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#i hope the english version will be at least readable
stingyslegslookweird · 8 months
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A week or so ago, I made a post about Yukari's letter from episode 42 of Kamen Rider Agito, asking if anyone had turned the stylized English it was written in into a font. From what I could find, no one had.
So I did.
Say hello to Limitless Evolution, my first (and so far only) custom font, based off what's more or less the catalyst for the entire plot of the 2001 tokusatsu, Kamen Rider Agito. It's available in both OTF and SVG formats, and I've included the .txt save file for the website I used to make it, in case you want to mess around with that.
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left: the screencap from my original post. right: the first paragraph of the letter, typed up in wordpad using the Limitless Evolution font.
And if you're wondering, here's what it says in readable English:
"In the beginning was Theos. Theos divided the light from the darkness, the day from the night, the firmament from the earth, and the land from the sea. Thus the world was finished."
A list of changes I had to make, for those curious:
The letter never uses the letters J, Q, X, and Z, so I had to come up with my own designs for them.
There are no parentheses, mainly because by the time I got to those characters, I couldn't think of any way to make them look good and consistent with the rest of the font.
Idk where else I can mention this but I realized partway through making this that, because all of the characters use straight lines, the Unknown (or whatever entity is responsible for this "language") likely used to write on wax or stone, since straight lines are much easier to legibly write with on those surfaces. Of course, this means there are absolutely no curves anywhere in this font (at least in the custom characters).
You might notice a few re-uses of specific characters here and there in other characters. Had I not done that, I 100% would've gotten burnt out halfway thru and never finished this.
The numerals are obviously not Arabic. I took inspiration from the weird "gang signs" the Unknown do before they commit murder and made the signs for numbers look like fingers on hands. I imagine their counting system works exactly like Arabic/base-10 counting, just with different symbols.
I replaced the tilde with a "does not equal" sign. The tilde sometimes signifies "is approximately equal to", and I figured the Unknown probably wouldn't vibe with that kinda thing.
I was gonna make the @ sign the Agito symbol but I forgor. 💀
The dollar sign ($) is also custom. It's the symbol for G with a line thru it. The Unknown strike me as a culture that would use Gold, plus it looks kinda like a crystal, which they might also perhaps use.
The ampersand (&) and plus (+) use the same symbol. I figured they mean basically the same thing, so why not, y'know? Also I couldn't come up with a good design for it.
I literally just realized as I'm writing this that the lowercase M is only slightly smaller than the capital M, and the lowercase and capital Ns are the same size. My bad. When/If I make an updated version of this, I'll be sure to fix that.
I used the comma in like six different characters. It's not laziness, it's resourcefulness.
Lastly, the greater than (>) and less than (<) symbols are meant to represent people bowing/praying, since I figured the Unknown would probably see it as whichever number was more "powerful". Kinda like the alligator thing but with fighting instead of eating.
So yeah. If you want, you can download the font by clicking its name earlier in this post, or here if you'd prefer:
Lemme know if there's any improvements or adjustments I should make in the next version that may or may not come out some time in the near or distant future. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ idk. Hope you enjoy regardless!
Update: In case you missed it, I released an updated version of the font that adds parentheses, brackets, some diacritics, and other fun things. It, along with the original version are both downloadable from the Google Drive link above (hopefully). I’m still planning on updating it again in the future, so if you have any suggestions or issues you’d like to see fixed in the future, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.
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Intro: Favorite Mongolian Authors & more
#slavic roots western mind
I've always had an interest in Mongolia, primarily because there's literally so little international news coverage, at least in my neck of the woods so to speak.
Despite my Mongolian language learning attempts being paused for the time being, I nonetheless continue to fall in love with Mongolian literature with every read, especially with poetry, which is why I've wanted to share my favourite authors.
Here's my quick list of Mongolian authors who's works I've read so far (and a few that are on my to-read radar).
1. Galsan Tschinag
My absolutely favorite poet, born in Mongolia in 1944, famous for his poetry, which interestingly enough was originally written in German, and then translated to English.
His works primarily feature the themes of a nomadic lifestyle, nature, heritage and cultural identity, so if any of these topics interest you, definitely check out his works!
2. Chadraabalyn Lodoidamba
I've only managed to read one of his novels "Тунгалаг тамир" (The Crystal Clear Tamir River), but it's definitely a worthwhile read. Set in the 20th Century, it provides an interesting insight into Mongolian history leading up to the uprising of Mongolia in 1932, with a strong focus on the struggle of the poor against the rich
There's no official English translation (there are German and Russion versions somewhere, but I didn't find them yet), but google translate helped me create a readable version from the original Mongolian.
There's also a movie split into several episodes avaliable on yt but with iffy subtitles, so if you liked the book, you can sort of follow along with the movie.
It's rare for me to hear spoken Mongolian, so watching the movie episodes has been a fascinating experience.
3. Choinom Ryenchi
Once again, I've only read one of this authors works "Buriad", written in 1973 and published in Sümtei Budaryn Chuluu [A Stone from the Steppe with a Monastery] in 1990, but it was enough to interest me.
Buriad refers to an ethnic group in Mongolia, with the poem describing their lifestyle and history. I don't know if what I've read is the entire work, as I found it in a research paper, feauturing said poem with the translation, but it was still quite beautiful.
The style is very lyrical, almost like a song or even a chant at times, and very captivating. A must-read.
4. Mend-Ooyo Gombojav
He has written quite a lot of novels, with many of them luckily translated into English.
His "The Holy One" is a great work of historical fiction, about a 19th century poet and teacher of Buddhism, whose memory and works were later persecuted by the governments fight against intellectuals and free-thinkers, all whilst his works protector attempted to save his works.
Unfortunately I've only read excerpts and bits and pieces, which is pretty frustrating because it seems so good? The style is unusual for me, but it's pretty great either way.
I've read the peom "The Way of the World", which has a rather nostalgic vibe, remembering the past warriors and their heroic deeds but also suggesting that only the stories of their victories will remain. Short but "sweet".
5. Oyungerel Tsedevdamba
I only know her "The Green-eyed Lama", co-written by her and her husband Jeffrey Lester Falt, but the plot description is enough to have me hooked. A love triangle, love and faith amidst war and rebellion... Here's me hoping that it won't be a tear-jerker, because sad endings are not my favorite genre.
Here's a link to a video about Oyungerel's and Jeffrey's writing and research process and how they wrote the novel. It's actually based on a true real-life story, so I guess I'll see how reading this novels turn out. History isn't exactly known for it's happy endings, so we shall see.
6. Combo: Mongolian Short Stories
This one is a compilation of short stories by various Mongolian authors rather than just one author, but it'll have to do because Number 6 exhausts all my knowledge of Mongolian literature.
Edited and compiled by Henry G. Schwarz, each story is about 4-15 pages long with different themes, ranging from daily life in rural Mongolia to critiques of the political situation at the time, the style is a tad over the place, as each author has their own distinct style. Nonetheless, this book gives interesting insights into what life was like in Mongolia at the time, and whether our notions and initial ideas about Mongolia reflect the literary depictions.
Here's my list so far, but chances are I'll update it soon, so watch out for any new updates!
I'll happily share any links and digital copies of these works that I have, just message me please!
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ladyniniane · 5 months
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Hello, I'd like to read your stories but is there an English versions available? If not, that's ok. Thank you
Hello Anon :)
There are no English versions of my stories, translating everything into English by myself would be a very time-consuming process (assuming that I would do this properly and not just use translation machines and call it a day).
But! I tried translating some bits with Deepl and it was okay. I was also told by a reader that Google Translate works decently as well. Of course, there will be some strange results (for my SaB fanfic I've noticed that Deepl translated "female serf" ("serve" in French) by "waitress"...which isn't exactly the same thing. Probably because this is a very specific word and it isn't aware of it and it looks like "serveuse", the French word for "waitress"). But at least it will still be readable.
I know that this isn't an ideal solution, but that's sadly all that I have to offer for now. However, if you still decide to read them, I can clarify some things if needed or provide summaries.
Hope you have a good day, anon!
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rebellious-in-space · 3 years
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One day I'll make a post on all of my Gunpowd'ville AUs. For now I'll just continue playing my favorite scenes from each before going to sleep, while projecting onto Jonny the-normal-human-amount.
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lovebugcody · 3 years
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dream's boundaries straight from his merch discord server
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it is very hard to read i apologise (image id and transcript) (there was a spelling error i corrected for the sake of readability)
[image ID
black minecraft-like font on near-neon green background saying
"Dream's Boundaries (Made by Dream) My content:
- I do not mind people using my content as long as it is changed in a way to make it unique! I encourage reactions, compilations, animations, and anything else other than reupload!
- I do not mind translation channels uploading translated versions of my content whether through text or audio as long as it is not English or a language that I already have translations options for AS LONG AS they are uploaded at least 10 days after my original upload!
They must be fully translated though and have accuratie translations FROM SOMEONE THAT SPEAKS THE LANGUAGE! Original video must be credited in the intro strongly.
- I do not mind this content being monetized at all! The music I use is licensable and as long as I am credited in the first two lines of the description!
Harassment:
- I do not tolerate any form of harassment. Harassment includes lots of things but most obvious examples are death threats, doxing, spamming negative things, replying for the sake of sending hate to someone, and I'm sure a lot more.
Saying things like "die", "hope you die", and other serious things towards someone you dislike even in a "joking way" is still constituted as harassment. Remember, even though you're one person if there's hundreds of others hate is amplified
- If you do not like someone on twitter, there is a block button for a reason! we can have a much nicer and welcoming community if people chose to use it and avoid the people they dislike or disagree with rather than engaging with them in harmful ways.
- I don't care what someone has done, they never deserve to be doxed or death threatened. Using the excuse that someone has said or done ___ as an excuse for extreme harassment is not acceptable.
Shipping:
- I personally do not mind shipping with me and my friends as long as they also do not mind as well.
- I do not tolerate shipping of people that have no said explicitly that they do not mind it. I also do not tolerate shipping of minors under any circumstances. Minors means under 18 regardless of location.
- George and I are not dating and have no plans to, but we do not mind shipping as we are comfortable with that fact and have always made jokes even before Youtube. No one should really care if we don't.
Racism:
- I do not tolerate any form of racism, or hate based on someone's ideology, race, or ethnic background. At the end of the day, we all come from the same place.
- People, even myself, can make mistakes and say or do things that could be harmful to epople from other cultures. It's importabt to learn from these situations so we can be better as a community in the future!
- With the internet we are in a unique place where we can easily hear from groups that would previously go unheard. Make sure to be mindful and try to listen to people. Something that you may not think is harmful at all could be harmful and it's important to do your best to listen and learn.
- Slurs, or personal attacks based on race/ethnic background/ideology are never okay and will not be tolerated. This includes harmful jokes, so be mindful of how your words could impact others.
Fanart:
- I love fanart and encourage people to express themselves artistically! this includes through all forms of artistic avenues.
- I do not tolerate NSFW or NSFW implied art in any form of minors or people that haven't explicitly said that they don't really care.
- I do not tolerate gore art in any form unles it is of a fictional character (aka dsmp)
- I personally don't mind NSFW art, but just know that I find it funny so I'll be silently laughing and cringing at it. If you don't mind this, so be it it does not bother me haha
- I don't mind artists selling their art with interpretations of me/my character in them, as long as it is their own interpretations.
- Saying strong NSFW things in donations, replies, or elsewhere where minors can see is weirdchamp as lots of people who wouldn't want to hear/see that could see. Be mindful.
- Overall feel free to express yourself artistically as I think fanartists are the backbone to this community and I love how artistic the community is.
Other:
- Digging into content creators personal lives or pasts is not cool. Especially personal lives.
- Spamming people especially creators in replies to address something accomplishes nothing and makes it feel forced if they do end up addressing it. Let people do things on their own time, and if they don't do something the way that you want them to, simply don't watch them or support them. Don't harass them or their fans, harassment isn't cool even if you think someone "deserves it".
- Do not speak for me on boundaries other than the ones on this list or ones I have clarified in the past! Feel free to make this list more pleasing (artists *cough*) if you would like to.
- Do not get mad if I am not in something you were hoping I would be. AKA MCC, videos, streams, or other events that you thought I might appear in. Usually people put in lots of effort for these things and that can overshadow it.
I encourage the blocking of anyone knowingly violating these boundaries
Educate people first. I will personally be blocking anyone **knowingly** violating these boundaries of mine."
end image ID]
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deafsignifcantother · 3 years
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billy lenz spending his first valentines day with his deaf girlfriend
♥ summary: showing the isolated man what having a lover really means.
♥ relationships: billy lenz x "girlfriend" (feminine referring) reader (romantic)
♥ word count: 1,088
♥ warnings: reader doesn't know english, reader was born deaf, eating vanilla cookies, mentions of sex
♥ author's note: not too well vamped on the well-accepted fanon version of billy so ? i hope this satisfies you all. also it is a little weird to me that i title this 'his deaf ___' when i don't think their deafness has anything to do with the story - but for those who are not following me and don't see my content - I write deaf s/o's. i think i might continue titling them like this. just for awareness of our niche category?
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It starts with you daydreaming about what to do this year. Your time spent with Billy has never entered the realm of February. This is, arguably, a good thing. Introducing him to Valentines' Day while early in the relationship would probably not be too good of an idea. At the heart of Billy Lenz, someone whose depth relies on his mysteriousness, are boundaries that are rather bluntly revealed. As his girlfriend, it is almost your job to wiggle your way into his heart through ways other than sexuality.
That is rather difficult. Even now. Ever since that day where he was muttering things against you (his way of flirting, even though he knows you cannot hear what he is saying), you pushed him away to ask him if he even liked having sex. Now you know that this was not a good move.
You survived, at least.
And you survived with a new morality. So did he, but of course he didn't show it.
All of your life has led up to you here now, adding pink and red sparkles onto glue in a stupid little Valentines' Day card. You've been exposed to so much love content since you were a child. Has he too? He doesn't talk about his past much. Well, he does not in a language you would understand. Maybe he was raised with a childhood crush that he had given heart lollipops to every year. Maybe he was homeschooled with no television or connection to the outside world at all. One of those options sounds more plausible than the other. Regardless, you are positive that he has had at least one heart-shaped cookie before.
The most embarrassing part of this on your end is the fact that you have nothing to write inside this card. You were not exposed to a bilingual environment at birth. You knew ASL, end of story. Only recently did you put effort into learning how to read basic sentence structures in English. Billy knows that. Or at least you think he does. Instead of using words, you just used glitter to draw out a heart. When you finish it, you hide it in one of the drawers in the kitchen and continue on with your evening.
The next day, February 14th, you drag him into the kitchen. His tall body hunches a bit at the force to which you tug on his arm. Your touch is valued only for how eager it is. At your destination, you stop, letting go to try and find where you left the card. Billy watches you with clueless eyes.
When you find the gift, you hold it loosely in your hand. The tiny bit of anxiety in your stomach makes you hesitate. All you can do is tell yourself to get over it. With that, you stand in front of his unmoving body and hold up the card.
"For you." You sign, hoping he understands.
He slowly takes it, analyzing the cover (two cartoon bears cuddling) and opening it. Piles of glitter fall out onto the tiled floor. There's a moment before his facial expression becomes readable to you. His lips part while he examines the cover again. And with that, he takes off, rushing up the stairs and slamming the attic's cover behind him.
You know you taught him the sign for thank you.
It doesn't matter much to you. At least with this, you can bake cookies in peace. There will be no chance of him squeezing into your body or pulling you away from the bowl mid-pour. He is not known for being considerate. So you take your time enjoying the fact that you won't have to clean up spilled batter afterward. You use cute heart cookie cutters to shape the cookies. When they get put in the oven, you sweep up the overturned glitter from before. Still no sign of him. No worries. If he doesn't come down by the time that the cookies are done, you'll go up and get him yourself.
Which is eventually when you end up doing. You take an umbrella, pushing it up on the door in your way of knocking. It opens almost immediately. That's good. You stand and wait as he crawls out from his house in your home. There's no card in view. It's only now that you wince a bit thinking about if he was doing something inappropriate with it. Good thing you refuse to barge into his little cave.
The rest of the afternoon is spent together. He does not attempt to hide away from you again in that time. He eats the majority of the cookies and then pulls you into his chest, falling back onto the couch so the two of you could lay as one. You can taste the crumbs of vanilla. His hands lazily drag up and down your back, going under your shirt to feel your warm skin. There is no way for you to communicate with him that today is an important holiday, but you are sure he gets the jest of it.
You fall asleep in your bed alone. He holds your hand as you walk up the stairs, of course, but he doesn't accompany you into bed. Spending February with Billy isn't too bad. He is getting warmed up to the idea of being romantic. Maybe sometime he will try to adventure out of his little bubble and decide to sleep alongside you. You will never force him. He is perfectly fine at the pace he is going.
You wake up to his hand interlocked with yours. The surprise lays in the gentle way his thumb runs circles against your knuckles; little nudges to force you awake. You open your eyes to him looming over your bed. That's close enough to what you were thinking about last night. That's close enough.
When he notices he's caught your attention he is quick to point at your nightstand. Before you play along, you rub your eyes with your one free hand and sit up. Hopefully, it is not too early in the morning. Maybe Billy is considerate enough to not have woken you up before 8:00.
What you see surprises you, though. Your card. The assumption you had yesterday was incorrect - he did not do anything inappropriate to it. Not anything that you can notice. When you examine it in your hand you notice one thing different. He has written words in it - words you recognize.
"From Billy
To: Pretty (Y/N)"
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becomewings · 3 years
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Hello again! I'm the new ARMY. Thank you for answering my previous ask :D
But it has raised a new question. What do you mean by notes 1 & 2 and album-accompanying notes? I thought they were the same? Like the notes 1 & 2 came with albums? Is there a difference in their content? Which do you think I should read first?
(Sorry for all the questions. I'm excited to get involved!)
Hi again! :) Please don’t be sorry, I’m happy to share this info and hope it helps you and potentially others as well!
The Notes 1 and The Notes 2 (which technically have fuller titles that include ‘The Most Beautiful Moment in Life’) are full-length, published books available in Korean, Japanese, English, and Spanish. The “album-accompanying” Notes that I referred to are individual entries that began accompanying certain BTS albums as of Love Yourself: Her. Not all of the entries released with the albums are present in the books, although some dates overlap (presenting different versions of the time loop or shorter excerpts). The album-accompanying Notes are only in Korean. As I unfortunately don’t speak it, I can’t confirm if the ones that do very closely match the corresponding entries in the books are truly identical in the Korean originals--I can only go off fan translations into English and compare to the official book translations. (I posted something about this a long time ago for SeokJin’s 30 August Year 22 entry from Tear because I was curious if it matched the Korean version of The Notes 1 but didn’t get any replies... not sure if there are newer folks here now who could answer this?)
I hope that clears things up about the different sources for The Notes. Actually, I should also add that sometimes excerpts have been posted on the official @/smeraldo_books Twitter account, generally around a comeback and/or before new Notes are released.
As for the order...! This may really all come down to personal preference, but I will outline my recommendation based on my own experience (as someone who started following BTS in ~Aug 2019) and what may generally be the most chronological. (I should put this into a formal post sometime, maybe? Anywhere, here we go with a first draft!)
If you have not already, watch all BU certified MVs/short films from I Need U through Epiphany. List here. I recommend just letting yourself... experience them. Don’t read the YT comments, don’t hunt for theories (old or new), just let your mind do its own thing. You won’t understand everything, and that’s okay!
Read the Save Me Webtoon. This used to be readable all in one go online, but now unfortunately I think it’s paced out on the app. The events in this comic are SeokJin’s earliest time loops and therefore fall before Notes 1.
Read The Notes 1 and the Notes from the Love Yourself albums Her, Tear, and Answer. You will get a much fuller picture of the narrative in Notes 1, but the albums’ entries fill in some gaps and potentially occur in slightly earlier loop(s). Notes 1 can be purchased from WeVerse. Fan translations of the album notes are presented in chronological order here or twitter user origamifirefly has/had hers posted for download on Google drive.
 Now is a great time to rewatch all of the MVs/films if you haven’t in a while!
Read the album Notes from MotS: Persona and 7, again included here. These occur in very different versions of the time loops from Notes 1 and serve as the bridge to...
The Notes 2. Aside from the mobile game (getting there in a moment), this is the most substantial piece of new BU content in a year and a half and was published last August. Big book lots of feels haven’t brought myself to reread it yet.
Watch the BTS Universe Story ‘Map of the Soul’ trailer. There are earlier, shorter trailers, but this gets the most information across. I’m recommending this after Notes 2 because it actually references a lot of the Notes 2 version timeline.
Play BTS Universe Story: The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>. This is the official BU content available in the mobile game so far and most of it is unfortunately behind a pay wall (or you can unlock them slowly with in-game resources...? I didn’t have time for that so I paid up front). OR you can read the extensive highlights/summaries I just finished 7+ weeks working on if you’re more interested in the plot than the game experience. ;) The narrative in <I’M FINE> actually falls between the Save Me Webtoon and Notes 1, slightly overlapping with the latter, but I think you will have a better grasp on the overall story if you at least read Notes 1 first. Alternately, you may consider playing this before you read Notes 2. The <I’M FINE> arc actually bears very little resemblance to the Map of the Soul trailer.
Come celebrate with me because you just made it through a LOT of a complex, nuanced, transmedia experience!! ♡ 
I’m really curious to hear how others have progressed through BU. Do you agree with my outline or have suggestions of your own? Please share them!
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4th Anniversary Stuff
I had quite the long day yesterday and now I am a day late^^’
But, well, anyway... Watchdog of the Queen turned four yesterday! Yey!
I have been terrible again with updates in the last few months, so if you’re still here and waiting - thank you! Life and university kept me busy and exhausted lately (and I was, to my surprise, picked for a zine!), but I’m still working on the next chapter and have no intention of dropping this story anytime soon! Not when it is still keeping my brain busy.
I think I’m always getting so melodramatic and repetitive in these posts^^’ Sorry...
Well, last year, I put together some trivia and notes and I thought I would do the same this year! But that’s not everything...
When I started writing this fic, I created a file to collect little bits and pieces as I thought of them. So far, I have 258 snippets in that file^^’ Some are just a sentence long, others some pages. And I thought that, if someone’s interested, you can send me a number between 11 and 258 and I’ll post either the entire thing or part of it. However, if it’s just a sentence or a joke I have saved for later, I will reserve not to post it. (And it’s from 11 to 258 and from 1 to 258 because the first ten are just too old and irrelevant.)
Thank you so much for sticking with me for four years now! And let’s hope for many more^^
Story
The little “add-on” about Oscar and Cloudia on the intermission chapter was actually supposed to be much longer. It would have not just been about Cloudia returning to the townhouse and talking to Oscar there after she met Cedric for the first time, but it would have been an extended version of the entire first three chapters. It was supposed to start with the morning before Cloudia went to that party and end with her conversation with Oscar. It even had a proper name: “The Countess, Once Again.” But I thought it would be too long and too boring, so I just kept the last part of it. I did like the beginning part when Cloudia woke up; I was quite sad to cut it. (I wrote it in late 2017/early 2018… while it was snowing! *sigh*)
While finishing the general outline and concept of Arc 4, I thought about roughly basing it on a fairy-tale, and because it’s set in France, I thought about picking a French fairy-tale. (Also the term “fairy-tale” was actually introduced by Madame d’Aulnoy, a Frenchwoman, so it would have been perfect!) Unfortunately, it did not work out because the arc became too stuffed with other things.
Originally, they were supposed to go to Réchicourt-le-Château, not Nanteuil-la-Forêt, but I changed it to cut their travelling time shorter. They were also supposed to stay at the proper Château Dupont, rather than at an acquaintance’s place. I changed it because I thought it would be too silly to say that, of all places, Nicodemus Townsend was spotted/the Clockmaker is living so close to where Cloudia’s relatives live. I just couldn’t do that – not after reading Villette…
Very early on, Townsend was to appear from the start of Arc 4. He was still the one who stole Queen Victoria’s super-secret box, but it would not have been so blatant. Instead, Townsend would aide Cloudia and Cedric and try to divert the investigation from himself. Cloudia was actually supposed to start liking Townsend (for some reasons), much to Cedric’s chagrin, but this particular aspect was so silly, I scrapped it all and rearranged it.
Originally, the last chapter (Mystery), the next chapter (Malady), and the one coming after it were one chapter. Please remind me to provide a word count for them when I have finished all three. What was I thinking…
Cloudia was lamenting about having apparently lost her family ring in the intermission chapter… Actually, I planned for Cedric to give her the ring in Faint and Low, wrote it into my outline, but I somehow forgot including it. Thankfully, I did not forget to make him return it to her in the intermission.
While working on the intermission, I thought about writing that Cedric and Milton met every now and then in the past year and became more acquainted with each other. Like, Cedric would come to Cloudia when she was extra busy, she would send him to town with Thomas, and they would run into Milton and Wentworth. But then, I finalised Milton’s story and decided that it would be better to say that he did not set foot into England since his villa was destroyed.
Milton and Cloudia met at a reception in 1846 because, years ago in English class, my teacher talked about how “receptions are little parties,” I jotted it down and thought “that might be a good place for their first meeting!” But, according to Wikipedia, “Formal receptions are parties that are designed to receive a large number of guests, often at prestigious venues [..]. The hosts and any guests of honor form a receiving line in order of precedence near the entrance. Each guest is announced to the host who greets each one in turn as he or she arrives. Each guest properly speaks little more than his name (if necessary) and a conventional greeting or congratulation to each person in the receiving line. In this way, the line of guests progresses steadily without unnecessary delay. After formally receiving each guest in this fashion, the hosts may mingle with the guests.” – which is not really what I had in mind back then. But I had already said that they met at a reception, so there was no going back.
 There will be a total of three side stories for this arc. The Poker Game was the first. The second will come sometime in the middle after certain pieces of information were revealed. The last will come right after the arc wrapped up.
“The Earl, Reckless” and “The Siblings, Partners” are actually the first two pieces in a little series of five stories about Vincent and Francis. I hope to get out the third next year!
There will be a few more stories about them, but they won’t belong to that collection because they won’t be very readable as “standalone” fics. One of them is the pirate story which was mentioned in the second zucchini bonus chapter.
 Names
Anaïs was always supposed to be a girl, but her name used to be Amable because it means “lovable” and I thought it’s such a cute name! Turned out it’s a boy’s name, so I changed it last-minute to Anaïs after the character from The Amazing World of Gumball.
Her aunt Sylviane was originally named Renée. I changed it because I remembered that “Renée” is the name of one of the musketeers in Barbie and The Three Musketeers, and I really dislike that movie.
Aurèle used to be named Gervais. But then, I named another character Gervais and forgot that I already had a character with the same name. Because I had worked more with the second Gervais in my head, I decided to rename the first one to Aurèle. At some point, I cut out the “final” Gervais (who was the original Clockmaker) though and replaced him with the current Clockmaker. So, there’s currently nobody with the name “Gervais” in the story…
I am actually quite lazy when it comes to picking names for any secondary characters. The names of the Dupont servants and most names of the inhabitants of Nanteuil-la-Forêt were generated with a random French name generator.
As I already said, I like naming characters after other fictional characters. I often base their personalities and stories on them as well. When I read a book or comic, or watched a movie or show which I did not like, I name and base characters who get killed, villain characters, annoying characters etc. after the characters from that book/comic/movie/show I did not like. For example, Maven, Manon, Axel, and Brenton were named and based on characters from Red Queen. Maven is, obviously, Maven. Manon is Mare, but her name is from Miraculous Ladybug because she was supposed to be the “puppeteer.” Axel Shade is named after Shade. (But his middle names are from The Infernal Devices which I do like.) Brenton is based on Cal. I chose the name “Von Brandt” because “Brand” means fire or blaze and Maven has fire powers in Red Queen. (-1/10 would not recommend that book.)
Nicer characters are, in turn, named after characters from media I liked. For example, Dahlia, Duke, Cas, the man Cas talked to in Duke’s tavern, and Lucas Renn are named/based after/on characters from A Darker Shade of Magic. Dahlia is Lila. Duke is Barron. Cas is Kell. The man he talked to is Ned. Lucas Renn is Alucard Emery (whose nickname is “Luc”).
 Characters
Milton is my least favourite character to write because he has no humorous bone in his body. (Almost) everyone else is joking around, but I simply cannot picture him doing the same. At least, he can talk in waterfalls like most others – even if it’s in a different way. (This does not mean that I dislike Milton as a character! It just makes his dialogue a bit more challenging because he’s always very kind and never sarcastic. He’s the kind of person who, if you were to stab them, would calmly and softly tell you that it’s fine and that they have no ill-feelings for you even though they are literally dying and you are just a random thug.)
His rain-induced-heartache-memory-return is based on a similar thing a friend of my father’s has. When I was little – like six or seven – he and his family were visiting us. It was raining, and he explained that he had a heart operation many years ago on a rainy day and now, every time it rains, his heart phantom-pains. For some reason, it stuck with me, and I eventually decided to give Milton the same condition.
Townsend was a Frenchman (“Nicodème Etienne Bellamy”) for a very short time period because I thought “The arc is set in France, shouldn’t it have a French villain?” But then, I realised that it made no sense why a Frenchman should steal the Queen’s super-secret box and changed it back.
I wrote two stories for a Kuro Advent Calendar in 2017: Waiting and Warming. They were only replacement ideas though: Waiting was the replacement for a little game I wanted to put together but did not have the time for in the end. Warming was the replacement for a clockwork/clockmaker/machinery fic which I could not make work at that time. The Clockmaker Cloudia is searching for is something of a “remnant” from that fic idea.
Actually, Kamden was supposed to be the fidgety one before I gave that trait to Milton.
Misc.
While Milton is someone who does not really hate anything or anyone, I think he would very much dislike the song “Love is an Open Door” if the fic was set in modern times.
Because my sister once asked why “I draw Cloudia with short hair when she has long hair”: I do not draw her with short hair. I draw her with barley curls and a chignon, but the chignon is never visible.
  Outtake – beginning of “The Countess, Once Again.”
The day Cloudia Phantomhive was to kill Ronan Parrish, she was tired – tired, bored, and wishing to be somewhere else.
She hadn’t slept well – she never slept well here – and her body both carved and dreaded more hours of sleep and rest. Cloudia had woken up far too early this morning and the dispute in her head had made her decide to stay awake and wait for the sun to rise – and in January, the sun was just as sleepy as she, but unlike her, it took its time to wake.
Not knowing what to do, Cloudia had taken the book she was reading from her bedside cabinet – The Chimes by Charles Dickens – but even though it was written by her favourite author, even though it was “just” a novella, she hadn’t been able to read more than a few pages. And so, until the sun rose and Lisa came, Cloudia spent her time staring into the darkness, the novella still in her hand. And when the sun had finally risen and Lisa had arrived, Cloudia nearly did not notice it; and when she was washing up and getting dressed, her head was still heavy and her body numb and she did not say a single word. Lisa did seem concerned, but Cloudia was thankful that she didn’t address it, that her concern was only shown in her gaze which Cloudia avoided.
Afterwards, Cloudia walked down the stairs to breakfast, the sun shining dimly through the ice-touched windows, and when she entered the parlour, Lisa in her wake and Newman opening the door for her, Oscar was already there.
Almost thirteen years ago, Cloudia’s father had died at the Phantomhive townhouse, and Cloudia herself had lost her memories. Since that day, Cloudia had never felt comfortable or safe or free inside the townhouse again – considering that she had ever felt like that here –, and because she was always sent back to that day whenever something triggered her – and this was even more likely at the townhouse – Eleanor and Barrington had decided that, even if she had Newman and Lisa with her, Cloudia was not to stay at the townhouse without another person. As both Barrington and Cecelia were busy and Oscar had helped her finding out about Parrish, although this “case” had been fairly clear from the very beginning, Oscar was staying with her.
“Good morning, Oscar,” Cloudia greeted him while sitting down, her own voice sounding odd to her.
“Good morning, Mylady,” he said, waiting for her to break her scone in half before he sunk his fork into his cake.
“Cake for breakfast again?” Cloudia remarked, but, instead of directly responding to her words, all Oscar said was, “Mylady, you should make sure to sleep more. Or, at all. It is not good for your health if you keep refraining from sleeping, even if it is the townhouse.”
Cloudia nodded absentmindedly and put cream on her scone. “I will when Parrish is dead and I can return to the manor,” she said, but Oscar did not reply and only ate in silence.
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arecomicsevengood · 5 years
Text
A Year Of Reading Acknowledged Masterpieces #2: Saul Steinberg’s The Labyrinth
Maybe my most pointless worry is for how aliens, or whatever civilization comes after us, will struggle to learn anything from the jumble of signals that is this modern moment of our undoing. Our language and its referents cannot be understood without full immersion, and so much of what holds a privileged place in our culture, like religion or celebrity, correlates to daily existence in a confused and unclear manner. I dwell on this theoretical future because my far more pressing worries make art feel useless and decadent. As much as I love work that feels like it’s arrived as an artifact from a parallel universe, like Peter Greenaway’s The Falls or Ben Marcus’s Notable American Women, they only confuse the issue of an easily imagined not-too-distant future where everything recognizable is extinct, and even man’s many gestures at mimetic realism and journalistic explanations appear to the only prevailing consciousness as incomprehensible as the Codex Seraphinus.
It is in the context of this insane existential anxiety that Saul Steinberg’s work functions as a huge relief. Here the big ideas and our idle habits are captured in the same graceful line. It’s beautiful and funny, thoughtfully considered but never belabored. Everything feels like the platonic ideal of ideas being captured in a distilled form; if I were to liken it to music I would cite John Fahey. Fahey had a hit record with a Christmas LP, Steinberg’s work achieved a high circulation due to its placement in The New Yorker. The cartoons in that magazine seem vaguely notorious for being unfunny and inscrutable, at least to a generation that remembers vividly that one Seinfeld episode and was otherwise weaned on the gags in The Far Side. There are people who dismiss Christmas music as a concept as well. While Steinberg’s work definitely lives up to any rep for dry wit, I don’t really view any of it as being gags. Once you remove the expectation that this work is intended to elicit a laugh it becomes pretty easy to see it as just great art, and its placement in a widely-circulated magazine is just a better delivery system to the masses than art galleries are.
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Here’s a Steinberg cartoon the New Yorker reprinted a few months back. It’s from a different time period than the stuff in The Labyrinth. It contains a caption, which none of the pieces in The Labyrinth do, though whether or not they did on their first publication is unknown to me.
The Labyrinth is an art book somewhere between a monograph and a sketchbook, edited and ordered for maximum readability as sets of ideas are explored. Many of those ideas are about drawing, and the drawing often feels close to doodling, as many pieces explore what you can do with a single line without removing pen from paper. It is arguably “not comics,” in that there isn’t a story you read from panel to panel, but the relationship to comics is pretty clear. If you are a maker of “avant-garde” or “art” comics, this book would be as informative to your process as reading E.C. Segar’s Popeye* would be for someone who writes Iron Man. Originally published in 1960, it was recently reprinted by NYRB, although not through their comics imprint, which has published artists whose work is prefigured here. Certain drawings seem to outline ideas that would be elaborated on in Pushwagner’s Soft City (drawn in the seventies, and published by NYRB a few years back), and drawings of people playing music, where the sound is rendered as various abstractions, bring to mind stuff in Blutch’s Total Jazz, published by Fantagraphics in 2018, though NYRB handled an English-language version of his book Peplum in 2016. There’s also stuff in the drawing that calls to mind Sasaki Maki’s Ding Dong Circus. All of these works are done by people outside of the U.S., and I can’t really assert with any historical certainty that those people saw the work in question before their own undertakings, though the amount of copies of The New Yorker that are printed make it seem not impossible. It also seems like Steinberg might’ve attained something of a celebrity status enough that potentially photographs of his drawings of women on bathtubs would’ve made it to Life magazine or something. As great as the drawing is, I’m not sure how much of it you would deliberately copy unless you were seeing individual images in isolation. Seeing so much collected in one place the takeaway is how unaffected it all is: It might inspire you to do more sketchbook drawing to see if you can capture the energy of life as effectively as Steinberg did, but you’re certainly not going to capture the verve of his line by studiously redrawing his work.
In terms of intent, Steinberg’s cartoons set a precedent for Jules Feiffer’s Explainers strips, which would run in The Village Voice a few years later. Feiffer, of course, was well-versed in various kinds of comics, having worked in Eisner’s studio, and his avid readership of the earliest comic books is documented in his book The Great Comic-Book Heroes, but there’s not really anything in that stuff suggestive of the sort of observational acuity of the middle-class that you get in his writing, that is present in Steinberg’s work. The depictions of playing music are rendered similarly his depicting to other forms of communication as outgrowth of power dynamics. The drawings of art galleries and artist’s studios exist alongside pieces that seem to primarily document his own drawing process, all of it capturing how much of mankind’s energy is spent choosing to willfully distract itself, how much we throw ourselves into art. In Feiffer you read these self-involved and circular monologues and dialogues of educated neurotics. Steinberg depicts what these people get up to when they’re not talking through their thoughts, but the reader can still intuit the neuroses through posture and gesture, and the depiction of the social settings that create them.
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This is done largely without language. If on first publication they were accompanied by typeset lines of dialogue beneath them, those have been excised for posterity. When a selection of drawings of Russia appear, you recognize it by changes in architecture and fashion. Towards the end, however, there are a few pieces that use lettering as part of the landscape of a piece to convey the meaning of the word being used, i.e. a piece where the word “sick” is laid up in bed. The afterword, dating from the time of the first printing, calls these drawings “conceptual art,” a term which would soon after be applied to something else entirely, making this attempt at nomenclature the sort of historical footnote that’s funny to me. These pieces aren’t the best stuff in the work. They have this children’s book illustration quality that nonetheless brings home how beyond language the rest of the book is. It’s a lesson in expression being taught by someone impossibly fluent, a genius condescending to explain himself: I probably would not have come up with this piece’s introductory paragraph, explaining a way into the work, without their precedent. After readers have been shown what humans are, they’re bestowed tools to understand language. These pieces appear at the end because they’re a way out of the labyrinth, out of Steinberg’s system of association between drawings where lines go wild, and back into the world of humdrum communication.
I have read speculation that music’s initial evolutionary purpose involved soothing the young. A mother’s lullaby, like a cat’s purring, is its origin, and both language and instrumental ornamentation followed later. The musicality of Steinberg’s line, as presented here, follows a similar arc, where beginning from a baseline of recognition at shared humanity, and advancing through harmonic extemporizing with each new suite of drawings serving as a piece of counterpoint, becomes both more abstract and more articulate. The end result is something like an ethnography and something like a symphony.
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(*: I’m probably going to talk about Popeye next month. At least one motivating factor behind this series is to get away from the promotional cycle of hype for the new, and look at work worth of being approached almost like items on a syllabus. I hope it doesn’t result in too much writing where I list influenced works to make a case for “historical importance.”)
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elucubrare · 6 years
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Dear Elucubrare, I have a question and only you can answer it! I'm going to Sicily for a week soon, so of course I've decided I should read the Odyssey to prep for SEA and SANDCASTLES and RAFT BUILDING. I grew up in Italy where our proprietorial relationship with the classics means every translation is a verse translation, but I am now in London, and flabbergasted at THE SHEER amount of PROSE! I'm a bit at loss at what's the best English translation- everyone seems to go for Fagles but IS IT?
Dear Pudentilla, 
First, I hope Sicily is wonderful! Raft building sounds amazing (and Homer can give you advice on that!). 
Second, it’s a hard question. It really depends on what you’re reading for and the feel you want to get from it. The most prominent translations are Fagles, as you know, Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Stanley Lombardo, and now Emily Wilson (a lot of people like her translation, but she makes a lot of choices I don’t really like; that said, a lot of them are probably more things you’d only care about if you’re doing actual academic work on it – I’m thinking of translating the epithets differently, which I don’t approve of). I’ll post the beginnings below, though they’re fairly similar:
Fagles 
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This is fine – readable and fairly faithful, though “Launch out on” for a story about seafaring seems a little precious, and ἀφείλετο, which he translates as the vivid “blotted out” is really just “take away.”
Lattimore
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The problem with Lattimore is that he tries very hard to be faithful to the Greek, which sometimes causes his English to suffer. “From some point here” in line 9 is weak; “hard though/he strove to” feels slightly awkward to me; “driven/far journeys” strikes me as ungrammatical. 
Fitzgerald
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I think I might actually go with Fitzgerald – he has a good sense of a line and is fairly close to the Greek; my only quibble is with “townlands,” because it might be an archaism in English but it doesn’t really feel like one.
Lombardo
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I remember liking Lombardo’s Iliad, but this seems over-written, really. I’m specifically looking at “the minds he grasped,” “the suffering deep in his heart at sea” and “that god snuffed out.” That said, his verse has movement and cadence, so it would at least be readable. 
Wilson
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I’m biased against hers from the start by “complicated” – πολύτροπον, which it’s supposed to be translating, is hard to find equivalents for, I admit - it’s literally “much-turning,” but that’s awkward; still, it’s an epithet that’s not solely applied to Odysseus, but is pretty much confined to wily people and other tricksters in the wider Greek corpus, and to Odysseus in Homer. “Complicated” is much too common and colloquial a word to be a good translation. That sets the tone: I think her register is off. 
She wants to simplify and modernize, which is fine if you call it a “version” rather than a translation, but the problem with modernizing translations of Homer is that, while it’s true that Homer was originally (probably, insert disclaimer here) fireside entertainment, the language was never colloquial or demotic: it’s a separate dialect created for the purpose of telling these stories. 
So! that’s a lot of words, apologies, but if you want a recommendation I’d say Fitzgerald; you can judge from these excerpts if you agree. 
I close as I began: I hope you have an amazing time in Sicily! 
Best, 
E. Lucubrare
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donutpwns · 6 years
Text
Little Brother Blues - Part 5
Part 4 - Part 6
His vision blurs again as he stares at the page in front of him and it takes him a moment to realize it's not just another part of the thing that just makes no sense to him. With a groan, he rubs at his eyes under the pair of glasses he'd finally given into wearing and blinked until the words became somewhat readable. He turns to the notebook where he had started keeping his makeshift cipher to help him translate, finger trailing over the symbols to find the match. Square with a squiggle, no not that one, the other square with a squiggle. Ugh.
Why couldn't Ford have written the damn thing in English? Or Spanish, Stan could read that as well as English. Hell, he'd have settled for Russian, he could at least stumble his way through that somewhat passably thanks to Yuri. But this weird alien, made up language? It's taken the better part of the last five years to get just a mostly helpful cipher figured out. There were usually some things that were wrong but Stan could usually figure it out. Mostly. Passably.
He chances a look at his watch and can't suppress another groan at the time it shows. Four hours until opening, five if Stan wanted to say screw it to the old people that came first thing. But they were the ones quickest to buy souvenirs for grandkids that didn't give a shit. Extra sleep versus money. As if that was really a choice at this point in his life. He could only steal so many parts and it wasn’t like he could steal Ford’s mortgage payments. Then again, maybe if he broke into the bank he could…no, too much attention.
He's so tired. Seasonal rush of tourists have been running him ragged; he really needed to get a way to run the forest tours while not on his feet. And then the portal had been keeping him up later and later. He'd hoped once he'd gotten the panels to work again he could flip the switch but the power wasn't communicating somewhere; he was lucky to get the portal to spark. He'd blown out the power three times in as many weeks trying to figure out where the disconnect was. Maybe it was time to steal a few more books on electrical engineering and skim them until they made sense? He needs to find a new supply of copper wiring too. Maybe the streetlights downtown had been repaired so he could steal them again.
A yawn effectively shuts down his thought process, brain function shutting down and rebooting. Holy Moses he is tired.
He gives a regretful look back to the portal that looms in the other room. He needs to get some sleep if he's going to be able to work. When he glances back at the book, the words start to blur again, ink running together when his eyes move over the page; he has a feeling that he's not gonna get much more work done tonight anyway. He looks back up at the portal again and for a second swears he sees it glowing again with an old silhouette in it. Sleep deprivation and guilt were never friends to him though they had always found kin in each other.
“Tomorrow, Sixer. I promise. I can feel it, I'm almost there.” He repeats the same line he's said almost every night for the last five years, puts the same confidence into his grin that he does when he tells the cops he had nothing to do with whatever they're asking. He closes the Journal, placing his hand over the one on the cover to see the extra finger stick out of an otherwise perfect match. “High six.” He mutters under his breath, trying to will himself to find comfort in the gesture. It never works but maybe someday it will.
Tomorrow he'll get it. It'll be fixed and Ford will be back and Stan can apologize properly. Tomorrow. Everything will make sense again after he gets some sleep.
“YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT, HUH?”
Tap tap tap
Stan jolts awake, hands slapping down on the middle console and the door as he searches around. Mabel's face is pressed against the driver side window that's slightly cracked due to the heat. Right. He was picking the kids up from the lake. Stan shakes his head to get the remnants of the dream out of his mind and to get his brain back into the present before rolls the window down the rest of the way. She's got the boys behind her; all of them are red everywhere their skin shows. Probably should've given them sunscreen. Oh well.
He gives Dipper’s sun-reddened cheek a pinch when the boy steps up to the driver side door just to laugh when the boy swats him away. It brings a rush of fond memories to the surface; he almost swears he can smell salt mixed with the telltale scent of sun touched skin. “You kids are going to be peeling like little monsters in a few days.” he feels the need to point out as the three of them climb into the backseat.
Mabel’s amazed sounding “Cool!” mixes with Dipper’s disgusted groan and Stan shares a laugh with the girl. He can see Ford slumping against the door, a tired look on his face. Apparently Stan wasn't the only one that had needed a nap.
“Too much excitement for you, huh, Sixer?” he teases naturally though the bags under his brother’s eyes are a little concerning. Did he have those this morning? Stan can’t remember; he had been too focused on what he was going to say to McGucket to pay much attention to the kids.
This reminds him of what he’s learned. It eats time. The thing eats time. How the hell were they supposed to fix that? Stan didn't doubt that they could, he'd pulled Ford from another dimension for heaven's sake; there wasn’t much he couldn’t believe they could get done. But the how was a little mind boggling. Maybe the kids would have some ideas once they could sit down and think everything through together. They were both smarter than Stan, could probably see something he couldn't.
He'd never admit it to anyone, but he wishes he could talk to the older version of Ford about this. Heck, if the positions were reversed, Ford probably would've had a fix before nightfall on the first day. If he'd cared enough to do so. Probably would've done it just to prove he could. Been all smug about it and the kids would've thought he was so cool. Jackass.
The thoughts threaten to spiral him into a bad mood but he tries to shove it down. His issues with his brother are well documented at this point but they're a problem for another day. Stan's a big fan of why do today when it can be done tomorrow, or better yet when you can con someone else into doing it for you? Now, wouldn’t that be the greatest con, getting someone else to deal with his emotional baggage for him. Heh.
"We saw a chaimera, Grunkle Stan!” Mabel yells, hanging halfway over the passenger seat. She flails her arms as they pull out of the parking area to start the journey back to the Shack. “It was super cute! But then its mama came and we had to punch it!”
Stan laughs at that, “What did I tell you kids? Few things in this world can’t be solved with a good punch.” he angles the mirror so he can see them all and feels his good mood dip when he spots Ford asleep against the door. Running around for a few hours in the sun shouldn’t have him so tired. Hell, the past few days have just reminded him why their father had such a strict bedtime for them as kids. “What’s up with him?”
Mabel settles back into the seat and reaches under the passenger seat to grab her scrapbook she had apparently stashed there. Stan really needs to teach her how to pickpocket; girl was shockingly sneaky for a bundle of loud sparkles. “He fell asleep on the boat on the way back.”
Dipper nods. “I think his head hurts. He's been wincing and rubbing his temples when he thinks we're not looking.”
“Just like you do!” Mabel grins and moves her hand in a waving motion with her fingers spread. “Twins!” she began scribbling on a page of her scrapbook. “He punched a snake though so I think he's okay.”
Stan’s thoughts split into two directions at that. First that a snake was much less impressive than a dinosaur as far as punching reptiles was concerned. Second is worry because maybe he shouldn't be letting the kids go off on adventures that might be dangerous. He knows that they can handle themselves, of course, they're all very tough and smart, but he feels a resurgence of that old fear bubbling up inside him. The fear that kept him lying for the last thirty years but especially this summer. The fear that had him checking on the kids randomly at night sometimes to just ease his nerves that they were still there. The fear that had him angling the mirror to see Ford again, frowning at the wrinkle in his brow as his mini twin slept.
Ford is still asleep by the time they arrive back at the Shack as the sun is setting and barely makes a fuss when Stan picks him out of the seat. The kids run into the house ahead of them while Stan puts him in his room. While he’s there, maybe he checks his brother over for snake bites. And maybe after he’s relieved to see that his brother was bite free, he takes the time to take off his brother’s shoes and cover him with a blanket. Ford’s sleeping so he can never tell anyone and Stan will never admit to it.
The air in the hall is filled with the delicious scent of chocolate that Stan is more than happy to follow. It leads him to the kitchen. He can’t help a smile at the sight of Mabel standing on a chair in front of the stove, stirring a pot with an overly large spoon. Dipper is putting four coffee mugs of the table that already has the last bag of marshmallows in that Mabel hasn’t devoured yet on it. This is exactly what he had in mind when he said the kids were smarter than him.
Stan grabs one of the small jars of glitter from the cabinet and sets it next to the mug with the pink, glittery M painted on it. “Scooch over, sweetheart.” he bumps Mabel with his hip and takes the spoon from her. “Kid, drop a handful of those in my cup before your sister eats all of them.” he calls to Dipper, pointing to the bag.
“Ha, like that would stop me.” Mabel laughs as she jumps down from the chair and hurries over to the table.
The table is spattered with drops and drips of spilled chocolate by the time all their three cups have been filled, thanks mostly to Stan not having the best of aim. Oh well, he’d just ask Soos to clean the kitchen tomorrow; boy was always happy to do whatever Stan asked of him. Stan’s happy to see he got a good helping of the marshmallows before Mabel had attacked the bag. Her cup is to the brim of overflowing, though Dipper’s not much better, just less glitter. If there’s anything their family shared, it was a sweet tooth. That and horrifically bad vision, as the kids were no doubt going to learn in a few years.
Stan takes a long drink, savoring the thick, sweet taste. It was nice to just sit with the kids, a taste of normal in the mess that their lives had been. Man, maybe they should have a movie night soon. Some bad horror movies at 3 am sounded like a great idea. Ford liked even the bad movies; it was funny to see how amazed his brother was over even the worst effects. Sometimes Stan forgot how much things had changed since he was a kid.
“So I think we need to look through Journal 2 again and do a sweep of the forest, see if we can’t find the thing that bit Great Uncle Ford.” Dipper suggests after a few minutes. He shifts in his seat so he can, apparently, pull a map out of his pocket and unfold it on the table. He’s got various sections marked with red marker. “If we can’t find out what it was, maybe we can just find it again and capture it.”
Stan sighs and moves to pull out the page that McGucket had printed out for him. Well, the normalcy was nice while it lasted. Back to his full time job of trying to save Ford. “This is what it is. It eats time.”
Dipper snatches it instantly and maybe Stan has a little bit of pride in the way the boy lights up when it comes to learning something. He’s never really understood the appeal of studying or learning a bunch of stuff you were probably never going to use, but it was nice to see how happy it made people like Dipper or Soos. Then again, maybe if he’d actually paid attention in school it wouldn’t have taken him thirty years to fix the Portal.
Dipper’s nose wrinkles as he reads over the page. “It eats time?” there’s a pen in his hand though where it came from Stan has no idea. “Something in its venom…”
“Like a snake?” Mabel suggests while she shakes a good helping of glitter over her cup and stirring it with a spoon. “Don’t they make, like, anti-venom? Or maybe Blenjamin can help. We could, like, challenge him to deadly laser tag again. Get another time wish!” she mimes firing a gun, complete with laser sound effects. “Glarg-far or whatever! If it can do infinite pizza, it could probably do, like, re-old man-ening.”
“I feel like that would be a grievous abuse of our truce with him.” Dipper frowns.
Stan shrugs, “I’m always for grievously abusing something for personal gain. I ever tell you guys about the old lady that helped me smuggle rare kittens with a hyper cuteness gene? Convinced her we were legally getting them to a cat charity. Pretty solid scam for like six months until the cops raided her garage.” he lets out a fond sigh. He’d made a lot of money off that. But cat scams were always high risk; so many scratches. Now it was all about puppies.
Dipper rolls his eyes but Stan can see the smile on his face. “Still. I think Mabel might have a good idea with the anti-venom.”
“All my ideas are good!” she says with glitter smeared across both cheeks.
“Right. Sure.” another eye roll. “But yeah. Maybe if we catch the thing we could like...study it’s venom? See if there’s an antidote. Maybe Ford could help him.”
Mabel reaches over to pull the bag of marshmallows closer to herself. “Wouldn’t that mean letting him in one of the labs? I thought we were, you know, not letting him see that stuff cause of all the questions. You know with the whole being a crazy scientist and the stuff with the portal and how him and Stan are idiots.”
Stan lets out a mildly offended grunt but doesn’t really argue. At least she’s also calling Ford stupid.
“Maybe we should tell him about...what happened?” Dipper winces as he says it, plunking an extra marshmallow into his cup and giving it a stir. “I mean, keeping secrets doesn’t really seem to help us accomplish much. And it’s getting really hard to keep coming up with reasons why he can’t look at certain parts of the Journals. If he can go to the lab with me, maybe we could figure something out?”
Stan glares into his cup, poking a floating marshmallow down into the cocoa until the burning liquid stings his skin. “Listen, I’m not exactly his biggest fan, but the kid doesn’t deserve to know about what a mess our future is.” Stan doesn’t want to have that conversation, not again. And maybe he doesn’t want to lose Ford again any sooner than he has to.
“But maybe Ford will remember all this when he’s grown again and he won’t be as mad.” Mabel pipes up, cheerful as ever with a thick, glittery chocolate mustache. She grabs another handful of marshmallows from the bag and shoves them into her mouth. “An’ den you cah hug eh oht!” her cheeks puff out like a squirrel.
Stan shakes his head, “Pumpkin, there’s a bigger chance of me giving all my money to a ‘charitable cause’” he does the air quotations for emphasis, “than of Ford and me making up. I tried for thirty years to make things up to him; a week as a runt isn’t going to change that. Once he’s back to normal, he’ll remember how much he hates me and things will be status quo again.”
There’s the sound of rubber squeaking on the hardwood floor and then a second later, the back door is slamming in the doorframe. Stan is on his feet in a heartbeat and at the window with enough time to see Ford running towards the woods. He swears under his breath and chases after his brother. He nearly stumbles down the stairs that lead down from the back porch. “Stanford! Get back here!” he yells after him, grabbing the broken railing to catch himself. His chest constricts when Ford turns to glare at him; why could he still see so much of his adult face in that expression, even with all the baby fat? Stan tries to shove that down, crush it down to fuel for his grin. “Come on, Sixer, come back inside.”
“I heard what you were saying, Stanley!” Ford jabs a finger in the direction of the house. There’s a shake to his whole body as he steps back, moving into the darkness of the yard. “You said I hate you!”
Stan takes a step forward, moving slow like he would if it was an injured animal and not his own brother. “You just heard the wrong part. C’mon, get back inside.”
Ford shakes his head. “No, he said we...he said I didn’t--” he stamps his foot before meeting Stan’s eyes again. Stan is caught off guard by the heat in his stare. “What happened to the Stan o War? Why don’t we have it? Why aren’t we sailing, Stanley? Tell me!”
Frustration is building inside of him; this isn’t the time for this. “It--that’s complicated, Stanford. Trust me, it doesn’t matter, just--”
“It matters to me!” he slaps a hand to his chest, voice raising, taking another step back. “I want to know! I deserve to know! It was our dream and you won’t tell me what happened to it! You all keep lying to me! It’s not fair! What happened?!”
Stan can feel his eye twitching and a throbbing starting in his temple. “Ford, this isn’t the time to talk about this. Come back inside and we’ll--”
“Why? Why is this not the time?!” Ford’s voice raises to a full blown yell, his fists at his sides. “Tell me why you won’t tell me!”
“Because I said so and I'm the adult, Stanford!” he starts marching towards him, longer strides getting him closer faster than Ford can stumble backwards. “Now stop being childish and get back inside!”
“Just because you look like Dad doesn't mean you have to act like him!” the words are a slap; Ford instantly covers his mouth with both hands like he had just swore as Stan freezes in his place. “I--I didn’t mean that. I mean, I just...I deserve to know. I just want to know why.”
A bitter bark of a laugh escapes Stan before he can even process it. The words echo in his head, catching on the walls to ignite a spark that lights the fuel he’d shoved down. “You want to know what happened?” he sweeps his hands out in front of him, gesturing to the space that was still between them. “I cut the rope and let it drift out to sea!”
Ford had destroyed their dream when he’d replaced it with one that was entirely his own, but Stan had physically destroyed it. That was what he was good at. He’d driven to the beach and cut the rope with the salt air stinging his eyes because like hell would he let Ford have it. Ford hadn’t wanted their stupid childish dream, hadn’t wanted Stan, so he wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of being the one to bid the boat a goodbye. He’d have burned it if he’d had the gas and matches.
Ford’s arms go slack at his sides, all the anger and indignation melting away into a stunned expression. “You...you cut the rope?” his voice shakes with the kind of emotion only a kid can show; like a nerve rubbed raw and left exposed to the world. “Why? Why would you do that?!” his voice catches on a hitched breath. “Why?”
The fire begins to die as quick as it flared, leaving Stan with the old feeling of being empty and cold. “Because things don’t work out, Sixer. It’s…” he runs a hand through his hair and looks away. “Because it’s not us against the world. Because life isn’t what we planned it to be. It’s not what either of us wanted, but it’s the way life is.”
“You said I hated you.” Ford shakes his head and when Stan looks at him again, he can see the wet streaks catching the light on his cheeks. “Do you hate me?”
“What? God, Ford, no.” he moves in front of his brother, dropping to one knee to grab his shoulders. “Sixer, I could never hate you.” Not this Ford, and not the older one either, really. Everything he’s ever done has been for their family. So much work, so many sleepless nights and fighting to get Ford back. It didn’t go the way he wanted, no part of Stan’s life did but especially where his brother was concerned. But he didn’t hate him. Could never hate him. And as pathetic as it was, Stan knows that if Ford were to ask for his help again, just like thirty years ago, Stan would come running. “Never.”
Ford drops his chin to his chest and his shoulders are shaking under Stan’s hands. “But I can hate you. That’s who I become. He was right.”
Pines men don't cry. He hears the words of their father in his head but he still has enough shame from Ford's comparison to keep them from falling from his tongue. He doesn't want to be that man; he is okay being lots of different people, many of them ones he could never be proud of, but not him. He never wants to be him. Instead, Stan gives his shoulders a squeeze, feeling uneasy with the use of the pronoun game. “Who was right, Ford?” he gives him a little shake in hopes of getting his brother to look at him. “Sixer, who have you been talking to?”
“I’m going to fix this. I’m not going to let myself be that. I'm not going to let me ruin everything.” Ford looks up with a determined look on his face. Stan nearly falls back when he lunges forward, his arms wrapped tight around Stan’s neck for a moment. “I'm going to make it alright again, Lee. I promise.” Before Stan has a chance to react, though, he’s pulling back and taking off towards the woods again.
“Sixer! Wait!” Stan tries to snatch him but he’s too quick. “Stanford! Stanford come back!” by the time he’s back on his feet, Ford has broken through the treeline. In the dark, there’s no sight of him once Stan reaches the trees. He cups his hands around his mouth. “Stanford! Stanford!”
His voice echoes through the trees but the only response he gets is the sounds of animals scattering. For the fourth time in his life, his brother has disappeared.
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testblogplzignore · 3 years
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Derivation of the Euler-Lagrange equation with a specific system
An unnecessarily long and in detail derivation from combining my notes (a single double sided page with zero explanation and just equations) with other derivations found on the internet. My derivation goes into the most detail by far that you will see out of all other derivations found on the internet by a very large margin. This came at the cost of being not general ironically and amusingly. I try to be as physical as possible. If you want it to be general just substitute in generalized coordinates and ignore the physical descriptions. I hope this is somewhat readable (text) to the extreme layman (doubtful) or at least somebody who has a moderate understanding of calculus as I go into way too much detail for somebody who knows multivariable calculus (I define this as the minimum knowledge required to fully understand this). Even if you did calculus but haven’t used it in years you should be able to read this. I understand the target audience able to read the math is incredibly small but still I don’t especially find it hard to define everything just feels pointless
How much can you understand with your education of math? If you want to test your math education and fluency level then try reading some of the math as I’ve explained all the steps in English including to people who don’t know calculus
I explain the concepts needed to roughly understand this post here
https://brundungerelle.tumblr.com/post/658420707852763136/mathematical-concepts-required-to-understand-my
but even if you grasped those concepts you won’t be able to understand the actual math as it ranges from single variable to multivariable calculus. Still though you can try reading the text (physical interpretation) and see how far you get. Even if you don’t understand some part you should skip it and see if you can understand anything else. If you accept these concepts as true then you can see the specific mathematical (a language) representation of them at some parts. If you do know calculus this is how detailed I got. It’s probably 99% unnecessary (except for that one guy) as these concepts are extremely basic and are natural to somebody who knows multivariable calculus or higher (tensor calculus). It’s also probably annoying to a person who has done multivariable calculus or higher
Try to think of a car on a flat surface who has a certain displacement from its starting point (say your house is on this flat plane) and a velocity both as time goes on. This is what I’ll reference to try and make it more comprehensible. Well I didn’t reference it/haven’t but still think of the car as what’s being described. There exists a most efficient path the car can take from one point to your house. The most efficient path is a straight line and what this post goes into detail about is if you vary that most efficient path by small amounts you can get a mathematical expression that gives you the most efficient path. I think it’s very neat
This derivation intentionally fully defines the system as
\( f= f(t,x(t),\dot{x}(t)) \)
or a function dependent on time, distance, and velocity respectively and is twice differentiable (can take the derivative twice)
\( \dot{x} = \frac{dx}{dt} \) is the velocity as per Newton notation
I did it this way instead of the normal general way because I like the physicality to defining it this way and it lets me define things in ways you might not understand otherwise. As well it’s an abstract concept so I try and make it real which might make it easier to understand for some. The general version is mathematically extremely similar
Consider the action of a physical system with time, distance, and velocity defined by
\( J(t,x,\dot{x}) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} f(t, x, \dot{x}) dt\)
The action \( J(t,x,\dot{x}) \) is how the physical system evolves over time or looking at what the system did at all the times between one time \(t_1\) and another time \(t_2\). We will define what the function \(  f(t, x, \dot{x}) \) is later
Let \( x(t, \alpha) = x_0(t) + \alpha \eta(t) \)
This defines the position of an object to be a function of time and \( \alpha \) with \( \alpha \) being a constant, \( x_0(t) \) being the shortest possible distance (between two points) and \(\alpha \eta(t) \) being a small difference between the shortest distance and another possible distance. \(\eta(t) \) is an arbitrary (can choose whatever path you want to take with this term) differentiable (one derivative) function that varies the distance over time thus to make \( \alpha \eta(t) \) small we require \( \alpha \) to be small. We also want \( \alpha \) to be small so any varying higher order terms are negligible. This is the same as saying any other small variations are too small to make a difference
This allows the distance between two points to vary by a small amount from the shortest distance the system can take to any distance longer than the shortest path while the system changes between the times \( t_1 \) and \( t_2 \)
The distance variation also implies velocity variation because velocity is the first derivative of distance with respect to time \( \dot{x} = \frac{d\dot{x}}{dt} \) and \( \eta \) is dependent on time so \( \eta = \eta(t) \)
so taking the total derivative with respect to time of our new displacement variable to get our new velocity variable we have
\( \dot{x} (t, \alpha) = \frac{dx}{dt} = \frac{d}{dt} [x_0(t) + \alpha \eta(t) ] \)
by distributing the derivative
\( \dot{x} (t, \alpha) = \frac{d}{dt} x_0(t) + \frac{d}{dt} \alpha \eta(t) \)
and commuting \( \alpha \)
\( \dot{x} (t, \alpha)= \dot{x}_0 (t) +  \alpha \frac{d}{dt}  \eta(t) \)
\( \dot{x} (t, \alpha)= \dot{x}_0 (t) +  \alpha  \dot{\eta}(t) \)
where again \( \dot{\eta}(t) \) is the first time derivative and \(  \dot{x}_0 (t) \) is equal to the most efficient possible velocity to travel a path the quickest way
Because of these coordinate changes the action changes and is now defined as
\( J[ t, x(t, \alpha),\dot{x}(t, \alpha)] = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} f [ t, x(t, \alpha), \dot{x}(t, \alpha)]dt \)
We also require the endpoints to the small variation at times \( t_1 \) and \(t_2\) be zero thus
\( \eta(t_1)=\eta(t_2)=0 \)
because we want the distance and velocity deviancy to disappear from the path that extremizes the function \( f [ t, x(t, \alpha), \dot{x}(t, \alpha)] \) at the endpoints \( t_1 \) and \( t_2 \). We are extremizing \( f [ t, x(t, \alpha), \dot{x}(t, \alpha)] \) by defining our coordinates to be the shortest possible displacement with a small variation and subsequent velocity to be the same. Another way to say this is the shortest possible path requires that the small variation \( \alpha \eta(t) = 0 \) at times \( t_1 \) and \(t_2\). Because \( \alpha \) is a constant not dependent on time we have to have \( \eta(t_1)=\eta(t_2)=0 \) to guarantee the variation disappears at the time endpoints
This is the same as saying while the function \( f [ t, x(t, \alpha), \dot{x}(t, \alpha)] \) is initially at time \( t_1 \) there is no small variation of its distance and velocity compared to the shortest possible path because the system is at rest relative to when changing over time between \( t_1 \) and \( t_2 \). The endpoint must also have no deviations from the same shortest path so it must disappear as it reaches time \( t_2 \)
Logically this makes sense as at \( t_1 \) the original function is at a certain place with zero displacement and velocity from itself. Having any small deviation pushes you outside the place you were originally in and thus increases your displacement from that point. Since the shortest possible path has the endpoints to where the original function is you have increased your displacement from the point and therefore have to go back to that point to start traveling which increases the path taken and is now not the shortest possible path
Since \( \eta(t) \) is an arbitrary function that goes to zero at the times \( t_1 \) and \( t_2 \) then \( \alpha \) is the thing we should change thus making \( \eta(t) \) not a dependency we need. Thus the new coordinates we have \( x(t) \) and \( \dot{x} (t)\) can be rewritten as \( x(t,\alpha) \) and \( \dot{x} (t, \alpha) \)
Everything so far has been about defining our system and can be explained pictorally by
Tumblr media
Where we have defined \( x(t) = x_0(t) + \alpha \eta(x) \) instead of \( y(x) \), \( \lambda \), and \( v(x) \). As well the times we have \( t_1 \) and \( t_2 \) are \( x_1 \) and \( x_2 \) respectively. when \( y = y(x) \) in their picture we have \( x(t) = x_0(t) \). Another picture
Tumblr media
can also be used to demonstrate what is happening. Basically what is happening is we are defining our coordinate system to be the shortest path between two times \( t_1 \) and \( t_2 \) (usually a straight line) + a small variation that changes the path taken by a small amount and thus makes it not the shortest path. These pictures describe the shortest possible distance and the variance we have on that distance
If you are reading the text then almost everything below this is just math or symbol manipulation and should be skipped if you don’t understand it so far
Basically we extremize the action \( J[ t, x(t, \alpha),\dot{x}(t, \alpha)] \) by \( \alpha \) to find the function \( f[ t, x(t, \alpha),\dot{x}(t, \alpha)] \) that yields the smallest possible displacement and most efficient velocity for our system. This is because since \( \eta(t) \) is arbitrary we require variation in \( \alpha \) to guarantee we get the most efficient path
To make the math easier to write and see
Rewrite the action dependent on time, displacement, velocity, and \( \alpha \) as
\( J(\alpha) = J[ t, x(t, \alpha),\dot{x}(t, \alpha)] \)
as well as the function inside the integral as
\( f(\alpha) = f[ t, x(t, \alpha),\dot{x}(t, \alpha)] \)
Now we find the first variation, \( \delta \), of the action and is defined as
\( \delta J( \alpha ) = \frac{d}{d\alpha} J(\alpha)  \)
and since we’re finding the extrema for any function \( \eta(t) \) we set
\( \frac{d}{d\alpha} J(\alpha) = 0 \)
\( \frac{d}{d\alpha} J(\alpha) = \frac{d}{d\alpha} \int_{t_1}^{t_2} f (\alpha ) dt = 0 \)
commuting the derivative with the integral (this isn’t always valid as it happens but ignoring that)
\( \frac{d}{d\alpha} J(\alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{d\alpha} f ( \alpha)dt = 0\)
Now using the multivariable chain rule on \( f (\alpha) \)
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} \frac{ \partial }{ \partial t} f(\alpha) + \frac{ d }{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha)\frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \frac{ d  }{ d \alpha} \dot{x}(t, \alpha) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] dt \)
Without loss of generality we use the full derivatives. The full derivatives end up being the same as partial derivatives in our case anyway. This is pretty much retarded to do because it’s already a specific system and not general.
Looking at the left most term
\( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} \frac{ \partial }{ \partial t} f(\alpha) \)
We calculate \( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} \) by noticing that t has no dependence on \( \alpha \) so the derivative is zero
Since \( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} = 0 \) then \( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} \frac{ \partial }{ \partial t} f(\alpha) = 0 \)
Looking at the middle term
\( \frac{ d }{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha)\frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) \)
We calculate \( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha) \)
Recall
\( x(t, \alpha) = x_0(t) + \alpha \eta(t) \)
by our definition. Therefore
\( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha) = \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} [x_0(t) + \alpha \eta(t)] \)
Commuting the derivative
\( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha) = \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} x_0(t) + \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} \alpha \eta(t) \)
\( x_0(t) \) is not dependent on \( \alpha \) therefore that term goes is zero leaving the remaining derivative
\( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha) = 0 + \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} \alpha \eta(t) \)
\( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha) =  \eta(t) \)
Because \( \eta(t) \) is independent of \( \alpha\) and by the power rule
Combining
\( \frac{ d }{ d \alpha} x(t, \alpha)\frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) =  \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) \)
Looking at the right most term
\( \frac{ d  }{ d \alpha} \dot{x}(t, \alpha) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
We calculate \( \frac{d t}{ d \alpha} \dot{ x}(t, \alpha) \). Recall
\( \dot{x} (t, \alpha)= \dot{x}_0 (t) +  \alpha  \dot{\eta}(t) \)
Now taking the derivative with respect to \( \alpha \)
\( \frac{ d }{ d \alpha}\dot{x} (t, \alpha) = \frac{ d }{ d \alpha} [\dot{x}_0 (t) + \alpha \dot{\eta}(t) ] \)
Skipping commutation step and just taking the derivatives (same thing as before)
\( \frac{ d }{ d \alpha} \dot{x}_0(t, \alpha) = \dot{\eta}(t) \)
Combining
\( \frac{ d  }{ d \alpha} \dot{x}(t, \alpha) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) = \dot{\eta}(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
We can’t calculate the partial derivatives \( \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) \) and \( \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \) because we don’t know what \( f(\alpha) \) is and don’t want to because we want to extremize \( f(\alpha) \)
Taking what we derived and combining again
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[  \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \dot{\eta}(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] dt \)
Now we do one of two things, we either use integration by parts or guess a function and using the product rule to rearrange to the form where every term has \( \eta(t) \) and right now the right term has \( \dot{\eta}(t) \) instead. We want \( \eta(t) \) instead because that is the arbitrary function we’re varying by and want the dependence to be fully on it. I say we can do two things because the product rule is just a different arrangement of integration by parts so they’re really the same thing (the proof for integration by parts is just the product rule). It should be noted that \( \frac{d}{dt} \) can’t be integrated out unless it applies to a whole term so
\( \int \dot{x}(t) \frac{\partial}{\dot{x}}f(\alpha)dt = \int \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \frac{\partial}{\dot{x}}f(\alpha)dt \neq \int \frac{d}{dt} \big[ \eta(t) \frac{\partial}{\dot{x}}f(\alpha) \big] dt \)
Integration by parts goes as follows
\( \int_a^b u(x)v’(x)dx=\Big[ u(x)v(x)\Big]_a^b - \int_a^b u’(x) v(x) dx\)
Rearranging by very basic algebra (showing anyway can’t stop me!)
\( \int_a^b u(x)v’(x)dx=\Big[u(x)v(x)\Big]_a^b - \int_a^b u’(x) v(x) dx\)
\( \int_a^b u’(x) v(x) dx + \int_a^b u(x)v’(x)dx =\Big[u(x)v(x)\Big]_a^b \)
\( \int_a^b u’(x) v(x) dx  =\Big[u(x)v(x)\Big]_a^b - \int_a^b u(x)v’(x)dx \)
Reforming by distributing the integral
\(  \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha)dt + \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \dot{\eta}(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha)  dt \)
Changing to a slightly clearer form with multiplication symbols to differ terms and changing \( \dot{\eta} (t) \) to \( \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t)\) (I’ve gone too far with simplifying things so doing two massive steps at once)
\\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x}  f(\alpha)dt + \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha)  dt \)
Comparing the right term
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha)  dt\)
with
\( \int_a^b u’(x) v(x) dx   =\Big[u(x)v(x)\Big]_a^b - \int_a^b u(x)v’(x)dx \)
we see
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} J(\alpha)  dt = \int_a^b u’(x) v(x) dx \) 
and we can equate \( u’(t) \) and \( v(t) \)
\( u’(t) = \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \)
\( v(t) = \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
with corresponding
\( u(t)=\int \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t)dt = \eta(t) \) by the fundamental theorem of calculus
\( v’(t) = \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
plugging into our equation for integration by parts
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha)  dt   = \Big[u(x)v(x)\Big]_a^b - \int_a^b u(x)v’(x)dx \)
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha)  dt   = \Big[\eta(t) \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]_{t_1}^{t_2} - \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) dt \)
Evaluating
\( \Big[\eta(t) \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]_{t_1}^{t_2} \)
\( \eta(t_2) \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) - \eta(t_1) \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
Notice the boundary condition \( \eta(t_1)=\eta(t_2)=0 \) so
\( \eta(t_2) \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{0}} f(\alpha) - \eta(t_1) \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{t_1}} f(\alpha) = 0-0 = 0 \)
Thus
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha)  dt = - \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) dt \)
Plugging back in
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \dot{\eta}(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] dt \)
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) - \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] dt \)
We will continue the derivation after showing the method by the product rule and it goes as follows
Notice the second term on the right side
\( \dot{\eta}(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
\( \Big[\frac{d}{dt}\eta(t) \Big] \Big[ \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] \)
looks like one of the two products in the product rule
\( \frac{d}{dx} (u \cdot v) = u\cdot \frac{dv}{dx} + \frac{du}{dx}\cdot v \)
Plugging in the similar term
\( \frac{d}{dx} (u\cdot v) = u\cdot \frac{dv}{dx} + \frac{d}{dt}\eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
And you think about a function \( u \cdot v \) that gives you this term (by some theorem the other term has to be a solution for this equation) and in this case it’s something of the form \( \frac{d}{dx} (u \cdot v) \)
And \( \frac{d}{dx} (u \cdot v) \) in our case happens to be (not because we just did it by integration by parts)
\( \frac{d}{dx} (u \cdot v) = \frac{d}{dt} \Big[ \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] \)
Thus
\( \frac{d}{dt} \Big[ \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]= \eta(t)  \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) + \frac{d}{dt}\eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
Rearranging
\( \frac{d}{dt} \Big[ \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]-  \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) =  \frac{d}{dt}\eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
and plugging into
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} f( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \dot{\eta}(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] dt \) 
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \frac{d}{dt} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} J(\alpha) \Big]- \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]dt \)
Notice you can distribute the integral and integrate out
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \big[ \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big ]dt = \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] \Big|_{t_1}^{t_2} \)
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \Big[ \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]dt = \eta(t_2) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) - \eta(t_1) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
by the fundamental theorem of calculus. You then recall the boundary condition \( \eta(t_1)=\eta(t_2)=0 \) so both terms go to zero again
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \frac{d}{dt} \Big[ \eta(t) \cdot \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]dt = 0 \)
Plugging in
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \frac{d}{dt} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]- \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big]dt \)
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] dt \)
This looks almost exactly like integration by parts but uses a different mindset (less solving more thinking). In terms of just solving it out it’s easier to use integration by parts but perhaps in some cases you can identify the other term easier by thinking about a derivative where one product is the one you have. In higher dimensions or more variables it might be easier or harder with this trick. I actually did it this way for my assignment to derive the Euler-Lagrange Equations for a system with function \(f=f(t, x, \dot{x}, \ddot{x}) \) where \(\ddot{x} \) is acceleration
Back to the derivation we have
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \eta(t) \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) + \eta(t) \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] dt \)
Factoring out \( \eta(t) \)
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] \eta(t) dt \)
Remember that we’re minimizing \( J (\alpha) \) so taking the derivative and setting it to \( 0 \)
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) = 0 \)
Thus
\( \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \Big[ \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \Big] \eta(t) dt = 0\)
The left hand side takes the form
\( \int_{a}^{b} f(x)h(x)dx = 0 \)
Therefore by the fundamental lemma of calculus of variations
\( f(x) = \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) = 0 \)
Another way to think about this is because \( \eta(t) \) is an arbitrary function that can take a non ideal different path we require that equation be zero to extremize the function and give us the extremized displacement and extremized velocity
So we’re left with
\( \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) = 0 \)
Recall
 \( x(t, \alpha) = x_0(t) + \alpha \eta(t) \) 
\( \dot{x} (t, \alpha)= \dot{x}_0 (t) +  \alpha  \dot{\eta}(t) \)
Now evaluating at \( \alpha = 0 \) to return to our original function and to guarantee we have the shortest possible displacement and most efficient velocity regardless of \( \eta (t) \). We do have the condition that \( \eta(t_1)=\eta(t_2)=0 \) but that only applies to the endpoints and doesn’t have to apply for \( \dot{\eta}(t) \)
It should be noted you can do this step earlier but I kept it in for generality (not commuting the evaluation with the derivative) and because I did the latex without thinking and am too lazy to take the \( \alpha \) out
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) \Big|_{\alpha} = 0= \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(\alpha) - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(\alpha) \)
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) \Big|_{\alpha} = 0= \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(0) - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(0) \)
Therefore
\( x(t, 0) = x_0(t) +0 \cdot \eta(t) \)
\( x(t) = x_0(t) \) 
and the velocity
\( \dot{x} (t, 0)= \dot{x}_0(t) +  0 \cdot  \dot{\eta}(t) \)
\( \dot{x} (t)= \dot{x}_0 (t)  \)
and they are now no longer dependent on \( \alpha \) but our only on time so
\( f[t,x(t,\alpha),\dot{x}(t, \alpha] \Big|_{\alpha=0} = f[t,x(t,0),\dot{x}(t, 0)] = f(t, x_0, \dot{x}_0) \)
which is the function with the lowest possible distance and most efficient velocity requirements so the most efficient path it can take to get there
For this to be true it has the requirement that
\( \frac{d  }{d \alpha} J( \alpha) \Big|_{\alpha = 0}  =  0 \)
if and only if
\( \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} f(t,x,\dot{x}) - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} f(t, x, \dot{x}) = 0 \)
We call this equation the Euler-Lagrange equation
\( \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} \mathcal{L} - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} \mathcal{L}  = 0 \)
Where \( \mathcal{L} \) we call the Lagrangian and is equal to the total kinetic energy minus the potential energy of the system or
\( \mathcal{L} = T- V \)
Therefore the action
\( J(t,x,\dot{x}) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} f(t, x, \dot{x}) dt\)
is extremized by the Euler-Lagrange equation
\( \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} \mathcal{L} - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} \mathcal{L}  = 0 \)
So the action of a system is defined by the Lagrangian
\( J(t, x, \dot{x}) = \int_{t_1}^{t_2} \mathcal{L}(t,x,\dot{x}) dt  \)
and takes the extremized energy requirement path when
\( \frac{ \partial  }{ \partial x} \mathcal{L} - \frac{d}{dt} \frac{\partial}{\partial \dot{x}} \mathcal{L}  = 0 \)
Doing the actual calculus using the Euler-Lagrange equation with matching Langrangian yields the equations of motion for a physical system
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faithisaverb · 5 years
Text
40 Days of Questions: An Introduction
Day 0 - What is this?
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Lent is a season in the church calendar of 40 days that lead up to Easter starting on Ash Wednesday.
Actually, a better name for it is Resurrection Sunday (Easter is a fine name, but the word “Easter” derives from “Oester” which is the name of a germanic god and has nothing really to do with Christianity so much as the vernal equinox, but we’ll talk about that later).
And it’s actually 46 days rather than 40 between Ash Wednesday and Easter, as we don’t count Sunday (or Sabbath Day).
But I digress…
Nonetheless, Lent begins today, Ash Wednesday, and runs for the next 40 (46) days until Easter (Resurrection Sunday).
It is meant to be a time of spiritual journey, mirroring Christ’s 40 days in the wilderness, and the Israelite’s 40 years in the desert in the Exodus.  Much like those biblical analogues, it is meant to be a time where we wrestle with who we are, who God is, and then who we are in context to who God is.  It’s an important time to, as St. Francis said, “stop, collaborate, and listen.”  At least I think St. Francis said that.  Regardless, it’s a good thing to do, and Lent gives us plenty of space for that.
For Lent this year, I asked members of our congregation (at Wexford Community Presbyterian Church in Wexford, PA - in the north hills of Pittsburgh) to ask questions about faith, about, God, about the Bible, about church.  Big questions, little questions.  All sorts of questions.
As I told them, there really no bad questions - the only bad questions are the ones that you have, but don’t ask.
And so I have a collection of 40 (46) questions, and each day in Lent, I’m going to respond to those questions.  I won’t always have the “answer” or “solve” the question, and I’d caution you to be weary of those who seem to have an absolute answer to every question.  I will be rather responding each question in a real way.  Some will have a rather complete answer, some with have an answer that is framed by a Presbyterian theological understanding of that question, and many will simply be a form of me saying, “That’s a great question!  I don’t know the answer, but here’s a place that we can explore to try to discover it!”  I’ll do my best to make a distinction between foundational theological understanding, and my own personal understanding whenever those differ.
Along the way, I’ll be using a lot of tools.  First is my own general education and experience (pastors kid, public school teacher, 11 years in ordained ministry, Masters of Divinity, Doctor of Ministry) and scripture.  I tend to use the Common English Bible (CEB) translation, as I find it thoroughly readable, accessible, and yet scholarly, but sometimes will use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and occasionally may try to impress you with the original Greek and Hebrew of the original texts - as all pastors are expected to say the phrase, “well, in the original Greek/Hebrew it actually is saying…” at least four times a month.
I’ll also be using some more simple books that address a lot of questions about faith:  
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Presbyterian Questions, Presbyterian Answers by Donald McKim
More Presbyterian Questions, More Presbyterian Answers by Donald McKim
Presbyterian Beliefs: A Brief Introduction by Donald McKim
Know Why You Believe by Paul E. Little
The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (Deluxe Edition)
Dune by Frank Herbert
The first five are really good sources of easily accessible information about faith, God, the Bible, church, and the Marvel Universe.  The sixth one is just a great book that doesn’t really have anything to do with this, but you should read it.  It’s fantastic.
I’ll certainly use other sources as well, and will note them when I do, but these will likely be the core, so I invite you to seek them out if you are interested.
So that’s it for an intro.  Whether you are a devout Christian, a lapsed Christian, a searching agnostic, a certain atheist, a person of another faith, an “I don’t really know anymore,” or somewhere else on the spectrum of belief, I hope you’ll join me on this journey.  I think it’ll be pretty interesting regardless of where you are coming from.  I’ll be posting these each day on Tumblr, Facebook, and through a daily email list.  Feel free to share them, and to respond with questions and thoughts of your own.  We’re on this journey together.  Let’s go.
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jamiekturner · 5 years
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Optical Effects in User Interfaces (for True Nerds)
How to make optically balanced icons, correct shapes alignment, and perfect corner rounding. An illustrated guide.
Our eyes are weird organs that often tell lies to us. But if you know the peculiarities of human vision, you can construct more approachable and clean designs. Not only do type designers utilize optical tricks for creating readable and well-balanced fonts, but it’s also helpful for interface designers, who build user-computer interaction.
In the 1920s the Gestalt theory of visual perception was developed. It explains how our eyes process different images and how our brain interprets them. You might have already heard about such things as the principle of proximity or the common fate rule. This article refers to some points of the Gestalt theory and highlights practical aspects rather than scientific research. There is a list of recommended materials on the topic at the bottom.
1. Measured and optical size
What is bigger: a 400-pixel square or a 400-pixel circle? Geometrically speaking, their width and height are equal. But look at the picture below. Our eyes immediately detect that the square outweighs the circle.
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Here is the version with guides.
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Let’s take a look at one more picture with a square and a circle. In terms of visual weight, are they equal to you?
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At least it’s hard to tell immediately, which one outweighs the other. Not surprising because I increased the diameter of the circle.
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I overlapped the shapes from the first and the second examples. On the left, the 400-pixel square has bigger area than the 400-pixel circle. That’s why we see it visually larger. On the right, the circle and the square are balanced. Basically, they have similar area while their width and height are different.
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We can witness the same effect with diamonds or triangles. To be balanced visually with squares, they should be wider and higher, so that their areas are similar. Area-based approach works perfect with the simplest shapes.
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How can one use this feature in interfaces? For instance, when you are creating a set of icons, it’s important to make them all well-balanced, so that no icon stands out too much or looks too tiny. If we directly inscribe icons into square areas, the more square-like icons will look larger.
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I recommend compensating the weight of differently shaped icons by allowing visually smaller icons to hang beyond the icon area and by leaving some space between visually heavier icons and the icon area.
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And now some real icons balanced optically.
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Now it’s clear why an icon area is always larger than an icon body — just to allow non-square icons fit it and look not smaller than square icons.
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The easiest test to check visual balance is blurring the items. If your icons turn into more or less similar blobs, they have the same optical weight.
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But sometimes we work with already existing graphics, for instance, social network logos used as sharing and liking buttons. Facebook and Instagram icons are square, whereas Twitter is represented by a bird silhouette and Pinterest by an encircled “P”. That’s why Twitter and Pinterest icons are a bit larger, so that they look balanced with Facebook and Instagram icons.
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Another example of an optical balance issue is a textbox placed together with a round button. If the button diameter equals the textbox height, the button will seem smaller to our eyes. When you enlarge it a little bit, the whole construction will become better balanced.
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But if you change the style of the button, enlargement won’t be needed. On the picture below, the button and the textbox are 80 pixels high, but the button on the right doesn’t look “lost” owing to the strong black fill.
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Things to remember
Optical weight is how human eyes perceive the size and significance of an object, and it doesn’t necessarily equal its pixel size or area.
Circles, diamonds, triangles, and other non-square shapes need to be higher and wider to be optically balanced with squarish shapes.
Areas for icons should have some space reserved for optical balancing. It’s crucial for sets of icons, which should look consistently.
2. Alignment of different shapes
Optical alignment is a logical continuation of the optical balance topic. Take a look at the stripes below. Do they look as if they are of the same length?
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Pixelwise, the answer is a firm “yes”. However, at first sight, the lower stripe looks shorter than the upper one.
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One more picture of the two stripes. Has anything changed?
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I applied optical compensation for the lower stripe. Allowing the spikes to go 20 pixels beyond the length of the upper stripe is the way to compensate a gap between the spikes and make both shapes optically equal.
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And now some more sophisticated examples of differently shaped stripes.
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So, if you are creating a poster with folded stripes and text on them or you are putting a bright “discount” stripe on a product card of an online store, mind making them optically balanced. Sharp edges should go a bit beyond the rest of the shape, especially if it’s a rectangle.
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And what about aligning plain text and paragraphs that have a background? It depends on the visual density of the background. If it’s light, you can align the highlighted paragraph with the rest of text.
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Since the background is light, it doesn’t interrupt the usual text flow.
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A different approach can be utilized for a dense background. On the picture, the black background is aligned with the rest of text while the white text inside of it is placed with indents.
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Unlike the case with the light background, the black one has substantial optical weight, and if the goal is to insert a paragraph seamlessly, it’s better to align it the way shown below.
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The same principle will work with buttons and input fields. Of course, it’s not a dogma, just a recommendation based on human visual perception.
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The light background of input fields on the left can go beyond input labels and user’s input. The right edge of “Send” button is not fully aligned with the right edge of input backgrounds since the button is darker and looks heavier from visual perspective.
On the right, inputs have solid borders, and I aligned them with the labels while user’s input has indents inside of the boxes. “Send” button has a triangular side. The button is moved a bit rightwards to look balanced with the rectangular input fields above.
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And here we are approaching to one more aspect of alignment — the alignment of text and icon buttons. Look at the buttons below. The text looks centered, doesn’t it?
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The trick is that on the right button I moved the word a bit to the left, since the right edge is triangular. Moreover, the arrow-like button is 40 pixels wider to look optically equal to the rectangular one.
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Not only do text buttons have horizontal alignment, but also they have vertical alignment of a word and a background. The first approach I’d like to tell about is used in the interfaces of various operating systems, sites, and applications. It’s the alignment based on the height of an uppercase letter of a font (so-called cap height). It equals the height of either “H” or “I”.
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Basically, the space above and below an uppercase letter and the edge of a button is equal. It makes sense because command names usually are written in title case and English letters have more ascenders, upper sticking out parts (l, t, d, b, k, h), than descenders, lower hanging parts (y, j, g, p).
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Another approach is to align a name and a background using the height of a lowercase letter of a font (so-called x-height). In sans and sans serif interface fonts, it equals the height of — not surprisingly—the letter “x”.
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This approach also makes sense because the main optical weight of a text is concentrated in the area where lowercase letters are placed.
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Is there any difference between these approaches? Yep, there is a difference. And it’s not that big.
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More examples for comparison below. The cap-height approach represented by the left column is definitely better for “Cancel” and “OK” — so widely used buttons — because “Cancel” has no descenders and “OK” is all capitals. The x-height approach shown in the right column is better only for “Sync” button, the name of which has both an upper and a lower sticking out elements; “Cancel” and “OK” words seem to be placed too high.
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The situation with icon buttons is slightly different from text buttons. Let’s put a popular “Send” icon on a round button background. Which variant looks more visually balanced?
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Hope you’ve noticed that something is wrong with the left one. It happens because of different alignment methods. The first option treats the icon if it was a rectangle. To a certain extent that’s right because when you send an SVG or PNG file to a developer it’s a rectangular sheet with a paper plane art on it. The right variant shows the icon placed the way all its sharp edges have equal distance to the circular button background.
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If you prepare a file for a developer, you need to reserve some area, so that they can center the icon on the background optically right.
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The same story with “Play” buttons. If you directly align these shapes — a rounded rectangle and a triangle — they’ll look odd.
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If you want to position the triangle optically better, encircle it and align this circle with the button background.
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Things to remember
Shapes with sharp edges should be larger or longer to look balanced with the neighboring rectangular objects.
Cap-height alignment is an effective method of positioning button names on button backgrounds.
One of the effective ways to correctly position a triangular icon on a button is to encircle it and align the circle with the background.
3. Optical corner rounding
What can be more circular than a circle? I used to think that nothing, but as I said at the beginning of this article, our eyes are weird and sometimes perceive things not as we expect. So, which circle on the picture below looks the most smoothly circular?
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People who I asked before were choosing between numbers 3 and 4. Numbers 1 and 2 are definitely too skinny, 5 is too plump. If we overlap the third and the fourth variants — a geometric circle and a modified circle — we’ll find out that the latter is a trifle heavier than the first one and, consequently, more smooth to our eyes.
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To show what I mean I took letters “o” from three famous geometric fonts — Futura, Circe, and Geometria. Given that high-quality fonts are built based on human visual perception and use a sophisticated system of optical construction, I suppose their circular shapes look more circular than geometric ones. Aren’t these letters pleasant to your eyes?
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Let’s overlap them with geometric circles. Even the most geometric Futura’s “o” has four sticking out parts. Circe’s and Geometria’s letters are, in addition, wider than circles, but even if they had equal height and width, we could see these four “bellies” as if they were hungry and overate.
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So, optically speaking, a modified circle (on the right) can look even more “circular” than a geometric one (on the left).
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How can we use this phenomenon? For corner rounding, of course! If you utilize the embedded rounding feature in popular graphics editors, the result will be not optically good.
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Human eyes immediately detect the point where a straight line suddenly turns into a curve. And this rounding doesn’t look natural.
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I fixed this issue taking into account our visual perception.
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This kind of rounding has an extra area beyond the geometric circle making the point where a line meets a curve unnoticeable.
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Just try to feel the difference between these rounding methods.
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Now we can apply this approach to rounded buttons.
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You might have noticed that the buttons on the right have more smooth corner rounding and it is more pleasant to your eyes.
The same story with app icons. One doesn’t simply use standard corner rounding to reach a perfect result. But before we dive into this topic let’s take a look at two differently rounded shapes.
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The first one is a rounded rectangle, which I created in Sketch. The second shape is a superellipse, also known as Lamé curve. It was discovered by a French mathematician Gabriel Lamé and depending on the formula can vary from something like a four-pointed star to the shape looking practically as a rounded square.
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Marc Edwards proposed the formula of Lamé curve that resulted a smooth and optically perfect shape. Icons starting from iOS 7 are based on it.
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Later this shape was modified by adding golden ratio proportions and a grid for guiding the designers of new icons but that’s a different story.
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The main benefit of using shapes like superellipse is their smooth appearance. On the other hand, these non-standard shapes are difficult to insert into a real interface. One should either combine multiple SVGs, include special formulas or scripts into the code or use PNG masks like Apple does for its app icons.
As for design process itself, there is a simple fix for rounded corners. You need to convert revertible rounding effects into an outline, enter the shape editing mode and manually move curve handles closer to each other.
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The difference is even more vivid with acute angle rounding, which is important for drawing road or metro schemes.
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Things to remember
Geometrically rounded corners look artificial because you can easily see the points where a straight line suddenly turns into a curve.
Optically correct corner rounding needs special formulas or manual adjustment of a shape.
Bonus
Sometimes a not ideally geometrical square looks more squarish. You might think, “What a ridiculous nonsense?” So, what do you think about the squares below? Which shape looks more squarish?
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If you’ve chosen the left shape, you’ve managed to hear the voice of your unbiased visual perception.
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I personally was surprised when learned that our eyes are more sensitive to the height of an object than to its width. It explains why even in geometric fonts, letters “o” are always wider than geometric circles, and the vertical stems of letters “H” are always thicker than the horizontal ones.
Recommended reading
This essay provides a limited understanding of the topic, so I encourage you to keep on exploring it. Here is a list of articles and books about the origins of Gestalt psychology and its initial ideas.
Barry Smith, “Gestalt Theory: an Essay in Philosophy”, 1988. A profound study on the Gestalt theory origin and the philosophical and psychological aspects of human perception.
Steven Lehar, “The World in Your Head: A Gestalt View of the Mechanism of Conscious Experience”, 2002. This book explains how people perceive reality. It turns out that we see not the real world but its reflection in the brain. (Chapter 1 is available online.)
James J. Gibson, “The Perception of the Visual World”, 1950 (a scanned copy, some images are low-quality). The book shows how the physical processes in our brain affect the way we see the world.
James J. Gibson, “The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception”, 1979. (A same-titled article with key ideas is available online.)
George Boeree, “Gestalt Psychology”. A brief history of Gestalt ideas.
Biographies of the founders of Gestalt psychology: Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, and Wolfgang Köhler.
The post Optical Effects in User Interfaces (for True Nerds) appeared first on Design your way.
from Web Development & Designing https://www.designyourway.net/blog/user-interface-design/optical-effects-in-user-interfaces-for-true-nerds/
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my-mystic-messenger · 7 years
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can i request a ficlet for a pride and prejudice au with jumin and mc? thanks!!
hahaha that moment when you think you have it under control but then things get totally out of hand. Lol. Anyway, this was by far my favourite prompt so far, because Pride and Prejudice was the first ever book I read in english, it is to this day my favourite book as well as movie (the 2005 version with my goddess Keira Knightly) and I finally got to write that AU I’ve been dreaming about writing. Masterlist and of course the MC’s used and described in this story hope you enjoy and as per usual 
|| REQUEST ARE (ALWAYS) OPEN!! ||
Fandom: Mystic MessengerRating: GeneralWarnings: NoneCategories: F/MRelationships: MC x JuminWord count: 4756
Madeleinehad been amidst dancing with a young, lively man when suddenly themusic had come to a sudden halt, effectively stopping everyone intheir tracks. Heads were turning and quiet gasps filled the ballroomimmediately. In the span of a mere minute people moved away from thedance floor, forming a sort of pathway for the three new guests.Madeleine frowned, standing on her tiptoes in a fable attempt tocatch a glimpse of these apparent royals, from the treatment theywere receiving. That was when a strong grip pulled her to the frontof the row. Now she stood amidst her two best friends, Mi-Hi Cha andMélodie Carpentier. While Madeleine had known Mi-Hi since her moveto Korea at the age of eleven, Mélodie had joined their friendsgroup rather recently. Yet, a deep bond had formed between the threewomen, especially Madeleine and Mélodie. There was not a thoughtunshared between these three women, no matter this situation.Obviously, such a grand entrance had to be discussed as well, albeitin hushed tones.
“Someroyals I must know of”, Madeleine asked, turning to her Koreanfriend, as she generally knew better when it came to gossip. “Well,you’re not that far off. All of them are rather close in line for thethrone, but even without the title they are influential andridiculously wealthy.” You snorted a laugh. “Really?” Mi-Hinodded. “The one on the right, his name is Jihyun Kim and the womanon the right is his fiancé, Rika Choi.” Upon second glance theblonde looked even more stuck up and arrogant than Madeleine hadfirst assumed. Her face was a constant mask looking as if she had anunpleasant smell in her nose. There was also something about her eyesthat seemed rather wicked. Especially seeing the way she looked atthe man in the middle when she was supposed to be Mr. Kim’s fiancée.“And who is the poor, miserable sod in the middle?” Mi-Hi huffed.“Miserable he might be but poor he certainly is not. His name isJumin Han. He earns multiple thousand mun a year and owns half ofSeoul.” Madeleine couldn’t help but chuckle at that. Obviously hisfortune didn’t make him any happier. “Which one, the miserablehalf?” 
The two women were just laughing when the threearistocrats passed them. While Mi-Hi managed to contain herself,Madeleine barely did so, looking up midst snicker only to catch themans eyes on her. Despite her quickly catching herself and the politecurtsy she made, Mr. Han seemed unimpressed first glaring at herbefore quickly looking away. As the man seemed to focus his attentionon anything but her, Madeleine couldn’t help the laugh that bubbledup inside of her. Luckily the heavy silence was soon broken by themusic starting up once more. With a sigh of relief the three womenreturned to their dancing until it was their turn to be introduced tothe new guests. The introduction was brief and left Madeleine with afoul taste in her mouth. Everything from the way Mr. Han looked ather to the way Miss Rika, as she preferred to be called, looked atMr. Han seemed off to some extend or the other. Her assumptions wereproven correct when later that same evening she overheard Mr. Kim andMr. Han talking about the women present. While Mr. Kim wasnothing but friendly and polite, even saying as much as how beautifulhe found Mélodie in particular, Mr. Han had nothing but cold wordsto share. He said that he was in no way interested in any of thewomen in here, that none of them were pretty enough to peek hisinterest and even went as far as calling Mélodie ‘too exotic’ afterMr. Kim had just complimented her. When he mentioned Miss Rika andhow she was the only good looking woman at the dance Madeleinecouldn’t help but roll her eyes. The dynamic of that friendshipseemed off. Were they having an affair? But had he not just said hefound no interest in women? Maybe he was gay? Who knew. “What aboutMiss Campbell? I saw you stealing glances at her.” Madeleine beamedwith pride for a brief moment. She did not care for the mansjudgement, but knowing that she was desirable still soothed her ego.That was until Mr. Han opened his mouth to correct his friend. “Itmust have been the intense colour of her hair catching my eye. She isfar too simple minded for my taste and in no way attractive enough topeek my interest.” Madeleine huffed. Well, she did not care for theman either!
“MissMadeleine, let us take a turn about the room”, Miss Rika suggested,tearing the woman’s eyes away from her book. Madeleine was in no waynaïve and knew that Miss Rika had some sort of ulterior motive. Eversince Madeleine came to Mr. Kim’s estate where her best friendMélodie was sweating out her horrible cold the woman had never oncebeen sincere about any of her seemingly innocent or kind words. Therewas always a tone of sarcasm and superiority laced within them thatput Madeleine off. However, she knew better than to disappoint. Onebest fought such people by playing along with their silly mind games.So she closed her book and got up where Miss Rika instantly got holdof her arm, laced it with hers and the two of them began their walk.“Will you not join us, Mr. Darcy?” Madeleine smirked to herself,holding back on shaking her head at the woman’s words. “You canonly have two motives, Rika and I would interfere with either”, Mr.Han replied, not even looking up from the letters he was writingswiftly.
Oncemore Madeleine would have enjoyed to laugh. While Miss Rika’sadvances were understood they were completely shut down by the man.It was amusing, to say the least. “What can he mean”, Miss Rikaasked in faux surprise. Madeleine was not interested in playing alongthis time. “Our surest way of disappointing him will be to ask himnothing about it”, she replied. That was when Mr. Han looked up andfor a brief moment their eyes locked, Madeleine smirking at himbefore looking away. Miss Rika obviously noticed, trying to redirectthe attention to her by breaking the pleasant silence once more: “Butdo tell us, Mr. Darcy.” As expected Mr. Han barely acknowledgedher, scarcely looking up from his work. However, as he did, it wasalways in Madeleine’s direction and it would have been a lie to saythat she was not please. For however little she liked him the moreshe enjoyed the fact that it was her catching his eye and not MissRika whom so unbashfully made advances at him with her dear fiancéestill in the room. Madeleine had never wish for a union to fall apartas much as she wished for theirs to do as much.
Herthoughts were interrupted by Mr. Han’s surprising words.“Either youare in each other’s confidence and have secret affairs to discuss, oryou are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantageby walking. If the first, I should get in your way. If the second, Ican admire you much better from here.” Madeleine snickered. “Ahyes, a woman’s job; to be admired by a man.” On the couch Mr. Kimwas stifling a laugh while Miss Rika – who’d stopped beside Mr. Han– looked positively bewildered by Madeleines comment. She quicklycaught herself, of course, once she noted that Mr. Han’s attentionswere directed and Madeleine once more. “Well, it seems the onlything Mr. Han admires is writing those tedious business letters. Howodious I should think them. Don’t you agree, Miss Madeleine?”Madeleine who’d once more seated herself in the couch to continue herbook looked up from the beautiful words, meeting the woman’s awaitingeyes. “I fear I find myself disagreeing. I quite enjoy writingletters, even letters of business.” Miss Rika frowned. “When didyou have occasion to write such letters?” 
Madeleine smiledto herself, closing her eyes for the briefest of moments to regaincomposure. Yes, women like Miss Rika did not know they joys ofworking for yourself. Everything in her life was done for her andeven the faintest of independence scared her. “Since quite a youngage I’ve helped my father with his business. I consider myself anemployee, even. Writing letters was one of my earliest tasks as myfather considered my handwriting to be much more readable andpleasant to the eye”, Madeleine explained, Miss Rika’s eyeswidening with every of her words. “That sounds rather accomplishedto me”, Mr. Kim said, smiling at her in his usual, friendly manner.“I would have liked to agree with you, Mr. Kim, but from thediscussion we shared earlier on that very topic I can no longer say Iam. Too much of my energy was invested in making a living instead ofembroidering cushions and table painting. However, know that MissRika and Mr. Han have educated me on what an accomplished woman hasto be like, I shall practice those skills at once. Hopefully one dayI’ll be able to call myself truly accomplished so that Mr. Han mayknow more than just half a dozen accomplished women.
WhenMadeleine had agreed to dance with Mr. Han it had been mostly out ofsurprise and a certain curiosity. Last time he’d found her notinteresting enough to dance, despite her having hinted at wanting apartner, and now he was asking her. She wanted to know the reason forsuch a change in heart. Not to mention the opportunity to spark aconversation about Mr. Ryu, whom he’d reacted to strangely to. Atfirst their conversation was polite, overly so. Both of them knewthey were avoiding what they really wanted to talk about. “Do youtalk, as a rule, while dancing”, Mr. Han asked, giving Madeleinethe opportunity for a little jab. “No… No, I prefer to beunsociable and taciturn… Makes it all so much more enjoyable, don’tyou think?” Luckily, it was Mr. Han who brought up their walk intotown so Madeleine merely had to reply and thereby decide the courseof the conversation. “Yes, we often walk to town. It’s a greatopportunity to meet new people. In fact, when you met us, we’d justhad the pleasure of forming a new acquaintance.”
Mr.Han’s facade never quite fell, but Madeleine could see it crumblingbehind his eyes and she wondered what had caused such distaste. “MrRyu’s blessed with such happy manners, as may ensure his makingfriends. Whether he is capable of retaining them, is less certain.”“He’s been so unfortunate as to lose your friendship. I dare saythat is an irreversible event”, Madeleine instantly returned, thetwo of them dancing around one another in both the literal as well asfigurative way. “It is. Why do you ask such a question?” Had hejust sounded irritated? No, Madeleine must have been mistaken. “Tomake out your character”, she replied, looking directly into hiseyes, so close now the energy coursing between them could have beentouched. “What have you discovered?” They’d come to a completehalt then, instead facing each other in the middle of the dance floorlike a challenge. “Very little. I hear such different accounts ofyou as puzzle me exceedingly.” It was then that Mr. Han suddenlycaught himself, starting up their dance once more but never oncetaking his eyes off Madeleine. “I hope to afford you more clarityin the future.”
Madeleinehad been in church when she’d heard of what Mr. Han had done.Frankly, despite her better judgement, she found herself hurt andsurprised. Madeleine could not have said when their conversationsstarted to change from cold and distant to somewhat familiar and fun,even. Suddenly the jabs were no longer with any heat behind them thatwas meant to hurt but for both their amusement. They talked likefriends instead of distant acquaintances and their looks lingeredjust a moment too long for them to be purely platonic. Yet, neitherof them was ready to admit to any such feelings. In fact, Madeleinehad sworn to herself to never find a liking in that man and yetsomewhere along the way she had. Which made his betrayal all theworse. The fact that he’d purposefully taken away Mr. Kim in order toprevent Mélodie and him getting to know and appreciate each otherbetter would have been just a little understandable had it been withMr. Kim’s reputation in mind. However, Madeleine knew better than toassume as much. His actions had all been with Miss Rika’s benefit inmind and that thought infuriated her.
Aftermass, Madeleine just wanted to leave. Despite the heavy rain shefound herself running, more than willing to face a month tied to bedin order to avoid seeing Mr. Han. Little had she known that he’d beenfollowing her through the rain, surprising her when he made himselfknown. “Miss Madeleine. I have struggled in vain and I can bear itno longer. These past months have been a torment. I came to visit myfather with the single object of seeing you… I had to see you. Ihave fought against my better judgment, my family’s expectations, theinferiority of your rank due to your insistence to work alongsideyour father and circumstance. All these things I am willing to putaside and ask you to end my agony.” Madeleine froze, staring at theman with wide eyes as the cold rain caused her body to shiver. “Idon’t understand”, she replied, arms wrapped around her body. “Ilove you. Most ardently. Please do me the honour of accepting myhand.” That is when Madeleine realized that the cold had verylittle to do with her shiver. She’d merely predicted those words andher body had recoiled. “Sir, I appreciate the struggle you havebeen through, and I am very sorry to have caused you pain. Believeme, it was unconsciously done.”
“Isthis your reply?” His gentle demeanour dropped, leaving thefamiliar cold and irritation behind. “Yes, Sir.” He steppedcloser and surprising herself, Madeleine copied his move instead oftaking a step back. “Are you… are you laughing at me?”Madeleine swallowed, never once looking away as she denied as much.“Are you rejecting me?”  To ask with such shock in hisvoice almost made Madeleine laugh. “I’m sure that the feelingswhich, as you’ve told me have hindered your regard, will help you inovercoming it.” Once more he stepped closer and Madeleine swallowedyet refused to budge. “Might I ask why, with so little endeavour atcivility, I am thus repulsed?” The audacity of that man! “And Imight as well enquire why, with so evident a design of insulting me,you chose to tell me that you liked me against your better judgment.”He tried to apologize, his composure faltering for the briefest ofmoments, but Madeleine would not hear a word of it.
“Doyou deny it, Mr.Han? That you separated a young couple who could haveloved each other given the chance, exposing your friend to thecensure world of caprice and my friend to derision anddisappointed hopes, involving them both in acute misery of the worstkind? Only a fool would ignore Miss Rika’s indifference towards herfiancée. She has nothing but status in mind, completely unashamed inher advances on you and yet when someone sincere came around thatcould have made your friend happy, you separated them. Do you denyit?” At least he had the mind to look ashamed. “I do not denyit.” When Madeleine inquired his reason for doing as much she couldnot believe her ears. “Iobserved them most carefully and realized his attachment was fardeeper than hers. Jihyun has been hurt by Rika more than enough andthe last thing he needs is another woman with too little interest inhis heart”, he’d replied. “Mélodie, she’s shy! She hardly showsher true feelings to me and Mi-Hi. Not to mention that she is not yetfluent in Korean and therefor remains quiet a lot.”
“Andwhat about Mr. Ryu”, Madeleine asked after a moment of silence.What excuse can you give for your behaviour toward him? He told ofhis misfortunes and yet you treat him with sarcasm.” It was thatstatement that somehow seemed to anger Mr. Han, although Madeleinewas not sure why that was. “So this is your opinion of me? Thankyou. Perhaps these offences might have been had your pride not beenhurt by scruples about our relationship. Am I to rejoice in theinferiority of your circumstances?” Madeleine gasped, her anger nowmatching his. “And those are the words of a gentleman? From themoment I met you your arrogance and conceit and your selfish disdainfor the feelings of other made me realize that you are the last manin the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.” At thispoint Mr. Han and Madeleine were so close to one another they seemedto be sharing the same breath. He bend further even and for a momentMadeleine was sure he’d steal a kiss, once more surprising herself bynot moving away. Of course no such thing happened.“Forgive me,madam, for taking up so much of your time”, he said instead beforeleaving her behind feeling strangely empty.
Madeleinetold herself that she was not interested in his wealth or hisdepressive side of Seoul. He was a selfish, cold man with nothinggoing for him other than his wealth and she would rather remain alonely maid for the rest of her life than marry him. For long she’dbeen so sure of herself and her opinion. That was until she’dfinished the letter he’d brought over in a hurry explainingeverything. Madeleine had spent hours upon hours reading andre-reading it, internalizing his words. As he explained his disputewith Mr.Ryu and how it’d come to it. It broke Madeleines heart tohear such things and even more so when she realized she’d trusted thewrong man all along while judging the innocent so harshly. She’dstopped reading for a moment then, considering all the shamefulthings she’d said and feeling as rotten as she deserved. When shepicked the letter back up it was to words of apology and a sincereproblem to make up for what he’d wronged. By the time Mi-Hi returnedhome she found Madeleine sitting by the fire, tears glistening in hereyes. He was not the one who should apologize. It was her.
Thenext time Madeleine so much as heard of Mr. Han was through news ofher dearest friend Mélodie. Apparently Mr. Han had convinced Mr.Kimof the mistake he was making in denying himself a happy future out ofthe obligations he felt towards Miss Rika. Not only that but he’dmade sure to help his friend in proposing to her surprised friend aswell as paying for the quick but according to Mélodie beautifulwedding. He’d also apparently talked about Madeleine a lot and onlyin the most positive ways possible. It made her feel warm inside andyet that shame and rotten feeling never quiet died down. Especiallynot when in the middle of the night there was a bang on the door,waking up Madeleines entire family and staff in the process. By thetime she’d gotten herself out of bed – red hair a mess and sleepinggown out of place – Lady Glam Choi had already made her way insideof the house, making her anger and disgust obvious despite using veryfew words. It was really quite interesting, really, how she wascapable of such a thing.
Sheasked everyone to leave the room as she wanted to speak to Madeleinealone, which confused the younger woman. What on earth could thiswoman possibly want from her, let alone in the middle of the night?From her aggravated state it could only mean bad things. Of courseMadeleine was proven wrong as the old hag began cursing her to helland back, insulting every fiber of her being and throwing accusationsaround the room Madeleine had not even heard of before. Apparentlywhen Mélodie had mentioned Mr. Han talking about her in positivelights she’d failed to mention the rumours of their engagementcirculating along with his words. Madeleine attempted to explain toLady Glam Choi that she had, in no way, so much as heard of suchrumours let alone started and spread them herself, but the woman wasbeyond comprehension, it seemed. Madeleine was about to lose her calmentire and snap at the woman when she mentioned her sister and thefact that she was apparently engaged to be married to Mr. Hanhimself. It most certainly changed things, but not enough toMadeleine to budge. Mr. Han would never have asked her to marry himwithout the intention of going through, which could only mean thatthe engagement had been fabricated against his will. Strangelyenough, it gave Madeleine a sort of hope.
“Now tell me onceand for all: Are you engaged to him?” Madeleine swallowed,overwhelmed by the sadness that suddenly consumed her at the thoughtsof her following words. “I am not”, she whispered. “And willyou promise never to enter into such an engagement”, Lady Glam Choiinquired once more. Had her tone not been as judgemental, Madeleinemight have reacted more politely. “I will not and I certainly nevershall. You have insulted me in every possible way, and can now havenothing further to say”, she replied, walking towards the door andripping it open, revealing the entire staff and family standing thereand listening in. Not that she cared in that moment. I must ask youto leave immediately. Good night.” The woman gaped and huffed,angrily storming outside the room and towards the exit. “I havenever been thus treated in my entire life”, were her parting wordsand Madeleine found herself strangely silent. That conversation was alot to take in for the young woman, especially after all the newthings she’d heard over the course of the last week she could notfully comprehend yet. Madeleine had been sure that she’d never crosspaths with anyone related to Mr. Han again, but fate obviously hadmore in store for them and Madeleine was ready to face it.
Evenhours after returning back to bed Madeleine had not been capable offalling asleep. Her entire body seemed to be buzzing with somethingakin excitement and nervousness at the very same time. She tried tosleep multiple times but gave up entirely when she heard the firstbirds sing their song outside her window. With a sigh she got up anddressed herself to go for a quick walk, nothing more. Maybe the freshair would soothe the turmoil inside her, allowing her to finally restin peace. She’d been walking through the grass heavy with nicelysmelling morning dew for about half an hour when she heard movementfrom before her. Upon lifting her head Madeleine was surprised to seeMr. Han approaching her, breathtakingly beautiful as ever. His linenblouse was unbuttoned just enough to reveal parts of his bare, strongchest as his long, black coat swayed openly with his movements andthe breeze. Madeleine’d breath got caught in her throat and shebarely dared to breathe nor speak.As he finally stood beforeher the distance between the two of them seemed to close almost onit’s own. They stepped close to one another, leaving only enoughspace between them as to not touch. Once more neither of them wascapable of sparking the conversation as the thoughts in their mindsseemed to overwhelm them each. Eventually, it was Madeleine who spokeup, voicing the first thought that somehow managed to fall past herlips. “I couldn’t sleep”, she whispered, a small smile curlingabout her lips which was mirror by his. “No, so I heard. Lady GlamChoi…”, he spoke, quickly interrupted by Madeleine. “Yes, shewas here.” She knew it was impolite to interrupt, but that womanwas the last thing she wanted to talk or think about during suchprecious moment. “How could I ever make amends for such pain?”Madeleine looked up from the ground, eyes wide with surprise. “Afterwhat you have done for Mélodie it is I who should be making amends.”Mr. Han stepped even closer there, so much so that she could feel hiswarm breath ghosting over her cheek. “You must know…surely, you must know it was all for you. You are too generous totrifle with me. I believe you spoke with Lady Glam Choi last night,and it has taught me to hope as I’d scarcely allowed myself before”,he said, their eyes locked the entire time. “If your feelings arestill what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affectionsand wishes have not changed, but one word from you will silence meforever.” There was a short pause, giving Madeleine the opportunityto speak her part, send him away if she so wished. When nothing camethe small smile returned to the mans face and he continued. “If,however, your feelings have changed, I will have to tell you: youhave bewitched me, body and soul, and I love, I love, I love you. AndI never wish to be parted from you from this day on.” Madeleinetook his hand into hers, lifting it to her lips and pressing a kissto the cold skin. “Very well”, she whispered, smiling hopefullyat the man before he. He returned the smile, eyes glistening withsomething that could have been tears as he leaned forward to resttheir foreheads together, completing the perfection of their tendermoment together.
Asthey stood beside one another, looking upon the estate that both ofthem now finally called home Madeleine mindlessly rubbed he hand upand down her husbands back, eager to touch and hold and feel now thathe was irrevocably hers as she was his. Jumins gaze turned from theflickering lights on the water darkened by the night and to his wife,smiling at her the way he’d never dreamed he’d get the opportunityto. He turned to her, taking in all the beautiful that she had tooffer. “How are you this evening, my dear”, he asked, brushing aloose lock from her tender face. “Very well… although I wish youwould not call me my dear”, she replied, earning herself achuckle from her husband. “Why is that?” Madeleine shrugged,hands mindlessly playing with the hem of his blouse. “Because it’swhat my father always calls my mother when he’s cross aboutsomething.”
“Whatendearments am I allowed then”, he asked in return. Madeleinehummed in thought. “Well let me think…Maddy for every day,my love for Sundays, and…Goddess Divine… but onlyon very special occasions”, she replied, chuckling at the lastpart. “And… what should I call you when I am cross? Mrs. Han?”Madeleine quickly shook her head. “No! No. You may only call meMrs. Han… when you are completely, and perfectly, andincandescently happy.” Jumin reached out for her then, cupping herface with his hand, holding it so delicately as if it were the mostprecious of treasures in the world. The chuckle he gave was thesweetest of sounds and it melted Madeleines heart every single timeshe got to hear it. “Then how are you this evening… Mrs. Han?”He caressed her cheek, bending forward to press a kiss to Madeleinesforehead. Her eyes fell shut, both her hands coming to rest on thepart of his chest that was bared to her, right above his heart. “MyMr. Han”, he whispered before finally closing the distance betweenthem once and for all, sealing the moment with a kiss.
A/N: for obvious reasons some of the plot-points and stuff had to be changed. However, I tried to keep the charm and feeling of the original alive and did use some of my favourite dialogue from the movie in here. 
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escoverthinker · 7 years
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Song 10: Italy (Francesco Gabbani - Occidentali’s Karma)
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***Now for something totally different***
Now, let’s be honest, if you’re reading this then you actually know all these songs already, in particular you know a lot about this one. The hyped up favourite, the predicted winner on a similar scale to Alexander Rybak and Loreen. Surely all of this year is just a glorified contest for second place at this point? Well, allow me to burst the bubble in this piece I am jazzily titling…
…Why Italy is not winning Eurovision 2017.
The review will be broken up into mini-sections as my blog usually is, but not the one’s I usually write around. By the end I will hope to shine a light on the cracks in the theory that Italy are running away with the win.
1. It became the favourite mostly based on when San Remo fell in the selection calendar
When Italy’s annual clusterfucky hot mess of a parade that is the San Remo festival finally drew to its conclusion and Francesco won, less than a quarter of the competing songs had been selected. At that point, the only other jolly uptempo number was Belarus’s NAVI and their folksy stomper. Plus, for the next fortnight or so, a lot more countries seemed to be picking songs with mid to low tempos. This created the impression that seems to have stuck that we’re “drowning in ballads” this year which feeds into the conventional wisdom that this is definitely winning. Having had all of the entries now declared, that simply is no longer true. But because it seems to have stuck that this is the lone uptempo, it hasn’t really shifted from its position atop the odds.
2. Other songs have come up that can win, the fan community has just been too infatuated with the Italian entry to appraise them fairly
Belgium can win. Australia can win. Israel can win. Sweden can win. Romania can win. Bulgaria might be able to win. It’s not impossible for Serbia to win. Some misguided eurofans seem pretty sure Portugal can win so I’ll include them for rhetorical effect. If all of the previously listed candidates fail in some way then Estonia could even win (but I’ll concede that’s a stretch).
But when all of these songs debuted, the fans (who are 100% of the people paying attention at this point) who were all convinced of the inevitable Italian walkover by that point jumped immediately to the “I just can’t see it winning” (pause: which is an opinion, which is infinitesimally susceptible to bias and not a legitimate reason why something can’t win) or it “isn’t as good as Italy” (again, an opinion which is totally fine if you’re describing what your favourites are, less so if you’re assessing the relative strengths of the potential contenders).
3. It didn’t win the San Remo televote until the final night
On the first night that this was in the San Remo heats (or semi-finals? I’m unsure what the exact nomenclature is) it came fourth on the public vote. That’s right, fourth. It was boosted into first place overall by the “press jury” that really loved it but it was very much dragged up to just barely beating Michele Bravi.
The second time this was up for a vote (we’re not counting the covers round where he came 8th because, obviously, nobody’s going to be voting on it), it came third both in the public voting and in the overall voting (the public vote is weighted at 40% in the second and then again in the final round – I know it doesn’t make sense, it’s San Remo – just go with it). A comfortable distance behind Michele Bravi and Fiorella Mannola.
Only in the final night of voting did it win the televote but even then, it was kept off first place by Fiorella.  Only in the superfinal did Francesco turn it around and make it over the line. What this suggests to me is that the song wasn’t strong enough to win domestically in the first round and needed the week’s build up and hype that the format of San Remo allows to happen because of the nature of what it is as a show to make it over the line, and even then only just barely. Compare this to the last time Italy won the televote, Il Volo’s Grande Amore in 2015. That won every single televote round it was in by an absolute landslide. This is an especially pertinent precedent of the SR televote being a good indicator of the Eurovision televote as Il Volo would then go on to comfortably win the final televote, but were brought back down to third by an only ~okay~ jury score (which was even indicated as well in San Remo as both sets of juries marked Grande Amore last out of the three superfinalists in 2015).
If you think that, for instance, Sweden will have difficulty winning because it didn’t win its televote, then you should also be mindful of Italy’s slow start in winning the televote.
4. Italy are an automatic qualifier
Automatic qualifiers are at a structural disadvantage in terms of going for the win (which for being automatic qualifiers is probably a fair compromise) because the ‘buzz’ and media coverage that might have propelled them forwards to the victory gets eaten up by the semi-final qualifiers. Sweden’s Frans and France’s Amir were widely believed to be in contention for the win in the build up to last year’s contest but the momentum from the semis was swallowed by by Russia, Ukraine and Australia. If they’d both had to qualify from a semi to get there, things may well have been different. Italy will face a similar hurdle they have to overcome this year to make it over the line, arguably amplified to even greater levels because the song relies on the buzz of “omg this guy with the dancing gorilla is going to win Eurovision” going into the final for enough people to be looking out for it. Wednesday morning the buzz will probably be all about “the Belgian girl with the moody electro song and the stunning staging” and Friday morning will likely be all about “that one with the yodelling”.
5. The message/narrative isn’t clearly readable on first listen/viewing
What, if you break it down and analyse it, is the message or narrative of the Italian song? The main crux of the lyrics are about how western culture is vacuous, technology dependant, fame obsessed and inherently depraved. This is emphasised by…dancing about with a Gorilla. Okay. That at least works in tandem with the song in a surrealist/borderline camp way so I’ll give Italy credit for that. The problem is, the vast majority of viewers seeing it for the first time who don’t speak or understand Italian won’t be reading it as a well thought out parody of western culture and a comment on contemporary culture. I bring this up because all of the main challengers for the Eurovision crown over the past few years had a message/narrative that was easily readable even without knowing the words. You knew what the message of “1944” was even if you didn’t speak Crimean Tatar or English. You could buy into the relationship of “Calm after the Storm” even if you didn’t speak English. But if you don’t understand Italian then, in its current form at least, all that is readable about it is a guy the wrong side of thirty doing a kitschy dance with a Gorilla.
And while we’re on that Gorilla…
6. The gorilla actually hampers the song’s scoring potential
A lot of people are cross reading the Gorilla as having the same totemic power as Conchita Wurst’s beard and Mans Zelmerlow’s stick figure animation. This is a false equivalency. While both the beard and the animation worked in a similar way as the gorilla by providing an easily memorable gimmick, neither of them strayed over into being read as crass or kitch. Conchita’s beard was the visible marker of her difference that caused her the pain of rejection and the animation/projections during the Heroes performance made the whole performance stunning on an aesthetic level and made it look just like a live performance of a music video. Whilst those gimmicks made the performance novel, it didn’t make them novelty. When a juror, for instance, saw them, they probably didn’t think ‘oh okay, this country aren’t taking it seriously’ and consciously or unconsciously adjusted their mark for that country.
The Gorilla, by contrast, is easily readable as a joke. If you didn’t know that this had won the San Remo festival and a country like Ireland were sending it, I don’t think people would have bought into the gorilla as working on that level. If you’re a jury in, let’s say, Latvia for instance, are you going to go for the kitschy gorilla dancing OR are you going to go for (say) the young guy with the sleek and modern pop song with memorable staging, the dark and emotive ballad or the young girl with the stunningly staged hooky electropop song.
If you think the jury are going to mark Romania down for being an “obvious novelty song” then you should have concerns about Italy’s jury score.
7. It doesn’t work (at least as well as some of the other entries) on an emotional level
A related factor to being marked down by the juries for being kitschy and an obvious novelty, Occidentali’s Karma doesn’t fit the pattern of the last few years of Eurovision high scorers because it doesn’t work effectively on an emotional level.
Jamala, Mans and Conchita all had the narrative of triumph through adversity (across the spectrum of persecution and discrimination to just personal insecurity), Emmelie de Forest (and basically every other peace ballad that's done well) was a “aww that’s sweet” moment, Sound of Silence was all about the struggle to connect in a disconnected world and Calm After The Storm was a will they/won't they about a couple that were breaking up. The basic thread that runs through all of them is that the message/narrative is about tugging people's heartstrings that is emphasised by things like the staging (and, like the message/narrative section, is performed in a way that is translatable across language barriers). For an expanded version of this (written in the run up to 2015) then there’s this article from Sofabet that provides a good introduction.
What then, really, is the emotional or affective core of Occidentali’s Karma? Most people if you ask them why it’s their/the favourite will tell you either “it’s funny”, which implies that this is a glorified novelty track, “it’s catchy” or that there’s a “euphoric instrumental”. Whilst it certainly makes sense that that should mean it’ll have an undeniable cross-continental appeal, the battleground of Eurovision is littered with the corpses of “catchy” songs with a “euphoric instrumental” that failed to make any kind of impression much at all (the song from last year that probably fits that description the most is probably Spain’s Say Yay and we all remember how that went!).
So why has the fan community elevated this catchy and frivolous song to the level of favourite when it seems so comparatively out of step with what you’d expect to be majorly challenging for the win? Well, in addition to the reasons we discussed at the start of this piece…
8. Italy is the “fetch” of Eurovision
For all that they don’t seem to have the same kind of approach to the contest, Sweden and Italy have more in common in terms of their positions in the Eurovision fandom than most people would care to believe. Both have their own extensive and popular independently from the Eurovision world selection show, both generally send songs that are professional and well produced and both will generally be overrated by the fan community in the run up to the main event.
Much has been said about why this is the case with Sweden. Generally if you’re over about 35 then it’ll be because of the peak schlager music days of Charlotte Perelli, Carola and Linda Bengtzing (among others) and if you’re under 35 it’s because the high quality and quantity of quality pop music the Swedes export around the world, currently best encapsulated in Zara Larsson. Italy faces a similar type of overhyping because people tend to have a very over-romanticised view of Italian music, related to the over romanticised view of Italy as a country in general. The difference is that a substantial part of the fandom will instantly write off the Sweden fans as “fanboys”, “the fans” or “the OGAEs”, nobody uses such words to deride people about overrating the Italian songs. And they are overrated. From 2012 onwards, the Italian song has always finished higher in the OGAE poll than they have in the final contest. So if you’re distasteful about Sweden being overrated by the fans every year, you ought to be equally as suspicious of fans overrating Italy (unless of course, your stereotypical view of the types of people who enjoy the Italian song every year aren’t perceived to be from a cultural minority in the way that the fans of the Swedish song are, in which case, stop being such a prick).
The fandom has been trying to make Italy “happen” ever since their return but, for the reasons I have outlined above, I have extensive reasons to believe that it’s not going to happen.
In Conclusion
Italy might still win. I’d be foolishly blind and blindly foolish to say that it isn’t going to score very well. What I wanted to show in this piece is that there are still reasons why it isn’t the locked in runaway that people are hyping it up to be, based on both the context in which it failed to win San Remo until the last moment, the fact that the staging makes it easily readable as a joke entry ergo the juries have an excuse to mark it down, Italy’s history of being overrated and over hyped every year since 2012, the fact that Italy cannot gain momentum via the semi finals and that the song doesn’t have an emotional register that other eurovision songs both past and present do have.
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