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worldwalkernovel · 5 years

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The dynamic duo: What is their favorite book/poem/song of earth? Of Alleirat? Can they sing? What are some instruments of Alleirat? What are they made of? How are they made? Are they widely available? Of earth's instruments, what is their sound similar to? Are there major festivals/holidays? Any strange ones (like the city in Spain that has an annual tomato fight)? What are Alleirai beds like (raised on four legs/futons/hammocks)? Are there sleeping bags or does everyone just suffer on the road?

Hey, y’all, sorry I just...fucking vanished there! Real life obligations caught up with me. Ironically this is a long term positive--I’m much more productive in writing when I have a job, because it leaves me less time to second guess myself. Point is, I’m going to try and actually Do Things on this blog again. Also the last one about holidays got pretty long so I put it under a cut.

What is their favorite book/poem/song of Earth? Of Alleirat?

Oh my God, listen, I’m not gonna get to most of this question because I got overexcited, but let’s talk about these two and Earth poetry, yeah?

Crispin discovers Emily Dickinson in seventh grade English class, and the first poem of hers he ever reads is, of course, Because I could not stop for Death. He traces his fingers over the words “Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet//Feels shorter than the Day//I first surmised the Horses’ Heads//Were toward Eternity –” and for some reason he can’t quite put his finger on, his throat closes up tight and his voice breaks when he’s asked to read aloud. Some indiscernable something about her words ring in his head like English hasn’t rung in years, and he checks a collection out of the library the same day. His favorite poem of hers is--it’s not really his favorite, but the poem of hers he knows by heart and can’t seem to peel out of the beat of his pulse is I measure every Grief I meet. Some days he loves it, for how cleanly and purely it seems to scribe him into neat four-line stanzas. Some days he can’t read it without crying, or throwing the book across the room.

The only Dickinson poem Brenneth likes is Tell all the Truth, and sometimes when she looks at Crispin she thinks it was written for him.

Brenneth doesn’t like poetry much, she mostly prefers songs--they’re easier to remember and she knows what to do with them, she doesn’t really know what to do with poetry (can’t sing it, doesn’t have a narrative, can’t even go see it performed) and she doesn’t like not knowing what to do with a thing. But once she read Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti. She started it by accident, and there was a story, a narrative threading through the ramble, and she kept reading, and--

Brenneth has dreams for a week, dizzy uneasy dreams of Crispin biting into strange foreign fruits and letting juice as thick and red as blood stain his mouth, and of hands--his hands, strong and crackling with lightning--pressing the fruit against her mouth and saying eat, eat, and of a mouth on her jaw and neck and collarbones, drinking the juice from her skin.

What are Alleirai beds/travel beds like?

The basic structure of Alleirai beds is “four legs, some kind of pad, sheets/blanket, maybe a pillow” but there’s a lot of scope there and it’s not unheard of for people to have a different arrangement based on what they’re used to--sailors are used to hammock-style bunks on ships, travelers used to sleeping rough are most familiar with bedrolls that consist of little more than two blankets and possibly a very thin pad. At the end of the day, though, since a large portion of the continent is arable, elevated beds have the practical advantage of being easier to keep relatively clean of dirt, water, and creepy crawlies. As such, a cot-style arrangement is considered the bare minimum, with a base of taut cloth and no mattress at all. The rich might have a four-poster bed with a down mattress. Most people are somewhere in the middle with plain frames and horsehair or straw ticks that get exchanged on a semi-regular basis.

Can they sing?

Yes! Brenneth has a nice folksy low alto, it’s nothing special but she used to sing shanties and ballads while she worked in her forge, especially while she was hammering or doing anything else that required a rhythm. Sometimes she gave people a discount on their work if they were willing to teach her a new song instead, and people made jokes about the singing smith. Crispin has a beautiful mid-range tenor, sweet and clear as glass when he was a child and deepening to something warm and full as he got older. He has formal voice training, which was part of his education--singing is a good way to learn to project your voice, which is a desirable trait in a hero of legend. However, he hates to sing alone, which is where all his training lies, so he taught himself to sing harmony to Brenneth’s melodies and that’s the only way he sings anymore.

What are some instruments of Alleirat/what are they like?

They hit a lot of the same major categories as we do--they have necked and non-necked string instruments (things like guitars or fiddles and lyres or harps, respectively), drums and other percussion instruments, wind instruments. They lack the finesse to make out modern instruments, and most wind instruments are made of wood rather than metals, whereas they have a lot more metal drums than hide-and-wood drums, so playing the drum in Alleirat is equally about knowing how to stop a sound as start it. You know that dome-shaped hang drum thing? Something similar to that with only a few tones (like four total) is pretty common on ships and is used to keep time for sea shanties, and more complex versions are popular during festivals, in combination with strings and singing. Vocalists are prized in Alleirat, so wind instruments are less common than things that allow singing and playing simultaneously.

Are there major holidays/festivals? Any weird ones?

I’d have sworn on my life I answered this already, but apparently not. The Alleirai seasons each have a festival at the height and one at the end of the year, four religious festivals and one political. The political festival is Unification Day, the commemoration of the unification of the continent of Alleirat and the formal truce of the lengthy wars that threatened to kill everyone on it, and takes place in the early days of summer. How seriously and/or cheerfully people take Unification Day depends on how they’re feeling about the Unified Council at that moment, and whether or not their protectorate state is on the verge of civil war with a neighbor.

The religious festivals are:

the Feast of the Wanderer, which takes place at midsummer and is a festival of plenty and warmth and alcohol--the Wanderer is the god of life and fire, and the festival is encouraged to embrace and embody joy and revelry. There are also ritual fights, which are largely in fun and more like friendly bar brawls than formalized gladiator matches, and both participants are usually quite drunk. Agreeing to be the on-call flesh workers standing ringside on the Feast makes you an obscene amount of money, but you have to be sober. Gifts are also exchanged at this festival--material gifts, specifically.

the Lady’s Night, or the Night of Stars, which takes place at midwinter and is very much a festival of...keeping out the dark, I suppose, would be the way I’ll put it. The festival is about remembering that We Are Alive And Life Is Short, as well as remembering the dead, with a lot of candles lit in memorial and just for light--traditionally, you stay up from dusk until dawn, and if your candles and fire go out, you’ll have bad luck all year. There’s still drinking and feasting and general celebration, but it’s more intimate and less raucous than the Feast. You exchange stories and sing and hold your breath whenever the flames flicker. (Cheating with magical glowglasses is considered bad luck as well.) There are people who learn a single story or song all year in preparation for the Night of Stars, and you display them as a gift for the people you’re celebrating with.

the Landing, the first day of the new year at mid-spring, which marks the day that tradition and lore say the gods first came to Alleirat. It’s probably not the right day, sort of like Christmas was moved around a bunch, but no one but the very well educated or very pedantic care. You leave offerings at the temples or shrines at dawn, and then you go out and celebrate. All day if you can, more often just from “whenever you get off work” to “whenever you collapse.” The large cities and sometimes smaller towns and villages hold a parade, and crown young people, a boy and a girl in their mid to late teens or early twenties, as the Lady and the Wanderer for the day. The crowns assigned to each of the two (generally flower crowns, rather than anything valuable) is supposed to be handed around over the course of the day, as a sort of village-wide game of Tag with the crowned people as “it”, and whoever holds the crowns at sundown has the responsibility of leading the town in the service of the Landing, which is a whole thing. It’s sort of like religious hot potato with drinking.

the Eve of Dead Gods, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. In terms of the feel of the Eve, it’s sort of somewhere between old celebrations of Halloween and Yom Kippur, with an emphasis on considering your own actions of the past year and serious reflection, as well as a day when...well, they’re pretty serious about the dead gods. Gods can’t be ghosts, of course, don’t be foolish, but--but when you worship the last two of a mighty pantheon, it doesn’t hurt to do honor to those who went before. On the Eve, you lock your doors and windows at dusk and don’t go outside again until the sun is shining, and you remember that everything dies. Even gods.

Some people--those whose ancestors escaped the sinking of the western continent--hold a quiet holiday for the Chained Lord, the god who didn’t answer when they called for salvation and whose death throes killed thousands. It’s a small thing of fasting and candles and salt scattered on the floor, observed by most as little more than a cursory tradition and not even a shadow of a shadow of what his festivals must have once been.

#worldwalker #alleirat #alleirai culture #alleirai religion #brenneth #crispin #earth #i am not dead and i have brought content as an apology for disappearing on you #so sorry folks #real life beat me metaphorically black and blue for about two or three weeks there #i'm trying to get some structure back in my life so that i can get stuff done again #god you just took me out at the KNEES with that question about poetry #i have a LOT of feelings about that suddenly #also if you're in the market for good poetry the mentioned ones are some of my favorites #queue deeper than the sea of stars #sprifes-are-bamfs #asked and answered

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imagine-jim-bones-and-spock · 7 years

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I DID THE THING BUT I CAN'T GET TUMBLR TO ACCEPT IT. MARK MY WORDS, YOU WILL BEAR WITNESS TO THE NERDOM THAT RESIDES WITHIN ME AND BASK IN THE HORROR OF MY BROKEN ALTO VOICE SOME WAY SOME HOW. (Pardon the all-caps, but I am pure determination right now)

AHHH you did it!!

If you post it to your own blog and tag me I will find it!! Or you can try my submit box here.

I can’t wait to see it!!!

#IM SO EXCITED #star trek #space voices #ana speaks!#sprifes-are-bamfs

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english-majors-blog · 4 years

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Why the Reboots Sucked

Hello All! Many have been asking for my capstone paper on hegemonic masculinity in Abrams’ Star Trek. Well it just came through the final round of edits! I am proud to say that I received 100% on this assignment after working on it nonstop for the past 5 months. Click the link below to access it on OneDrive. If you need it a different way, send me a message and we can work something out!

Word:

https://iammcdaniel-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/hrs008_mcdaniel_edu/ESIuAFrNV31IozeBFIgCyN4BVmvSmBmzi8VBLip5vtrhlg?e=jaf7LZ

PDF:

https://iammcdaniel-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/hrs008_mcdaniel_edu/ERsITGnngvtLmkdQtX1PIP0B3H1O3fApi9tN04gdG8UHnQ?e=3TEyeE

FULL WARNING: This a 34 page paper, which is A LOT. However, it is not comprehensive of every single moment or character which I could’ve analyzed. In fact, I had to sacrifice a lot to make this fit the page maximum.

The first half of my argument focuses on how they changed the male characters to embody hegemonic masculinity while the second half focuses on how they reinforce the subordination of women through their dress.

Thank you to all of you for your support! Especially @howvipdowegot2get for giving me one of my major sources!

For all those who offered suggestions on my posts: I’ve tagged you here so you can view the final product if you’d like!

@memefactorymanager @whydoeseverythinghurt @leanconnoli @mountainashtree @inacupcakeapron @flamingbluepanda @sprifes-are-bamfs @spirk-zadr-kyman @lees-got-writers-block @punkspockispunkrock @softkirk

#senior capstone #senior sem #tales from an english major #english majors blog #star trek #jj abrams #star trek reboot #the original series #hegemonic masculinity #male gaze

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bumfuckeastjesus · 10 years

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OHMYGOD WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO ME? YOU CHANGED YOUR PIC SO I WAS ALL LIKE WHO DIS BITCH BE AND IT WAS YOU AND I WAS SO CONFUSED AND JUST NO. HOW DARE YOU. In other news, I got a religious pamphlet instead of candy from one house on Halloween.

IT’S STILL A GRIM REAPER THOUGH.

DRESSED AS THE 11TH DOCTOR FOR HALLOWEEN. WITH FEZ AND MOP AND BOWTIE.IN THE END, YOU OVERCAME THE CONFUSION, AND THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS.In similarly unrelated news, clearly your costume implied you needed to be introduced to Jesus on Halloween.

#sprifes-are-bamfs #sprifes be talking shit yo #Halloween #Religion #Changing pics

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worldwalkernovel · 5 years

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Since you enjoyed answering my questions so much and I am enthralled with this novel of yours; have some more! are there alleirai games like rock-paper-scissors/I spy/simon says? does alleirat have toothbrushes? is dental hygiene a thing? is there indoor plumbing? is there organized religion in alleirat or a general mysticism? a common mythology? many separate mythologies? are the fabrics of alleirat significantly different from those of earth? I have... a lot more if you're interested lmao

YES I AM INTERESTED. Trust me dude, if you hit ‘spoiler’ territory I just won’t tell you the thing.

Are there Alleirai games like rock-paper-scissors/I Spy/Simon Says?

Yes! Kids are kids and kids get bored! They have a version of I Spy pretty much verbatim (this is usually attributed to soldiers on march, not kids, though), they have a sweeping variety of clapping games mostly indigenous to various city states, the coast and the Outrigger Islands have a game called Captain’s Orders that’s similar to Simon Says, and they have a very common tag game called Foxes where there’s a team of ‘foxes’ who have to work together to hunt down the ‘mice’! This is a very small cross-section, obviously, but those are some games that exist.

Does Alleirat have toothbrushes? Is dental hygiene a thing?

They do have toothbrushes (what we would recognize as a bristle toothbrush dates to China in the 600′s, so I’d need to backdate this society pretty far to escape that one), and therefore yes, dental hygiene is a thing. Additionally, flesh workers are able to repair teeth in much the same way that they can repair bone, as teeth are living tissue, so to some extent even magical dental work is a thing.

Is there indoor plumbing?

There’s indoor plumbing in the sense of “they’ve figured out how to use a gravity-driven pump to push water up into a building” and in the sense of “they’re past chamber pots for toiletries”, and they’ve even figured out how to use magic to heat water. That being said, most living arrangements don’t have the finances to have extensive running water inside their home for the sake of bathing, so public bathhouses remain the most common solution and are also a social thing.

Is there organized religion in Alleirat or a general mysticism? A common mythology? Many separate mythologies?

Residents of Alleirat mostly adhere to a single religion, following the dual gods of the Wanderer and the Lady of Stars. They don’t believe that the gods made Alleirat, but they believe that the gods came to Alleirat not long after people first appeared there and claimed domains under their power. There were more gods at one point, but they either left the same way they came and went to bother other worlds, or they were killed, like the Chained Lord, the god of the sea who died during the Wanderer and the Lady’s war against each other. The level of organization in the religion is relatively limited–there’s a temple to both gods in every major city, and usually at least a small shrine in every town, but people attend at will and generally when they’re seeking some kind of guidance. However, the temples are also responsible for caring for kids too young to go into apprenticeships (generally around twelve or fourteen) and are responsible for the high literacy level in Alleirat, as the officiants teach a lot of kids to read. It’s also common, although not necessarily mandatory, that people take one of the two gods as their particular patron (Brenneth took the Wanderer, Crispin took the Lady), and they may choose to keep a small shrine to the relevant god in their home with candles in the appropriate color (red for the Wanderer, undyed or silvery for the Lady) and small offerings like coin or ribbon. A sufficiently wealthy home might have a stone icon, and a poorer house might have a wooden one. Incense is never burned at home altars unless there’s been a recent death in the house, and only ever used at the temples when a major tragedy has occurred.

Are the fabrics of Alleirat significantly different from those of Earth?

There are a lot of the same types of fabric (broadcloth, lace, etc), but there’s a more limited number of plants to make fabric from (for the record, harvesting a cotton field with a plant worker is vastly easier than doing it by hand). Wool and cotton constitute a huge percentage of what they make clothes from, as well as silk that is produced largely in the northern mountains. The primary cereal grain, kestho, can also be processed to produce a stiff form of cloth from the fibrous stalk, which can soften over time with use into something sort of close to mid-heavy gauge denim, commonly used in dress coats, vests, and trousers. At the time of the novel, “layers” is the fashion of the day, which means that at least a long sleeved shirt and a vest is standard, often including a jacket and/or a coat, so that cloth is getting a workout these days.

#worldwalker #bits and sundries #alleirai culture #alleirai religion #alleirat #uh...incidentally they went through A Lot of incense while the white wolf was abroad #these are so random and delightful thank you so much #also VERY helpful worldbuilding if you're looking to worldbuild #if you're looking to write a list of facts about a world you're developing these should be on there #i love it #queue deeper than the sea of stars #sprifes-are-bamfs #asked and answered

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worldwalkernovel · 5 years

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Take your pick of these Real Dumb Questions: what are the main duo's favorite snack foods? did they try to make food from alleirat back on earth? if yes, how successful were they? how good at poker are they? did they become incredibly interested/invested/absorbed in issues of earth because of their experiences in alleirat or did they close themselves off from the goings on of earth (wars/environment/certain periods of history)? do they have odd handwriting (quill to pen? different alphabet?)

If you think I am not answering them all, you are sorely mistaken.

what are the main duo's favorite snack foods?

Brenneth likes anything spicy that can be eaten with one hand, a holdover from her fondness for what’s called “soldier’s rolls” in Alleirat, a bread roll filled with some form of (generally) meat and spices. Think of a spicy pot pie inside a really dense dinner roll. Crispin likes fruit with a sort of universal fondness--anything from a turnover to a raw peach is pretty much his preferred snack. They also both like apples.

did they try to make food from alleirat back on earth? if yes, how successful were they?

They did try, almost universally without much success. A lot of the baseline foods, like “chicken” or “potatoes” or whatever, exist on Earth, but a good number of Alleirai spices don’t, and neither does the primary grain used to cook in Alleirat. That pretty well limits their options. However, Crispin has managed a passable imitation of a breakfast dish featuring fried eggs by using a combination of cinnamon, chili powder, and a few other things to imitate an Alleirai spice called kulla.

how good at poker are they?

Crispin is excellent. Brenneth is middling.

did they become incredibly interested/invested/absorbed in issues of earth because of their experiences in alleirat or did they close themselves off from the goings on of earth (wars/environment/certain periods of history)?

They considered themselves pretty well out of Earth events. Part of this was because they came back as ten-year-olds and no one really told them stuff, part of it was because they were working through some disastrously immediate PTSD and didn’t have the spare brainpower for Earth’s problems, and part of it was because they really strongly do not consider Earth their home anymore.

do they have odd handwriting (quill to pen? different alphabet?)

Crispin’s handwriting is finishing-school-perfect in any language. He knows how to do calligraphy, his printing could be a typeface. His only real oddity on the matter is a virulent dislike of ballpoint pens, as he’s used to fountain pens and thinks that Bic is the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, probably.

Brenneth, uh...does NOT have great penmanship. It’s worse in English than in Alleirai, and her English lettering sometimes looks like hieroglyphics when she gets distracted because she’ll revert back to the overall shape of the Alleirai alphabet but still be writing in fundamentally English lettering. This improves over the fourteen years she spends on Earth, but...it’s still kinda rough to read. She can engrave you some beautiful shit on a sword but good luck reading the receipt, basically.

#worldwalker #brenneth #crispin #alleirat #earth #bits and sundries #'pick your favorites' ADORABLE #i will answer All thank you #all very good questions #i enjoyed myself immensely #now i am going tf to bed #queue deeper than the sea of stars #sprifes-are-bamfs #asked and answered

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