Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

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elemtilas
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by elemtilas »

Khemehekis wrote: 07 Apr 2019 08:41
elemtilas wrote: 01 Apr 2019 01:18 Physically, Men are quite close to human: rarely reach to six feet in height, are generally slight of build (though there are beefier & huskier ethnicities), they live longer on average than humans and they come in a rather wider variety of quite distinct shapes and colours.
So just an analogue. Like elephants vs. oliphants. Got it.
Right.

Though, re Potchka & "Please, don't be a racist, peoples of all ethnicity should be allowed to exist in all conworlds if human exists.", I'm afraid I fail on many counts! Not least of which there being, among Men, no "Asians" proper at all. Not many "Europeans" either. Plenty of "Africans", though, if that helps!
Hentai . . . interesting.

No, I'm afraid any similarity there is quite accidental!
Oh, OK.

Is this your first time hearing or reading the word "hentai"?
Actually, yes. Has quite the interesting history & cultural context depending on whether one is inside or outside Japan. In Japan, hentai is any sexually perverse or bizarre act --- Orcs (& Hotai) are definitely up for that kind of thing! So maybe there is some subconscious inspiration there.
Spoiler:
When it comes to Elves, all bets are off. They rarely reveal their true forms. Fair seeming and helpful they appear; wise and gracious. They are welcoming and openly friendly. Much like Daine. But their policies as a whole and as individuals are quite orthogonal. They are pernicious, malicious and they delight in the fear and terror they instill. They are masters at manipulation and discovering all the right levers to pull and buttons to push. Black widows and conmen have nothing on an Elf! Before long, even the wisest and canniest of Daine or Orc is taken in by their presence, even the auraskilled are very hard pressed to see the dark.
Elemtilas, once you've finished getting The World online, you ought to pitch your Elves -- and your world -- to the film industry folks and see if they'll give you a deal. You could be your generations J. R. R. Tolkien, and you could find your very own Peter Jackson. Your Elves are more interesting than the standard recycled fantasy most elf-langers and elf-worlders put out. (I've never played Dungeons & Dragons or similar games, nor did I know many classmates who did, so I have no idea what the experience is like, but the impression I get from reading posts on conworlding boards that mention using their conlang/conworld for D&D campaigns is that said campaigns are very low on originality, creatively fenced-in, color-by-number.)
Now, now! Let's not be hasty! I don't think of myself anything like close to being our generation's Tolkien (any of the four writers Tolkien, for that matter).

Movie deal? Wouldn't that be an odd thing indeed!

Re D&D, I played it a few times but never very seriously. I concur about the creative fencing in, and I think that, leastways as far as making a world into a game setting goes, largely comes down to a matter of fitting that setting into the broad & already existing framework of a gaming franchise. I personally feel that The World would make for an interesting game setting, but I'd either have to castrate it in order to make it fit the little pigeon holes of the gaming industry & the expectations of gamers used to that kind of game or else come up with an entirely new game mechanics.

Also, I've long been of the opinion that a lot of worldbuilders, especially young ones & especially new ones, mimic their favourite settings (games, movies, online content). And this is not a bad thing, after all, any of the great composers, in their early works especially, have pieces that mimic or rely heavily on the music of their mentors, tutors or favourites. This only becomes a problem if they can't get out of that early mimicry. I think the nature of D&D & game settings in general kind of molds worldbuilders into deeper mimicry.
The only other elves I recall that stood out in the Internet conlanging community were WeepingElf's Albic elves (actually humans) and Danny Wier's Techian elves (which had races like Caucasian and Asian, and practiced human religions).
Indeed. I always rather liked Joerg's take on elves. Techian elves! Now there's a name I haven't heard in a minute!
Not really whole lot here, to be honest. Most of it, honestly, is off-line, on-paper. Most of the stuff on the Daine is completely unrevealed. Languages are mostly unrevealed. The Chorography is now long unpublished (and now in dire need of correxion). A number of stories are unrevealed and more languish unfinished or unbegun.
Is it ever going to all be online? Maybe in ten or twenty years' time? Do you suppose you could get an Angelfire site or something?
Probably not. [:(] A lot of drudge work, really. And so many other projects on various back burners that it'll probably never get done.

I have a site at conlang.org which, as of now, consists of a woefully incomplete wiki.
I polished up Bodus (though my astronomical calculations need more eyeballs), and created 67 new Shaleyan fungi, plants, and animals. I'm getting closer to being able to present Shaleya and the Shaleyans in a CBB thread.

And since Bodus and Shaleya are both basically utopias, I should probably present Kebsabhaz, my hateworld, as well. You know, to be fair and balanced. Or just to mix things up.
Good to hear!!

I for one shall look forward to it!
I always thought the internment was rather one-sided. I mean, it's not like there weren't zillions of Krau...I mean German-Americans! in the country!
And then the Italian-Americans. Italians are Whiter than Japanese, but they're not WASP's the way Germans are. Italian-Americans could be forced to drink from the Colored fountains in some parts of the U.S. South in those days. Plus, to this day, the U.S. has never had an Italian-American president, whereas in World War II, they had already had one German-American president (Herbert Hoover, originally Huber).
I don't think we've ever had a Finnish-American president either. With only forty some presidents in all of history, I think we'd have a long way to go before we even get to a tithe of the European ethnicities. To say nothing of the African or Asian!

Coloured only. Another stupid idea among stupid ideas.
Well, in those days, it was not unheard of for Americans to join the British military in order to fight. Presumably you could have gone that route.
Cool! Didn't know that! Sort of like the way many Americans of the Lost Generation joined the Spanish Civil War?[/quote]

Yep. During WWI and WWII, Americans fought for a variety of other countries including Poland, China, Britain, France, Germany & Canada.
Daine militias are, I think, something akin to the Swiss model. Basically, everyone is expected to learn how to use hunting and fighting weapons; everyone is expected to make or obtain their own kit and maintain it & themselves in readiness. There are quasi militaryesque units that are kept on duty at all times. The Sheriffs being the most prominent: especially in the marches they're the ones who are on guard for rogue visitors and stray megafauna. They're the ones who will, in time of dire need, will raise the hue and cry and will stand in defense of the whole queendom until the Greatqueen's armies can mobilise and get in place. Sheriffs are always boys and are generally taken from folks who are highly skilled with weapons and martial arts, trackers, hunters, scrappers and skinchangers.
Oh, this sounds so cool! And I see Daine have a sort of division of labor by the sexes: queens are always girls, and sheriffs are always boys. And what's a skinchanger? Is that someone who helps others shapeshift?
Skinchanger is term I use for shapeshifter. Not an uncommon ability among Daine, but those who can fóol the beasts they shift into, those are rare indeed!

On division of labour by sex, yes! Queens are always girls, mothers (obviously) and mother-sisters (obviously), midwives, maranderi artists. Those are some examples of girl only labours. Sheriffs, rangers, weaponsmiths, shéep herders, dog hunters & trackers. Those are always boys.

Girls personalities, spiritual & intellectual constitutions make them better at certain tasks just as boys are naturally better at some other things. But that doesn't mean there is necessarily a prescribed division on those counts. The more open compassion of girls helps make them great healers in general; but the detail orientation of boys makes them great healers too. She throws her heart and spirit into her healing. He inserts his mind and intuition.

Even though there are many such divisions of labour & distinctions of personality, I don't think much of them. There's no "Women are from Estarea, men are from Ares" among Daine. They understand girls and boys as being complimentary to one another, as each needing what the other offers and rejoicing when they work as one.

Men have lost sight of that, I think. Both *there* in Yeola and *here* in Earth. We're too concerned about "equality" as a kind of sameness and have forgotten that male & female are indeed quite different. Naturally complimentary, we have too frequently destroyed that in favour of a hierarchy of power and now suffer the struggles that this wrongsightedness brings with it.
Ah, Jhonam is an ordinary ethnic name. Yavenam is the usual form for John.
Nice name -- Yavenam! Does Avantimannish have equivalents for all the common Biblical names (James/Jim, Rachel, Sarah, Paul, Peter, Mark, Thomas/Tom, Ruth, Elizabeth, Mary, etc.)?
Yep! Mind you, Biblical names are not common in the Eastlands. Except among the Jews. Among Kristians, you'll find some folks named after evangelists or apostles, but most folks have good old fashioned Avantimannish names. Jhonam, Marcam, Hertez, Bartram, Mariyez, Wolfam, Harctam, etc.

Meiriez, Maqthalliez, Yevannez, Suosaniez, Marethez, Ruodez, Weruniqez, Yavenam, Matuwam, Yllucam, Maracam, Pallam, Pitram, Iaqonam, Amtarawaz, Tomam, Saianam, Filippam, Parathalanam, Iyevadanam, Tawadivam. Not common names by any stretch of the imagination! Kristian names in modern times come usually through the medium of Talarian, which is kind of obvious from the paucity of vowels and the fracture of glides.

Interestingly, in Avantimannish, there are special declensions for names (you can see that names in -ez are fem. and names in -am are masc.) that differ from the usual nominal declensions:

NOM wolfaz Pallam
ACC wolfa(m) Pallam
GEN wolfes Pallo
DAT wolfe Pallo
Mind you, weraz = male Man; mannaz = "human being" in Avantimannish.
Oh! So just like Old English!
It is Germanic, after all! (More than a nod to Gothic.)
The Hidden Queen is on the one wing the de facto ruler of the Daine of Auntimoany (the Empress of Men, Yesseraê, is their de jure sovereign). The Hidden Queen is also the ruler of Ôntumûn, the ancient land that was before the coming of Men. It is, perhaps, what we might call . . . not entirely there? Or rather there, but not entirely present. . . . Cosmically, her place is at the centre of the collegium of Daine queens -- elevated above them but still of them; equal in dignity to the true queens of Men & Teyor. They sit at the feet of the Heavenly Queen whose wings in turn caress the throne of the One above.
Sounds straight out of a novel! Maybe you should put out a trilogy, tetralogy, pentalogy, hexalogy, heptalogy, octalogy, ennealogy, or decalogy of novels set in The World before you shop around for a movie deal! Good stuff.
Hah! I can barely get a couple articles onto the Wiki! And you want ten novels already! :mrred:
That's getting into the domain of transhumanism, a complicated and controversial issue in human states. Blue skin or Na'vi-style bioluminescent freckles are permissible most places, and even porcupine quills are now legal in most human countries. People get away with sexdactyly on Kankonia, 5% of Kankonian humans being sexdactylous, but I can't see most places allowing heptadactyly or higher, nor hypodactyly for humans. (Tetradactyly would, on the other hand on both hands, be the norm on Hapoi, whose sapients are the Reds.) If someone doesn't like his quillhawk, he can get regened when he's old enough to object.

Some dystopias create warborgs, genetically-engineered sapients bred to fight in wars. The biological horror, they are!
Transhumanism is exactly where I was headed!

Sexdactyly --- never heard that word! I've heard of it as hexadactyly. Six of one hex of the other.

Interesting: I don't have any (humanoid) races with more or fewer digits than five.

Well, Daine. Daine have thrée digits in their wings! In some individuals, the wing-thumb is separate and mobile; within the wing-hand are two long digits composed of two broad fused digits each. So, back in the evolutionary past, there must have been five wing-hand digits.
Bidis. Mentolatian death sticks! That's the kind of crap Men like smoking --- adulterated weed wrapped up in barely smokable leaves. Tsk. Thankfully, the habit hasn't caught on among Men, and Daine, as you know, already know how to smoke properly! The bidis made in Mentolatum are generally very thin and rather short and are smoked in a small mouth-pipe device of silvered bronze with a little finger ring so you don't have to keep it in your mouth. Might as well aerosolise a tar pit and breathe that in!
Oh, that's so cool! I've never read about a conworld that had bidis before!
Men'll smoke any damn thing. These Mentolatian bidis are little different than their Indian conterparts: cheap, poorly processed tobacco wrapped up in cheap leaf wrappers. *Here* I wouldn't smoke bidis. Too much child labour involved and too little pressure can be brought to bear on the unregulated nature of the industry, unlike clothing or other sweatshop industries which do at least have some attention among Occidental consumers.

*There* I wouldn't smoke bidis either! Mostly because they're the kinds of cheap things the urban destitute smoke when they can't find dry leaves in the gutters. Proper Mentolatian bidis, like their Indian counterparts, are nicotine laden death traps. Even Daine can become hooked on the things. And that's a terrible thing to see, a Daine who knows better struggling to get off something his body craves so deeply.
Say it ain't so! North Korea is a socialists' paradise, struggling against the decadent US and its henchcountries, not a repressive third world country!
North Korea? To be honest, I didn't have any particular country in mind.
Heh. Your description seemed just spot on!
Bernie Sanders would puke at the North Koreans, by the way. They don't let boys grow their hair long.
Daine everywhere would puke at the NKs. Daine generally prefer long hair. Else how can they braid it and plait it and decorate it with bits of bling?
Yes. In places where the vast majority of people are unaware of GST, they'll assume someone with blue skin, bioluminescent freckles, porcupine quills as a mohawk, and wings came from another planet.
Wings? Sign me up!
Only in countries that both (1) are dystopias, (2) have longstanding norms against homosexuality, and (3) require everyone to genetically tweak their children before birth. Kebsabhaz is quite homophobic, but it doesn't screen all zygotes before you can become a parent (the amount of "freedom" Kebsabhaz gives to parents is such that Dylan's friend's Pentecostal parents would be allowed to do what they do to him), so Kebsabhazian pachams who had the genes to be gay but weren't designer babies would be dealt with some time after they began puberty.
This makes sense.
I guess. Although I wouldn't be happy living in a Leholan country that frowned upon synaesthetes.
I can imagine!
I'm working on the scheme now. The resulting baby arrives the way she does, simplistically, as a result of a curious mixture of genetics, thaumic orientation, the will & disposition of the parents, various physical and physiological parameters.

It's not like you can choose one from column A and two from column B. But if you work at it sufficiently, you'll be sure to end up quite unexpected!
A work in progress -- coolness! One more thing to put into your novels/movies.
It's all work in progress, in a manner of speaking. I've long known that a child of rape will be broken and quite probably end up being his father's doom.

Karma.

There's that permissive will again. Evil happens, but ever in the service of the good.
Don't forget that George W. Bush received warnings that Osama was planning to strike earlier that year, and didn't investigate. And that he advised Willie Brown not to fly on September 11, 2001. 9/11 may have been Mohammed Atta's plan, but passively-aggressively letting it happen was the Bushies' plan.

And then, to think that after George W. Bush let it happen, millions of Americans said, "We must get behind Bush and not question ANY of his positions! I'm so glad Gore lost! Bush is The Right Man!" . . .
Probably most of those did not know anything going on behind the scenes. They woke up one morning to disaster and got all December 7th on the matter. I think that's a normal American response. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but could only wish it were otherwise than you've described!
Heh --- lack of a money economy is another similarity!
Nice!
Their economy is much more like early Christian societies. They "are together and ha(ve) all things in common"; while they don't have property to sell, they do hold real & cultural property in common and of the produce of their common labour, they "divide them among all according to each one’s need".

Or I guess, given the history of the World, Christian societies end up being Daine-like in nature!
And there are town councils, for the different incorporated cities on Bodus. They deal with infrastructural things like the postal service, as opposed to moral/cultural/social issues like teen curfews or indecent exposure laws.
I see. What counts as "indecent" exposure? Daine would be like :wat: can't get much more "exposed" than we already are!
Hihi! Oezha...oazha is an old (very old!) Daine word for orgasm. With or without perception altering plant derivatives. [}:D]
Oh, wow! Great minds think alike! Oezha makes you feel as if you're having an orgasm, after all, kind of. There's such a glorious history of oezha use on various Leholan planets. Did you know, for instance, that in the Povoian civilization that once existed on Kankonia, a boisangatru (warrior assigned to special operations to expand the Povoi's empire) was given oezha the night before a fight to see an omen of how to win the mano-a-mano combat? Or that Sivrut, a trendy religious movement in the dying days of the Povoian Empire, stated that oezha was the secret, just-discovered, long-lost key to understanding life and the afterlife?
[;)]

Interesting lore there! There are plants the use of which induce similar sensations in Daine. Usually (ab)used by peripubescent boys as part of a stupid kind of game. They usually end up passing out. Sometimes they end up dead.

What does the mano-a-mano combat entail? Is it like a combat between champions? Can a battle or war be settled in that manner? In the (very!) old days, Daine wars often were settled by champion combats. War between Daine is so very rare anymore (I guess there are enough other non-Daine people to fight it's just not worth slaying your own); but the traditions survive! Champion combats and war games are events you find during the quarter fairs.
If you lived on Kankonia, I imagine you would belong to the Hazumi faith. Hazumas has saints, and Hazumi priests have liturgies wherein they cook these delicious liturgical sharks!
Do go on...and on! Tell me more.
Thanks for sharing your lovely poetry! And your daughter is beautiful -- black hair and green eyes? Does that look like a Daine version of her?
Yes. I imagine that's what she'd look like as a Daine! She was very premature and died I think pretty much right away after birth. She'd be about Yaviê's age now. A trouble maker and no mistake!
Good thing about crosses is we don't bear them alone. And anyway, the day is soon coming when I can set it down and look up...

to see her face...
Wait, "soon coming"? Are you saying you're terminally ill? Does this mean the world will never get to see your published compilation on The World? This is more bad news.
No, I'm not wishing to die tomorrow!

But I am mortal and do eagerly but patiently await the day when I'll cross over.
Goodness! They're eleven & twelve somethings! Beautiful, smart, creative boys.
Oh, that's good to hear. So they're from the Fifth World Generation!
[:D]
No, I think what's really a travesty is that none of the Daine are bisexual! We need bisexual Daine, lesbian Daine, gay Daine, asexual Daine, transgender Daine, genderqueer Daine! Oh, and please make one of your Daine agendered or bigendered!
If you only knew...

Or rather, if I only understood well enough to be able to explain!

[>:|]

These things don't exist among Daine because they aren't human --- that doesn't mean they're a race of perfectly binary nothing in between. The reality is that their experience and their nature is entirely other. And, as with many things about Daine I don't talk about, I just don't have the understanding to make it plain. And, worse, mislead through poor explanation.
A mystery that humans cannot know! You've just stricken the golden mean between having rubber-forehead aliens with entirely human souls and psychology and having aliens that no human reader can identify with because they're not human enough, and you've made them the center of your conworld! Brilliant!
Of course, this problem had me all in a twist for the better part of last week.

I don't think I'm any closer to a proper explanation. I will say that there are certain behaviours that Men (and presumably humans) would interpret as homosexual or bisexual acts. Some of them probably not repeatable here. I'll also say that Daine would scratch their heads at such interpretations. Finally I'd posit that the reality is probably more like all (or overwhelmingly most) Daine are neither one way nor the other and also both / and simultaneously. So, yeah. No lesbian or bi Daine --- but really no straight or asexual Daine either, if you take my meaning.

The only things I can say with certainty are the matter of "gender reassignment". That's kind of ordinary bio-magic. Also, Daine, in general, can't be cross-dressers. On account of them being either normally naked or else everyone regardless of gender wears basically the same articles of clothing.
I would not be surprised! Did you ever ask?
No. But I could!
You don't have to report back, but I must admit to curiosity on the matter.

I'm of the opinion that this is one of those things that parents are aware of (either consciously or unconsciously) simply as a matter of their intimate understanding and observation of their children. Possibly also depends on the constitution and devotion of the parents. Some parents may well be so horrified that their kid could be same sex attracted that they'll repress the intuition, ignore the signs, fight against it. Whatever. I just don't understand why people, parents most of all, have to behave that way towards their children.
If I recall correctly, there are over a million (or was it a hundred thousand?) articles in the Waray-Waray Wikipedia.
As of today, more than 2M articles. But apparently they're not all very "deep".
[>_<] [O.O]

I hope the world record book people are paying you well!
Are you saying I'm the only person on Earth who's worn a turtleneck that consistently for that long? It would be pretty cool if I were!
I think you must be the only person on any planet in the known universe who's worn a turtle neck so consistently over such a long period of time. I think the last time I wore a turtle neck was when I was eight. And I hated it. If there isn't a category for turtleneck wearing, there ought to be!
Basically, the Tzielites learned that the human genome had been completely deciphered, and they had found out where evil lay in humanity's genome. They got to work taking the DNA and zygotes and embryos of Halenean humans and cut and spliced and engineered to completely eliminate the parts that would make evil possible. Then they set the first Shaleyans up on their planet, never before colonized by sapient life, with walkie-talkies and other technology, and raised them to the adulthood of the first generation. From there, Shaleyan civilization began, and the Greys of Tziel began watching them from more of a distance. But over the next few generations, they saw many Shaleyan humans were LGBTQIA. Sometimes they went naked in public. Sometimes they masturbated in public. They developed a culture that included a transvestite subclass. And they'd even make "beyond-life pacts" wherein two Shaleyans would consent to the surviving one of the two continuing to have sex with the other's corpse after the first of the two to die passed away! They also discovered drugs like phamein, and used them, albeit responsibly. This was to the utter mortification of the puritanical Sahandists of Tziel, who had an extremely Sahandocentric view of what should be considered moral and what should be considered immoral. They called the people of that planet "Akhlayit", or "those who are destined to fall", which over the millennia evolved into the word "Shaleya" in the Shaleyan language. The Tzielites completely abandoned their Edenic planet-creation and stuck to life on Tziel or joined a ufopolis. They closed down all the Tzielite bases on Shaleya.
Wow. That's quite the history!

But, did any of these naked, beyond-life pacter, responsible phamein using people actually do anything évil? Seems like, perhaps, the Tzielites got exactly what they bargained for.
Yep! Special xenomedical expertise like you'd find aboard an ARV!
Accommodation and Repair Vessel?
Some regions of Westmarche and Withwandiê are known for the practice. The marriages thus made are generally not life-matings. They're ways of spreading genetic influence across a wide area and end up being either temporary unions or marriages for making children.

And as for fourteen or fifteen year olds doing those kinds of things, puhleeease!! That would be like an eight or nine year old human having such a relationship!! They don't even hit puberty until their mid to late twenties!
Oh cool, so marriages aren't permanent there! What an interesting concept! And on Bodus, it's the opposite: puberty begins between 3 and 4, and the Seeking occurs between 4 and 7. (As I stated in the Bodus thread, ages 4-6 on Bodus are like ages 16-24 in Western civlization!) Then again, Bodus is the fifth planet from a large sun, so it takes 3.65 Earth-years to complete one Bodus-year.
Actually, more than you think end up being or becoming permanent. There are a number of marriage types that last for a season or a year or some other defined period of time. Marriages whose purpose is to make children obviously expire when the youngest kid comes of age. Of course, partners can always "re-enlist" as it were. No matter what kind of marriage you've made, if kiddoes come into the picture, any Daine would do the right thing and do the family thing!

Divorce is quite uncommon, if for no other reason than that most, especially younger, Daine are bound within temporary marriages of some kind. As Daine get older, the likelihood of making a life marriage increases dramatically. In part, divorce is uncommon because of the nature of Daine courtship. As with many things in Daine life, it is not anything like a private affair. If you're still quite young (say under 70 or 80 years), your parents and her parents will probably be talking about the courtship; your siblings will be grilling her and hers will be grilling you; for quite a while, you and your sweetie-pie can't even get a moment alone, as you'll have friends or relations nearby. Watching. Considering. And in those moments when your heart stops thumping and your mind reengages a bit, you'll have a chance to consider and ponder as well.

Turghun as I've said are the complete opposite. For them it's literally instant and irrevocable attraction the moment a girl and boy meet who are destined for one another. They can tell a little in advance, if they pay attention to their intuition, that The One is nearby. And for this reason, it's not uncommon to observe how unjoined Turghun boys & girls rarely look each other in the eye. Maybe they feel they aren't ready or don't like each other for one reason or other and are afraid they'll end up joined.
Definitely. Except instead of "children should be seen and not heard", it's going to be "Why won't my children speak to me instead of playing Angry Birds all day?"
[:'(]
Edit: Story update: the Amazon Daine story is still bare outline; the Elf story is percolating nicely. About 25 pages written so far.
Khemehekis
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

elemtilas wrote: 08 Apr 2019 04:45 Though, re Potchka & "Please, don't be a racist, peoples of all ethnicity should be allowed to exist in all conworlds if human exists.", I'm afraid I fail on many counts! Not least of which there being, among Men, no "Asians" proper at all. Not many "Europeans" either. Plenty of "Africans", though, if that helps!
Kankonians look sort of like Tongans, Samoans, or Fijians the way I picture them. Some people to whom I've described them say they sound like African-Americans, or Persians/Iranians. Shaleyans are more like Scandinavians. Hitans -- Japanese or Korean, maybe? Junsu (the planet that includes Tenta) has quite a wide representation of racial phenotypes, although they don't have a one-on-one correspondence to those of humans on Earth. Tentans themselves look more or less like Western Europeans, except they have high cheekbones.
Is this your first time hearing or reading the word "hentai"?
Actually, yes. Has quite the interesting history & cultural context depending on whether one is inside or outside Japan. In Japan, hentai is any sexually perverse or bizarre act --- Orcs (& Hotai) are definitely up for that kind of thing! So maybe there is some subconscious inspiration there.
Oh, cool!

I remember when my brother Alex (as a teen) was watching an anime in the early tenties, and a character in the anime gave a man a magazine with a capital aitch on the front. I asked Alex, "Do you know what that aitch means?"

"What?", he asked.

"Hentai", I replied.

Alex gave a squeal of the "This is crazy!" sort. Clearly, he knew what hentai was.
Elemtilas, once you've finished getting The World online, you ought to pitch your Elves -- and your world -- to the film industry folks and see if they'll give you a deal. You could be your generations J. R. R. Tolkien, and you could find your very own Peter Jackson. Your Elves are more interesting than the standard recycled fantasy most elf-langers and elf-worlders put out. (I've never played Dungeons & Dragons or similar games, nor did I know many classmates who did, so I have no idea what the experience is like, but the impression I get from reading posts on conworlding boards that mention using their conlang/conworld for D&D campaigns is that said campaigns are very low on originality, creatively fenced-in, color-by-number.)
Now, now! Let's not be hasty! I don't think of myself anything like close to being our generation's Tolkien (any of the four writers Tolkien, for that matter).
Whom would you consider the Tolkien of Generation X? J. K. Rowling, perhaps?

You have the INFP-dom to do it all! Just look at the company you're in!
Re D&D, I played it a few times but never very seriously. I concur about the creative fencing in, and I think that, leastways as far as making a world into a game setting goes, largely comes down to a matter of fitting that setting into the broad & already existing framework of a gaming franchise. I personally feel that The World would make for an interesting game setting, but I'd either have to castrate it in order to make it fit the little pigeon holes of the gaming industry & the expectations of gamers used to that kind of game or else come up with an entirely new game mechanics.
I don't know much about how games like D&D or Magic: The Gathering work -- I've never even played with Pokémon or Yu-gi-oh! cards like so many people I know born circa 1990. My closest encointer with MtG was when I found an MtG card littered on the ground when I was out and about one day and took it home to my brother -- to his delight. To be truthful, I'm not sure I'd even buy a collectible card game centered around The World, as I likely couldn't wrap my head around how to play it -- even if it had unconventional game mechanics.
Also, I've long been of the opinion that a lot of worldbuilders, especially young ones & especially new ones, mimic their favourite settings (games, movies, online content). And this is not a bad thing, after all, any of the great composers, in their early works especially, have pieces that mimic or rely heavily on the music of their mentors, tutors or favourites. This only becomes a problem if they can't get out of that early mimicry. I think the nature of D&D & game settings in general kind of molds worldbuilders into deeper mimicry.
Quite likely. My minimal exposure to geek and nerd culture may have helped me create an interesting conworld with the Lehola Galaxy that I never would have developed if I had thought from an early age that I had to have a world with elves, dwarves, and orcs in it.

There will always be exceptions, though. How about Mark Rosenfelder/Zompist? He said he originated the Verdurian language for a D&D campaign, and now he has a great conworld in Almea.
Is it ever going to all be online? Maybe in ten or twenty years' time? Do you suppose you could get an Angelfire site or something?
Probably not. [:(] A lot of drudge work, really. And so many other projects on various back burners that it'll probably never get done.
How sad. Will future Elemtilologists be left to pore through and analyze all your notes to piece the World together after you have passed away?
I polished up Bodus (though my astronomical calculations need more eyeballs), and created 67 new Shaleyan fungi, plants, and animals. I'm getting closer to being able to present Shaleya and the Shaleyans in a CBB thread.

And since Bodus and Shaleya are both basically utopias, I should probably present Kebsabhaz, my hateworld, as well. You know, to be fair and balanced. Or just to mix things up.
Good to hear!!

I for one shall look forward to it!
[+1]
And then the Italian-Americans. Italians are Whiter than Japanese, but they're not WASP's the way Germans are. Italian-Americans could be forced to drink from the Colored fountains in some parts of the U.S. South in those days. Plus, to this day, the U.S. has never had an Italian-American president, whereas in World War II, they had already had one German-American president (Herbert Hoover, originally Huber).
I don't think we've ever had a Finnish-American president either. With only forty some presidents in all of history, I think we'd have a long way to go before we even get to a tithe of the European ethnicities. To say nothing of the African or Asian!
So far, there've been English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch, and Kenyan. That's not much, is it? America came close to having French-American presidents twice (with Ross Perot in 1992, and with Al Gore in 2000), but alas, it was not meant to be. If Michael Dukakis had prospered in 1988, we could've had a Greek-American president! No presidents like you, nor any presidents like me (although in the latter case, a certain candidate whom I love and whom you detest could've filled that role if the DNC hadn't been so Establishment and conspiratorial in 2016!)
Skinchanger is term I use for shapeshifter. Not an uncommon ability among Daine, but those who can fóol the beasts they shift into, those are rare indeed!
Oh, OK, thanks for explaining.
On division of labour by sex, yes! Queens are always girls, mothers (obviously) and mother-sisters (obviously), midwives, maranderi artists. Those are some examples of girl only labours. Sheriffs, rangers, weaponsmiths, shéep herders, dog hunters & trackers. Those are always boys.
What's maranderi?
Girls personalities, spiritual & intellectual constitutions make them better at certain tasks just as boys are naturally better at some other things. But that doesn't mean there is necessarily a prescribed division on those counts. The more open compassion of girls helps make them great healers in general; but the detail orientation of boys makes them great healers too. She throws her heart and spirit into her healing. He inserts his mind and intuition.

Even though there are many such divisions of labour & distinctions of personality, I don't think much of them. There's no "Women are from Estarea, men are from Ares" among Daine. They understand girls and boys as being complimentary to one another, as each needing what the other offers and rejoicing when they work as one.
Say, are you familiar with Simon Baron-Cohen's systemizing/empathizing theory? He says that males are inborn systemizers, who are good at things like working with machines, categorizing, analyzing, understanding math and science. And females are inborn empathizers, who are good at things like understanding their and others' emotions.

I'm an anomaly for my gender, though -- here are my results.
Nice name -- Yavenam! Does Avantimannish have equivalents for all the common Biblical names (James/Jim, Rachel, Sarah, Paul, Peter, Mark, Thomas/Tom, Ruth, Elizabeth, Mary, etc.)?
Yep! Mind you, Biblical names are not common in the Eastlands. Except among the Jews. Among Kristians, you'll find some folks named after evangelists or apostles, but most folks have good old fashioned Avantimannish names. Jhonam, Marcam, Hertez, Bartram, Mariyez, Wolfam, Harctam, etc.

Meiriez, Maqthalliez, Yevannez, Suosaniez, Marethez, Ruodez, Weruniqez, Yavenam, Matuwam, Yllucam, Maracam, Pallam, Pitram, Iaqonam, Amtarawaz, Tomam, Saianam, Filippam, Parathalanam, Iyevadanam, Tawadivam. Not common names by any stretch of the imagination! Kristian names in modern times come usually through the medium of Talarian, which is kind of obvious from the paucity of vowels and the fracture of glides.
Mary, ?, Joan, Susan, ?, Ruth, Veronica, John, Matthew, Luke?, Mark, Paul, Peter, Jacob/James, ?, Thomas, ?, Philip, ?, ?, ?
Interestingly, in Avantimannish, there are special declensions for names (you can see that names in -ez are fem. and names in -am are masc.) that differ from the usual nominal declensions:

NOM wolfaz Pallam
ACC wolfa(m) Pallam
GEN wolfes Pallo
DAT wolfe Pallo
That's quite the interesting touch to Avantimannish! Quirky just like a real language.
That's getting into the domain of transhumanism, a complicated and controversial issue in human states. Blue skin or Na'vi-style bioluminescent freckles are permissible most places, and even porcupine quills are now legal in most human countries. People get away with sexdactyly on Kankonia, 5% of Kankonian humans being sexdactylous, but I can't see most places allowing heptadactyly or higher, nor hypodactyly for humans. (Tetradactyly would, on the other hand on both hands, be the norm on Hapoi, whose sapients are the Reds.) If someone doesn't like his quillhawk, he can get regened when he's old enough to object.

Some dystopias create warborgs, genetically-engineered sapients bred to fight in wars. The biological horror, they are!
Transhumanism is exactly where I was headed!

Sexdactyly --- never heard that word! I've heard of it as hexadactyly. Six of one hex of the other.
Odd, I've always seen the word "sexdactyly", so that's what I use for my Lehola pages.
Interesting: I don't have any (humanoid) races with more or fewer digits than five.
I vary the number of digits in my land-dwelling sapients quite a bit. My Bodusians have ten fingers and eight toes! For that reason, they have an octodecimal number system.
Well, Daine. Daine have thrée digits in their wings! In some individuals, the wing-thumb is separate and mobile; within the wing-hand are two long digits composed of two broad fused digits each. So, back in the evolutionary past, there must have been five wing-hand digits.
This is the kind of detail that creators of conpeoples with wings seldom put into their descriptions.
Say it ain't so! North Korea is a socialists' paradise, struggling against the decadent US and its henchcountries, not a repressive third world country!
North Korea? To be honest, I didn't have any particular country in mind.
Heh. Your description seemed just spot on!
Ha ha ha! I guess it did, in retrospect.
Bernie Sanders would puke at the North Koreans, by the way. They don't let boys grow their hair long.
Daine everywhere would puke at the NKs. Daine generally prefer long hair. Else how can they braid it and plait it and decorate it with bits of bling?
Kankonians and Shaleyans love long hair!
Yes. In places where the vast majority of people are unaware of GST, they'll assume someone with blue skin, bioluminescent freckles, porcupine quills as a mohawk, and wings came from another planet.
Wings? Sign me up!
You want to be a Daine?

Maybe we can take the genes from the sapients of Psittacotia to figure out how to give a sapient of human persuasion some wings. I can't think of any other winged sapients in the Lehola Galaxy.
I guess. Although I wouldn't be happy living in a Leholan country that frowned upon synaesthetes.
I can imagine!
Are you synaesthetic, by any chance, Elemtilas?
It's all work in progress, in a manner of speaking. I've long known that a child of rape will be broken and quite probably end up being his father's doom.

Karma.

There's that permissive will again. Evil happens, but ever in the service of the good.
Oh yes, you did discuss children of rape when you were talking about teleology and consequences in the World.
Don't forget that George W. Bush received warnings that Osama was planning to strike earlier that year, and didn't investigate. And that he advised Willie Brown not to fly on September 11, 2001. 9/11 may have been Mohammed Atta's plan, but passively-aggressively letting it happen was the Bushies' plan.

And then, to think that after George W. Bush let it happen, millions of Americans said, "We must get behind Bush and not question ANY of his positions! I'm so glad Gore lost! Bush is The Right Man!" . . .
Probably most of those did not know anything going on behind the scenes. They woke up one morning to disaster and got all December 7th on the matter. I think that's a normal American response. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but could only wish it were otherwise than you've described!
I woke up to disaster, too, but all I could think of when I thought of Bush after the towers fell was a man who hated LGBT Americans, a man who hated teens, a man who wanted to drill for oil, a man who didn't care about the rain-forests, a man who had executed 313 innocent people as governor of Texas, a man who worshipped globalization and the WTO, a man who wanted to keep marijuana illegal, a man who let civil asset forfeitures and other law-enforcement wrongdoings transpire, a man who opposed Napster. And then, when I saw so many people insisting that we all had to accept all these positions because some zealots have driven some airplanes into some buildings . . . well, that made me really hate Bush. It was sickening to see such a terrible man with terrible positions on the issues followed in such a microtine manner.

In 2014 I wrote a song about my memories of the attack titled "Sept. 12". I can share the lyrics (and send you an MP3) if you'd like.
Heh --- lack of a money economy is another similarity!
Nice!
Their economy is much more like early Christian societies. They "are together and ha(ve) all things in common"; while they don't have property to sell, they do hold real & cultural property in common and of the produce of their common labour, they "divide them among all according to each one’s need".

Or I guess, given the history of the World, Christian societies end up being Daine-like in nature!
I believe we had some discussion before wherein we discossed how the Daine were like Quakers! Quakers -- not your typical Protestant group, they.
And there are town councils, for the different incorporated cities on Bodus. They deal with infrastructural things like the postal service, as opposed to moral/cultural/social issues like teen curfews or indecent exposure laws.
I see. What counts as "indecent" exposure? Daine would be like :wat: can't get much more "exposed" than we already are!
Nothing would be "indecent" exposure on Bodus. Bodusians don't have any taboos against nudity. Indecent exposure and teen curfews were cited as two examples of laws Bodusians would never make.

And Bodusians, as I've mentioned in my Bodus thread, normally go topless. Bodusians aren't mammals and don't produce a galactologue fluid, though, so there are no breasts to arouse leery American heterosexual men.
Oh, wow! Great minds think alike! Oezha makes you feel as if you're having an orgasm, after all, kind of. There's such a glorious history of oezha use on various Leholan planets. Did you know, for instance, that in the Povoian civilization that once existed on Kankonia, a boisangatru (warrior assigned to special operations to expand the Povoi's empire) was given oezha the night before a fight to see an omen of how to win the mano-a-mano combat? Or that Sivrut, a trendy religious movement in the dying days of the Povoian Empire, stated that oezha was the secret, just-discovered, long-lost key to understanding life and the afterlife?
What does the mano-a-mano combat entail? Is it like a combat between champions? Can a battle or war be settled in that manner?
The boisangatrus would fight with swords and a variety of Iron Age weapons, and would get into head-on battles with high-ranking knights, generals, that sort of thing. Sometimes they'd assassinate tribal chiefs or even kings in order to expand the Povoian Empire.
In the (very!) old days, Daine wars often were settled by champion combats. War between Daine is so very rare anymore (I guess there are enough other non-Daine people to fight it's just not worth slaying your own); but the traditions survive! Champion combats and war games are events you find during the quarter fairs.
It's all like jousting, though, right? No actual deaths?
If you lived on Kankonia, I imagine you would belong to the Hazumi faith. Hazumas has saints, and Hazumi priests have liturgies wherein they cook these delicious liturgical sharks!
Do go on...and on! Tell me more.
A priest at Hazumi religious gatherings must bless all the food to be served before it can be eaten. This blessing from the priest is called a semar. Feasts held on the days of saints important to the local temple include lamb, turtles and a species of shark called the liturgical shark. Such a feast is called a nutwa. More modernistic temples substitute lamb qasa, turtle qasa and shark qasa ("qasa" being a word of Javarti origin for a kind of in vitro meat) for the actual animals. There are also litases (singular: litass), in which only lamb is served as an attempt to make the self more gentle and purify the soul.

There are also a large number of monasteries and convents across Kankonia, where monks or nuns study together without any one head priest. Monks or nuns will take turns giving semars or placing the shark on the table. After 25 years of study of the Tzalath since being ordained, priests can become judges. A judge will take raspberry wine after hearing a case, then, when sober again, will decide whether someone has broken the ethical code of Hazumas. Judges take care of the job of interpretation of the Tzalath. Another role in Hazumi temples is the zodenis ("shark-keeper"). Zodenas raise liturgical sharks in aquaria, or in pools near the temple. They take on such duties as feeding the sharks, monitoring their temperature, looking out for diseases, and catching the sharks when it is time to eat one.

The liturgical shark is fairly small for a shark -- it's not whale-shark-size or anything. We don't have them on Earth, though, so a Hazumi cleric immigrating here would be stuck, unless they brought a liturgical shark farm along with them in their spacecraft.
Thanks for sharing your lovely poetry! And your daughter is beautiful -- black hair and green eyes? Does that look like a Daine version of her?
Yes. I imagine that's what she'd look like as a Daine! She was very premature and died I think pretty much right away after birth. She'd be about Yaviê's age now. A trouble maker and no mistake!
I'm sorry to hear that, Elemtilas. Will she still be a newborn when you see her in the afterlife, do you think?
No, I'm not wishing to die tomorrow!

But I am mortal and do eagerly but patiently await the day when I'll cross over.
Oh, OK. Whew!

Of course, this problem had me all in a twist for the better part of last week.

I don't think I'm any closer to a proper explanation. I will say that there are certain behaviours that Men (and presumably humans) would interpret as homosexual or bisexual acts. Some of them probably not repeatable here. I'll also say that Daine would scratch their heads at such interpretations. Finally I'd posit that the reality is probably more like all (or overwhelmingly most) Daine are neither one way nor the other and also both / and simultaneously. So, yeah. No lesbian or bi Daine --- but really no straight or asexual Daine either, if you take my meaning.

The only things I can say with certainty are the matter of "gender reassignment". That's kind of ordinary bio-magic. Also, Daine, in general, can't be cross-dressers. On account of them being either normally naked or else everyone regardless of gender wears basically the same articles of clothing.
OK, I see. Kind of like the way a lot of people today think Abraham Lincoln was bisexual because they're judging the language in his epistles with a twenty-first-century frame of mind. Good to know.

I'm very physically "soft" with many of the people I love in a platonic way, and love hugging friends, even male friends. My physical affection with male platonic friends, however, is still quite distinguishable from my sexual attraction towards guys.
I'm of the opinion that this is one of those things that parents are aware of (either consciously or unconsciously) simply as a matter of their intimate understanding and observation of their children. Possibly also depends on the constitution and devotion of the parents. Some parents may well be so horrified that their kid could be same sex attracted that they'll repress the intuition, ignore the signs, fight against it. Whatever. I just don't understand why people, parents most of all, have to behave that way towards their children.
I think some fundamentalists view homosexuality as their child's body and soul being "invaded" by Satan, or at least by demons. This would be "beating the sin" out of them, to use Dylan's words.

Then there are the people who think homosexuality is wrong because society says it is. These kind of parents see it as their duty to mold their children into following the norms necessary to be an accepted, norm-abiding member of society. Creating a son or daughter who "functions in society" is actually more important to parents of this sort than loving their children. Parents like these do not truly love their children.
If I recall correctly, there are over a million (or was it a hundred thousand?) articles in the Waray-Waray Wikipedia.
As of today, more than 2M articles. But apparently they're not all very "deep".
I don't imagine they'd be too deep!
I think you must be the only person on any planet in the known universe who's worn a turtle neck so consistently over such a long period of time. I think the last time I wore a turtle neck was when I was eight. And I hated it. If there isn't a category for turtleneck wearing, there ought to be!
Eight? Wow! What do you wear now?
Basically, the Tzielites learned that the human genome had been completely deciphered, and they had found out where evil lay in humanity's genome. They got to work taking the DNA and zygotes and embryos of Halenean humans and cut and spliced and engineered to completely eliminate the parts that would make evil possible. Then they set the first Shaleyans up on their planet, never before colonized by sapient life, with walkie-talkies and other technology, and raised them to the adulthood of the first generation. From there, Shaleyan civilization began, and the Greys of Tziel began watching them from more of a distance. But over the next few generations, they saw many Shaleyan humans were LGBTQIA. Sometimes they went naked in public. Sometimes they masturbated in public. They developed a culture that included a transvestite subclass. And they'd even make "beyond-life pacts" wherein two Shaleyans would consent to the surviving one of the two continuing to have sex with the other's corpse after the first of the two to die passed away! They also discovered drugs like phamein, and used them, albeit responsibly. This was to the utter mortification of the puritanical Sahandists of Tziel, who had an extremely Sahandocentric view of what should be considered moral and what should be considered immoral. They called the people of that planet "Akhlayit", or "those who are destined to fall", which over the millennia evolved into the word "Shaleya" in the Shaleyan language. The Tzielites completely abandoned their Edenic planet-creation and stuck to life on Tziel or joined a ufopolis. They closed down all the Tzielite bases on Shaleya.
Wow. That's quite the history!

But, did any of these naked, beyond-life pacter, responsible phamein using people actually do anything évil? Seems like, perhaps, the Tzielites got exactly what they bargained for.
No, none of them actually did anything evil. The Sahandism-practicing Tzielites, however, had such a strong Fundamentalist tinnel vision that they were unable to think outside their Sahandist frame of reference, and could not recognize that these behaviors were, in fact, not evil.
Yep! Special xenomedical expertise like you'd find aboard an ARV!
Accommodation and Repair Vessel?
Alien reproduction vehicle.
Actually, more than you think end up being or becoming permanent. There are a number of marriage types that last for a season or a year or some other defined period of time. Marriages whose purpose is to make children obviously expire when the youngest kid comes of age. Of course, partners can always "re-enlist" as it were. No matter what kind of marriage you've made, if kiddoes come into the picture, any Daine would do the right thing and do the family thing! Divorce is quite uncommon, if for no other reason than that most, especially younger, Daine are bound within temporary marriages of some kind. As Daine get older, the likelihood of making a life marriage increases dramatically. In part, divorce is uncommon because of the nature of Daine courtship.
Oh, I see, so some marriages are permanent. But there are marriages made of love.
Turghun as I've said are the complete opposite. For them it's literally instant and irrevocable attraction the moment a girl and boy meet who are destined for one another. They can tell a little in advance, if they pay attention to their intuition, that The One is nearby. And for this reason, it's not uncommon to observe how unjoined Turghun boys & girls rarely look each other in the eye. Maybe they feel they aren't ready or don't like each other for one reason or other and are afraid they'll end up joined.
Now, this is my conception of an ideal marriage!
Edit: Story update: the Amazon Daine story is still bare outline; the Elf story is percolating nicely. About 25 pages written so far.
That's excellent!
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by elemtilas »

Khemehekis wrote: 15 Apr 2019 04:47
elemtilas wrote: 08 Apr 2019 04:45
Kankonians look sort of like Tongans, Samoans, or Fijians the way I picture them. Some people to whom I've described them say they sound like African-Americans, or Persians/Iranians. Shaleyans are more like Scandinavians. Hitans -- Japanese or Korean, maybe? Junsu (the planet that includes Tenta) has quite a wide representation of racial phenotypes, although they don't have a one-on-one correspondence to those of humans on Earth. Tentans themselves look more or less like Western Europeans, except they have high cheekbones.
How do you describe them?

In Yeola, apart from the "typical" Men, there are a couple other closely related kindreds. One are a kind of shorting and stoutish and perhaps somewhat pukelish kind of Men (the Bo Sovi). You don't see them in the East at all. They're perhaps kind of like Neanderthalers. They and their Very Tall cousins have taken to making delvings into caves and hidden places in the mountains. Here, they live with their dead ancestors in stone necropolises. (When it comes to death, they're even worse than the Nibukians!) Shorter than the rest are the Dolunds. Fisherfolk and trappers in the uplands of the Whythywindles, they too make delvings, but not so grand as those of the Bo Sovi. They like to smoke, too, and would probably kill for someone to import some bidis up their way. Unlike Daine, they're direct inhalers, fashioning hookah like bowls to smoke their weeds in.
Orcs (& Hotai) are definitely up for hentai kind of things! So maybe there is some subconscious inspiration there.
Oh, cool!
Perhaps not if you're a Daine or a Man on the receiving end!

But on the other hand, Men are up for some kinkiness of their own.
I remember when my brother Alex (as a teen) was watching an anime in the early tenties, and a character in the anime gave a man a magazine with a capital aitch on the front. I asked Alex, "Do you know what that aitch means?"

"What?", he asked.

"Hentai", I replied.

Alex gave a squeal of the "This is crazy!" sort. Clearly, he knew what hentai was.
Hm. I'm guessing it wasn't Haute Couture magazine...

I'm sure The World's denizens have their sexual deviances aplenty. Even the Daine have some odd peculiarities that could rise to that level in the minds of some folks.
I don't think of myself anything like close to being our generation's Tolkien (any of the four writers Tolkien, for that matter).
Whom would you consider the Tolkien of Generation X? J. K. Rowling, perhaps?
Good lord, no!

The Wizarding World is okay, as far as fantasy worlds go, and I think her vision of it is improving as we move away from the focus on adolescents and too much "cool for the sake of cool" with the recent movies set in Leftpondia.

I think she's a good writer, but in many respects a terrible worldbuilder. Too many ... issues.

When I browse the fantasy shelves at B&N, I see lots of name dropping --- the next Tolkien; Tolkien for a new generation; with a depth to rival Middle Earth. But when I read the synopsis and maybe crack open to a random page, I often end up asking myself, did the reviewer even know who Tolkien was? How he went about his work?

If I were to judge who the current Tolkien is by who has the most Deluxe Boxed Sets on the shelves, it would have to be G.R.R.Martin. Also, note very kindly, that he's got four names, and while I do too, none of mine are R.

I think for sheer volume of data, quality of data and breadth of worldbuilding, I'd nominate PTerry as the emeritus Tolkien Chair of Geopoetry. I've never read Martin, though have heard "Westeros is basically Europe" as a repeated criticism. Paolini is also considered by some to be the Tolkien of our generation (though that might be, from what I've read of his work, because he copied so heavily); I watched Eragon once and wasn't terribly impressed and have never read any of the books. I'm sure I've read every Disc World novel a dozen times. I sometimes wish I'd never heard of him. After I finished L.F., I knew right away that here was a writer who thinks and writes a lot like me (though obviously, his work is polished and professional and had been at it for years already). For me at least, the peril lay in unconscious borrowing; in parallelism. There are homages in The World of course!), though I do try to steer away from nicking everything that ain't nailed down.

And prying up what is.

For the present (our) generation, I don't know yet. I'm not even convinced there can be another Tolkien, leastways not the complete package deal.
You have the INFP-dom to do it all! Just look at the company you're in!
Heavy weights to a one. I mean, St. Augustine! Can't get much more of a megaton slugger than that! Plus just about everybody (except Sir Terry, INTP) I've mentioned above!

I don't know much about how games like D&D or Magic: The Gathering work -- I've never even played with Pokémon or Yu-gi-oh! cards like so many people I know born circa 1990. My closest encointer with MtG was when I found an MtG card littered on the ground when I was out and about one day and took it home to my brother -- to his delight. To be truthful, I'm not sure I'd even buy a collectible card game centered around The World, as I likely couldn't wrap my head around how to play it -- even if it had unconventional game mechanics.
I don't know anything about that kind of card game either. Ordinary playing cards based on those found in The World might make more sense.
How about Mark Rosenfelder/Zompist? He said he originated the Verdurian language for a D&D campaign, and now he has a great conworld in Almea.
I don't know anything about Almea or Zompist for that matter.
How sad. Will future Elemtilologists be left to pore through and analyze all your notes to piece the World together after you have passed away?
Ha! "Elemtilologists". I suspect the reality is that, like 99.99% of our output, it'll end up in the dustbin. Or more likely, the recycling bin.

Mind you, this area of our obscure arts is something I've thought about for a long while. That is, the curating of dead-and-gone papers of language inventors & world builders. Thus far I've considered three basic pathways as being the most viable: first of course is the recycling bin, it's economical and that's where most human creative output ends up anyway, so we'd be in good company; next is to donate a wad of money to one's alma mater, their librarians can toss it all in a box, label it and put it on a shelf to gather dust for next few decades until they do a clearance sale; third is to court the shifty whims of Lady Internet and go digital. The history of online content security is abysmal. A lot of people used to have content on Geocities. All gone. Even places like CBB will eventually pass into oblivion. Just have to look at the histories of other once robust and active bbs to see how those stories end up. Even if the forum itself survives another ten years, who's going to even know what's there? When was the last time, apart from this instant, Penzala ever got a mention?

No, their job will be made easy. There just won't be anything left to sift through or piece together.

So far, there've been English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch, and Kenyan. That's not much, is it? America came close to having French-American presidents twice (with Ross Perot in 1992, and with Al Gore in 2000), but alas, it was not meant to be. If Michael Dukakis had prospered in 1988, we could've had a Greek-American president! No presidents like you, nor any presidents like me (although in the latter case, a certain candidate whom I love and whom you detest could've filled that role if the DNC hadn't been so Establishment and conspiratorial in 2016!)
Oh, I don't detest the candidate(s). Just the politics. And for the record, that detestation applies across the spectrum.

On division of labour by sex, yes! Queens are always girls, mothers (obviously) and mother-sisters (obviously), midwives, maranderi artists. Those are some examples of girl only labours. Sheriffs, rangers, weaponsmiths, shéep herders, dog hunters & trackers. Those are always boys.
What's maranderi?
This is the art of making a fellow Daine even more beautiful by applying a kind of long lasting tint to the skin. Rather like henna, though maranderi girls have a wider selection of colours to choose from. Unlike tattoos, the stuff can be washed off and the body can be reused as canvas fresh and clean once again!
Girls personalities, spiritual & intellectual constitutions make them better at certain tasks just as boys are naturally better at some other things. But that doesn't mean there is necessarily a prescribed division on those counts. The more open compassion of girls helps make them great healers in general; but the detail orientation of boys makes them great healers too. She throws her heart and spirit into her healing. He inserts his mind and intuition.

Even though there are many such divisions of labour & distinctions of personality, I don't think much of them. There's no "Women are from Estarea, men are from Ares" among Daine. They understand girls and boys as being complimentary to one another, as each needing what the other offers and rejoicing when they work as one.
Say, are you familiar with Simon Baron-Cohen's systemizing/empathizing theory? He says that males are inborn systemizers, who are good at things like working with machines, categorizing, analyzing, understanding math and science. And females are inborn empathizers, who are good at things like understanding their and others' emotions.

I'm an anomaly for my gender, though -- here are my results.
Haha! I'm more empathetic than you!! [;)] E50S13

I answered one as a Daine boy and got "Empathiser ~ Balanced"; a little more empathic and a little less balanced as a girl. Pretty much as expected: I think this indicates why they work so well together.

I don't think humans were made to be at odds, but I can see how we've gotten ourselves that way.
Meiriez, Maqthalliez, Yevannez, Suosaniez, Marethez, Ruodez, Weruniqez, Yavenam, Matuwam, Yllucam, Maracam, Pallam, Pitram, Iaqonam, Amtarawaz, Tomam, Saianam, Filippam, Parathalanam, Iyevadanam, Tawadivam.
Mary, ?, Joan, Susan, ?, Ruth, Veronica, John, Matthew, Luke?, Mark, Paul, Peter, Jacob/James, ?, Thomas, ?, Philip, ?, ?, ?
Mary, Magdalen, Joan, Susan, Martha, Ruth, Veronica, John, Matthew, Luke, Mark, Paul, Peter, Jacob, Andrew, Thomas, Simon, Philip, Bartholomew, Jude/Judas, Thaddeus.
Interesting: I don't have any (humanoid) races with more or fewer digits than five.
Not quite! Elves have six: four fingers, two thumbs.
Well, Daine. Daine have thrée digits in their wings! In some individuals, the wing-thumb is separate and mobile; within the wing-hand are two long digits composed of two broad fused digits each. So, back in the evolutionary past, there must have been five wing-hand digits.
This is the kind of detail that creators of conpeoples with wings seldom put into their descriptions.
Well, I do have a strong interest in anatomy. I could go on about Daine's dextrocardia, situs inversus, extra organ(elle)s, redundant nervous & circulatory subsystems, second brains, six chambered hearts (Marag), ancillary hearts, supernumerary bits & pieces, number and arrangement of teeth, etc.

Daine everywhere would puke at the NKs. Daine generally prefer long hair. Else how can they braid it and plait it and decorate it with bits of bling?
Kankonians and Shaleyans love long hair!
Do tell what they do with it!

Tana are fond of topknots and they decorate these with bones and feathers; and plaits which they like to make into complex & beautiful constructions. Turghun usually just let it grow without bothering to even comb it out. It's so thick and wiry and wavy anyway and just ends up in unmanageable locks. Some Turghun have taken to painting their locks, though. Sure, it adds to the mess, but Turghun are kind of messy Daine all around.
Wings? Sign me up!
You want to be a Daine?
You bet! If it were possible, I'd do it.
Maybe we can take the genes from the sapients of Psittacotia to figure out how to give a sapient of human persuasion some wings. I can't think of any other winged sapients in the Lehola Galaxy.
Winged sophonts seem to be common enough in The World. Not just in Yeola.
I guess. Although I wouldn't be happy living in a Leholan country that frowned upon synaesthetes.
I can imagine!
Are you synaesthetic, by any chance, Elemtilas?[/quote]

Mirror-touch is the only one I've experienced. As far as conjoining sound with some other sense (like visual effects or colour perception), for me it's the other way around. I don't see a colour or shape when I hear a sound; but when I see something or even think of something, music will arise. But even when there is no particular stimulus, there is always the music.
I woke up to disaster, too, but all I could think of when I thought of Bush after the towers fell was a man who hated LGBT Americans, a man who hated teens, a man who wanted to drill for oil, a man who didn't care about the rain-forests, a man who had executed 313 innocent people as governor of Texas, a man who worshipped globalization and the WTO, a man who wanted to keep marijuana illegal, a man who let civil asset forfeitures and other law-enforcement wrongdoings transpire, a man who opposed Napster. And then, when I saw so many people insisting that we all had to accept all these positions because some zealots have driven some airplanes into some buildings . . . well, that made me really hate Bush. It was sickening to see such a terrible man with terrible positions on the issues followed in such a microtine manner.

In 2014 I wrote a song about my memories of the attack titled "Sept. 12". I can share the lyrics (and send you an MP3) if you'd like.
Share away!

I don't know the man at all, so can't really say what he hated or loved. As for positions on issues, I don't equate those with emotion, so can't really respond there. As for politics, well you know my general feelings on politics!

As for the wars of that era & following (& continuing), I think those have largely been a mess and will end up solving nothing. Mostly because we're just too damn sensitive. That and the modern media coverage (for good or ill) means that no war can ever be properly pursued or won.

It's my opinion, but I believe that when Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the US responded, we should never have gone into Iraq at all. But we did. We entered that region half-heartedly, still assuming that war would be waged largely as it was in Germany in WWII. This was a majorly flawed plan. In Afghanistan, we did the same thing, pretending like Afghanistan and Iraq would somehow magically turn into post-war Germany. Throughout that time, they were always like "we're not going to engage in nation building". Well, why bother invading a relatively secure country (Iraq) if you have no plans for what to do with it afterwards!? And Afghanistan was even worse!
I believe we had some discussion before wherein we discussed how the Daine were like Quakers! Quakers -- not your typical Protestant group, they.
Quakers?? We did?
I see. What counts as "indecent" exposure? Daine would be like :wat: can't get much more "exposed" than we already are!
Nothing would be "indecent" exposure on Bodus. Bodusians don't have any taboos against nudity. Indecent exposure and teen curfews were cited as two examples of laws Bodusians would never make.
I see!

Curfews is interesting. I can't say Daine impose curfews per se. (No clocks, for one.) But, you know, there are dangerous creatures that lurk in the night and young, unprepared and immature people taste no different than their usual prey.

I'm of the opinion that Daine parents (and older siblings) impose such restrictions on young kids not because they feel the need to cramp their lifestyle, but simply as a matter of keeping them safe.
And Bodusians, as I've mentioned in my Bodus thread, normally go topless. Bodusians aren't mammals and don't produce a galactologue fluid, though, so there are no breasts to arouse leery American heterosexual men.
Also true for the vast majority of peoples in The World. For those people relatively unaffected by weather & climate, there's no issue. For those who do get chilled in Winter or in the rain, the occasional addition of protective clothing becomes more of a necessity. For example, the Empress of Auntimoany.

As for the proclivities of heterosexual American men, I'm of the opinion that the more boobs you see on a day to day basis, the less arousing they become. Most especially once you come to appreciate that the majority of real girls' breasts do nòt look like what you see advertised in Hollywood or in smutty websites. Over-engineered and built to astound -- that's just not the reality. And it's not even really all that beautiful in many instances.

Daine girls don't have much in the way of beasts anyway (except when lactating), so won't be arousing many AHM on that account. Quite a few have more than two, which may put some fellows off. Even Mannish girls aren't overly huge in that department.
The boisangatrus would fight with swords and a variety of Iron Age weapons, and would get into head-on battles with high-ranking knights, generals, that sort of thing. Sometimes they'd assassinate tribal chiefs or even kings in order to expand the Povoian Empire.
Kind of do anything, go anywhere shock warriors!
In the (very!) old days, Daine wars often were settled by champion combats. War between Daine is so very rare anymore (I guess there are enough other non-Daine people to fight it's just not worth slaying your own); but the traditions survive! Champion combats and war games are events you find during the quarter fairs.
It's all like jousting, though, right? No actual deaths?
Well, I wouldn't say that. Anything pointy or sharp has the potential to kill. Anything bludgeoning has the potential to kill.

War games are not engaged in with the intent to kill one's opponents, but rather to show off your bravery, your physical beauty & grace and your masterful accomplishment of martial arts & skills. There's always one or two that end up with a spear through their chests. A tragedy, to be sure! Probably too young, too immature and too hot-headed to even know the serious nature of these games. Such a warrior should have stuck to wrestling or archery or dillino (a contest of main strength). You know, something where you're not likely to get yourself killed!

There are kinds of warfare Daine engage in that are deadly. Duelling is a thing, and depending on the circumstances and the players and the rules decided upon, the fight can turn out fatal for one or both participants. These are typically duels of honour.

Among the Marag, the majority of boys (the wild type) engage in terribly costly mating fights every season.

Most Daine live in regions where there are people and creatures who know no better way than that of violence, and so even the most peace loving of Tana must prepare for violence. And when they go out to meet an enemy at war, they put every ounce of strength, determination (and beauty & grace!) into it. They are hardy and skillful and terribly difficult to kill, but still, not every one comes home again alive.

Even a simple boyhood game like nifta can turn out tragic. This is a game played with longing knives that have rounded but still reasonably sharp blades on them. The idea of the game to give your friend a cut over the breastbone. Sometimes boys get a little to enthusiastic and a civil game can turn into a bit of a brawl. Inexperience can lead to severe injuries. The blade itself, if mishandled, can slide between the ribs and cut something you didn't want to cut.
A priest at Hazumi religious gatherings must bless all the food to be served before it can be eaten. This blessing from the priest is called a semar. Feasts held on the days of saints important to the local temple include lamb, turtles and a species of shark called the liturgical shark. Such a feast is called a nutwa. More modernistic temples substitute lamb qasa, turtle qasa and shark qasa ("qasa" being a word of Javarti origin for a kind of in vitro meat) for the actual animals. There are also litases (singular: litass), in which only lamb is served as an attempt to make the self more gentle and purify the soul.

There are also a large number of monasteries and convents across Kankonia, where monks or nuns study together without any one head priest. Monks or nuns will take turns giving semars or placing the shark on the table. After 25 years of study of the Tzalath since being ordained, priests can become judges. A judge will take raspberry wine after hearing a case, then, when sober again, will decide whether someone has broken the ethical code of Hazumas. Judges take care of the job of interpretation of the Tzalath. Another role in Hazumi temples is the zodenis ("shark-keeper"). Zodenas raise liturgical sharks in aquaria, or in pools near the temple. They take on such duties as feeding the sharks, monitoring their temperature, looking out for diseases, and catching the sharks when it is time to eat one.

The liturgical shark is fairly small for a shark -- it's not whale-shark-size or anything. We don't have them on Earth, though, so a Hazumi cleric immigrating here would be stuck, unless they brought a liturgical shark farm along with them in their spacecraft.
Yes, that sounds quite nice indeed! The conjunction of spiritual and legal realms is of interest here. Among Daine, while they don't have written laws as such, it's often monks who consider questions of everyday moral & ethical issues.

Why is the shark so important to Hazumi?
Yes. I imagine that's what she'd look like as a Daine! She was very premature and died I think pretty much right away after birth. She'd be about Yaviê's age now. A trouble maker and no mistake!
I'm sorry to hear that, Elemtilas. Will she still be a newborn when you see her in the afterlife, do you think?
No, I don't think so. It's a matter of speculation only, and for now a mystery. The only thing I can say is, if I'm happy enough to arrive in the right place, I shall know her when I see her!
No, I'm not wishing to die tomorrow!

But I am mortal and do eagerly but patiently await the day when I'll cross over.
Oh, OK. Whew!
[:D] Just ordinary considerations there!

Spoiler:
I don't think I'm any closer to a proper explanation. I will say that there are certain behaviours that Men (and presumably humans) would interpret as homosexual or bisexual acts. Some of them probably not repeatable here. I'll also say that Daine would scratch their heads at such interpretations. Finally I'd posit that the reality is probably more like all (or overwhelmingly most) Daine are neither one way nor the other and also both / and simultaneously. So, yeah. No lesbian or bi Daine --- but really no straight or asexual Daine either, if you take my meaning.

The only things I can say with certainty are the matter of "gender reassignment". That's kind of ordinary bio-magic. Also, Daine, in general, can't be cross-dressers. On account of them being either normally naked or else everyone regardless of gender wears basically the same articles of clothing.
OK, I see. Kind of like the way a lot of people today think Abraham Lincoln was bisexual because they're judging the language in his epistles with a twenty-first-century frame of mind. Good to know.
[O.O]

They do?
I'm very physically "soft" with many of the people I love in a platonic way, and love hugging friends, even male friends. My physical affection with male platonic friends, however, is still quite distinguishable from my sexual attraction towards guys.
That's very Daine. Friends hug one another all the time; they walk along arm in arm or hand in hand. Very unAmerican, but it turns out the latter at least is rather a trait of Filipino culture.
I think some fundamentalists view homosexuality as their child's body and soul being "invaded" by Satan, or at least by demons. This would be "beating the sin" out of them, to use Dylan's words.
That's sad indeed. The Catholic take is so radically different. Same sex attraction is not a sin at all. Sin only appears when attraction becomes action. Kind of a different take on the whole Sodom and Gomorrah thing!

Me, as I read the Sodom story, I don't see in that incident homosexual sex, strictu sensu and per se. While I don't agree with some LGBXYZ proponents who see the sin of Sodom as merely a betrayal of hospitality (very important in ancient society I grant!); I see the sin of Sodom more as repugnantly lustful & same gender rape as part of what is apparently a wholly debauched and pagan culture practiced by utterly unascended people. Primitive and savage at the core and totally self-centered, uninterested in living a better way, and utterly intolerant.

Notice that Lot does actually tempt them with his daughters. (I wouldn't do that, but I think he made his point!) They had no interest in the daughters -- they wanted to destroy the two men (disguised angels). The sin, I think, is much more about deep attitudes and lusts than it is about mere same-gender sex in and of itself.
Then there are the people who think homosexuality is wrong because society says it is. These kind of parents see it as their duty to mold their children into following the norms necessary to be an accepted, norm-abiding member of society. Creating a son or daughter who "functions in society" is actually more important to parents of this sort than loving their children. Parents like these do not truly love their children.
I concur on the first statement. "Society says" is never the guide to good parenting at least in my way of thinking. Society is far too labile, far too self-centered, far too interested in base gratification for it to be used as a model for raising children well. I fully concur: raising your child to social norms is not an expression of love.

However, I dare say we quite possibly mean entirely different things when we think of what "society says"!
I think you must be the only person on any planet in the known universe who's worn a turtle neck so consistently over such a long period of time. I think the last time I wore a turtle neck was when I was eight. And I hated it. If there isn't a category for turtleneck wearing, there ought to be!
Eight? Wow! What do you wear now?
Usually if I'm home, just a sarong. Otherwise, jeans and a shirt. No turtlenecks! Ever!!
No, none of them actually did anything evil. The Sahandism-practicing Tzielites, however, had such a strong Fundamentalist tunnel vision that they were unable to think outside their Sahandist frame of reference, and could not recognize that these behaviors were, in fact, not evil.
Quite. Closed eyes can only see what the closed mind wants them to see.
Yep! Special xenomedical expertise like you'd find aboard an ARV!
Accommodation and Repair Vessel?
Alien reproduction vehicle.
Uy. Not even close!

Spoiler:
Actually, more than you think end up being or becoming permanent. There are a number of marriage types that last for a season or a year or some other defined period of time. Marriages whose purpose is to make children obviously expire when the youngest kid comes of age. Of course, partners can always "re-enlist" as it were. No matter what kind of marriage you've made, if kiddoes come into the picture, any Daine would do the right thing and do the family thing! Divorce is quite uncommon, if for no other reason than that most, especially younger, Daine are bound within temporary marriages of some kind. As Daine get older, the likelihood of making a life marriage increases dramatically. In part, divorce is uncommon because of the nature of Daine courtship.
Oh, I see, so some marriages are permanent. But there are marriages made of love.
Oh, well, they're (almost) all made of love of some kind. Even marriages for a season are based on love. The two parties might be friends or hunters that meet in the same grounds year after year.
Turghun as I've said are the complete opposite. For them it's literally instant and irrevocable attraction the moment a girl and boy meet who are destined for one another. They can tell a little in advance, if they pay attention to their intuition, that The One is nearby. And for this reason, it's not uncommon to observe how unjoined Turghun boys & girls rarely look each other in the eye. Maybe they feel they aren't ready or don't like each other for one reason or other and are afraid they'll end up joined.
Now, this is my conception of an ideal marriage!
Even Tana fantasise about and, to an extent, idealise this kind of union. Sometimes it happens to them in real life, but most usually marriage for a Tana is founded upon friendship, courtship and the usual hard work.

Turghun are just wired differently. Usually, they learn how to get along. When they don't, the results can be as humorous as they are explosively entertaining!
Khemehekis
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

elemtilas wrote: 17 Apr 2019 19:38
Khemehekis wrote: 15 Apr 2019 04:47 Tentans themselves look more or less like Western Europeans, except they have high cheekbones.
How do you describe them?
Tentans have straight or wavy hair. Among the ethnic Tentans, hair color comes in 65% blonde, 17% red and 18% brown among the females and 30% blonde, 27% red and 43% brown among the males. Eyes come in 71% blue, 5% grey, 8% green, 5% hazel and 11% brown. 80% of boys and 61% of girls have freckles. Tentans have high cheekbones. The average adult height is 6'1" (male) and 5'11" (female).
In Yeola, apart from the "typical" Men, there are a couple other closely related kindreds. One are a kind of shorting and stoutish and perhaps somewhat pukelish kind of Men (the Bo Sovi). You don't see them in the East at all. They're perhaps kind of like Neanderthalers. They and their Very Tall cousins have taken to making delvings into caves and hidden places in the mountains. Here, they live with their dead ancestors in stone necropolises. (When it comes to death, they're even worse than the Nibukians!) Shorter than the rest are the Dolunds. Fisherfolk and trappers in the uplands of the Whythywindles, they too make delvings, but not so grand as those of the Bo Sovi. They like to smoke, too, and would probably kill for someone to import some bidis up their way. Unlike Daine, they're direct inhalers, fashioning hookah like bowls to smoke their weeds in.
I had to look up the word "pukel". Turns out Púkel-men are a race from Tolkien. I don't think any peoples of the Lehola Galaxy look like that. And Bo is the name of the solar system in which Junsu (Tenta's planet) is located.
But on the other hand, Men are up for some kinkiness of their own.

I'm sure The World's denizens have their sexual deviances aplenty. Even the Daine have some odd peculiarities that could rise to that level in the minds of some folks.
Are these lead-ins to you sharing more stuff about the World?
I remember when my brother Alex (as a teen) was watching an anime in the early tenties, and a character in the anime gave a man a magazine with a capital aitch on the front. I asked Alex, "Do you know what that aitch means?"

"What?", he asked.

"Hentai", I replied.

Alex gave a squeal of the "This is crazy!" sort. Clearly, he knew what hentai was.
Hm. I'm guessing it wasn't Haute Couture magazine...
Haute Couture? I doubt it. Do they even read that in Japan?
Whom would you consider the Tolkien of Generation X? J. K. Rowling, perhaps?
Good lord, no!

The Wizarding World is okay, as far as fantasy worlds go, and I think her vision of it is improving as we move away from the focus on adolescents and too much "cool for the sake of cool" with the recent movies set in Leftpondia.

I think she's a good writer, but in many respects a terrible worldbuilder. Too many ... issues.
I see. Everything I know about Harry Potter, I learned from the Internet, from my brother, and from articles and reviews in the press about the books. I've never read the novels nor seen the movies. From your characterization of her as a "terrible worldbuilder", I don't think I'd want to.
If I were to judge who the current Tolkien is by who has the most Deluxe Boxed Sets on the shelves, it would have to be G.R.R.Martin. Also, note very kindly, that he's got four names, and while I do too, none of mine are R.
Oh, of course, him! Yes, his middle initials are even R. R.

However, Tolkien created his own languages, whereas Martin gets David J. Peterson to do his conlanging for him.

And I have four names too: James Epperson-French Landau.
I think for sheer volume of data, quality of data and breadth of worldbuilding, I'd nominate PTerry as the emeritus Tolkien Chair of Geopoetry.
Another good candidate. My brother likes Terry Pratchett.

I remember, back in 2004, when my brother received a Terry Pratchett novel as a present for his sixteenth birthday.

"[Title] by Terry Patchett", my father said.

"Terry Pratchett?", I asked.

He looked closer at the cover. "Yes, Pratchett. Clearly, you've heard of him. Tell me about him."

"Well . . . he's a science fiction writer, and he's popular in the U.K."
Paolini is also considered by some to be the Tolkien of our generation (though that might be, from what I've read of his work, because he copied so heavily); I watched Eragon once and wasn't terribly impressed and have never read any of the books.
I've never read Paolini nor seen Eragon. Your comment made me think of this post:

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1422&p=59551#p59551
Veris wrote: 02 Oct 2011 12:10 5. Copy-pasting Tolkien without realizing it. I'm looking at you, Christopher Paolini. To be fair, I think we all start out making highly-derivative works, but that's why I'm listing, subjectively, "things that turn me off of a conworld" rather than making a claim of an objective "doing this is bad." Do what you want, but Tolkien ripoffs repulse me like antigravity.
For the present (our) generation, I don't know yet. I'm not even convinced there can be another Tolkien, leastways not the complete package deal.
Well, right off the bat, I know I'm out, since I don't do fantasy.

I know! How about MONOBA?
MONOBA wrote: 05 Feb 2012 00:49 Every century needs its Tolkien!
And Siųa is indisputably one of the best-loved languages on the CBB.
You have the INFP-dom to do it all! Just look at the company you're in!
Heavy weights to a one. I mean, St. Augustine! Can't get much more of a megaton slugger than that! Plus just about everybody (except Sir Terry, INTP) I've mentioned above!
I'm ENFP, the same type as Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie, Julian Assange, Ralph Nader, Anne Frank, Arianna Huffington, Walt Disney, Kurt Vonnegut, Anaïs Nin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Salvador Dali, George Carlin, Oliver Stone, Ellen DeGeneres, Alicia Silverstone, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shailene Woodley, Jack White, Gwen Stefani, Daniel Radcliffe, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Shia LaBeouf.

When I think of INFP's, I picture a little boy standing atop his bed in karate gi with his toy lightsaber, issuing dramatic proclamations about killing evil monsters who cannot defeat him!

Whereas when I think of ENFP's, I picture a long-haired demonstrator giving a speech in front of hundreds, filled with gimmicks like ripping up photos and throwing water balloons filled with feces.

Then there's Sir Terry Pratchett's type, INTP. When I think of INTP's, I picture an overweight, ponytailed geek sitting at his laptop and visiting sites where he discusses quantum physics and new sustainability paradigms, tweaking his Unified Theory of Everything.
I don't know anything about that kind of card game either. Ordinary playing cards based on those found in The World might make more sense.
Oh, those could be cool.

The most popular deck of cards in the Lehola Galaxy is that which originated in Tenta any centuries ago.
How sad. Will future Elemtilologists be left to pore through and analyze all your notes to piece the World together after you have passed away?
Ha! "Elemtilologists". I suspect the reality is that, like 99.99% of our output, it'll end up in the dustbin. Or more likely, the recycling bin.
Well, I'm planning to get all mine up on the Internet!
Mind you, this area of our obscure arts is something I've thought about for a long while. That is, the curating of dead-and-gone papers of language inventors & world builders. Thus far I've considered three basic pathways as being the most viable: first of course is the recycling bin, it's economical and that's where most human creative output ends up anyway, so we'd be in good company; next is to donate a wad of money to one's alma mater, their librarians can toss it all in a box, label it and put it on a shelf to gather dust for next few decades until they do a clearance sale; third is to court the shifty whims of Lady Internet and go digital. The history of online content security is abysmal. A lot of people used to have content on Geocities. All gone. Even places like CBB will eventually pass into oblivion. Just have to look at the histories of other once robust and active bbs to see how those stories end up.
There is the Wayback machine. There is web.archive.org. Just look at https://web.archive.org/web/20120204050 ... onaht.html , for instance. Hopefully this will keep Teonaht alive for many generations of conlangers to come. Fifty to a hundred years from now, conlinguists are going to be interested in what kind of language Teonaht was, and they'll likely turn to these archived pages.
Even if the forum itself survives another ten years, who's going to even know what's there? When was the last time, apart from this instant, Penzala ever got a mention?
I often think of Paga. Conlangconstructor last visited this site on October 17, 2018. His last post before that recent visit was on June 12, 2014. I'm going to miss Paga.

I've been working hard (even getting a go bag for my notebooks full of Lehola drawings, maps, and con-scripts) to make sure that the Lehola Galaxy never ends up like the Cimeran language.
What's maranderi?
This is the art of making a fellow Daine even more beautiful by applying a kind of long lasting tint to the skin. Rather like henna, though maranderi girls have a wider selection of colours to choose from. Unlike tattoos, the stuff can be washed off and the body can be reused as canvas fresh and clean once again!
Ooh, this just sounds so lovely! Is maranderi from a particular plant species we don't have on Earth?

I'm an anomaly for my gender, though -- here are my results.
Haha! I'm more empathetic than you!! E50S13
Coolness!
I answered one as a Daine boy and got "Empathiser ~ Balanced"; a little more empathic and a little less balanced as a girl. Pretty much as expected: I think this indicates why they work so well together.

I don't think humans were made to be at odds, but I can see how we've gotten ourselves that way.
Daine boys and girls are both empathizers -- interesting! With humans, girls are empathizers and boys are systemizers.

I imagine with the Greys of Bt!a, both genders would be systemizers!
Meiriez, Maqthalliez, Yevannez, Suosaniez, Marethez, Ruodez, Weruniqez, Yavenam, Matuwam, Yllucam, Maracam, Pallam, Pitram, Iaqonam, Amtarawaz, Tomam, Saianam, Filippam, Parathalanam, Iyevadanam, Tawadivam.
Mary, ?, Joan, Susan, ?, Ruth, Veronica, John, Matthew, Luke?, Mark, Paul, Peter, Jacob/James, ?, Thomas, ?, Philip, ?, ?, ?
Mary, Magdalen, Joan, Susan, Martha, Ruth, Veronica, John, Matthew, Luke, Mark, Paul, Peter, Jacob, Andrew, Thomas, Simon, Philip, Bartholomew, Jude/Judas, Thaddeus.
Thanks!
Interesting: I don't have any (humanoid) races with more or fewer digits than five.
Not quite! Elves have six: four fingers, two thumbs.
Heh, two left thumbs, but also two right thumbs. Can't trust those Gean Elves.
Well, Daine. Daine have thrée digits in their wings! In some individuals, the wing-thumb is separate and mobile; within the wing-hand are two long digits composed of two broad fused digits each. So, back in the evolutionary past, there must have been five wing-hand digits.
This is the kind of detail that creators of conpeoples with wings seldom put into their descriptions.
Well, I do have a strong interest in anatomy. I could go on about Daine's dextrocardia, situs inversus, extra organ(elle)s, redundant nervous & circulatory subsystems, second brains, six chambered hearts (Marag), ancillary hearts, supernumerary bits & pieces, number and arrangement of teeth, etc.
O_O Daine have a second brain? That's some strange "bodybuilding" you did there, Elemtilas.
Kankonians and Shaleyans love long hair!
Do tell what they do with it!
Kankonian women most often grow their hair fairly long and straightened, but the most masculine among them keep it curly. A few wear it in a bun, and many wear dreadlocks. Currently, young women will straighten their hair even more often and wear it even longer. 30% of Kankonian women and girls wear their hair in a ponytail on any given day. Men wear their hair long, medium or short, and often put it into dreadlocks. Some wear the umangi modeled after the Chatonian method of styling coliza, in which several locks of hair in front are gelled together and twisted over in curls against the back of the head. One popular style is the somash, in which alternating columns of hair are shaven and unshaven. Young men have unkempt and often long hair, which they tend to keep curly unless their hair is naturally straight. Many shave all their hair off (this is also known among women). Beards are common among male Kankonians, moustaches less so (unless you are Musefi). Braiding is common in some parts of Povoi and Dumang among both genders, and was popularized elsewhere from the Povoian braided style.

Shaleyan women and girls usually wear their hair long and flowing. They usually keep it straight, but sometimes will perm it. Young women will often wear their hair in ponytails. The Dido flip is also known. Androgynous bangs are also popular with ladies. Men and boys will quite usually wear their hair long as well; young men often wear a Beatles cut or a flip, and male Shaleyans of any age often have shoulder-length hair. Many other guys wear a Kurt Cobain hairstyle. Braiding is common among spiritual leaders. Scientists of both genders usually wear a ponytail. Facial hair is less common, but 10% of Kankonian men do grow a beard. Transmen who get hormone treatment will usually grow a beard as an assertion of their male identity, ironically being many times more likely to grow one than cismen. Moustaches are rare, but sideburns and soul patches are common. 6% of female Shaleyans and 3% of male Shaleyans style their hair in dreadlocks. Astronauts of both genders often shave their heads entirely.
Wings? Sign me up!
You want to be a Daine?
You bet! If it were possible, I'd do it.
Maybe one of these decades, regening will come to Earth and Terrans can invent Daine.
Are you synaesthetic, by any chance, Elemtilas?
Mirror-touch is the only one I've experienced. As far as conjoining sound with some other sense (like visual effects or colour perception), for me it's the other way around. I don't see a colour or shape when I hear a sound; but when I see something or even think of something, music will arise. But even when there is no particular stimulus, there is always the music.
You have mirror-touch synaesthesia? Oh, cool!
In 2014 I wrote a song about my memories of the attack titled "Sept. 12". I can share the lyrics (and send you an MP3) if you'd like.
Share away!
Sept. 12
Music and lyrics by James Landau (C) 2015

I hear my dream white sound machine
Then I'm woken up, and see a screen
The ground is black, I see things crash
It all turns to black box and ash
Ooh, ooh
There's danger to discover
Ooh, ooh
I'd be your secret lover

I cannot fight the madness
That's raging in my brain
They crushed me under sadness
The chemicals remain
I try to keep my eyes closed
Hold images within
But I still recognize those
Thoughts always win

I've known for years I wasn't free
But now they lambaste liberty
They want to live and nothing more
What's there now for them to live for?
Tempers
Could stand to grow much riper
They say
They can't stand men in diapers

My message isn't clicking
Their leader's clicks a lot
His boots they'll keep on licking
With angst I now am fraught
I rage to see red color
But also white and blue
When I with people duller
Try to talk to

Every night and day I try to sleep
But it's pollsters who were counting sheep
With my own life, these scars compound
Till I myself feel at the ground
Closer
How do I make these screams stop?
Later
Life sounds a lot like dream-pop

It's been many elections
And many brand-new songs
I still have recollections
Of how young folks were wronged
We've made a lot of progress
And better it will get
But I can't like a log rest
At least not yet

I cannot fight the madness
That's raging in my brain
They crushed me under sadness
The chemicals remain
I try to keep my eyes closed
Hold images within
But I still recognize those
Thoughts always win
I don't know the man at all, so can't really say what he hated or loved. As for positions on issues, I don't equate those with emotion, so can't really respond there. As for politics, well you know my general feelings on politics!
I sort of connect positions with emotions. If a person supports sodomy laws, for instance, I'm pretty sure he hates LGBT people.

And yes, you believe the best politicians in the multiverse are Daine queens!
Throughout that time, they were always like "we're not going to engage in nation building".
I think the people on boards like the CBB are the ultimate nation builders!
I believe we had some discussion before wherein we discussed how the Daine were like Quakers! Quakers -- not your typical Protestant group, they.
Quakers?? We did?
Starting here.
Daine girls don't have much in the way of beasts anyway (except when lactating), so won't be arousing many AHM on that account. Quite a few have more than two, which may put some fellows off. Even Mannish girls aren't overly huge in that department.
Beasts? You mean breasts, right? The Daine have beasts like the oliphant and brontothere!

I'm a member of a Facebook IM group that shares freak videos, and someone once posted a video of a woman with three breasts.
The boisangatrus would fight with swords and a variety of Iron Age weapons, and would get into head-on battles with high-ranking knights, generals, that sort of thing. Sometimes they'd assassinate tribal chiefs or even kings in order to expand the Povoian Empire.
Kind of do anything, go anywhere shock warriors!
Yeah! Like that!
Among the Marag, the majority of boys (the wild type) engage in terribly costly mating fights every season.
Are Marag a Daine culture?
Even a simple boyhood game like nifta can turn out tragic. This is a game played with longing knives that have rounded but still reasonably sharp blades on them. The idea of the game to give your friend a cut over the breastbone. Sometimes boys get a little to enthusiastic and a civil game can turn into a bit of a brawl. Inexperience can lead to severe injuries. The blade itself, if mishandled, can slide between the ribs and cut something you didn't want to cut.
Sounds a bit like stretch/splits/mumbledypeg.

"Chagen, nobody will deliberately stab themselves inbetween the ribs because breathing is too easy."
Why is the shark so important to Hazumi?
I've never thought that part out. Sharks, however, are of the aquatic type of animal that a meat-forbidding Catholic monastery might have allowef on Friday. I was partly inspired by Jeffrey Henning's church (I forget the denomination -- Lutheran?) eating anableps once.
Yes. I imagine that's what she'd look like as a Daine! She was very premature and died I think pretty much right away after birth. She'd be about Yaviê's age now. A trouble maker and no mistake!
I'm sorry to hear that, Elemtilas. Will she still be a newborn when you see her in the afterlife, do you think?
No, I don't think so. It's a matter of speculation only, and for now a mystery. The only thing I can say is, if I'm happy enough to arrive in the right place, I shall know her when I see her!
I will hope for you.
OK, I see. Kind of like the way a lot of people today think Abraham Lincoln was bisexual because they're judging the language in his epistles with a twenty-first-century frame of mind. Good to know.
[O.O]

They do?
Yes. See https://www.nndb.com/people/332/000024260/#FN2 , for instance.
I'm very physically "soft" with many of the people I love in a platonic way, and love hugging friends, even male friends. My physical affection with male platonic friends, however, is still quite distinguishable from my sexual attraction towards guys.
That's very Daine. Friends hug one another all the time; they walk along arm in arm or hand in hand. Very unAmerican, but it turns out the latter at least is rather a trait of Filipino culture.
Eh, I was never a member of Mainstream American Culture. I'm not middle-class nor Protestant nor WASP anyway.
That's sad indeed. The Catholic take is so radically different. Same sex attraction is not a sin at all. Sin only appears when attraction becomes action. Kind of a different take on the whole Sodom and Gomorrah thing!

Me, as I read the Sodom story, I don't see in that incident homosexual sex, strictu sensu and per se. While I don't agree with some LGBXYZ proponents who see the sin of Sodom as merely a betrayal of hospitality (very important in ancient society I grant!); I see the sin of Sodom more as repugnantly lustful & same gender rape as part of what is apparently a wholly debauched and pagan culture practiced by utterly unascended people. Primitive and savage at the core and totally self-centered, uninterested in living a better way, and utterly intolerant.

Notice that Lot does actually tempt them with his daughters. (I wouldn't do that, but I think he made his point!) They had no interest in the daughters -- they wanted to destroy the two men (disguised angels). The sin, I think, is much more about deep attitudes and lusts than it is about mere same-gender sex in and of itself.
I've never believed that the story of Sodom was about homosexuality myself. Ezekiel 16:49-50 pretty much makes it clear to me.
Usually if I'm home, just a sarong. Otherwise, jeans and a shirt. No turtlenecks! Ever!!
A sarong? Oh, that's cool? My Filipino friend Joseph told me about something called a barong Tagalog just the other day. By shirt, do you mean a dress shirt?
No, none of them actually did anything evil. The Sahandism-practicing Tzielites, however, had such a strong Fundamentalist tunnel vision that they were unable to think outside their Sahandist frame of reference, and could not recognize that these behaviors were, in fact, not evil.

Quite. Closed eyes can only see what the closed mind wants them to see.
[+1]

BTW, Elemtilas, it's been a while since you updated the conlang census thread. There are a number of new conlang pages waiting to be added and updated.
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by elemtilas »

Khemehekis wrote: 25 Apr 2019 06:27
elemtilas wrote: 17 Apr 2019 19:38
Khemehekis wrote: 15 Apr 2019 04:47 Tentans themselves look more or less like Western Europeans, except they have high cheekbones.
How do you describe them?
Tentans have straight or wavy hair. Among the ethnic Tentans, hair color comes in 65% blonde, 17% red and 18% brown among the females and 30% blonde, 27% red and 43% brown among the males. Eyes come in 71% blue, 5% grey, 8% green, 5% hazel and 11% brown. 80% of boys and 61% of girls have freckles. Tentans have high cheekbones. The average adult height is 6'1" (male) and 5'11" (female).
Looks pretty Eurostandard! Mind you, and I've looked at loads of high/low cheekbone images and really can't tell what the difference is.
In Yeola, apart from the "typical" Men, there are a couple other closely related kindreds. One are a kind of shorting and stoutish and perhaps somewhat pukelish kind of Men (the Bo Sovi). You don't see them in the East at all. They're perhaps kind of like Neanderthalers. They and their Very Tall cousins have taken to making delvings into caves and hidden places in the mountains. Here, they live with their dead ancestors in stone necropolises. (When it comes to death, they're even worse than the Nibukians!) Shorter than the rest are the Dolunds. Fisherfolk and trappers in the uplands of the Whythywindles, they too make delvings, but not so grand as those of the Bo Sovi. They like to smoke, too, and would probably kill for someone to import some bidis up their way. Unlike Daine, they're direct inhalers, fashioning hookah like bowls to smoke their weeds in.
I had to look up the word "pukel". Turns out Púkel-men are a race from Tolkien. I don't think any peoples of the Lehola Galaxy look like that. And Bo is the name of the solar system in which Junsu (Tenta's planet) is located.
Actually, as with many things, Tolkien just did a good job of borrowing and making them his own. Another name for them, Woses, is an old name attached to old lore concerning the Woodwoses, the Wild Men of the Forests. It may very well be that the Bo Sovi carve stone Púkel Men to guard the ways of the dead...
But on the other hand, Men are up for some kinkiness of their own.

I'm sure The World's denizens have their sexual deviances aplenty. Even the Daine have some odd peculiarities that could rise to that level in the minds of some folks.
Are these lead-ins to you sharing more stuff about the World?
Ha! Will no one think of the children!?

I'm not sure CBB is the best venue for these things. Heck, there are a lot of perfectly normal things Daine do that I'd hesitate to talk about here (or most other places, for that matter) simply because of community standards.
I remember when my brother Alex (as a teen) was watching an anime in the early tenties,
I've noticed you've used tenty on several occasions. I know it's another word for 100 (in the series of tenty, eleventy, twelvety, etc.). What does it mean when you use it for dating purposes?
The Wizarding World is okay, as far as fantasy worlds go, and I think her vision of it is improving as we move away from the focus on adolescents and too much "cool for the sake of cool" with the recent movies set in Leftpondia.

I think she's a good writer, but in many respects a terrible worldbuilder. Too many ... issues.
I see. Everything I know about Harry Potter, I learned from the Internet, from my brother, and from articles and reviews in the press about the books. I've never read the novels nor seen the movies. From your characterization of her as a "terrible worldbuilder", I don't think I'd want to.
Please don't take me the wrong way! And definitely don't not read the books on my sayso! I actually have the series in my library (at least for me, that says something, as I do not have GRRM or Paolini); I've read them a couple times and have watched the movies several times. HP is actually quite a good story; I just think, perhaps, she did a little too much ad hockery when it came to building the WW.
However, Tolkien created his own languages, whereas Martin gets David J. Peterson to do his conlanging for him.
Quite. Mind you, I have no issue with that at all. I've no connexion any more with the LCS, but they have done a great service to the community by putting authors, theatre groups and production companies in contact with actual language inventors. Certainly beats writing to some random linguist or, slightly worse, just recycling a random Philippine language for your foreign / alien language!
And I have four names too: James Epperson-French Landau.
Hmm.

Nope. No Rs -- can't be you either!

[}:D]
I think for sheer volume of data, quality of data and breadth of worldbuilding, I'd nominate PTerry as the emeritus Tolkien Chair of Geopoetry.
Another good candidate. My brother likes Terry Pratchett.
There are issues here as well, but all in all he's got a pretty well made world and an awesome sense of humour! He also figured out how to integrate worldbuilding lore into his tales without being the cause of the dreaded infodump. (Well, dreaded by many writers, if not by this particular reader!)
Paolini is also considered by some to be the Tolkien of our generation (though that might be, from what I've read of his work, because he copied so heavily); I watched Eragon once and wasn't terribly impressed and have never read any of the books.
I've never read Paolini nor seen Eragon. Your comment made me think of this post:

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1422&p=59551#p59551
Ha! Elves again! (No. 3 under eye-rollingly bad)

I thought the map for no. 4 looked vaguely familiar, too. Honestly, the names are no worse than you'll find in any map of central or eastern Europe.

Yeah, No. 5 -- My friend's son (the young geopoet of previously anterior mention) is a CP fan. But he's at that age where he doesn't yet know what's good or bad in invented languages. I'll give him a few more years of innocent bliss before properly educating him.

Some good posts in the earlier part of that thread!
Well, right off the bat, I know I'm out, since I don't do fantasy.
There is that. But it's mainly the Rs.
I know! How about MONOBA? Every century needs its Tolkien!

And Siųa is indisputably one of the best-loved languages on the CBB.
Would seem so! I had a shufty. A 700 page grammar is quite impressive by any standards, and it looks like there's a lot of good invented culture to go with. Sadly, it seems they disappeared shortly after I joined, so I missed the goodness of the older discussions.
I'm ENFP, the same type as Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie, Julian Assange, Ralph Nader, Anne Frank, Arianna Huffington, Walt Disney, Kurt Vonnegut, Anaïs Nin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Salvador Dali, George Carlin, Oliver Stone, Ellen DeGeneres, Alicia Silverstone, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shailene Woodley, Jack White, Gwen Stefani, Daniel Radcliffe, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Shia LaBeouf.
Hmmm. Maybe there is something to that politics & genetics thing you were talking about! [}:D]

But you do have Walt Disney, and while I don't hold with bowlderising the Old Stories, out of irrational fear that children might be put off by them, he was certainly a high creative.

And he loved steam trains!

And Salvador Dali, one of my favourite painters!
When I think of INFP's, I picture a little boy standing atop his bed in karate gi with his toy lightsaber, issuing dramatic proclamations about killing evil monsters who cannot defeat him!
Pretty much! Though sans karate gi for me. And there were no toy light sabers then, so had to make do with a more mundane sword.
Whereas when I think of ENFP's, I picture a long-haired demonstrator giving a speech in front of hundreds, filled with gimmicks like ripping up photos and throwing water balloons filled with feces.
Hopefully you'll not take up poop ballooning any time soon!
Then there's Sir Terry Pratchett's type, INTP. When I think of INTP's, I picture an overweight, ponytailed geek sitting at his laptop and visiting sites where he discusses quantum physics and new sustainability paradigms, tweaking his Unified Theory of Everything.
Ha! That would be Ponder Stibbons to a tee!

Image

All in all, my favouritest of the wizards of U.U. Just replace "laptop" with HEX and "quantum physics" with, well, just quantum and Bob's thy nuncle. And he rocked the round specs long before HP was a speck in JKR's imagination.
Oh, those (playing cards from The World) could be cool.
Yet another slowly bubbling project...
The most popular deck of cards in the Lehola Galaxy is that which originated in Tenta any centuries ago.
Do describe!

The current popular deck in the Eastlands is the eight suit pack having 176 cards: 96 pips (A-12 in eight suits), 32 honours (Queen-Consort-Scholar-Warrior), 8 motleys (Jokers) and 52 trumps.
Ha! "Elemtilologists". I suspect the reality is that, like 99.99% of our output, it'll end up in the dustbin. Or more likely, the recycling bin.
Well, I'm planning to get all mine up on the Internet!
Keep at it!

Sadly, even with the Great Archive, I'd think a researcher would have to know what they're looking for in order to find it. How would they find Lehola or The World if they didn't know those things existed and what key and sub-key terms to search for?
There is the Wayback machine. There is web.archive.org. Just look at https://web.archive.org/web/20120204050 ... onaht.html , for instance. Hopefully this will keep Teonaht alive for many generations of conlangers to come. Fifty to a hundred years from now, conlinguists are going to be interested in what kind of language Teonaht was, and they'll likely turn to these archived pages.
mmm. Teonaht. Me all warm and fuzzy recalls it with, um, elendelasuruein, nostalgia and grief intermingled. Possibly akin to how many folks here recall Siwa?
I've been working hard (even getting a go bag for my notebooks full of Lehola drawings, maps, and con-scripts) to make sure that the Lehola Galaxy never ends up like the Cimeran language.
A go bag is a fantastic idea! I actually got Carbonite service so that if this computer goes caput, at least retrieving the important stuff won't be a pain. Because I'm so horrible at external back ups. I mean, it's not like I can't just reach down & turn the external hard drive on and copy files over to it! Just haven't touched it in like a year. Or two maybe?
Maranderi is the art of making a fellow Daine even more beautiful by applying a kind of long lasting tint to the skin. Rather like henna, though maranderi girls have a wider selection of colours to choose from. Unlike tattoos, the stuff can be washed off and the body can be reused as canvas fresh and clean once again!
Ooh, this just sounds so lovely! Is maranderi from a particular plant species we don't have on Earth?
Yeah! My avatar is all maranderi'd up! They have different plants and different additives they use to give a wide variety of colours. If it's not the henna tree per se, it's certainly rather similar in properties! Daine like lighter, brighter colours for maranderi: blues, greens and reds being the most common.

And while I say it can be "washed off", it's really more like it can be scrubbed off with some effort, and even then may take a week for it wear off sufficiently!

Haha! I'm more empathetic than you!! E50S13
Coolness!
Wasn't that so empathetic of me!
I answered one as a Daine boy and got "Empathiser ~ Balanced"; a little more empathic and a little less balanced as a girl. Pretty much as expected: I think this indicates why they work so well together.

I don't think humans were made to be at odds, but I can see how we've gotten ourselves that way.
Daine boys and girls are both empathizers -- interesting! With humans, girls are empathizers and boys are systemizers.

I imagine with the Greys of Bt!a, both genders would be systemizers!
Describe!
Heh, two left thumbs, but also two right thumbs. Can't trust those Gean Elves.
No indeed!
Well, I do have a strong interest in anatomy. I could go on about Daine's dextrocardia, situs inversus, extra organ(elle)s, redundant nervous & circulatory subsystems, second brains, six chambered hearts (Marag), ancillary hearts, supernumerary bits & pieces, number and arrangement of teeth, etc.
O_O Daine have a second brain? That's some strange "bodybuilding" you did there, Elemtilas.
Not just Daine, but they're the best known and best studied of the speaking races. They've long been used by the medical schools as vivisection subjects and anatomical models, you know.
Kankonian women most often grow their hair fairly long and straightened, but the most masculine among them keep it curly. A few wear it in a bun, and many wear dreadlocks. Currently, young women will straighten their hair even more often and wear it even longer. 30% of Kankonian women and girls wear their hair in a ponytail on any given day. Men wear their hair long, medium or short, and often put it into dreadlocks. Some wear the umangi modeled after the Chatonian method of styling coliza, in which several locks of hair in front are gelled together and twisted over in curls against the back of the head. One popular style is the somash, in which alternating columns of hair are shaven and unshaven. Young men have unkempt and often long hair, which they tend to keep curly unless their hair is naturally straight. Many shave all their hair off (this is also known among women). Beards are common among male Kankonians, moustaches less so (unless you are Musefi). Braiding is common in some parts of Povoi and Dumang among both genders, and was popularized elsewhere from the Povoian braided style.
mgmg... There's a number of Daine in the Eastlands especially who would happily try some of those styles! Maybe not shaving strips off --- but, some individuals have been known to shave some or all of their hair off. Deffo a bit [O.O] for everyone else!

Beards. No. Moustaches. No. Not even remotely possible.
Shaleyan women and girls usually wear their hair long and flowing. They usually keep it straight, but sometimes will perm it. Young women will often wear their hair in ponytails. The Dido flip is also known. Androgynous bangs are also popular with ladies. Men and boys will quite usually wear their hair long as well; young men often wear a Beatles cut or a flip, and male Shaleyans of any age often have shoulder-length hair. Many other guys wear a Kurt Cobain hairstyle. Braiding is common among spiritual leaders. Scientists of both genders usually wear a ponytail. Facial hair is less common, but 10% of Kankonian men do grow a beard. Transmen who get hormone treatment will usually grow a beard as an assertion of their male identity, ironically being many times more likely to grow one than cismen. Moustaches are rare, but sideburns and soul patches are common. 6% of female Shaleyans and 3% of male Shaleyans style their hair in dreadlocks. Astronauts of both genders often shave their heads entirely.
Dido Flip --- didn't even know the name for that! I recall it being popular enough at college. Some Daine chop their hair short and uneven like that, too.

Interesting factoid about the transmen!

But again, facial hair is just NO. [}:D] But even among Men, most ethnicities can just about grow a straggly thin & wispy moustache. Sidelocks are pretty common though, even when they've got a short hair style or some kind of pomaded up style.
Maybe one of these decades, regening will come to Earth and Terrans can invent Daine.
May be...
You have mirror-touch synaesthesia? Oh, cool!
Not terribly strong, but yeah.
Sept. 12
Music and lyrics by James Landau (C) 2015
I hear my dream white sound machine
Then I'm woken up, and see a screen
The ground is black, I see things crash
It all turns to black box and ash
Ooh, ooh
There's danger to discover
Ooh, ooh
I'd be your secret lover

I cannot fight the madness
That's raging in my brain
They crushed me under sadness
The chemicals remain
I try to keep my eyes closed
Hold images within
But I still recognize those
Thoughts always win

I've known for years I wasn't free
But now they lambaste liberty
They want to live and nothing more
What's there now for them to live for?
Tempers
Could stand to grow much riper
They say
They can't stand men in diapers

My message isn't clicking
Their leader's clicks a lot
His boots they'll keep on licking
With angst I now am fraught
I rage to see red color
But also white and blue
When I with people duller
Try to talk to

Every night and day I try to sleep
But it's pollsters who were counting sheep
With my own life, these scars compound
Till I myself feel at the ground
Closer
How do I make these screams stop?
Later
Life sounds a lot like dream-pop

It's been many elections
And many brand-new songs
I still have recollections
Of how young folks were wronged
We've made a lot of progress
And better it will get
But I can't like a log rest
At least not yet

I cannot fight the madness
That's raging in my brain
They crushed me under sadness
The chemicals remain
I try to keep my eyes closed
Hold images within
But I still recognize those
Thoughts always win
Thanks for sharing that! As with many songs, I feel there's a lot to unpack in here. Have you given any thought as to the song's meaning (I mean, apart from the obvious), connexions, metaphors and the like?
I don't know the man at all, so can't really say what he hated or loved. As for positions on issues, I don't equate those with emotion, so can't really respond there. As for politics, well you know my general feelings on politics!
I sort of connect positions with emotions. If a person supports sodomy laws, for instance, I'm pretty sure he hates LGBT people.
I see! I don't make that connexion. On the flip side: just because someone supports e.g. "gay marriage laws", I don't take that to mean they hate Christians or want to utterly destroy American or Western culture. (Though I know there are some folks who fear exactly that.)

Swords like these cut both ways; and the blood on either side is the same red. I find the practice of sodomy disgusting (odd -- -- that wasn't in the questionnaire!) but I can't really see supporting a law against it either. I don't see same sex unions as marriages per se, and would likely not support it being enshrined in law that way. I can't say I hate alphabet soup people because of that position. (Some of my dearly beloved are LGBTQ, after all!)
And yes, you believe the best politicians in the multiverse are Daine queens!
Well, naturally! When those who reign & rule do so with true charity in good faith; and those chosen are among the wisest & craftiest, then it's hard to lose out!
Throughout that time, they were always like "we're not going to engage in nation building".
I think the people on boards like the CBB are the ultimate nation builders!
I know right!

Different kind of nation building, though. I don't think imposing the Auntimoanian constitution & system of jurisprudence would be what either side would need.
I believe we had some discussion before wherein we discussed how the Daine were like Quakers! Quakers -- not your typical Protestant group, they.
Quakers?? We did?
Starting here.
Right you are. Primarily as regards cultural values rather than theological positions. Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship (from a Friends school curriculum). Not values they strive to attain so much as maintain and increase. And of course, their values aren't understood in terms of religion so much as an innate vital sign if you will. A healthy Daine might have a temperature of 100, b.p. of 112/78, 96~98% PICES; you might want to work on that depressed Simplicity value, miss!

I read an interesting article this morning that I think might help explain some segments of Daine culture. The idea of the sharing economy. Obviously, Daine cultures don't have or use money, unless (like the Daine of Auntimoany who are rumoured to be rolling in it) they're dealing with Men or Dwarrows who value the stuff. So the rental aspect of the subculture won't be accurate. But the idea of particularly a wandering Daine craftsman or bard or storyweaver might live such a lifestyle. Not exactly nomadic, not exactly settled.
Daine girls don't have much in the way of breasts anyway (except when lactating), so won't be arousing many AHM on that account. Quite a few have more than two, which may put some fellows off. Even Mannish girls aren't overly huge in that department.
Beasts? You mean breasts, right? The Daine have beasts like the oliphant and brontothere!
That they do!

But yes, I meant breasts.
I'm a member of a Facebook IM group that shares freak videos, and someone once posted a video of a woman with three breasts.
Like three in a row or like supernumerary breasts? Like all mammals, Daine (and Men & Humans) have several potential sites for breast development. I the number is about 40% of Daine have four and 60% have two.
Kind of do anything, go anywhere shock warriors!
Yeah! Like that!
Among Daine, there are Badhast warriors that fill more or less that function. Usually Turghun. No iron age weapons to speak of (unless they're hunting Elves); but they're about as fearsome as you can find anywhere in Yeola!
Among the Marag, the majority of boys (the wild type) engage in terribly costly mating fights every season.
Are Marag a Daine culture?
They're one of the principle kindreds. They're the ones with long almost wolflike snouts. Bunch of extra teeth, long tongues and for those that can speak, at least two extra points of articulation in the hard palate!
Even a simple boyhood game like nifta can turn out tragic. This is a game played with longing knives that have rounded but still reasonably sharp blades on them. The idea of the game to give your friend a cut over the breastbone. Sometimes boys get a little too enthusiastic and a civil game can turn into a bit of a brawl. Inexperience can lead to severe injuries. The blade itself, if mishandled, can slide between the ribs and cut something you didn't want to cut.
Sounds a bit like stretch/splits/mumbledypeg.
Yep. Boys can be real crazy! Mumblety-peg played by sticking the knife as close to your foot as possible sounds like something Daine boys would play. And you'd better be a skilled knife thrower! Because Daine don't wear shoes. Sole is pretty tough, but the top of the foot, not so much!
Why is the shark so important to Hazumi?
I've never thought that part out. Sharks, however, are of the aquatic type of animal that a meat-forbidding Catholic monastery might have allowef on Friday. I was partly inspired by Jeffrey Henning's church (I forget the denomination -- Lutheran?) eating anableps once.
Are the sharks four eyed?? Or just the inspiration?
The only thing I can say is, if I'm happy enough to arrive in the right place, I shall know her when I see her!
I will hope for you.
[<3]

I have worked out a general scheme of the life stages of a typical Daine. Once I get the image scanned in I'll post about it here in CBB. Yaviê is in stage 2, the long childhood of Daine.
OK, I see. Kind of like the way a lot of people today think Abraham Lincoln was bisexual because they're judging the language in his epistles with a twenty-first-century frame of mind. Good to know.

Yes. See https://www.nndb.com/people/332/000024260/#FN2 , for instance.
Looks like a case of really bad research.
I've never believed that the story of Sodom was about homosexuality myself. Ezekiel 16:49-50 pretty much makes it clear to me.
That as well.
Usually if I'm home, just a sarong. Otherwise, jeans and a shirt. No turtlenecks! Ever!!
A sarong? Oh, that's cool? My Filipino friend Joseph told me about something called a barong Tagalog just the other day. By shirt, do you mean a dress shirt?
Sarong = racca (Daine clothing, very comfy!) The barong is a fancy dress shirt; it's very light and roomy; you wear it over a t-shirt, don't tuck it in and never with a tie. Yyayy! You can get different colours and fancy patterns, but this is typical:

Image

Not really a dress shirt, no. Usually just a flannel shirt or some kind of buttony shirt. Maybe a t-shirt. Whatever's comfortable. And turtlenecks ain't comfortable!
BTW, Elemtilas, it's been a while since you updated the conlang census thread. There are a number of new conlang pages waiting to be added and updated.
Done and done!
Khemehekis
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 3883
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 09:36
Location: California über alles

Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

elemtilas wrote: 26 Apr 2019 17:45
Khemehekis wrote: 25 Apr 2019 06:27 Tentans have straight or wavy hair. Among the ethnic Tentans, hair color comes in 65% blonde, 17% red and 18% brown among the females and 30% blonde, 27% red and 43% brown among the males. Eyes come in 71% blue, 5% grey, 8% green, 5% hazel and 11% brown. 80% of boys and 61% of girls have freckles. Tentans have high cheekbones. The average adult height is 6'1" (male) and 5'11" (female).
Looks pretty Eurostandard! Mind you, and I've looked at loads of high/low cheekbone images and really can't tell what the difference is.
Yes, Bina, the continent on Junsu on which Tenta is located, is a sort of equivalent to Europe. Part of Bina has the Cheitwekwi race, which includes such countries as Tenta, Frelakh, and Bionjeng. Cheitwekwi people are characterized by medium height and weight, variable hair and eye colors, variable hair texture, white skin with freckles, and high cheekbones. A lot of philosophy and important ancient history went on in Bionjeng, and Bionjengese roots are to Tentan what Latin and Greek roots are to English or what Chinese roots are to Japanese. Another part of Bina has the Jin'ekwi race, characterized by medium to short height, gold or coffee-colored skin, dark brown to black hair, hazel or brown eyes, and variable hair texture. Countries with Jin'ekwi natives include Pinszer, Salada, and Eyibo.
Actually, as with many things, Tolkien just did a good job of borrowing and making them his own. Another name for them, Woses, is an old name attached to old lore concerning the Woodwoses, the Wild Men of the Forests. It may very well be that the Bo Sovi carve stone Púkel Men to guard the ways of the dead...
So they're appropriated like Elves and Dwarves is what you're saying? Oh.
But on the other hand, Men are up for some kinkiness of their own.

I'm sure The World's denizens have their sexual deviances aplenty. Even the Daine have some odd peculiarities that could rise to that level in the minds of some folks.
Are these lead-ins to you sharing more stuff about the World?
Ha! Will no one think of the children!?
The battle-cry of washy-moderate New Democrats and social-conservative Republicans alike! I've never understood how a child can be harmed by learning about or being exposed to sex. Sure, sex is "not for" children, but neither is the stock market, and I've never heard of anyone trying to censor knowledge about the stock market from children. (If anything, the stock market is even less for kids than sex, because in the U.S., you have to be 18 to play the stock market, whereas 16-year-olds may legally have sex in the majority of states.)

(And yes, I knew you were being satirical with that remark.)
I'm not sure CBB is the best venue for these things. Heck, there are a lot of perfectly normal things Daine do that I'd hesitate to talk about here (or most other places, for that matter) simply because of community standards.
Well, as a khemehekis, I sometimes bring up that my Kankonians have no taboo against public mastrbation or dogging.
I remember when my brother Alex (as a teen) was watching an anime in the early tenties,
I've noticed you've used tenty on several occasions. I know it's another word for 100 (in the series of tenty, eleventy, twelvety, etc.). What does it mean when you use it for dating purposes?
The tenties are the decade from 2000-2009. SIXties, SEVENties, EIGHTies, NINEties, TENties. We are now in the last year of the eleventies, and soon we will be in the decade in which Inner Bruise is set, the twelveties.
Please don't take me the wrong way! And definitely don't not read the books on my sayso! I actually have the series in my library (at least for me, that says something, as I do not have GRRM or Paolini); I've read them a couple times and have watched the movies several times. HP is actually quite a good story; I just think, perhaps, she did a little too much ad hockery when it came to building the WW.
Oh. Well, I'm not into fantasy in general. I have never had elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, etc. in the Lehola Galaxy.
However, Tolkien created his own languages, whereas Martin gets David J. Peterson to do his conlanging for him.
Quite. Mind you, I have no issue with that at all. I've no connexion any more with the LCS, but they have done a great service to the community by putting authors, theatre groups and production companies in contact with actual language inventors. Certainly beats writing to some random linguist or, slightly worse, just recycling a random Philippine language for your foreign / alien language!
Yeah, Peterson really made Dothraki a great language, so we could MWGA (make Westeros great again). Any reason you left the LCS?
I think for sheer volume of data, quality of data and breadth of worldbuilding, I'd nominate PTerry as the emeritus Tolkien Chair of Geopoetry.
Another good candidate. My brother likes Terry Pratchett.
There are issues here as well, but all in all he's got a pretty well made world and an awesome sense of humour! He also figured out how to integrate worldbuilding lore into his tales without being the cause of the dreaded infodump. (Well, dreaded by many writers, if not by this particular reader!)
You infodump about The World all the time, so that's hardly surprising. Do you think that if you wrote a novel or trilogy/heptalogy/whatever about The World, you'd slap the reader with a lot of infodumps? Or would you try to use incluing more? Or would you go the Ursula K. LeGuin path of having infodump chapters interspersed with more narrative chapters?
I've never read Paolini nor seen Eragon. Your comment made me think of this post:

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1422&p=59551#p59551
Ha! Elves again! (No. 3 under eye-rollingly bad)
Yes, Veris really could not stand the perfect, immortal Elves cliché. Same guy as the OP of "Elves other than 'humans, only awesomer'."
I thought the map for no. 4 looked vaguely familiar, too. Honestly, the names are no worse than you'll find in any map of central or eastern Europe.
Tbilisi! Dnepopetrovsk! It's the map of part of Almea, Zompist's conplanet. I have a few conpeople whose names sound like that, and unlike Veris, I believe an entire planet/solar system/galaxy without any such names would be (dare I say it?) unnaturalistic. Some peoples of Lehola have vocal apparatus like those of rodents or insects instead of humans. So there are stars and planets whose names are worse for Anglophone folk than anything on that Almea map.
Yeah, No. 5 -- My friend's son (the young geopoet of previously anterior mention) is a CP fan. But he's at that age where he doesn't yet know what's good or bad in invented languages. I'll give him a few more years of innocent bliss before properly educating him.
Hee hee hee. I hope your friend's son doesn't get stuck all his life with concreations that are uninspired Tolkien rip-offs. If he learns how real languages and scripts work, he can avoid creating Paolini-style conlangs or English ciphers written with cipherbets.
Some good posts in the earlier part of that thread!
Agreed, although I had never heard of Warhammer 4K and was amazed that so many people who randomly happened to have seen the thread were familiar with it.

Often, I feel as if I can't understand half the stuff (video games, tabletop games, anime, etc.) the people on this board are talking about.
Well, right off the bat, I know I'm out, since I don't do fantasy.
There is that. But it's mainly the Rs.
Yes? Why no R-words in my name? Perhaps because I can't stand the right-wing, restrictive, repressive, rigid, ruthless, rule-bound Ronald Reagan Religious Right that took over this country in the eighties.
Would seem so! I had a shufty. A 700 page grammar is quite impressive by any standards, and it looks like there's a lot of good invented culture to go with. Sadly, it seems they disappeared shortly after I joined, so I missed the goodness of the older discussions.
I sure hope Siųa wins a Smiley Award one of these years.
I'm ENFP, the same type as Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain, Salman Rushdie, Julian Assange, Ralph Nader, Anne Frank, Arianna Huffington, Walt Disney, Kurt Vonnegut, Anaïs Nin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Salvador Dali, George Carlin, Oliver Stone, Ellen DeGeneres, Alicia Silverstone, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shailene Woodley, Jack White, Gwen Stefani, Daniel Radcliffe, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Shia LaBeouf.
Hmmm. Maybe there is something to that politics & genetics thing you were talking about! [}:D]

But you do have Walt Disney, and while I don't hold with bowlderising the Old Stories, out of irrational fear that children might be put off by them, he was certainly a high creative.

And he loved steam trains!

And Salvador Dali, one of my favourite painters!
ENFP's are the most rafical type! Check it out: this article says ENFP's are the farthest to the left, and ISTJ's are the farthest to the right.
When I think of INFP's, I picture a little boy standing atop his bed in karate gi with his toy lightsaber, issuing dramatic proclamations about killing evil monsters who cannot defeat him!
Pretty much! Though sans karate gi for me. And there were no toy light sabers then, so had to make do with a more mundane sword.
Looks as if I nailed you!
Whereas when I think of ENFP's, I picture a long-haired demonstrator giving a speech in front of hundreds, filled with gimmicks like ripping up photos and throwing water balloons filled with feces.
Hopefully you'll not take up poop ballooning any time soon!
Doubtful I will after an experience with my freshman orientation in high school. When we freshmen toured the campus, some seniors threw water balloons at us! Being anosmic, it wasn't until I got home and my mother told me I smelled that I learned said water balloons had been filled with vinegar. Feces would be ten times worse.
Then there's Sir Terry Pratchett's type, INTP. When I think of INTP's, I picture an overweight, ponytailed geek sitting at his laptop and visiting sites where he discusses quantum physics and new sustainability paradigms, tweaking his Unified Theory of Everything.
Ha! That would be Ponder Stibbons to a tee!

All in all, my favouritest of the wizards of U.U. Just replace "laptop" with HEX and "quantum physics" with, well, just quantum and Bob's thy nuncle. And he rocked the round specs long before HP was a speck in JKR's imagination.
Hmmmm . . . "Ponder" sounds a lot like "Potter". What's U.U.?

And my INTJ brother wears glasses like that.
The most popular deck of cards in the Lehola Galaxy is that which originated in Tenta any centuries ago.
Do describe!

The current popular deck in the Eastlands is the eight suit pack having 176 cards: 96 pips (A-12 in eight suits), 32 honours (Queen-Consort-Scholar-Warrior), 8 motleys (Jokers) and 52 trumps.
Does pips mean they look like dice?

Tentan playing cards were invented in the 550's. They consist of sixteen ranks: they are the numbers 0/danko, 1/ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, then the six face cards: from lowest to highest they are ansi (little girl), pochi (little boy), nali (girl), vambo (boy), sanja (woman), and tumu (man). They also come in four suits, circles (red), stars (yellow), triangles (green) and diamonds (blue), for a total of 64 cards per deck. Sometimes one or two bembis (a wild card, equivalent to jokers in the French suit) are thrown in as well. The bembi shows this mythical Tentan creature, a humanoid monster with horns and fangs.
Sadly, even with the Great Archive, I'd think a researcher would have to know what they're looking for in order to find it. How would they find Lehola or The World if they didn't know those things existed and what key and sub-key terms to search for?
That's true. Hopefully, onlangers (i.e. online conlangers) will continue to talk about Auntimoany, Kankonia, the Teonim, and Siųa in 2100 in much the way people still talk about Middle-Earth, Quenya, Sindarin, and Khuzdul in 2019.
There is the Wayback machine. There is web.archive.org. Just look at https://web.archive.org/web/20120204050 ... onaht.html , for instance. Hopefully this will keep Teonaht alive for many generations of conlangers to come. Fifty to a hundred years from now, conlinguists are going to be interested in what kind of language Teonaht was, and they'll likely turn to these archived pages.
mmm. Teonaht. Me all warm and fuzzy recalls it with, um, elendelasuruein, nostalgia and grief intermingled. Possibly akin to how many folks here recall Siwa?
Hmmm . . .

elendelasuruein — watch the stars wheel overhead; rejoice in the changing seasons and years; recollect the past with nostalgia and grief intermingled; recount the years and ages of the world via mythistorical narrative or song (Mind you, it's getting cold here a bit too soon, so I'm not necessarily all on board with rejoicing at the sudden change from Summer to Winter!)

Great word (though I had to look it up!)
Haha! I'm more empathetic than you!! E50S13
Coolness!
Wasn't that so empathetic of me!
I didn't notice that the first time around, but irony noted!
Daine boys and girls are both empathizers -- interesting! With humans, girls are empathizers and boys are systemizers.

I imagine with the Greys of Bt!a, both genders would be systemizers!
Describe!
The Bt!achis are a spacefaring people and just about all of them have been aboard a spacecraft. A Bt!achi with flight sickness is a very rare sight. Abroad, they love experimenting on other people's animals, and have cloned and spliced many species. They often abduct other sapients (they call it "sampling").

Bt!achis are polyamorous. They seldom perform marriages anymore; marriage is a dying institution on Bt!a. Groups will raise their children together until the children turn 7. They receive vigorous education about Bt!a and its history in learning disks between the ages of 3 and 7, and spend ages 8 to 10 mastering learning disks about other planets. Bt!achis have a first name, a second name, a third name, a fourth name (their mother's first name) and a fifth name (their father's first name, as the biological father is always known through genetic analysis). Each name is one letter long.

The people of Bt!a are fond of math, and especially enjoy discovering new prime numbers. They also enjoy finding ways to prove theorems. They put mathematical concepts into their music, and even into their graffiti.

Every 5 years, the citizens of Bt!a elect a new president and Congress. Those registered with a party vote for their party's presidential candidate in the primary election, and then later on they vote for a candidate from their one of 800 districts to fill the 800 Congress seats. In this first-past-the-post system, certain parties have advantages in certain districts. The party that gets the most elected congresspeople is the same party whose presidential candidate wins on a planetary level. If two parties tie in number of congresspeople, the absolute number of votes given to candidates from each party across the planet determines the president. There are no limits on the number of terms a congressperson or president can have. There is no voting age on Bt!a. Parties include the Anarchist Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the environmentalist Bt!a First Party, the Galactic Grey Power Party, the isolationist Protection Party, the Primitive Party, the Peace Now Party, the Party Against Genetic Engineering and the Greys First Party. The government has no laws against consensual crimes or statutory rape, nor does it outlaw "sampling" other peoples. Its military fights planets that attack Bt!a, but does not start wars against anyone else.

These Greys drink blood, which fills both their food and water requirements. Such bodily fluids as phlegm, saliva and semen are enjoyed as snacks. A favorite drug is corticosterine, or wtt! as they call it, taken from the brains of other mammals, and used recreationally by the Bt!achis.
Shaleyan women and girls usually wear their hair long and flowing. They usually keep it straight, but sometimes will perm it. Young women will often wear their hair in ponytails. The Dido flip is also known. Androgynous bangs are also popular with ladies. Men and boys will quite usually wear their hair long as well; young men often wear a Beatles cut or a flip, and male Shaleyans of any age often have shoulder-length hair. Many other guys wear a Kurt Cobain hairstyle. Braiding is common among spiritual leaders. Scientists of both genders usually wear a ponytail. Facial hair is less common, but 10% of Kankonian men do grow a beard. Transmen who get hormone treatment will usually grow a beard as an assertion of their male identity, ironically being many times more likely to grow one than cismen. Moustaches are rare, but sideburns and soul patches are common. 6% of female Shaleyans and 3% of male Shaleyans style their hair in dreadlocks. Astronauts of both genders often shave their heads entirely.
Dido Flip --- didn't even know the name for that! I recall it being popular enough at college. Some Daine chop their hair short and uneven like that, too.
I taught you something! :D And I found a goof in what I wrote last time: the "Kankonian" I bolded above should be "Shaleyan".

This is Dido, by the way:

Here with Me

Thank You
Sept. 12
Music and lyrics by James Landau (C) 2015
I hear my dream white sound machine
Then I'm woken up, and see a screen
The ground is black, I see things crash
It all turns to black box and ash
Ooh, ooh
There's danger to discover
Ooh, ooh
I'd be your secret lover

I cannot fight the madness
That's raging in my brain
They crushed me under sadness
The chemicals remain
I try to keep my eyes closed
Hold images within
But I still recognize those
Thoughts always win

I've known for years I wasn't free
But now they lambaste liberty
They want to live and nothing more
What's there now for them to live for?
Tempers
Could stand to grow much riper
They say
They can't stand men in diapers

My message isn't clicking
Their leader's clicks a lot
His boots they'll keep on licking
With angst I now am fraught
I rage to see red color
But also white and blue
When I with people duller
Try to talk to

Every night and day I try to sleep
But it's pollsters who were counting sheep
With my own life, these scars compound
Till I myself feel at the ground
Closer
How do I make these screams stop?
Later
Life sounds a lot like dream-pop

It's been many elections
And many brand-new songs
I still have recollections
Of how young folks were wronged
We've made a lot of progress
And better it will get
But I can't like a log rest
At least not yet

I cannot fight the madness
That's raging in my brain
They crushed me under sadness
The chemicals remain
I try to keep my eyes closed
Hold images within
But I still recognize those
Thoughts always win
Thanks for sharing that! As with many songs, I feel there's a lot to unpack in here. Have you given any thought as to the song's meaning (I mean, apart from the obvious), connexions, metaphors and the like?
It came to me in a dream -- that's where I got the madness/brain/sadness/remain part and the discover/lover part, which don't really go with the broader post-9/11 theme. I like to think I used wordplay with the lines "Every night and day I try to sleep/But it's pollsters who were counting sheep". I actually wrote the "sleep" line first, and when I tried to think of words to rhyme with "sleep", I came upon the perfect double meaning. And maybe the song has the message of "Time heals everything"?
I see! I don't make that connexion. On the flip side: just because someone supports e.g. "gay marriage laws", I don't take that to mean they hate Christians or want to utterly destroy American or Western culture. (Though I know there are some folks who fear exactly that.)
Those "destroying Western civilization" arguments don't hold much water with me, because as much as social conservatives howl about "redefining marriage", marriage has been defined, redefined, and re-redefined throughout the history of Western and Middle Eastern civilizations and the Abrahamic religions. A marriage used to be, by definition, between two people of the same race, after all, and marriage also used to be defined as the husband owning hos wife.
Swords like these cut both ways; and the blood on either side is the same red. I find the practice of sodomy disgusting (odd -- -- that wasn't in the questionnaire!) but I can't really see supporting a law against it either. I don't see same sex unions as marriages per se, and would likely not support it being enshrined in law that way. I can't say I hate alphabet soup people because of that position. (Some of my dearly beloved are LGBTQ, after all!)
I wouldn't place opposing same-sex marriage in the same category as supporting sodomy laws. To support sodomy laws is to treat homo- or bisexuality as CRIMINAL. (As you may have gathered from my posts on this board, I get really angry when something that isn't morally wrong is made a crime.)
Right you are. Primarily as regards cultural values rather than theological positions. Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship (from a Friends school curriculum). Not values they strive to attain so much as maintain and increase. And of course, their values aren't understood in terms of religion so much as an innate vital sign if you will. A healthy Daine might have a temperature of 100, b.p. of 112/78, 96~98% PICES; you might want to work on that depressed Simplicity value, miss!

I read an interesting article this morning that I think might help explain some segments of Daine culture. The idea of the sharing economy. Obviously, Daine cultures don't have or use money, unless (like the Daine of Auntimoany who are rumoured to be rolling in it) they're dealing with Men or Dwarrows who value the stuff. So the rental aspect of the subculture won't be accurate. But the idea of particularly a wandering Daine craftsman or bard or storyweaver might live such a lifestyle. Not exactly nomadic, not exactly settled.
Wow, that was an awesome article. I wonder if we Millennials are on the way to creating a world that works like the society of the Smurfs: John Lennon's "imagine no possessions".
I'm a member of a Facebook IM group that shares freak videos, and someone once posted a video of a woman with three breasts.
Like three in a row or like supernumerary breasts? Like all mammals, Daine (and Men & Humans) have several potential sites for breast development. I the number is about 40% of Daine have four and 60% have two.
Like three in a row. Trimammism and tetramammism are pretty rare among the albeit-often-sexdactylous Kankonians.
Kind of do anything, go anywhere shock warriors!
Yeah! Like that!
Among Daine, there are Badhast warriors that fill more or less that function. Usually Turghun. No iron age weapons to speak of (unless they're hunting Elves); but they're about as fearsome as you can find anywhere in Yeola!
[+1]
Even a simple boyhood game like nifta can turn out tragic. This is a game played with longing knives that have rounded but still reasonably sharp blades on them. The idea of the game to give your friend a cut over the breastbone. Sometimes boys get a little too enthusiastic and a civil game can turn into a bit of a brawl. Inexperience can lead to severe injuries. The blade itself, if mishandled, can slide between the ribs and cut something you didn't want to cut.
Sounds a bit like stretch/splits/mumbledypeg.
Yep. Boys can be real crazy! Mumblety-peg played by sticking the knife as close to your foot as possible sounds like something Daine boys would play. And you'd better be a skilled knife thrower! Because Daine don't wear shoes. Sole is pretty tough, but the top of the foot, not so much!
Poor Daine boys!

I've never thought that part out. Sharks, however, are of the aquatic type of animal that a meat-forbidding Catholic monastery might have allowef on Friday. I was partly inspired by Jeffrey Henning's church (I forget the denomination -- Lutheran?) eating anableps once.
Are the sharks four eyed?? Or just the inspiration?
Just the inspiration. Liturgical sharks are binocular, like all other shark species on Kankonia.

I probably selected a shark because I wanted a seafood creature for their nutwas, and I decided when I was 14 that a lot more cartilaginous fish survived on Kankonia than on Earth. One of the first Kankonian species I invented was the spotted ray. The hindmost part of the ray is all grey, then as you go farther up there are a few black spots, then it's grey with black spots, then in the middle it's equally grey and black, then forward it's black with grey spots, then to the front of that it's mostly black with a few grey spots, and the front of the ray is all black.
I have worked out a general scheme of the life stages of a typical Daine. Once I get the image scanned in I'll post about it here in CBB. Yaviê is in stage 2, the long childhood of Daine.
Coolness!
OK, I see. Kind of like the way a lot of people today think Abraham Lincoln was bisexual because they're judging the language in his epistles with a twenty-first-century frame of mind. Good to know.

Yes. See https://www.nndb.com/people/332/000024260/#FN2 , for instance.
Looks like a case of really bad research.
Like this: https://www.amazon.com/Diagnosing-Jeffe ... filter-bar
Usually if I'm home, just a sarong. Otherwise, jeans and a shirt. No turtlenecks! Ever!!
A sarong? Oh, that's cool? My Filipino friend Joseph told me about something called a barong Tagalog just the other day. By shirt, do you mean a dress shirt?
Sarong = racca (Daine clothing, very comfy!) The barong is a fancy dress shirt; it's very light and roomy; you wear it over a t-shirt, don't tuck it in and never with a tie. Yyayy! You can get different colours and fancy patterns, but this is typical:

(Image)
Oh, I know what a sarong is. I have the word in the LCV next to "sari".

Cool picture! Now I know what to call a barong when I see one.
Not really a dress shirt, no. Usually just a flannel shirt or some kind of buttony shirt. Maybe a t-shirt. Whatever's comfortable. And turtlenecks ain't comfortable!
Oh. (Well, I find turtlenecks very comfortable! And hip, too.)
BTW, Elemtilas, it's been a while since you updated the conlang census thread. There are a number of new conlang pages waiting to be added and updated.
Done and done!
Gracias!
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by elemtilas »

Khemehekis wrote: 01 May 2019 04:41
elemtilas wrote: 26 Apr 2019 17:45
Yes, Bina, the continent on Junsu on which Tenta is located, is a sort of equivalent to Europe. Part of Bina has the Cheitwekwi race, which includes such countries as Tenta, Frelakh, and Bionjeng. Cheitwekwi people are characterized by medium height and weight, variable hair and eye colors, variable hair texture, white skin with freckles, and high cheekbones. A lot of philosophy and important ancient history went on in Bionjeng, and Bionjengese roots are to Tentan what Latin and Greek roots are to English or what Chinese roots are to Japanese. Another part of Bina has the Jin'ekwi race, characterized by medium to short height, gold or coffee-colored skin, dark brown to black hair, hazel or brown eyes, and variable hair texture. Countries with Jin'ekwi natives include Pinszer, Salada, and Eyibo.
I suppose all the unimportant ancient history went on everywhere else? [;)]

Leastways from the Bionjengese perspective maybe?
So they're appropriated like Elves and Dwarves is what you're saying? Oh.
Pretty much, but more than merely appropriated. Fitted seamlessly within the new mythistory and made real within the secondary world.
Ha! Will no one think of the children!?
The battle-cry of washy-moderate New Democrats and social-conservative Republicans alike! I've never understood how a child can be harmed by learning about or being exposed to sex. Sure, sex is "not for" children, but neither is the stock market, and I've never heard of anyone trying to censor knowledge about the stock market from children. (If anything, the stock market is even less for kids than sex, because in the U.S., you have to be 18 to play the stock market, whereas 16-year-olds may legally have sex in the majority of states.)

(And yes, I knew you were being satirical with that remark.)
A very Daine perspective, that!

I'm of the opinion that the world would be a much better place if (like Daine!) people would focus more on sex and children and family and less on money and stock markets.

Daine kids know about sex by the age of three or four. There's no such thing as private bedrooms for one thing. In most Daine houses (of the traditional round type, everyone in an extended family group basically sleeps and eats and makes babies in a rather open setting. Even in long houses, private bedrooms are not a thing. Kids will eventually be shunted to the Girls' House or the Boys' House, but they've already got a grip on the mechanics by then. They at least know that babies come out of mommies and there's a lot of groaning and carrying on to get the process started. Most kids just aren't that interested in sex; or rather, their interest largely revolves around asking if Mama can make a little sister this time around, cos I've got enough little brothers already.

This kind of sex (vaginal), of course, is not "for children" among Daine as well. Not least of which are various anatomical 7 physiological aspects don't work yet. There must also be some kind of built in "yuck factor" that keeps them uninterested for quite a few years. Another kind (marsupial) is a social bonding activity. Fairly young kids (equivalent to human teens maybe?) will start to figure that one out. It's common as a peer group / close friends circle kind of greeting and socialisation thing. Older children might play act this in various ways until the anatomy starts cooperating.
I'm not sure CBB is the best venue for these things. Heck, there are a lot of perfectly normal things Daine do that I'd hesitate to talk about here (or most other places, for that matter) simply because of community standards.
Well, as a khemehekis, I sometimes bring up that my Kankonians have no taboo against public masturbation or dogging.
That's true. Daine have no public tabus either. Mind you, "dogging" means quite a different thing in the slang of Westmarche and Auntimoany! Has more to do with imitating powerful totem animals and involves a goodly amount of howling and thumping one's chest. Dogging doesn't have the voyeuristic connotations it does in the UK, either. People might casually watch friends mating in the same way they might casually watch friends work a piece of wood into a bowl. Honestly, like how it is if you see girls' breasts all the time, sex becomes for Daine on the one wing a wonderful bonding and baby making thing a couple does; but on the other, nothing that will especially arouse the interest of anyone else. They don't experience satiation of sexual lusts by shagging in public or in watching someone shag in public. Basically, all shagging is in public by definition, generally in full view of your friends, your kiddoes, your siblings, your mothers & father and any visiting guests. Is that an issue?, one might ask. A very young Daine couple, just sorting things out, might feel a little intimidated --- after all, there's bound to be some (internal! but generally irrational) pressure the couple might be feeling. Such might try and find a more secluded locale for a while. But generally speaking, Daine are fairly comfortable living in the kind of community where literally everyone sees and knows just about everything that goes on.

Turghun, as I've mentioned, don't even have the choice of seeking out a secluded place. Once the eyes of girl & boy meet, everything pretty much happens regardless of what's going on around them and who's with them at the time. People just give them a little space and get on with things. Whatever they were talking about before can wait an hour or two more. It's not like anyone has a clock they have to live up to!
I've noticed you've used tenty on several occasions. I know it's another word for 100 (in the series of tenty, eleventy, twelvety, etc.). What does it mean when you use it for dating purposes?
The tenties are the decade from 2000-2009. SIXties, SEVENties, EIGHTies, NINEties, TENties. We are now in the last year of the eleventies, and soon we will be in the decade in which Inner Bruise is set, the twelveties.
Very interesting usage! I've never heard it before. I mean, "sixties" and so forth; but not anything beyond "nineties". I've heard "aughties" and "teens" though.
Please don't take me the wrong way! And definitely don't not read the books on my sayso! I actually have the series in my library (at least for me, that says something, as I do not have GRRM or Paolini); I've read them a couple times and have watched the movies several times. HP is actually quite a good story; I just think, perhaps, she did a little too much ad hockery when it came to building the WW.
Oh. Well, I'm not into fantasy in general. I have never had elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons, etc. in the Lehola Galaxy.
Understood. Though mind you, you don't have to be into fantasy have Elves and Orcs and so forth. Frankly, I think Orcs would work very well in sci-fi; it's been argued that Vulcans are sci-fi Elves. Pointy ears, you see.
Yeah, Peterson really made Dothraki a great language, so we could MWGA (make Westeros great again). Any reason you left the LCS?
Image

Nothing spectacular. Don't like some of the directions they've gone. I'd still recommend any interested person to join up if it fits their needs and goals, however.
Another good candidate. My brother likes Terry Pratchett.
Your brother has awesome taste in writers!

I never cared too much for his non-Discworld works (Truckers & so forth).
There are issues here as well, but all in all he's got a pretty well made world and an awesome sense of humour! He also figured out how to integrate worldbuilding lore into his tales without being the cause of the dreaded infodump. (Well, dreaded by many writers, if not by this particular reader!)
You infodump about The World all the time, so that's hardly surprising.
Well, yeah. But that's in the context of World snippets! Articles abòut Daine clothing for example, should ought to be infodumpish in nature.
Do you think that if you wrote a novel or trilogy/heptalogy/whatever about The World, you'd slap the reader with a lot of infodumps? Or would you try to use incluing more? Or would you go the Ursula K. LeGuin path of having infodump chapters interspersed with more narrative chapters?
No.

I'm working on a tween-oriented story now. I don't even think I mentioned the MCs are Daine until quite a ways in, and even then, it largely amounts to the name and the fact they've got feathery wings. Some aspects of The World get mentioned but I think nowhere close to being an infodump.

In thinking back on older stories, I think I've pretty much avoided the practice. I could be wrong!, but I think instances of infodumping are rare and relatively small in nature. I prefer incluing and showing rather telling. For example, rather than tell the reader that Daine use their wings to communicate, and describe various gestures, attitudes and alar gesticulations, as well as the lateral orientation of said gestures, I just said: “No, that won’t do!” Yavie stood suddenly, her wings and her fingers pointing out all the aspects of the plan in such a way she looked just like her Nanay, too!

In a much longer work, some judicious infodumping I think might be indulged in. Some things just have to be explained. I'd still prefer to find a way to either let one of the characters do the lecture (in finest Gandalfian fashion) or else use a "trick" like a diary entry or an encyclopedia quotation or something of that sort.

Yes, Veris really could not stand the perfect, immortal Elves cliché. Same guy as the OP of "Elves other than 'humans, only awesomer'."
Understandable. I've seen quite a bit of backlash against the perfect Elves motif.

But even Tolkien himself didn't actually make use of that motif either. For him, Elves were pretty much Men as they ought to have been had they not suffered the Fall. They're more beautiful, more graceful, having enhanced aesthetic and creative faculties. They may be pretty close to immortal, exceedingly wise and learned, but they are hardly perfect and hardly "awesomer" than ordinary Men!

They differ only in immediate fate (Elves are bound (in some undefined way) to Middle Earth, while Men are bound to depart from Middle Earth) and in the gift of death from the physical world. Very Catholic. I follow that general tradition with the Teyor who are unabashedly Unfallen Men rather than a race apart.
Tbilisi! Dnepopetrovsk! It's the map of part of Almea, Zompist's conplanet. I have a few conpeople whose names sound like that, and unlike Veris, I believe an entire planet/solar system/galaxy without any such names would be (dare I say it?) unnaturalistic.
Quite!
Some peoples of Lehola have vocal apparatus like those of rodents or insects instead of humans. So there are stars and planets whose names are worse for Anglophone folk than anything on that Almea map.
Naturally, I'll be interested in hearing about the cultures and physical appearance as well as languages of these rodent & insect folk!
My friend's son (the young geopoet of previously anterior mention) is a CP fan. But he's at that age where he doesn't yet know what's good or bad in invented languages. I'll give him a few more years of innocent bliss before properly educating him.
Hee hee hee. I hope your friend's son doesn't get stuck all his life with concreations that are uninspired Tolkien rip-offs. If he learns how real languages and scripts work, he can avoid creating Paolini-style conlangs or English ciphers written with cipherbets.
I don't fear either for him!

Even two and three years ago he demonstrated evidence of understanding the difference between sounds and letters and how one might represent sounds. He takes inspiration from a number of sources, but comes up with good stuff on his own, too. And he's such a sweetheart!
Some good posts in the earlier part of that thread!
Agreed, although I had never heard of Warhammer 4K and was amazed that so many people who randomly happened to have seen the thread were familiar with it.

Often, I feel as if I can't understand half the stuff (video games, tabletop games, anime, etc.) the people on this board are talking about.
40k I think. I don't know anything about it, but the artwork is generally well done. Gaming is a whole subculture that venns with geopoesy invented languages and cultures and althistory craft. Anime is who nother subculture. I find it to be extremely popular especially among younger artists. If the amount of anime inspired art drawn by obvious middle & high school kids I see at dA is any indication!

And you shouldn't complain -- you knew what hentai is all about! [}:D]
Well, right off the bat, I know I'm out, since I don't do fantasy.
There is that. But it's mainly the Rs.
Yes? Why no R-words in my name? Perhaps because I can't stand the right-wing, restrictive, repressive, rigid, ruthless, rule-bound Ronald Reagan Religious Right that took over this country in the eighties.[/quote]

Right, no R-words in your names. And now you've got a surfeit of Rs!

But, if you can make a cool monogramme with your initials, then you'd be in the running again!
I sure hope Siųa wins a Smiley Award one of these years.
Haven't heard of that in ages. Are they still doing it, I wonder?
ENFP's are the most radical type! Check it out: this article says ENFP's are the farthest to the left, and ISTJ's are the farthest to the right.
Leaving me out in the cold again. :wat:
Pretty much! Though sans karate gi for me. And there were no toy light sabers then, so had to make do with a more mundane sword.
Looks as if I nailed you!
[:D]
Doubtful I will after an experience with my freshman orientation in high school. When we freshmen toured the campus, some seniors threw water balloons at us! Being anosmic, it wasn't until I got home and my mother told me I smelled that I learned said water balloons had been filled with vinegar. Feces would be ten times worse.
Probably a bunch of ENFPs! [}:D]

I would be thoroughly unamused if I'd been on the receiving end of either, I think.
All in all, my favouritest of the wizards of U.U. Just replace "laptop" with HEX and "quantum physics" with, well, just quantum and Bob's thy nuncle. And he rocked the round specs long before HP was a speck in JKR's imagination.
Hmmmm . . . "Ponder" sounds a lot like "Potter". What's U.U.?
Unseen University! The premiere institution of magic in all of Discworld!

You'd probably enjoy reading the (un)series. His stories are really as much social satire as anything.
Does pips mean they look like dice?

Tentan playing cards were invented in the 550's. They consist of sixteen ranks: they are the numbers 0/danko, 1/ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, then the six face cards: from lowest to highest they are ansi (little girl), pochi (little boy), nali (girl), vambo (boy), sanja (woman), and tumu (man). They also come in four suits, circles (red), stars (yellow), triangles (green) and diamonds (blue), for a total of 64 cards per deck. Sometimes one or two bembis (a wild card, equivalent to jokers in the French suit) are thrown in as well. The bembi shows this mythical Tentan creature, a humanoid monster with horns and fangs.
Oo, neat! You've made some pictures of them, right?

Yeah, pips are the A-12 symbol cards. The honours are the court cards and the trumps are individual cards, naturally imbued with deep and philosophical nonsense.
That's true. Hopefully, onlangers (i.e. online conlangers) will continue to talk about Auntimoany, Kankonia, the Teonim, and Siųa in 2100 in much the way people still talk about Middle-Earth, Quenya, Sindarin, and Khuzdul in 2019.
Hear hear!
Hmmm . . .

elendelasuruein — watch the stars wheel overhead; rejoice in the changing seasons and years; recollect the past with nostalgia and grief intermingled; recount the years and ages of the world via mythistorical narrative or song (Mind you, it's getting cold here a bit too soon, so I'm not necessarily all on board with rejoicing at the sudden change from Summer to Winter!)

Great word (though I had to look it up!)
Glad you were able to find the dictionary!

The Bt!achis are a spacefaring people and just about all of them have been aboard a spacecraft. A Bt!achi with flight sickness is a very rare sight. Abroad, they love experimenting on other people's animals, and have cloned and spliced many species. They often abduct other sapients (they call it "sampling").
[O.O]

What do they do with their ... er, samples??
Bt!achis are polyamorous. They seldom perform marriages anymore; marriage is a dying institution on Bt!a. Groups will raise their children together until the children turn 7. They receive vigorous education about Bt!a and its history in learning disks between the ages of 3 and 7, and spend ages 8 to 10 mastering learning disks about other planets. Bt!achis have a first name, a second name, a third name, a fourth name (their mother's first name) and a fifth name (their father's first name, as the biological father is always known through genetic analysis). Each name is one letter long.
I'll bet a marriage is a big deal when one is celebrated!

What does a learning disk look like? How many kiddoes fit in one?

How many letters are there? Or is it the case that loads of Bt!achis share names like A or V (?) ? Or rather, what do their name strings look like? That might be easier!
The people of Bt!a are fond of math, and especially enjoy discovering new prime numbers. They also enjoy finding ways to prove theorems. They put mathematical concepts into their music, and even into their graffiti.
Commendable. I find that rather superior to especially enjoying discovering new basket ball talent or finding new ways to spend more money on sports.
Every 5 years, the citizens of Bt!a elect a new president and Congress.
Term limits?? (I'm all for that!)
Those registered with a party vote for their party's presidential candidate in the primary election, and then later on they vote for a candidate from their one of 800 districts to fill the 800 Congress seats. In this first-past-the-post system, certain parties have advantages in certain districts. The party that gets the most elected congresspeople is the same party whose presidential candidate wins on a planetary level. If two parties tie in number of congresspeople, the absolute number of votes given to candidates from each party across the planet determines the president. There are no limits on the number of terms a congressperson or president can have. There is no voting age on Bt!a. Parties include the Anarchist Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the environmentalist Bt!a First Party, the Galactic Grey Power Party, the isolationist Protection Party, the Primitive Party, the Peace Now Party, the Party Against Genetic Engineering and the Greys First Party. The government has no laws against consensual crimes or statutory rape, nor does it outlaw "sampling" other peoples. Its military fights planets that attack Bt!a, but does not start wars against anyone else.
Quite an array of parties. Hopefully they never get anything done in Congress and let the People be at peace!

What is the platform of the Primitive Party? Is there so much war in Bt!a society that Peace Nowers see the need for a party? Which party is for the warmongers?

Hmghmg...no voting age... I hope their young children are wiser than ours!
These Greys drink blood, which fills both their food and water requirements. Such bodily fluids as phlegm, saliva and semen are enjoyed as snacks. A favorite drug is corticosterine, or wtt! as they call it, taken from the brains of other mammals, and used recreationally by the Bt!achis.
Well, remind me to pack a lunch if I ever visit their world! Can't imagine any of those being very delicious snax --- presumably the sources they get those fluids from produce good tasting fluids? Are these mammals farmed for their blood & juices, or are they slaughtered or how does their food industry work?
Dido Flip --- didn't even know the name for that! I recall it being popular enough at college. Some Daine chop their hair short and uneven like that, too.
I taught you something! :D
Well, it's not the first time, you know!
This is Dido, by the way:

Here with Me

Thank You
Cute girl. Beautiful eyes and such a lovely voice! And, what's more, she can actually sing! That is a rare talent anymore. Lots of young things open their mouths and quasi-musical noise is emitted. This girl has a proper voice!
Thanks for sharing that! As with many songs, I feel there's a lot to unpack in here. Have you given any thought as to the song's meaning (I mean, apart from the obvious), connexions, metaphors and the like?
It came to me in a dream -- that's where I got the madness/brain/sadness/remain part and the discover/lover part, which don't really go with the broader post-9/11 theme.
Powerful and deeply personal are the things that come in dreams. Me, it's stories. I've dreamt music before, but never figured out how to write it down. Stories and descriptive bits come more readily anyway.
I like to think I used wordplay with the lines "Every night and day I try to sleep/But it's pollsters who were counting sheep". I actually wrote the "sleep" line first, and when I tried to think of words to rhyme with "sleep", I came upon the perfect double meaning. And maybe the song has the message of "Time heals everything"?
It is the sovereign elixir!
I see! I don't make that connexion. On the flip side: just because someone supports e.g. "gay marriage laws", I don't take that to mean they hate Christians or want to utterly destroy American or Western culture. (Though I know there are some folks who fear exactly that.)
Those "destroying Western civilization" arguments don't hold much water with me, because as much as social conservatives howl about "redefining marriage", marriage has been defined, redefined, and re-redefined throughout the history of Western and Middle Eastern civilizations and the Abrahamic religions. A marriage used to be, by definition, between two people of the same race, after all, and marriage also used to be defined as the husband owning hos wife.
The externals have changed based on social norms and culture and religious tradition. The fundamentals, however (the bits "social conservatives" howl about) have not and really quite predate all the more modern redefinitions. For example, matters of race or class or religion are not fundamental to this second most basic bond of humanity. At its root, marriage is the simple equation (girl + boy) + fucking == {babies in family}. It's a fundamental of biology but with a human twist (our spiritual nature requires a higher more sacred understanding of its nature).

Everything else is social & secular tinkering.
I wouldn't place opposing same-sex marriage in the same category as supporting sodomy laws. To support sodomy laws is to treat homo- or bisexuality as CRIMINAL. (As you may have gathered from my posts on this board, I get really angry when something that isn't morally wrong is made a crime.)
Quite. Whether it's morally wrong or not is a different matter (it should come as no surprise the Church teaches exactly that), but making such behaviours criminal acts is bad lawmaking in my way of thinking. It's my opinion only that I don't find same sex sex to be immoral per se. I know there are very many LGBTQ Catholics who concur with the Church's teaching and would disagree with me; but I respect their take on those matters!
Wow, that was an awesome article. I wonder if we Millennials are on the way to creating a world that works like the society of the Smurfs: John Lennon's "imagine no possessions".
Probably not? I found the last paragraph or so of that article telling: it's not a permanent lifestyle choice. When you're in your twenties or early thirties, it's okay and quite doable. Once you do get into a relationship and get married, and start having kids, and start having health issues, renting a cot in a cubby hole becomes a lot less attractive.

I'd not like that kind of lifestyle. I like my books and library and workshop!
quote]
I'm a member of a Facebook IM group that shares freak videos, and someone once posted a video of a woman with three breasts.
Like three in a row or like supernumerary breasts? Like all mammals, Daine (and Men & Humans) have several potential sites for breast development. I the number is about 40% of Daine have four and 60% have two.
Like three in a row. Trimammism and tetramammism are pretty rare among the albeit-often-sexdactylous Kankonians.[/quote]


Like this one?

Three is certainly possible in humans, but not in a row like that as far as I'm aware!

Yep. Boys can be real crazy! Mumblety-peg played by sticking the knife as close to your foot as possible sounds like something Daine boys would play. And you'd better be a skilled knife thrower! Because Daine don't wear shoes. Sole is pretty tough, but the top of the foot, not so much!
Poor Daine boys!
How so?
Oh. (Well, I find turtlenecks very comfortable! And hip, too.)
[O.o]
Khemehekis
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

elemtilas wrote: 04 May 2019 01:26
Khemehekis wrote: 01 May 2019 04:41
elemtilas wrote: 26 Apr 2019 17:45
Yes, Bina, the continent on Junsu on which Tenta is located, is a sort of equivalent to Europe. Part of Bina has the Cheitwekwi race, which includes such countries as Tenta, Frelakh, and Bionjeng. Cheitwekwi people are characterized by medium height and weight, variable hair and eye colors, variable hair texture, white skin with freckles, and high cheekbones. A lot of philosophy and important ancient history went on in Bionjeng, and Bionjengese roots are to Tentan what Latin and Greek roots are to English or what Chinese roots are to Japanese. Another part of Bina has the Jin'ekwi race, characterized by medium to short height, gold or coffee-colored skin, dark brown to black hair, hazel or brown eyes, and variable hair texture. Countries with Jin'ekwi natives include Pinszer, Salada, and Eyibo.
I suppose all the unimportant ancient history went on everywhere else?

Leastways from the Bionjengese perspective maybe?
Definitely, according to the Bionjengocentric view of history. It's like the way, in ancient Europe, historians consider Rome and Greece to be the most important civilizations in the history of Europe at the time. At that point in history, Northwestern Europe's history was less important. Even the Dark Ages (peoples like the Vandals) are generally considered less important than Greece and Rome by Western historians. Tentan scholomodules (modules whereby the kids who don't get lifesped can learn their academic material during childhood) have lots of material on Bionjeng, and of course Tenta, but not much on Ksirand, or Tiang, or Monad.
So they're appropriated like Elves and Dwarves is what you're saying? Oh.
Pretty much, but more than merely appropriated. Fitted seamlessly within the new mythistory and made real within the secondary world.
I see. Pretty much like what I've done with Greys and reptoids in the Lehola Galaxy.
The battle-cry of washy-moderate New Democrats and social-conservative Republicans alike! I've never understood how a child can be harmed by learning about or being exposed to sex. Sure, sex is "not for" children, but neither is the stock market, and I've never heard of anyone trying to censor knowledge about the stock market from children. (If anything, the stock market is even less for kids than sex, because in the U.S., you have to be 18 to play the stock market, whereas 16-year-olds may legally have sex in the majority of states.)

(And yes, I knew you were being satirical with that remark.)
A very Daine perspective, that!
Wow!
I'm of the opinion that the world would be a much better place if (like Daine!) people would focus more on sex and children and family and less on money and stock markets.
[+1]
Daine kids know about sex by the age of three or four. There's no such thing as private bedrooms for one thing. In most Daine houses (of the traditional round type, everyone in an extended family group basically sleeps and eats and makes babies in a rather open setting. Even in long houses, private bedrooms are not a thing. Kids will eventually be shunted to the Girls' House or the Boys' House, but they've already got a grip on the mechanics by then. They at least know that babies come out of mommies and there's a lot of groaning and carrying on to get the process started. Most kids just aren't that interested in sex; or rather, their interest largely revolves around asking if Mama can make a little sister this time around, cos I've got enough little brothers already.
. . .
Turghun, as I've mentioned, don't even have the choice of seeking out a secluded place. Once the eyes of girl & boy meet, everything pretty much happens regardless of what's going on around them and who's with them at the time. People just give them a little space and get on with things. Whatever they were talking about before can wait an hour or two more. It's not like anyone has a clock they have to live up to!
Interesting stuff. This reads sort of as an Ithkuilesque speculation on how human cultures could function. And it all seems to make sense together.
The tenties are the decade from 2000-2009. SIXties, SEVENties, EIGHTies, NINEties, TENties. We are now in the last year of the eleventies, and soon we will be in the decade in which Inner Bruise is set, the twelveties.
Very interesting usage! I've never heard it before. I mean, "sixties" and so forth; but not anything beyond "nineties". I've heard "aughties" and "teens" though.
I remember my mother recently told me that one of my great-uncles (?) coined the word "tenty" for hundred when he was a child learning to count. It may be in my genes!

And once when my sister was quite small, our family was reading a Smurfs book at beftime. She wanted to know how many Smurfs were pictured in the book, but they pretty much all look alike and so she likely counted a number of the same Smurfs multiple times. After nineteen Smurfs, Liz got to twenty . . . then twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen . . .

I thought her attempt to count beyonf 29 was so hilarious that I laughed really hard, and due to my giggle incontinence, had to change my underwear that night.
Understood. Though mind you, you don't have to be into fantasy have Elves and Orcs and so forth. Frankly, I think Orcs would work very well in sci-fi; it's been argued that Vulcans are sci-fi Elves. Pointy ears, you see.
According to The Underground Guide to the SAT, Vulcans are beings incapable of feeling emotion. That sounds quite un-Elf-like, as I understand Elves. Of course, I've never watched Star Trek, so I'm just going by what TUGttSAT says out Vulcans. Apparently, Vulcans can't feel love; wouldn't people want Elves to be able to feel love?
Yeah, Peterson really made Dothraki a great language, so we could MWGA (make Westeros great again). Any reason you left the LCS?
Image
Ha! That's a funny image! What did you google to find that?
Nothing spectacular. Don't like some of the directions they've gone. I'd still recommend any interested person to join up if it fits their needs and goals, however.
Oh. I might join at some time in the future. I imagine at least some of them would be eager to get my Landau Core Vocabulary up at http://fiatlingua.org
I'm working on a tween-oriented story now. I don't even think I mentioned the MCs are Daine until quite a ways in, and even then, it largely amounts to the name and the fact they've got feathery wings. Some aspects of The World get mentioned but I think nowhere close to being an infodump.

In thinking back on older stories, I think I've pretty much avoided the practice. I could be wrong!, but I think instances of infodumping are rare and relatively small in nature. I prefer incluing and showing rather telling. For example, rather than tell the reader that Daine use their wings to communicate, and describe various gestures, attitudes and alar gesticulations, as well as the lateral orientation of said gestures, I just said: “No, that won’t do!” Yavie stood suddenly, her wings and her fingers pointing out all the aspects of the plan in such a way she looked just like her Nanay, too!

In a much longer work, some judicious infodumping I think might be indulged in. Some things just have to be explained. I'd still prefer to find a way to either let one of the characters do the lecture (in finest Gandalfian fashion) or else use a "trick" like a diary entry or an encyclopedia quotation or something of that sort.
The last paragraph sounds like a good idea. Lectures by characters visited on other planets directed towards characters visiting those planets sounds like something that would work in a novel on the Lehola Galaxy, for instance. Or if a character is learning a foreign culture's alphabet, I might describe what shape some of the letters have.

I could do brief infodumping if it becomes necessary to define a word that naturally pops up. If a character wears an article of clothing not known on Earth, I would indeed define "mosaic top" or "kampaji" when doing a sartorial description of the character. If you've read The Bittersweet Generation, you'll know I normally describe what my characters are wearing.
But even Tolkien himself didn't actually make use of that motif either. For him, Elves were pretty much Men as they ought to have been had they not suffered the Fall. They're more beautiful, more graceful, having enhanced aesthetic and creative faculties. They may be pretty close to immortal, exceedingly wise and learned, but they are hardly perfect and hardly "awesomer" than ordinary Men!

They differ only in immediate fate (Elves are bound (in some undefined way) to Middle Earth, while Men are bound to depart from Middle Earth) and in the gift of death from the physical world. Very Catholic. I follow that general tradition with the Teyor who are unabashedly Unfallen Men rather than a race apart.
Sound kind of like my Shaleyans, except Shaleyans have the same lifespan as other advanced human peoples in Lehola.
Tbilisi! Dnepopetrovsk! It's the map of part of Almea, Zompist's conplanet. I have a few conpeople whose names sound like that, and unlike Veris, I believe an entire planet/solar system/galaxy without any such names would be (dare I say it?) unnaturalistic.
Quite!
[+1]
Some peoples of Lehola have vocal apparatus like those of rodents or insects instead of humans. So there are stars and planets whose names are worse for Anglophone folk than anything on that Almea map.
Naturally, I'll be interested in hearing about the cultures and physical appearance as well as languages of these rodent & insect folk!
Rodent people include the native sapients of the planet Richaq. Richaq is in the solar system Michit, and the names of the planets in Michit reflect the Dritok-like vocal anatomy of the only planet to have native intelligent life: Kwisich, Tukak, Twachak, Tsa'uq, Richaq, Kikatsa, Ichat, Tswamucha, Kichatl. I haven't done much with the natives of Richaq except worked out their phonology (I don't even have a name for their species yet).

I'm trying to find insect-sounding star or planet names in my list of Lehola stars and planets, but I haven't found any yet; I remember making a few, though. In any event, I made some place names that sound like q~'u^pl! and Xt!.

Two of the sapient insects/insectoids/entomologues I've actually named are the Tetramantoids and the Hexamantoids.

Tetramantoids look like these creatures. They are mantologues, or evolutionary convergences to praying mantises, except they have four limbs instead of six. Tetramantoids are often found aboard ufopoleis. They communicate telepathically, much like Greys.

Hexamantoids are native to the planet Twpia in the solar system Urinia. These are six-limbed mantis descendants who actually belong to the class Insecta. They have two legs and four arms. The top two arms they use as we use our arms. The middle two limbs are their language arms. Each Hexamantoid has nine grooves in one of its middle arms that can be played musically with the other arm (the latter of which functions like a violin bow). 80% of Hexamantoids have the grooves in their right arm and play with their left arm, while 20% have the grooves in their left arm and play with their right arm. The grooves go from biggest on the top to smallest on the bottom. Much like the bars on a xylophone, the biggest grooves make the deepest notes and the smallest grooves the highest notes in their enneatonic scale. The notes, from deepest to highest, are transcribed a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, and i. Some languages have two or three chronemes, indicating that a note is held longer. A normal c would simply be transcribed c; c held longer would be transcribed c2; and the longest chroneme for the note of c would be transcribed c3. A tacet (denoted with a space) separates words.

Hexamantoids do not use their vocal cords to communicate the way humans do, even though they can beatbox with their throats in addition to their a cappella speech and their fashioned musical instruments. The name Twpia comes from a proxy language spoken by the natives of Natwri, Twpia's neighboring planet. Natwri's sapients are tubans, much like the Domeheads of Bodus, although they come from a different class in that phylum, one with hair (so they're about as different from Bodusians as mammals are from reptiles). The musical languages of Twpia's Hexamantoids do not transliterate into human languages, so all the place names, species names, etc. on Twpia come from the languages of Natwri.
My friend's son (the young geopoet of previously anterior mention) is a CP fan. But he's at that age where he doesn't yet know what's good or bad in invented languages. I'll give him a few more years of innocent bliss before properly educating him.
Hee hee hee. I hope your friend's son doesn't get stuck all his life with concreations that are uninspired Tolkien rip-offs. If he learns how real languages and scripts work, he can avoid creating Paolini-style conlangs or English ciphers written with cipherbets.
I don't fear either for him!

Even two and three years ago he demonstrated evidence of understanding the difference between sounds and letters and how one might represent sounds. He takes inspiration from a number of sources, but comes up with good stuff on his own, too. And he's such a sweetheart!
Oh, that's so awesome!

I never went through a phase of creating cipherbets, because I saw how other scripts (Greek, Semitic alphabets, hieroglyphics) worked from quite a young age in charts in my parents' dictionaries. I remember creating an abjad for Ciladian at age 9 (Ciladian now has its own totally different abjad, and exists not on Earth but as an ancient civilization on Kankonia).
Some good posts in the earlier part of that thread!
Agreed, although I had never heard of Warhammer 4K and was amazed that so many people who randomly happened to have seen the thread were familiar with it.

Often, I feel as if I can't understand half the stuff (video games, tabletop games, anime, etc.) the people on this board are talking about.
40k I think. I don't know anything about it, but the artwork is generally well done. Gaming is a whole subculture that venns with geopoesy invented languages and cultures and althistory craft. Anime is who nother subculture. I find it to be extremely popular especially among younger artists. If the amount of anime inspired art drawn by obvious middle & high school kids I see at dA is any indication!
40K? Oh, right. Yes, anime-style art is ubiquitous among Millennials (and Fifth Worlders). In the late nineties, my mother looked at local K-12 art in her local lobrary and commented that there were so many kids who drew in the anime style. Must be Pokémon and Sailor Moon!
And you shouldn't complain -- you knew what hentai is all about! [}:D]
Oh, yeah! But I'm generally very unversed in nerd/geek culture. Someone I know once proposed a game:

CARL: I name a superhero's alter ego and you have to tell me which superhero it is.
KHEMEHEKIS: OK.
CARL: Diana Prinze.
KHEMEHEKIS: Ummmm . . . ummmm . . . no idea.
CARL: Wonder Woman.
KHEMEHEKIS: Oh, OK. Never knew that.
CARL: Next one. Bruce Wayne.
KHEMEHEKIS: Uhh . . . uhh . . . ::shrugs shoulders::.
CARL: You really don't read comic books, do you?
Yes? Why no R-words in my name? Perhaps because I can't stand the right-wing, restrictive, repressive, rigid, ruthless, rule-bound Ronald Reagan Religious Right that took over this country in the eighties.
Right, no R-words in your names. And now you've got a surfeit of Rs!
Raharaha! (That's Kankonian for "ha ha".)
But, if you can make a cool monogramme with your initials, then you'd be in the running again!
J. E. F. Landau? J.E.F. Landau? Jeff Landau? (Fun fact: my parents originally planned to call me Jeff, because my first three initials were J. E. F., but they never followed through on that.)
I sure hope Siųa wins a Smiley Award one of these years.
Haven't heard of that in ages. Are they still doing it, I wonder?
Yep!

http://dedalvs.com/smileys/

Note the 2018 winner. That was my first time hearing of Tapissary!
ENFP's are the most radical type! Check it out: this article says ENFP's are the farthest to the left, and ISTJ's are the farthest to the right.
Leaving me out in the cold again. :wat:
It stands to reason that INFP's would be close to ENFP's (i.e. on the left), since you're only one letter apart from us.
Doubtful I will after an experience with my freshman orientation in high school. When we freshmen toured the campus, some seniors threw water balloons at us! Being anosmic, it wasn't until I got home and my mother told me I smelled that I learned said water balloons had been filled with vinegar. Feces would be ten times worse.
Probably a bunch of ENFPs! [}:D]

Ha ha ha!

I would be thoroughly unamused if I'd been on the receiving end of either, I think.
Well, I remember one time I was the subject of a tirade on the Internet by a Republican INFP. This was on the Howe & Strauss board, no less.
Unseen University! The premiere institution of magic in all of Discworld!

You'd probably enjoy reading the (un)series. His stories are really as much social satire as anything.
Thanks for the explanation! So he's obviously an INTP . . . did Sir Terry base Ponder Stibbons on himself?
Does pips mean they look like dice?

Tentan playing cards were invented in the 550's. They consist of sixteen ranks: they are the numbers 0/danko, 1/ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, then the six face cards: from lowest to highest they are ansi (little girl), pochi (little boy), nali (girl), vambo (boy), sanja (woman), and tumu (man). They also come in four suits, circles (red), stars (yellow), triangles (green) and diamonds (blue), for a total of 64 cards per deck. Sometimes one or two bembis (a wild card, equivalent to jokers in the French suit) are thrown in as well. The bembi shows this mythical Tentan creature, a humanoid monster with horns and fangs.
Oo, neat! You've made some pictures of them, right?
Nothing I can scan yet. It would be so fun to have my own deck, though. I could invent a ton of card games with a pack of 64 or 65 or 66.
Yeah, pips are the A-12 symbol cards. The honours are the court cards and the trumps are individual cards, naturally imbued with deep and philosophical nonsense.
Sounds great!
The Bt!achis are a spacefaring people and just about all of them have been aboard a spacecraft. A Bt!achi with flight sickness is a very rare sight. Abroad, they love experimenting on other people's animals, and have cloned and spliced many species. They often abduct other sapients (they call it "sampling").
[O.O]

What do they do with their ... er, samples??
They examine their blood and urine and other fluids, create starchildren with them, give them anal probes, practice xenomedicine, and hypnotize Terrans so they won't remember these ordeals.
Bt!achis are polyamorous. They seldom perform marriages anymore; marriage is a dying institution on Bt!a. Groups will raise their children together until the children turn 7. They receive vigorous education about Bt!a and its history in learning disks between the ages of 3 and 7, and spend ages 8 to 10 mastering learning disks about other planets. Bt!achis have a first name, a second name, a third name, a fourth name (their mother's first name) and a fifth name (their father's first name, as the biological father is always known through genetic analysis). Each name is one letter long.
I'll bet a marriage is a big deal when one is celebrated!
Yes!
What does a learning disk look like? How many kiddoes fit in one?
Learning disks are like the scholomodules used in Tenta. They look like standard square computer disks, only thicker than a floppy or a hard disk. Kids don't "fit into" one; it's not like lifespeeding. Although B!tachis can lifespeed, they don't usually find this necessarily since even children have basic civil rights and developed brains (as I'll get into more below).
How many letters are there? Or is it the case that loads of Bt!achis share names like A or V (?) ? Or rather, what do their name strings look like? That might be easier!
Bt!apzh has forty letters, each for a different teleme, corresponding with a number from one to forty, plus a forty-first letter, zero, for /ɯ/.

0 ï
1 m
2 n
3 t
4 t!
5 d
6 d!
7 p
8 b
9 e
10 th
11 dh
12 f
13 v
14 ph
15 bh
16 a
17 kh
18 gh
19 k
20 g
21 q
22 x
23 y/ee
24 w/oo
25 l
26 r
27 -h
28 i
29 u
30 ch
31 dj
32 o
33 ü
34 sh
35 zh
36 hh
37 s
38 s!
39 z
40 z!

The exclamation points in the transliterations indicate pharyngealized consonants, so Bt!a is /btˤa/. But the Greys of Bt!a don't actually mouth speak the words, they telepathize them.

A full name might sound like A N S! Dj V Bh, althoogh such a Bt!achi would normally be addressed as simply A, or sometimes A N, if A Z! T Ü V W is in the same room.

Letter names can become the corresponding letter positions in other alphabets if the Bt!achis are sampling or otherwise finding a reason to communicate with people from other planets. When they are sampling Terrans, for instance, 1/M often becomes Alpha, 2/N becomes Beta, 3/T becomes Gamma, 24/W becomes Omega etc. Then come Digamma, Heta, San, Koppa, Sampi, and Tsan. Letters 31 thru 40 are simply Dj, O, Ü, Sh, Zh, Hh, S, S!, Z, and Z!.
Every 5 years, the citizens of Bt!a elect a new president and Congress.
Term limits?? (I'm all for that!)
Well, not really necessarily a *new* president. They don't have an equivalent to the Twenty-second Amendment, but every year divisible by five, the incumbent president and each congressperson is up for either reëlection or replacement.
Those registered with a party vote for their party's presidential candidate in the primary election, and then later on they vote for a candidate from their one of 800 districts to fill the 800 Congress seats. In this first-past-the-post system, certain parties have advantages in certain districts. The party that gets the most elected congresspeople is the same party whose presidential candidate wins on a planetary level. If two parties tie in number of congresspeople, the absolute number of votes given to candidates from each party across the planet determines the president. There are no limits on the number of terms a congressperson or president can have. There is no voting age on Bt!a. Parties include the Anarchist Party, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the environmentalist Bt!a First Party, the Galactic Grey Power Party, the isolationist Protection Party, the Primitive Party, the Peace Now Party, the Party Against Genetic Engineering and the Greys First Party. The government has no laws against consensual crimes or statutory rape, nor does it outlaw "sampling" other peoples. Its military fights planets that attack Bt!a, but does not start wars against anyone else.
Quite an array of parties. Hopefully they never get anything done in Congress and let the People be at peace!
They can form a unity government at times of real crisis, like if a huge asteroid storm is about to hit Bt!a or back when they faced climate change, but mostly they argue amongst themselves.
What is the platform of the Primitive Party?
The Primitive Party want to live like Neolithic Greys, or at least like Bronze Age Greys. No electronics, no spaceflight, no sewer systems/electricity (they're off the grid), simple farming of suckable animals.
Is there so much war in Bt!a society that Peace Nowers see the need for a party? Which party is for the warmongers?
The Peace Nowers want to get other planets and the rogue Ratharians to stop attacking Bt!a, and to accomplish this without any bloodshed. They also want to stop wars on other planets. The warmongers might like the Galactic Grey Power Party or the Greys First Party. The former party wants to create a single country for all the Greys across the Lehola Galaxy (those on Bt!a, those on Tziel, those on Tayaon, those on Taos, those on Grraibha, etc.) . . . it's analogous to the Falangists on Earth, who want to unite all the Hispanic countries. The Greys First Party is looking out for the interest of Greys on the world stage. They're a pragmatic, savvy, and yes, even cynical party with an Oliver North attitude, comparable to neocons in America.
Hmghmg...no voting age... I hope their young children are wiser than ours!
A B!tachi's intellect develops to adult level at about the age of 6 Earth-years, when they are still prepubescent. They are wise, but still wily, just like the adult Bt!achis. When they hit puberty, they become kinky as well. As for toddlers and babies, there's no law that would prevent the odd 2-year-old with a 214 IQ from voting, but generally with children that young, their parents just don't take them to the polls because the children show no interest in (nor comprehension of) politics, and the parents don't have the legal power to force their children to vote. Sort of like how an American wouldn't be taken to the polls to vote by her/his parents if s/he had severe mental retardation, even if s/he were over 18. And on Bt!a as on Earth, there's the hurdle of registration.
These Greys drink blood, which fills both their food and water requirements. Such bodily fluids as phlegm, saliva and semen are enjoyed as snacks. A favorite drug is corticosterine, or wtt! as they call it, taken from the brains of other mammals, and used recreationally by the Bt!achis.
Well, remind me to pack a lunch if I ever visit their world! Can't imagine any of those being very delicious snax --- presumably the sources they get those fluids from produce good tasting fluids? Are these mammals farmed for their blood & juices, or are they slaughtered or how does their food industry work?
Occasionally wild animals are hunted, but mostly the Bt!achis farm horses, pigs, water buffalo, sheep, goats, camelids, rabbits, guinea pigs, and rhesus monkeys.
Dido Flip --- didn't even know the name for that! I recall it being popular enough at college. Some Daine chop their hair short and uneven like that, too.
I taught you something! :D
Well, it's not the first time, you know!
Oh, yeah, that's right . . . hentai. And silver nitrate.
This is Dido, by the way:

Here with Me

Thank You
Cute girl. Beautiful eyes and such a lovely voice! And, what's more, she can actually sing! That is a rare talent anymore. Lots of young things open their mouths and quasi-musical noise is emitted. This girl has a proper voice!
Yes! She is like Enya, a true singer. No AutoTune. No Britney Spears helium voice.
It came to me in a dream -- that's where I got the madness/brain/sadness/remain part and the discover/lover part, which don't really go with the broader post-9/11 theme.
Powerful and deeply personal are the things that come in dreams. Me, it's stories. I've dreamt music before, but never figured out how to write it down. Stories and descriptive bits come more readily anyway.
I'll take your words to heart. Some bits of the Lehola Galaxy, such as the kmatumosumos, the three-faced bird that flies above the seas of Kankonia, came to me in dreams. (So did Urinia and Natwri and the place name Twpia, above.)
I wouldn't place opposing same-sex marriage in the same category as supporting sodomy laws. To support sodomy laws is to treat homo- or bisexuality as CRIMINAL. (As you may have gathered from my posts on this board, I get really angry when something that isn't morally wrong is made a crime.)
Quite. Whether it's morally wrong or not is a different matter (it should come as no surprise the Church teaches exactly that), but making such behaviours criminal acts is bad lawmaking in my way of thinking. It's my opinion only that I don't find same sex sex to be immoral per se. I know there are very many LGBTQ Catholics who concur with the Church's teaching and would disagree with me; but I respect their take on those matters!
I just don't understand why anyone would consider gay/lesbian sex to be morally wrong. The "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" argument is the fallacy of use (i.e. confusing the intended use(s) of something with the acceptable use(s) thereof), and as a deist, I just don't see a God who could pull rules like that ex recto, either.
Wow, that was an awesome article. I wonder if we Millennials are on the way to creating a world that works like the society of the Smurfs: John Lennon's "imagine no possessions".
Probably not? I found the last paragraph or so of that article telling: it's not a permanent lifestyle choice. When you're in your twenties or early thirties, it's okay and quite doable. Once you do get into a relationship and get married, and start having kids, and start having health issues, renting a cot in a cubby hole becomes a lot less attractive.
The Boomers eventually settled down. So did the Jonesers. And the Xers, though it took a while. Perhaps the Millennials will be the first generation in the Western world for whom the majority never settle down. Fifth Worlders don't seem to be going down the settle-fown path either. The "white picket fence" path is looking so Greatest/Silent now, anyway, and the Millennials may very well reinvent what it means to be middle-aged (the oldest are turning 40 this year).
I'd not like that kind of lifestyle. I like my books and library and workshop!
I need my go bag (with Lehola notebooks), laptop, and iPod!
Like three in a row. Trimammism and tetramammism are pretty rare among the albeit-often-sexdactylous Kankonians.
Like this one?

Three is certainly possible in humans, but not in a row like that as far as I'm aware!
Like that one, yes. So it was a fake all along? O_O
Yep. Boys can be real crazy! Mumblety-peg played by sticking the knife as close to your foot as possible sounds like something Daine boys would play. And you'd better be a skilled knife thrower! Because Daine don't wear shoes. Sole is pretty tough, but the top of the foot, not so much!
Poor Daine boys!
How so?
Because their feet are in pain. I empathize with injured Daine.
Oh. (Well, I find turtlenecks very comfortable! And hip, too.)
[O.o]
Really!
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by elemtilas »

Khemehekis wrote: 16 May 2019 09:43 Definitely, according to the Bionjengocentric view of history. It's like the way, in ancient Europe, historians consider Rome and Greece to be the most important civilizations in the history of Europe at the time. At that point in history, Northwestern Europe's history was less important. Even the Dark Ages (peoples like the Vandals) are generally considered less important than Greece and Rome by Western historians. Tentan scholomodules (modules whereby the kids who don't get lifesped can learn their academic material during childhood) have lots of material on Bionjeng, and of course Tenta, but not much on Ksirand, or Tiang, or Monad.
Makes sense, leastways from the Bionjengian (biased) perspective!
Pretty much, but more than merely appropriated. Fitted seamlessly within the new mythistory and made real within the secondary world.
I see. Pretty much like what I've done with Greys and reptoids in the Lehola Galaxy.
Right!
The battle-cry of washy-moderate New Democrats and social-conservative Republicans alike! I've never understood how a child can be harmed by learning about or being exposed to sex. Sure, sex is "not for" children, but neither is the stock market, and I've never heard of anyone trying to censor knowledge about the stock market from children. (If anything, the stock market is even less for kids than sex, because in the U.S., you have to be 18 to play the stock market, whereas 16-year-olds may legally have sex in the majority of states.)
A very Daine perspective, that!
Wow!
Is that surprising? [;)]
Daine kids know about sex by the age of three or four. There's no such thing as private bedrooms for one thing. In most Daine houses (of the traditional round type, everyone in an extended family group basically sleeps and eats and makes babies in a rather open setting. Even in long houses, private bedrooms are not a thing. Kids will eventually be shunted to the Girls' House or the Boys' House, but they've already got a grip on the mechanics by then. They at least know that babies come out of mommies and there's a lot of groaning and carrying on to get the process started. Most kids just aren't that interested in sex; or rather, their interest largely revolves around asking if Mama can make a little sister this time around, cos I've got enough little brothers already.
. . .
Turghun, as I've mentioned, don't even have the choice of seeking out a secluded place. Once the eyes of girl & boy meet, everything pretty much happens regardless of what's going on around them and who's with them at the time. People just give them a little space and get on with things. Whatever they were talking about before can wait an hour or two more. It's not like anyone has a clock they have to live up to!
Interesting stuff. This reads sort of as an Ithkuilesque speculation on how human cultures could function. And it all seems to make sense together.
Thanks! If only they dìd work more that way...!
I remember my mother recently told me that one of my great-uncles (?) coined the word "tenty" for hundred when he was a child learning to count. It may be in my genes!
I think so!
And once when my sister was quite small, our family was reading a Smurfs book at beftime. She wanted to know how many Smurfs were pictured in the book, but they pretty much all look alike and so she likely counted a number of the same Smurfs multiple times. After nineteen Smurfs, Liz got to twenty . . . then twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen . . .
French(-ish) after a fashion.
According to The Underground Guide to the SAT, Vulcans are beings incapable of feeling emotion. That sounds quite un-Elf-like, as I understand Elves. Of course, I've never watched Star Trek, so I'm just going by what TUGttSAT says out Vulcans. Apparently, Vulcans can't feel love; wouldn't people want Elves to be able to feel love?
No wonder the American education system is so screwed! Can't even get basic facts of biology right! Vulcans are perfectly capable of experiencing emotions; they (with some exceptions) as a culture have chosen to compartmentalise and control them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJrLnpk2dTs
Ha! That's a funny image! What did you google to find that?
I think "make Westeros great again"!
In thinking back on older stories, I think I've pretty much avoided the practice. I could be wrong!, but I think instances of infodumping are rare and relatively small in nature.
The last paragraph sounds like a good idea. Lectures by characters visited on other planets directed towards characters visiting those planets sounds like something that would work in a novel on the Lehola Galaxy, for instance. Or if a character is learning a foreign culture's alphabet, I might describe what shape some of the letters have.

I could do brief infodumping if it becomes necessary to define a word that naturally pops up. If a character wears an article of clothing not known on Earth, I would indeed define "mosaic top" or "kampaji" when doing a sartorial description of the character. If you've read The Bittersweet Generation, you'll know I normally describe what my characters are wearing.
An epic colloquium between the philosophers of two great Schools might work... Not sure it would make for all that great a narrative, even with the fight scenes, but the infodumping is not to be missed!
Tetramantoids look like these creatures. They are mantologues, or evolutionary convergences to praying mantises, except they have four limbs instead of six. Tetramantoids are often found aboard ufopoleis. They communicate telepathically, much like Greys.
There is a certain facial similarity there as well.

Have you worked out the Tetramantoid telepathy? As I recall, the Termite sophonts (created by Lorinda Taylor) also communicate telepathically making use of a kind of radio signal.
Hexamantoids are native to the planet Twpia in the solar system Urinia. These are six-limbed mantis descendants who actually belong to the class Insecta. They have two legs and four arms. The top two arms they use as we use our arms. The middle two limbs are their language arms. Each Hexamantoid has nine grooves in one of its middle arms that can be played musically with the other arm (the latter of which functions like a violin bow). 80% of Hexamantoids have the grooves in their right arm and play with their left arm, while 20% have the grooves in their left arm and play with their right arm.
HaHa! What a loser! Ixtiqil fiddles with his right arm!!
The grooves go from biggest on the top to smallest on the bottom. Much like the bars on a xylophone, the biggest grooves make the deepest notes and the smallest grooves the highest notes in their enneatonic scale. The notes, from deepest to highest, are transcribed a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, and i. Some languages have two or three chronemes, indicating that a note is held longer. A normal c would simply be transcribed c; c held longer would be transcribed c2; and the longest chroneme for the note of c would be transcribed c3. A tacet (denoted with a space) separates words.
Natural opera singers, by the sound of it!

There are plenty of mantids in Yeola, but none are sophonts that I'm aware of.
I never went through a phase of creating cipherbets, because I saw how other scripts (Greek, Semitic alphabets, hieroglyphics) worked from quite a young age in charts in my parents' dictionaries. I remember creating an abjad for Ciladian at age 9 (Ciladian now has its own totally different abjad, and exists not on Earth but as an ancient civilization on Kankonia).
I think i made a few writing systems based on Cyrillic letters.
Yes, anime-style art is ubiquitous among Millennials (and Fifth Worlders). In the late nineties, my mother looked at local K-12 art in her local lobrary and commented that there were so many kids who drew in the anime style. Must be Pokémon and Sailor Moon!
It wouldn't be so bad if they would draw their own characters. But they just copy from the books... A few only, it seems, take it up to the next level and create their own.
I'm generally very unversed in nerd/geek culture. Someone I know once proposed a game:

CARL: I name a superhero's alter ego and you have to tell me which superhero it is.
KHEMEHEKIS: OK.
CARL: Diana Prinze.
KHEMEHEKIS: Ummmm . . . ummmm . . . no idea.
CARL: Wonder Woman.
KHEMEHEKIS: Oh, OK. Never knew that.
CARL: Next one. Bruce Wayne.
KHEMEHEKIS: Uhh . . . uhh . . . ::shrugs shoulders::.
CARL: You really don't read comic books, do you?
You and me both...
Yes? Why no R-words in my name? Perhaps because I can't stand the right-wing, restrictive, repressive, rigid, ruthless, rule-bound Ronald Reagan Religious Right that took over this country in the eighties.
Right, no R-words in your names. And now you've got a surfeit of Rs!
Raharaha! (That's Kankonian for "ha ha".)
But, if you can make a cool monogramme with your initials, then you'd be in the running again!
J. E. F. Landau? J.E.F. Landau? Jeff Landau? (Fun fact: my parents originally planned to call me Jeff, because my first three initials were J. E. F., but they never followed through on that.)
Image
Note the 2018 winner. That was my first time hearing of Tapissary!
I've heard of a couple of the older ones.
Well, I remember one time I was the subject of a tirade on the Internet by a Republican INFP. This was on the Howe & Strauss board, no less.
Oo, a proper tirade?
You'd probably enjoy reading the (un)series. His stories are really as much social satire as anything.
Thanks for the explanation! So he's obviously an INTP . . . did Sir Terry base Ponder Stibbons on himself?
I don't think so. L-space seem to think he's based on several real world characters, Sir Isaac Newton among whom.
The Bt!achis are a spacefaring people and just about all of them have been aboard a spacecraft. A Bt!achi with flight sickness is a very rare sight. Abroad, they love experimenting on other people's animals, and have cloned and spliced many species. They often abduct other sapients (they call it "sampling").
[O.O]

What do they do with their ... er, samples??
They examine their blood and urine and other fluids, create starchildren with them, give them anal probes, practice xenomedicine, and hypnotize Terrans so they won't remember these ordeals.
:snif: Sounds like Men to me. Daine are what give the medical colleges all the organs in bottles, thaumically activated anatomy skeletons and vivisection subjects.

Mind you, their donations are not voluntary.
What does a learning disk look like? How many kiddoes fit in one?
Learning disks are like the scholomodules used in Tenta. They look like standard square computer disks, only thicker than a floppy or a hard disk. Kids don't "fit into" one; it's not like lifespeeding. Although B!tachis can lifespeed, they don't usually find this necessarily since even children have basic civil rights and developed brains (as I'll get into more below).
Like a zip disk!

Image
The exclamation points in the transliterations indicate pharyngealized consonants, so Bt!a is /btˤa/. But the Greys of Bt!a don't actually mouth speak the words, they telepathize them.
And here I thought it marked a click!
A full name might sound like A N S! Dj V Bh, although such a Bt!achi would normally be addressed as simply A, or sometimes A N, if A Z! T Ü V W is in the same room.
I C!
Every 5 years, the citizens of Bt!a elect a new president and Congress.
Term limits?? (I'm all for that!)
Well, not really necessarily a *new* president. They don't have an equivalent to the Twenty-second Amendment, but every year divisible by five, the incumbent president and each congressperson is up for either reëlection or replacement.
Nuts. Was hoping for a sensible (non-Daine) political system! [}:D]
They can form a unity government at times of real crisis, like if a huge asteroid storm is about to hit Bt!a or back when they faced climate change, but mostly they argue amongst themselves.
Ah, well, that's very reasonable of them!
What is the platform of the Primitive Party?
The Primitive Party want to live like Neolithic Greys, or at least like Bronze Age Greys. No electronics, no spaceflight, no sewer systems/electricity (they're off the grid), simple farming of suckable animals.
Kind of odd: why do they need a political party, when they can just slip off grid and live the life?
Is there so much war in Bt!a society that Peace Nowers see the need for a party? Which party is for the warmongers?
The Peace Nowers want to get other planets and the rogue Ratharians to stop attacking Bt!a, and to accomplish this without any bloodshed. They also want to stop wars on other planets.
Oh, okay! Now, that's an interesting take! Hopefully they'll be successful!
The warmongers might like the Galactic Grey Power Party or the Greys First Party. The former party wants to create a single country for all the Greys across the Lehola Galaxy (those on Bt!a, those on Tziel, those on Tayaon, those on Taos, those on Grraibha, etc.) . . . it's analogous to the Falangists on Earth, who want to unite all the Hispanic countries. The Greys First Party is looking out for the interest of Greys on the world stage. They're a pragmatic, savvy, and yes, even cynical party with an Oliver North attitude, comparable to neocons in America.
Any luck uniting all the Greys? Reminds also of the pan-Celtic movement.

Is there a Grey Green Party?

A B!tachi's intellect develops to adult level at about the age of 6 Earth-years, when they are still prepubescent. They are wise, but still wily, just like the adult Bt!achis. When they hit puberty, they become kinky as well.
Now, thát's interesting! I'll have to post about Daine growth & development.
As for toddlers and babies, there's no law that would prevent the odd 2-year-old with a 214 IQ from voting, but generally with children that young, their parents just don't take them to the polls because the children show no interest in (nor comprehension of) politics, and the parents don't have the legal power to force their children to vote. Sort of like how an American wouldn't be taken to the polls to vote by her/his parents if s/he had severe mental retardation, even if s/he were over 18. And on Bt!a as on Earth, there's the hurdle of registration.
Understood. Well, I like 2 year old B!tachis already! No interest in or comprehension of politics! If only they could mould their entire society along those lines...
These Greys drink blood, which fills both their food and water requirements. Such bodily fluids as phlegm, saliva and semen are enjoyed as snacks. A favorite drug is corticosterine, or wtt! as they call it, taken from the brains of other mammals, and used recreationally by the Bt!achis.

Occasionally wild animals are hunted, but mostly the Bt!achis farm horses, pigs, water buffalo, sheep, goats, camelids, rabbits, guinea pigs, and rhesus monkeys.
They must have some interesting milking machines to get rabbit snot...
I taught you something! :D ... Oh, yeah, that's right . . . hentai. And silver nitrate.
To say the least!
I'll take your words to heart. Some bits of the Lehola Galaxy, such as the kmatumosumos, the three-faced bird that flies above the seas of Kankonia, came to me in dreams. (So did Urinia and Natwri and the place name Twpia, above.)
So much of The World comes in dreams it's hard to pick apart what did and what didn't. Recently the tale of Lystrael came in a dream. Most of her life has been spent aboard a freelancer's ship of the same name, as a little one, she was their mascot, but eventually grew into one of the crew and eventually fought her way to the captaincy, from which place she's poised to finally sort out who & what she actually is. So far I've got the circumstances of her birth written.
I wouldn't place opposing same-sex marriage in the same category as supporting sodomy laws. To support sodomy laws is to treat homo- or bisexuality as CRIMINAL. (As you may have gathered from my posts on this board, I get really angry when something that isn't morally wrong is made a crime.)
Quite. Whether it's morally wrong or not is a different matter (it should come as no surprise the Church teaches exactly that), but making such behaviours criminal acts is bad lawmaking in my way of thinking. It's my opinion only that I don't find same sex sex to be immoral per se. I know there are very many LGBTQ Catholics who concur with the Church's teaching and would disagree with me; but I respect their take on those matters!
I just don't understand why anyone would consider gay/lesbian sex to be morally wrong. The "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" argument is the fallacy of use (i.e. confusing the intended use(s) of something with the acceptable use(s) thereof), and as a deist, I just don't see a God who could pull rules like that ex recto, either.
A simplistic fallacy. I understand the underlying argument well enough though am not convinced its foundation is firm. I get that sex is the ordained and enjoyable way new people are made, and thence the sacred nature of marriage & parenthood & family. (And hence why I don't same-sex marriage but do support same-sex arrangements.) But I also get that sex has other enjoyable uses and also that not everyone is made in the Female + Male mindset. Catholic LGBs (who conform to the given moral perspective) often speak in terms of self sacrifice and suffering, which I find noble and entirely fitting. They accept the teaching and the consequences that go with and I respect them deeply for it.

I am similarly opposed to the Left that desires legally or socially forcing those who hold same-sex sex as immoral to change. That's their rule and their choice to abide or not as their conscience dictates. That's every bit as evil as legislating against sodomy in the first place.

The Boomers eventually settled down. So did the Jonesers. And the Xers, though it took a while. Perhaps the Millennials will be the first generation in the Western world for whom the majority never settle down. Fifth Worlders don't seem to be going down the settle-fown path either. The "white picket fence" path is looking so Greatest/Silent now, anyway, and the Millennials may very well reinvent what it means to be middle-aged (the oldest are turning 40 this year).
There have always been folks who have channeled the ancestral nomad within. (And this is actually a very Daine thing to do, if you didn't know already!) If a significant number of people choose such a lifestyle, it will interesting to how society & culture & technology adapt.
I'd not like that kind of lifestyle. I like my books and library and workshop!
I need my go bag (with Lehola notebooks), laptop, and iPod!
Go bag would be too big and heavy for me...

I do have one I use to chuck some notebooks and pen-rollup into for when I'm away from home, though.
Like three in a row. ...

Like that one, yes. So it was a fake all along? O_O
Sorry! Phake all along!
Yep. Boys can be real crazy! Mumblety-peg played by sticking the knife as close to your foot as possible sounds like something Daine boys would play. And you'd better be a skilled knife thrower! Because Daine don't wear shoes. Sole is pretty tough, but the top of the foot, not so much!
Poor Daine boys!

Because their feet are in pain. I empathize with injured Daine.
Oh I see! From the knifey game! Yeah, well, teaches better aim! And they'll heal quick enough.
Oh. (Well, I find turtlenecks very comfortable! And hip, too.)
[O.o]
Really!
[o.O]
Last edited by elemtilas on 22 May 2019 17:38, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

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I jus wanna say how entertaining this thread is to read!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

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elemtilas wrote: 21 May 2019 21:07
Pretty much, but more than merely appropriated. Fitted seamlessly within the new mythistory and made real within the secondary world.
I see. Pretty much like what I've done with Greys and reptoids in the Lehola Galaxy.
Right!
I guess that makes Tolkien awesome in his own way.
The battle-cry of washy-moderate New Democrats and social-conservative Republicans alike! I've never understood how a child can be harmed by learning about or being exposed to sex. Sure, sex is "not for" children, but neither is the stock market, and I've never heard of anyone trying to censor knowledge about the stock market from children. (If anything, the stock market is even less for kids than sex, because in the U.S., you have to be 18 to play the stock market, whereas 16-year-olds may legally have sex in the majority of states.)
A very Daine perspective, that!
Wow!
Is that surprising?
Not really, knowing the Daine, but I'm always surprised to be told (by you) that some thought process of mine is Daine.

And I'm not sure how a moderate Democrat or a Republican would respond to my point about the stock market and the 18/16 discrepancy. I'm guessing that the Daine age for playing the stock market is higher than their age of consent (if the Daine even have a stock market).
Interesting stuff. This reads sort of as an Ithkuilesque speculation on how human cultures could function. And it all seems to make sense together.
Thanks! If only they dìd work more that way...!
You're welcome. And that sounds so much like the remark of an INFP worldbuilder.
And once when my sister was quite small, our family was reading a Smurfs book at beftime. She wanted to know how many Smurfs were pictured in the book, but they pretty much all look alike and so she likely counted a number of the same Smurfs multiple times. After nineteen Smurfs, Liz got to twenty . . . then twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen . . .
French(-ish) after a fashion.
Yes! Like soixante-seize for seventy-six, or soixante-vingt-neuf for eighty-nine.
According to The Underground Guide to the SAT, Vulcans are beings incapable of feeling emotion. That sounds quite un-Elf-like, as I understand Elves. Of course, I've never watched Star Trek, so I'm just going by what TUGttSAT says out Vulcans. Apparently, Vulcans can't feel love; wouldn't people want Elves to be able to feel love?
No wonder the American education system is so screwed! Can't even get basic facts of biology right! Vulcans are perfectly capable of experiencing emotions; they (with some exceptions) as a culture have chosen to compartmentalise and control them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJrLnpk2dTs
Thanks for the "education"! Explains their facial expressions. Sounds somewhat like Aspies; they feel emotions, but logic trumps emotion for them,

And The Underground Guide to the SAT isn't really part of the education system. It's a rather subversive guide written by young people over the course of a few decades and updated every now and then . . .
Ha! That's a funny image! What did you google to find that?
I think "make Westeros great again"!
Shoot! So I wasn't the first to say that!
An epic colloquium between the philosophers of two great Schools might work... Not sure it would make for all that great a narrative, even with the fight scenes, but the infodumping is not to be missed!
Hee-hee.
Have you worked out the Tetramantoid telepathy? As I recall, the Termite sophonts (created by Lorinda Taylor) also communicate telepathically making use of a kind of radio signal.
I think I have all my telepathic sapients use telemes. Radio signal sounds like a cool idea, though.
Hexamantoids are native to the planet Twpia in the solar system Urinia. These are six-limbed mantis descendants who actually belong to the class Insecta. They have two legs and four arms. The top two arms they use as we use our arms. The middle two limbs are their language arms. Each Hexamantoid has nine grooves in one of its middle arms that can be played musically with the other arm (the latter of which functions like a violin bow). 80% of Hexamantoids have the grooves in their right arm and play with their left arm, while 20% have the grooves in their left arm and play with their right arm.
HaHa! What a loser! Ixtiqil fiddles with his right arm!!
Some of the Hexamantoid societies (the pre-industrial agricultural ones in particular) will be more conformist than others. Just like some cultures and generations are more conformist than others on Earth (compare c. 1940 Greatests with c. 2010 Millennials). But you're right, in these conformist societies, fiddling with one's right arm will be viewed the way conformist humans traditionally frowned on left-handedness. And Ixtiqil is such an insectoid name -- [<3] it!
Yes, anime-style art is ubiquitous among Millennials (and Fifth Worlders). In the late nineties, my mother looked at local K-12 art in her local lobrary and commented that there were so many kids who drew in the anime style. Must be Pokémon and Sailor Moon!
It wouldn't be so bad if they would draw their own characters. But they just copy from the books... A few only, it seems, take it up to the next level and create their own.
I've never understood how some of my classmates could draw Bart Simpson exactly like Matt Groening, or a certain gross-looking superhero (of whom I do not want to see an image pulled from Google Image searches) exactly like Steve Ditko. And that's not my drawing bag anyway. When I draw, I'd rather draw the characters in The Bittersweet Generation or completely one-off people (like the people you might use to illustrate a picture dictionary).
I'm generally very unversed in nerd/geek culture. Someone I know once proposed a game:

CARL: I name a superhero's alter ego and you have to tell me which superhero it is.
KHEMEHEKIS: OK.
CARL: Diana Prinze.
KHEMEHEKIS: Ummmm . . . ummmm . . . no idea.
CARL: Wonder Woman.
KHEMEHEKIS: Oh, OK. Never knew that.
CARL: Next one. Bruce Wayne.
KHEMEHEKIS: Uhh . . . uhh . . . ::shrugs shoulders::.
CARL: You really don't read comic books, do you?
You and me both...
[+1]
Image
I LIKE IT!
Note the 2018 winner. That was my first time hearing of Tapissary!
I've heard of a couple of the older ones.
I'd heard of Kalusa, Teonaht, Ithkuil, Kelen, Okuna/Tokana, Rikchik, Brithenig, and Kash before they became Smiley winners. Clearly, we conlangers have a thing for K's and T's.
Well, I remember one time I was the subject of a tirade on the Internet by a Republican INFP. This was on the Howe & Strauss board, no less.
Oo, a proper tirade?
Is there some official formula for a "proper" tirade? If so, I'm unaware of it.
:snif: Sounds like Men to me. Daine are what give the medical colleges all the organs in bottles, thaumically activated anatomy skeletons and vivisection subjects.

Mind you, their donations are not voluntary.
How truly horrible. You know how I feel about non-consensual medical procedures . . .
Learning disks are like the scholomodules used in Tenta. They look like standard square computer disks, only thicker than a floppy or a hard disk. Kids don't "fit into" one; it's not like lifespeeding. Although B!tachis can lifespeed, they don't usually find this necessarily since even children have basic civil rights and developed brains (as I'll get into more below).
Like a zip disk!

Image
Yes!
A full name might sound like A N S! Dj V Bh, although such a Bt!achi would normally be addressed as simply A, or sometimes A N, if A Z! T Ü V W is in the same room.
I C!
[xD]
The Primitive Party want to live like Neolithic Greys, or at least like Bronze Age Greys. No electronics, no spaceflight, no sewer systems/electricity (they're off the grid), simple farming of suckable animals.
Kind of odd: why do they need a political party, when they can just slip off grid and live the life?
Because the extreme internationalization and technification of Bt!a make it hard for them to slip off the grid fully. Imagine living in the heart of New York city and trying to find wilderness, eating your own mushrooms and catching your own salmon. Now imagine that New York city has taken over the entire continent of North America.
The warmongers might like the Galactic Grey Power Party or the Greys First Party. The former party wants to create a single country for all the Greys across the Lehola Galaxy (those on Bt!a, those on Tziel, those on Tayaon, those on Taos, those on Grraibha, etc.) . . . it's analogous to the Falangists on Earth, who want to unite all the Hispanic countries. The Greys First Party is looking out for the interest of Greys on the world stage. They're a pragmatic, savvy, and yes, even cynical party with an Oliver North attitude, comparable to neocons in America.
Any luck uniting all the Greys? Reminds also of the pan-Celtic movement.
The pan-Celtic party sounds like something to bring tears to the eyes. KT Tunstall, Paolo Nutini, Duffy, Enya, Danny O'Donoghue (the boy from the Script) and Dolores O'Riordan all in their own free nation or nations. And as for now, the Greys live on diverse planets that have their own (mostly one-world) governments and don't always agree with each other. Tziel, for instance, is a theocracy that suppresses minority languages, while Bt!a is full of secular INTP-ish Greys whose sexual practices would appall the rulers of Tziel.
Is there a Grey Green Party?
Pretty much all of the parties are on board with the protect-the-environment agenda (despite the extreme techification of Bt!a), because that's the way it's been since the planet had to come to terms with climate change long ago. So a Green-type party would be superfluous.
As for toddlers and babies, there's no law that would prevent the odd 2-year-old with a 214 IQ from voting, but generally with children that young, their parents just don't take them to the polls because the children show no interest in (nor comprehension of) politics, and the parents don't have the legal power to force their children to vote. Sort of like how an American wouldn't be taken to the polls to vote by her/his parents if s/he had severe mental retardation, even if s/he were over 18. And on Bt!a as on Earth, there's the hurdle of registration.
Understood. Well, I like 2 year old B!tachis already! No interest in or comprehension of politics! If only they could mould their entire society along those lines...
::Smiles:: Well, without government, they couldn't have confronted the monster of climate change. Which leads me to my concerns about the rigged debates in the Democratic primary: too many centrists Democrats like Joe Biden and John Delaney aren't taking the threat of climate change seriously; they're thinking like corporate-controlled politicians. As we saw with Hillary in 2016, New Democrats are afraid to be the Party of Big Ideas. And their cynicism about what's politically possible is putting the future of our one and only planet in jeopardy.
These Greys drink blood, which fills both their food and water requirements. Such bodily fluids as phlegm, saliva and semen are enjoyed as snacks. A favorite drug is corticosterine, or wtt! as they call it, taken from the brains of other mammals, and used recreationally by the Bt!achis.

Occasionally wild animals are hunted, but mostly the Bt!achis farm horses, pigs, water buffalo, sheep, goats, camelids, rabbits, guinea pigs, and rhesus monkeys.
They must have some interesting milking machines to get rabbit snot...
Well, with rabbits, it's mostly the blood and corticosterine. Water buffalo snot is something, though! At least if you're Bt!achi!
So much of The World comes in dreams it's hard to pick apart what did and what didn't. Recently the tale of Lystrael came in a dream. Most of her life has been spent aboard a freelancer's ship of the same name, as a little one, she was their mascot, but eventually grew into one of the crew and eventually fought her way to the captaincy, from which place she's poised to finally sort out who & what she actually is. So far I've got the circumstances of her birth written.
Lovely story! And here's a true story of mine: I dreamt I was reading a review of Kankonian, and the reviewer noted, in analyzing how beautiful Kankonian phonaesthetics were, that the word for bar (in its musical sense) was varoivu. I didn't remember that! When I woke up, I checked, discovered that Kankonian did not yet have a word for "bar", and made varoivu the word for bar (in its musical sense).
There have always been folks who have channeled the ancestral nomad within. (And this is actually a very Daine thing to do, if you didn't know already!) If a significant number of people choose such a lifestyle, it will interesting to how society & culture & technology adapt.
Interesting you chose the word "nomad", because Howe & Strauss call Generation X a Nomad Generation!
Because their feet are in pain. I empathize with injured Daine.
Oh I see! From the knifey game! Yeah, well, teaches better aim! And they'll heal quick enough.
Oh, good.
♂♥♂♀

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31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by eldin raigmore »

Then there's Sir Terry Pratchett's type, INTP. When I think of INTP's, I picture an overweight, ponytailed geek sitting at his laptop and visiting sites where he discusses quantum physics and new sustainability paradigms, tweaking his Unified Theory of Everything.
I have never had a ponytail!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

eldin raigmore wrote: 02 Sep 2019 04:34
Then there's Sir Terry Pratchett's type, INTP. When I think of INTP's, I picture an overweight, ponytailed geek sitting at his laptop and visiting sites where he discusses quantum physics and new sustainability paradigms, tweaking his Unified Theory of Everything.
I have never had a ponytail!
But you are INTP, overweight, a geek, and a laptop user, right?

Do you discuss quantum physics? Do you discuss new sustainability paradigms? Do you have a Unified Theory of Everything?
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Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

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31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by eldin raigmore »

Khemehekis wrote: 21 Sep 2019 10:03
eldin raigmore wrote: 02 Sep 2019 04:34
Then there's Sir Terry Pratchett's type, INTP. When I think of INTP's, I picture an overweight, ponytailed geek sitting at his laptop and visiting sites where he discusses quantum physics and new sustainability paradigms, tweaking his Unified Theory of Everything.
I have never had a ponytail!
But you are INTP, overweight, a geek, and a laptop user, right?
Right!
Do you discuss quantum physics? Do you discuss new sustainability paradigms?
Yes and yes.

Your grasp of Gricean maxims, and your accuracy in applying them, is quite impressive!

Do you have a Unified Theory of Everything?
No, never have had, and don’t know anyone who ever has had.
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

eldin raigmore wrote: 21 Sep 2019 16:05
Do you have a Unified Theory of Everything?
No, never have had, and don’t know anyone who ever has had.
Oh, well.

I already knew you were an INTP, overweight, and a geek, and that you used a laptop!
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by eldin raigmore »

Khemehekis wrote: 21 Sep 2019 16:18
eldin raigmore wrote: 21 Sep 2019 16:05
Do you have a Unified Theory of Everything?
No, never have had, and don’t know anyone who ever has had.
Oh, well.
I already knew you were an INTP, overweight, and a geek, and that you used a laptop!
[:D] [:)] [:O] [;)] :mrgreen:
Khemehekis
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

Oh, that's so cool, Elemtilas!

At first I thought that was a real book cover, and I thought, "Someone else used the term "life speeder", and there's an association with the name Landau? What a coincidence! ("State of Landau" I interpreted as Landau in der Pfalz in Germany.)

Then I googled Ayer-Oberholtzer-Woody and discovered that the original was "Modern Life Speller", and that the books said, "State of Kansas" on them. So you spoofed that book cover!

Amazing! How did you do that! How did you get the same font for "speller" as they had for "modern life", and the same font for "Landau" as they had for "state of" . . . and then keep the same pattern in the background? As I said, it's totally amazing!
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Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by elemtilas »

It pleases me no end you enjoyed it!

Everything was done in Paint -- really just a few alterations & touch-ups to certain letters!
Khemehekis
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Re: Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

Post by Khemehekis »

elemtilas wrote: 27 Mar 2020 07:53 It pleases me no end you enjoyed it!

Everything was done in Paint -- really just a few alterations & touch-ups to certain letters!
Ah, I see. KANSAS and LANDAU share half of their letters. And SPELLER only needs two letters changed to become SPEEDER. Nice work!
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
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