of you recommended it?? #i feel cheated tbh #cant believe i wasted so much time on this but i genuinely believed it must get good at some point

[chaoticfoxsworld]

At this point, I'm simply taking my time reading "Babel" and savouring each chapter. I'm pretty sure it'll end up being one of my top five favourite books.

#words and books #babel an arcane history #the writing is immaculate #i was forced to take out some sticky tabs to help me find some amazing paragraphs. that's how good it is. #i might post some of them at some point #we shall see

[konfizry]

babel an arcane history is amazing imo mostly for its clever and fascinating hard magic system that sends my dumb little heart racing as someone who has a passing interest in translation it just opens up this whole new canvas of curiosity and wonder, and so like the protag finds himself musing about words and their meaning and the like, and like wow man the possibilities brought about by being able to shape the world so easily like all you need is to be somewhat smart about words and their connotations and etymology. knowledge is what gives you power!!! not only that but, speech as a tool that bends reality!!! and then around page 400

shit starts hitting the fan so the shady big brother character goes "alright kiddo party's over, now take this gun." and then everyone has guns I love it

#this is gross misrepresentation of what actually happens in the book #(the fancy translation magic is used for violence and domination all throughout the book it's kind of the point #I'm just being silly and also appreciative of griffin and his Real Ass Gun) #babel an arcane history #kontxt #babel an arcane history spoilers #also guns are not fun times :))))))

[ensign-cadet]

I think Journey to Babel is an interesting episode for a lot of reasons, though a big part of that is that it explores Spock's relationships with not just the people around him, but also with rules.

If this was someone's first episode of TOS, but they were familiar with more recent material, this iteration of Spock's character would be familiar. He's sticking by rules, to the detriment of both himself and others. And all other characters in this episode, as well as most fans, accept that as Spock's motivations throughout the episode.

But looking at Spock's stated rationale closer, it's clear that that's not what's going on.

[ID: Two gifs from Star Trek: The Original Series. The first gif shows Spock in a blue Starfleet uniform. He is standing in a green room in front of a red-lit glass cupboard that has a vase inside. Spock is captioned saying "My first responsibility is to the ship." The second gif continues Spock's speech, but he is no longer visible, with the shot instead panning to the ship's Doctor (Dr. McCoy) and then to Spock's mom (Amanda). Spock's words are captioned as, "[Our passenger safety is by Starfleet order]". End ID]

Here, Spock's first defense of not going into surgery to save his father's life is over regulations. However, in previous episodes, it's clear that Spock is comfortable disobeying rules for his benefit. In The Menagerie, he commits mutiny to bring Captain Pike to Talos IV, and risks the death penalty by doing so. In The Devil in the Dark, he openly overrides Jim's orders, initially to protect an unknown species, then later to protect Jim. If Spock and Jim weren't so close, both of these instances could likely lead to criminal charges.

And yet, he gets cold feet here. Even if a regulation existed that prevented Spock from temporarily stepping down (which I highly doubt), he's not one to shy away from breaking regulations when he sees fit.

(Also, does the verbiage in that first gif sound familiar to anyone? That's almost word-for-word what he said to Leila when he was letting her down in This Side of Paradise; I half-expected him to finish with "to that man on the bridge". Perhaps that's a subtle indication of where Spock really feels his responsibility lies.)

He then gets a bit more specific, in saying he doesn't want to hand over command in such a stressful situation.

[ID: Two gifs of Spock in his room, in front of an intersection between a white and green wall. He is making eye contact with and speaking to Amanda offscreen. Over the two gifs, his words are captioned: "Any competent officer can command the ship under normal circumstances. / The circumstances are NOT normal." The word "normal" in the first gif is underlined. End ID]

Oddly, that's a completely different defense. And not a logical one, since Scotty has been at the helm in equally stressful situations, like in A Taste of Armageddon, or The Apple, for example. It would even be a reasonable argument that Scotty is better in command than Spock, considering how stressed Spock got in The Galileo Seven. Also, because Spock is in his room here, someone else who's capable of command must be at the helm already, so why don't they just stay there? As much as I hate to admit it, Amanda was right-- before she went on her racist and manipulative tirade-- in that Spock should be able to hand over command to someone else.

He also talks to his mom about Vulcan philosophies, but given how it doesn't benefit anyone to have an acting captain who's so keenly distracted, it's not a logical argument to stick with.

[ID: A set of three gifs from the same scene as above, where Spock is talking to his mother. They are standing in front of a white wall with red lighting. He paces around her such that his face is only visible in the second and third gif. Amanda's expressions are never shown to camera. He is captioned saying, "It means to adopt a philosophy, a way of life, / Which is logical and beneficial / We cannot disregard that philosophy merely for personal gain." End ID]

So, what's making Spock behave like this? I don't think his sudden inflexibility here is because he cares for Sarek less than Jim and Captain Pike. That may be true, but Spock was the one who suggested the experimental procedure, and already volunteered as a donor before Kirk got injured. It's also not to impress his dad with Vulcan stoicism, since Sarek wouldn't live to see that play out.

In answer to that question, the episode posits that Spock's distress over his dad's critical condition makes him unable to think clearly. Though, Spock wasn't contradicting himself like this until Kirk got hurt. Before Jim's injury, he was following a coherent thought and behavior pattern (as in: dad is injured -> research ways to help -> talk to the doctor about it). But afterwards, his level-headedness went out the window, to the extent that when he went into the surgery (only after being led to believe Kirk was okay), he was restless and asking for Jim, despite the fact that he should have been unconscious from medication.

[ID: A gif of an operation from the same episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. In it, Dr. McCoy and Nurse Chapel are standing over an unconscious Sarek. He is wearing a green surgical blanket and his chest is underneath an angular grey medical device. Spock is laying in a different bed, and between them is a wall mount that connects four tubes; the two coming from Spock's side have a light green liquid, and the two going to Sarek have dark green liquid, to indicate the filtering of Vulcan blood. Spock is awake, sat up in bed, when Bones asks, "Where do you think you're going?" and Spock replies, "I must see the captain." Nurse Chapel reaches for a syringe. End ID]

I'd be willing to buy that both his dad and Jim's injuries causes Spock to be stressed out of his mind. However, the pacing of the episode shows that it's Jim's less severe stab wound that pushes him over the edge, to the point where he's forgetting things and not able to justify himself. I even believe Spock thought his actions were logical, he just lacked the self-awareness to realize he was incapacitated.

[ID: A set of two gifs, where Spock is lying upright in a sick patient bed. He's wearing an outpatient robe, and behind him is a red pillow and grey metallic headboard. Spock is staring at the floor until partway through the second gif, until he looks up to make eye contact with Kirk offscreen. Over the two gifs, his words are captioned: "The thing I don't understand / Is why I didn't think of it earlier." End ID]

I don't have a good conclusion here, other than that his actions make no sense unless he was worried sick (about Jim, specifically), which destroyed his rationality, objectiveness, and reverted him to Vulcan emotional barriers in a situation where it's illogical to have them. It's baffling to me that no one in the episode questioned Spock's logic, since his sudden adherence to rules is inconsistent with how he behaves normally, but it does fit in with his tendency to get agitated when Jim is injured.

#I don't know if anyone wanted an ungodly long post about this but #Spock's decisions bothered me a bit because on the surface level they make sense #but then if you think about it further it doesn't #so then you have to think about it even more to justify his character motivations #and I may not be looking but I haven't seen anyone try #also this took so much effort that at some point I just have to let it go akjsdfhlkdsjh #journey to babel #tracking tag #rambling #spirk #k/s #star trek tos #long post #<- I don't think it's that bad if you don't include image descriptions but still

[xiaofiaan]

taking a break from writing an essay:P what should I work on after my break

#tbh i will work out at some point today but i just ate so i . probably will not do that right away lmao #anyway. reading babel while the mutuals decide my fate #repost bc i forgot a me button. sob