Hello, friends!

Once again, I’ve a Failed Technomancer chapter update for you: chapter 5 is live! As well as the teaser chapter-beginning quote for chapter 6. I hope you enjoy reading how 64Bit’s life continues to spiral out of control.

Anyway, I’ve got a few things I wanted to share here, and I hope you’ll find each interesting. First of all, after reading last week’s blog post (and A Dinner Diabolical), Kevin reached out to me and asked if my short story was in any way inspired by the Angels, Demons, and Sandwiches saga. I’ve never read that tumblr-community-produced story before now, but I thought it was so much fun that I’ve decided to share it here. If you don’t go and read it, just know that the Sandwich Saga is a silly story about a person who accidentally summons a demon while making sandwiches and apparently gains a reputation for making really good ones. More demons keep coming and things evolve from here. As long as you can set aside certain theological implications at the end, it’s very delightful and heartwarming.

Secondly, I rediscovered this quote recently, and I found it inspiring:

Trusting others in the absence of naïveté is an act of faith. Celebrating the beauty of existence despite its tragedy and malevolence is an act of faith.

All action undertaken in the absence of omniscience is faith, and all action is undertaken in that absence. [Some] think faith means believing something that strains credibility, but it really means mature courage in being and becoming.

As it always truly has.

Doctor Jordan B Peterson

I enjoy pondering on faith and its various aspects. We live in a world where, I think, more faith than ever is needed—faith in a higher power, faith in ourselves, and especially faith in our fellow man. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people are hopeless because they have been taught that faith is exclusively a blind, foolish thing, and so they lose that resource to strive toward bettering themselves and, through their self-improvement, those around them.

Thirdly, while my writing during the week is largely focused on The Betrayed Technomancer (and I’ll have updates on that soon), I allow myself to work on other projects during the weekend and other instances of freer time, and the result lately has been me putting some solid work into my article on constructing fictional languages (written in a For Dummies style, more or less). Consider this a little teaser for that article.

For the article I’ve spent time studying lapine, the fictional language spoken by rabbits in Watership Down, and I honestly consider it the most masterful use of a fictional language that I’ve ever read. With one exception (that I found), you never read lapine in full sentences, but instead get random words that are fun to say, easy to memorize, and I think were excellently selected to capture the feeling of rabbitness. The reader is never overwhelmed, but by the end of the book the reader can casually make use of lapine words in intentional, nuanced ways if he or she so desires—which isn’t the point of introducing those words, but just goes to show how naturally and effectively those words were implemented in the book.

Here are some of the words I’m speaking of:

• Silflay, to go above ground and eat. Probably something rabbits would talk about a lot, since many live underground, and would find convenient to have a single word for!
• Hrair, many, any number above four. Clearly captures the mental capacity of these creatures, or how they view the world: in very small, distinct numbers, or a giant, uncountable mass.
• Tharn, hypnotized with fear. Anyone who has been around rabbits long would recognize this emotion and easily see why rabbits would develop a single, specific word to describe it.

Despite how flavorful the above words are, one of the best examples of how well lapine is used in this book is a moment where General Woundwort, the antagonist of the second half of the book, curses in lapine:

Embleer Frith!

General Woundwort

Earlier in the novel you learn that “embleer” means “stink or stinking”; how it is used tends to suggest it’s a rude word in rabbit culture. You also are reminded frequently throughout the book that rabbits revere Frith as the creator of animals. So, when Woundwort makes this statement, it doesn’t need to be explained to you that he just swore in a very profound and offensive way: you just recognize it, feel it, in a way that might stir your guts a bit. Fictional languages in other books have never hit me as hard as that one statement has.

Plenty of books make far more extensive use of fictional languages, and feature constructed languages that have been built out extensively (Lord of the Rings being particularly of note here), but none of them, to me, feel as approachable and impactful as lapine.

Bloggyness Review: Galaxy Quest

Galaxy Quest is a 1999 film starring Sigourney Weaver, Tim Allen, and Alan Rickman. In it, a handful of actors from a cheesy old sci-fi TV show accidentally find themselves on a spacefaring adventure mirroring the shows they used to act in. Galaxy Quest parodies Star Trek, but is so well-written and well-acted that it transcends being a parody and just plain becomes an incredible film all on its own that anyone can enjoy, whether they’ve seen Star Trek or not.

I can’t believe I’m still discovering people of my generation that haven’t seen this movie. It’s on Prime for free. Make a bucket of popcorn and go have a great time. I honestly don’t think it needs much more review than that, largely because I don’t want to spoil anything—although I will note that the aliens in this movie are so incredibly well acted. Masterful work. And hilarious.

Writing Updates

I am at… 6000 words! A little bit of an improvement over last week. Keeping my goal of 500 words a work day, hopefully I can hit 8500 before next week. That might be a little tough since I have a few hundred words I want to remove from a recent scene, but I’ll press forward.

Anyway, out of a predicted 150,000 words, that means I’m sorta at 4%.

Inner Demon, slush pile, as before. Sigh…

Send-Off

Have a wonderful week! And let me know what underrated gems from generations past you’ve read or watched recently.