#uncleftish beholding

[dndspellgifs]

look, I know I've talked about this essay (?) before but like,

If you ever needed a good demonstration of the quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", have I got an exercise for you.

Somebody made a small article explaining the basics of atomic theory but it's written in Anglish. Anglish is basically a made-up version of English where they remove any elements (words, prefixes, etc) that were originally borrowed from romance languages like french and latin, as well as greek and other foreign loanwords, keeping only those of germanic origin.

What happens is an english which is for the most part intelligible, but since a lot everyday english, and especially the scientific vocabulary, has has heavy latin and greek influence, they have to make up new words from the existing germanic-english vocabulary. For me it kind of reads super viking-ey.

Anyway when you read this article on atomic theory, in Anglish called Uncleftish Beholding, you get this text which kind of reads like a fantasy novel. Like in my mind it feels like it recontextualizes advanced scientific concepts to explain it to a viking audience from ancient times.

Even though you're familiar with the scientific ideas, because it bypasses the normal language we use for these concepts, you get a chance to examine these ideas as if you were a visitor from another civilization - and guess what, it does feel like it's about magic. It has a mythical quality to it, like it feels like a book about magic written during viking times. For me this has the same vibe as reading deep magic lore from a Robert Jordan book.

#off topic #literature #language #linguistics #science #science history #science fiction #fantasy #physics #atomic theory #anglish #chemistry #robert jordan #the wheel of time #uncleftish beholding

[cd-covington]

Hey, everybody who liked that post about "Uncleftish Beholding" - I have an article for you.

#uncleftish beholding #linguistics #writing #science fiction

[selwyngrimm]

Yet another Facebook memory.

This always makes me think of Uncleftish Beholding.

#Science #Uncleftish Beholding #Shiny crumb

[lionarstar]

"The heavier firststuffs are all highly lightrottish and therefore are not found in the greenworld"

#Uncleftish beholding

[max1461]

In favor of Uncleftish Beholding, I do have to say: "lightrotting" is a way better name than "radioactive decay".

[probablygoodrpgideas]

Step one: read 'Uncleftish Beholding'. Step two: read it again but with something open for the periodic table, so you can translate it and figure out what each 'Anglish' word actually means. Step three: use those words the next time you need some fantasy technobabble.

Uncleftish Beholding can be found here

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Uncleftish Beholding

For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.

The underlying kinds of stuff are the firststuffs, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff.

The firststuffs have their being as motes called unclefts. These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called bulkbits. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in ices when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike clefts link in a bulkbit, they make bindings. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

At first it was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that could be split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made up of lesser motes. There is a heavy kernel with a forward bernstonish lading, and around it one or more light motes with backward ladings. The least uncleft is that of ordinary waterstuff. Its kernel is a lone forwardladen mote called a firstbit. Outside it is a backwardladen mote called a bernstonebit. The firstbit has a heaviness about 1840-fold that of the bernstonebit. Early worldken folk thought bernstonebits swing around the kernel like the earth around the sun, but now we understand they are more like waves or clouds.

In all other unclefts are found other motes as well, about as heavy as the firstbit but with no lading, known as neitherbits. We know a kind of waterstuff with one neitherbit in the kernel along with the firstbit; another kind has two neitherbits. Both kinds are seldom.

The next greatest firststuff is sunstuff, which has two firstbits and two bernstonebits. The everyday sort also has two neitherbits in the kernel. If there are more or less, the uncleft will soon break asunder. More about this later.

The third firststuff is stonestuff, with three firstbits, three bernstonebits, and its own share of neitherbits. And so it goes, on through such everyday stuffs as coalstuff (six firstbits) or iron (26) to ones more lately found. Ymirstuff (92) was the last until men began to make some higher still.

It is the bernstonebits that link, and so their tale fastsets how a firststuff behaves and what kinds of bulkbits it can help make. The worldken of this behaving, in all its manifold ways, is called minglingken. Minglingers have found that as the uncleftish tale of the firststuffs (that is, the tale of firststuffs in their kernels) waxes, after a while they begin to show ownships not unlike those of others that went before them. So, for a showdeal, stonestuff (3), glasswortstuff (11), potashstuff (19), redstuff (37), and bluegraystuff (55) can each link with only one uncleft of waterstuff, while coalstuff (6), flintstuff (14), germanstuff (22), tin (50), and lead (82) can each link with four. This is readily seen when all are set forth in what is called the roundaround board of the firststuffs.

When an uncleft or a bulkbit wins one or more bernstonebits above its own, it takes on a backward lading. When it loses one or more, it takes on a forward lading. Such a mote is called a farer, for that the drag between unlike ladings flits it. When bernstonebits flit by themselves, it may be as a bolt of lightning, a spark off some faststanding chunk, or the everyday flow of bernstoneness through wires.

Coming back to the uncleft itself, the heavier it is, the more neitherbits as well as firstbits in its kernel. Indeed, soon the tale of neitherbits is the greater. Unclefts with the same tale of firstbits but unlike tales of neitherbits are called samesteads. Thus, everyday sourstuff has eight neitherbits with its eight firstbits, but there are also kinds with five, six, seven, nine, ten, and eleven neitherbits. A samestead is known by the tale of both kernel motes, so that we have sourstuff-13, sourstuff-14, and so on, with sourstuff-16 being by far the most found. Having the same number of bernstonebits, the samesteads of a firststuff behave almost alike minglingly. They do show some unlikenesses, outstandingly among the heavier ones, and these can be worked to sunder samesteads from each other.

Most samesteads of every firststuff are unabiding. Their kernels break up, each at its own speed. This speed is written as the half-life, which is how long it takes half of any deal of the samestead thus to shift itself. The doing is known as lightrotting. It may happen fast or slowly, and in any of sundry ways, offhanging on the makeup of the kernel. A kernel may spit out two firstbits with two neitherbits, that is, a sunstuff kernel, thus leaping two steads back in the roundaround board and four weights back in heaviness. It may give off a bernstonebit from a neitherbit, which thereby becomes a firstbit and thrusts the uncleft one stead up in the board while keeping the same weight. It may give off a forwardbit, which is a mote with the same weight as a bernstonebit but a forward lading, and thereby spring one stead down in the board while keeping the same weight. Often, too, a mote is given off with neither lading nor heaviness, called the weeneitherbit. In much lightrotting, a mote of light with most short wavelength comes out as well.

For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked on as a mote, the lightbit. We have already said by the way that a mote of stuff can behave not only as a chunk, but as a wave. Down among the unclefts, things do not happen in steady flowings, but in leaps between bestandings that are forbidden. The knowledge-hunt of this is called lump beholding.

Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside of the haste of light.

By shooting motes into kernels, worldken folk have shifted samesteads of one firststuff into samesteads of another. Thus did they make ymirstuff into aegirstuff and helstuff, and they have afterward gone beyond these. The heavier firststuffs are all highly lightrottish and therefore are not found in the greenworld.

Some of the higher samesteads are splitly. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.

With enough strength, lightweight unclefts can be made to togethermelt. In the sun, through a row of strikings and lightrottings, four unclefts of waterstuff in this wise become one of sunstuff. Again some weight is lost as work, and again this is greatly big when set beside the work gotten from a minglingish doing such as fire.

Today we wield both kind of uncleftish doings in weapons, and kernelish splitting gives us heat and bernstoneness. We hope to do likewise with togethermelting, which would yield an unhemmed wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain.

Soothly we live in mighty years!

#English without Latin #Uncleft Beholding #Atomic Theory #writing #altered etymology #troglodyte thoughts #free range sustainable shitpost #magitechnobabble #arcane jargon

[meolcwifes]

warding off the horrors by revisiting the bullshit uncleftish beholding stress management techniques of my twenties

#i love disgustingly low-res snipping tool screenshots and you can't stop me

[cleolinda]

Weekend links

My posts

I wrote a lot this week, including an overlong post about the saga of my haunted childhood home, which turned into two overlong posts after my sister told me I’d gotten it wrong. Those will go up this coming week. These gifs are deeply relevant.

This week: The 20th anniversary of Tiny Moist Hand.

Reblogs of interest

Strikes and unions: Early this week, there may [have been] internal division among the AMPTP.

As of this writing (Sunday morning 9/24), the WGA and the AMPTP may be close to a deal. By the time this post goes up in the afternoon, we may know the results.

Several LGBTQ+ archives

Happy birthday Dr. Elly, Cat Doctor!

All my librarians hate James Patterson

Found social-media poetry

New definition of ghosting

Uncleftish beholding

The unstoppable trans Chili Queen and her supportive wife

"If it’s about a dad dating other dads, how come some of them have kids???"

A quilted gift

Video

The crimes of the Neko Cat Cafe

Dentist magic

When you go from hype man to traditional man

Adele’s dog

The sacred texts

Evil Chancellor Traytor

But what if it… was for puppies

His wife has filled his house with chintz

Personal tags of the week

#Judaism, feat. the shalomander

#cats (not the musical) was very strong this week

#much to consider

#careers

#weekend links #odds and ends #linkspam

[girlonthelasttrain]

Uncleftish Beholding my beloved...

#this is what it feels like to read German for the first time. except it's not

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 68: Tea and skyscrapers - When words get borrowed across languages

When societies of humans come into contact, they’ll often pick up words from each other. When this is happening actively in the minds of multilingual people, it gets called codeswitching; when it happened long before anyone alive can remember, it’s more likely to get called etymology. But either way, this whole spectrum is a kind of borrowing.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about borrowing and loanwords. There are lots of different trajectories that words take when we move them around from language to language, including words that are associated with particular domains, like tea and books, words that shift meaning when they language hop, like “gymnasium” and “babyfoot”, words that get translated piece by piece, like “gratte-ciel” (skyscraper) and “fernseher” (television), and words that end up duplicating the same meaning (or is it...?) in multiple languages, like “naan bread” and “Pendle hill”. We also talk about the tricky question of how closely to adapt or preserve a borrowed word, depending on your goals and the circumstances.

Read the transcript here.

Announcements:

The LingComm grants have been announced! Thank you so much to everyone who made this possible, and congratulations to all our grantees. Go check out their projects as they keep rolling out over the rest of this year for a little more fun linguistics content in your life. In this month’s bonus episode, originally recorded live through the Lingthusiasm Discord, we get enthusiastic about your sweary questions! We talk about why it's so hard to translate swears in a way that feels satisfying, how swears and other taboo words participate in the Euphemism Cycle, a very ambitious idea for cataloging swear words in various languages, and more. Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 60+ other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can play and discuss word games and puzzles with other language nerds!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

Snopes entry ‘Did Coca-Cola translate its name into a Chinese phrase meaning 'bite the wax tadpole'?’

Auslan.org dictionary entry for ‘ham’

Wikipedia entry for ‘false friend’

@OlaWikander‘s tweet about tungsten

Wikipedia entry for ‘tungsten’

Wikipedia entry for Polish ‘herbata’

The Language of Food blog entry about the etymology of cha/tea

Map of tea vs cha spread via Quartz

WALS entry for words derived from Sinitic ‘cha’ vs words derived from Min Nan Chinese ‘te’

Wikipedia entry for ‘calque’

Wikipedia entry for ‘Uncleftish Beholding’

Lingthusiasm episode ‘You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality’

‘Morphological Complexity and Language Contact in Languages Indigenous to North America’ - by Marianne Mithun

Wikipedia entry for ‘Pendle Hill’

En Clair - The Pendle Witch Trials

All Things Linguistic post on loadwords creating duplicates (including the TikTok video about pav-roti)

Wikipedia list of tautological place names

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content, our Discord server, and other perks.

Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins, and our production manager is Liz McCullough. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

#language #linguistics #lingthusiasm #loanwords #borrowing #etymology #history #words #meaning #pronunciation #episode #episodes #episode 68

[dndspellgifs]

There’s this text written by an author named Poul Anderson where he tries to explain atomic theory without using any english words that are derived from greek, latin, and romance languages like french, as well as other modern-sounding loanwords.

The guy comes up with new derived words to replace many loanwords that are part of the scientific vocabulary, thus, for example, atomic theory becomes “uncleftish (as in cannot be cloven) beholding (theory)”.

Anyway this seems like a fun place to start stealing some cool sounding words for fantasy worldbuilding.

#off topic #creative writing #linguistics #fantasy

[script-a-world]

When creating a Fantasy world, how can you figure out where to use recognizable words and where to make up new ones?

I'm creating a whole new world and I realized that a lot of foods are named after Real Life places. It ended up opening a whole can of worms of trying to think of what words for itens and foods to keep and what ones to replace.

Tex: How far removed is your fantasy world to the one the reader comes from? Who are your readers? Are they from a single demographic (i.e. American, middle class, etc), or are they from varying demographics (Anglophones from across the planet, people of different religions, etc)? What does recognizable look like in your context?

If you’d like to mimic the look of Real Life Places, try introducing the place first, give it a few snippets of personality over a chapter or two, and then introduce the food. For example:

Chapter 1: Protagonist is in Red Door Village. There are very few red doors in this village, however protagonist is busy with Other Plot Things.

Chapter 2: Villager from Red Door Village answers question on the village’s name. “Well you see, ol' Granny Sewer's father couldn't see blue, and this was our only other paint." Mystery solved!

Chapter 3: Protagonist is in a town reasonably far from Red Door Village. They venture into an inn that has a red door, and the server recommends them their traditional dish. It turns out to be smoked herring ice cream. Protagonist learns that Ol’ Granny Sewer’s fifth cousin on her mother’s side who married into Fisherman Smoke’s family used to top all their food with smoked herrings, and did the same thing when ice cream came into town - it’s kind of grown on everyone, and most villagers will grudgingly admit it doesn’t taste that bad.

Voila, a food named after a place! In most instances, this is approximately the same amount of exposure to a food and its namesake place that is experienced in real life. How many people who have eaten New York-style pizza have been to New York? Proportionally, not many, though they’ve probably heard of the place in some aspect (most superficially, “this pizza is popular in New York”). It’s the same concept, you just need to put in a little more legwork on introducing to the audience a place in your world first, and then the food it’s named after.

Utuabzu: Another option is to take advantage of something called collocative substitution, where you can replace a part of a familiar phrase and readers will still be able to infer what it is. You often find this with insults like 'you absolute walnut', where it's clear that walnut is standing in for something significantly more unkind. So if you refer to 'Longish tea', people will infer it to be a kind of tea, perhaps equivalent to Chinese tea.

Otherwise you can also just replace the geographic adjective with a simpler descriptive one - bubbling wine instead of Champagne, spiced tea instead of masala chai, fruit-filled pastries instead of Danishes.

Feral: Unless you plan on creating a conlang and writing your story entirely in that conlang, maybe it’s best not to worry too much about it. “Uncleftish Beholding” by Poul Anderson is a famous sci-fi short story about atomic theory (that’s what the name means by the way) without using any loanwords whatsoever into English outside its German origins. It was an attempt to show just how stupid linguistic purism is, but I think this tumblr post does a pretty good job of explaining how to extend it to fantasy worlds.

#language #culture #magicallynormal

[mordcore]

thinking about bernsteinbits and minglingers.... i will continue reading about uncleftish beholding tomorrow

[loganvok]

UNCLEFTISH Beholding _ basic atomic physiks.

     For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began  to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that  watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.  The underlying kinds of stuff are the “firststuffs”, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff.

      The firststuffs have their being as motes called “unclefts”.  These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called “bulkbits”. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in ices when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) When unlike clefts link in a bulkbit, they make “bindings”. Thus, water is a binding of two waterstuff unclefts with one sourstuff uncleft, while a bulkbit of one of the forestuffs making up flesh may have a thousand thousand or more unclefts of these two firststuffs together with coalstuff and chokestuff.

    At first is was thought that the uncleft was a hard thing that could be split no further; hence the name. Now we know it is made up of lesser motes. There is a heavy “kernel” with a forward bernstonish lading, and around it one or more light motes with backward ladings. The least uncleft is that of ordinary waterstuff. Its kernel is a lone forwardladen mote called a “firstbit”. Outside it is a backwardladen mote called a “bernstonebit”. The firstbit has a heaviness about 1840-fold that of the bernstonebit. Early worldken folk thought bernstonebits swing around the kernel like the earth around the sun, but now we understand they are more like waves or clouds.

      In all other unclefts are found other motes as well, about as heavy as the firstbit but with no lading, known as “neitherbits”.  We know a kind of waterstuff with one neitherbit in the kernel along with the firstbit; another kind has two neitherbits. Both kinds are seldom.

       The next greatest firststuff is sunstuff, which has two firstbits and two bernstonebits. The everyday sort also has two neitherbits in the kernel. If there are more or less, the uncleft will soon break asunder. More about this later. The third firststuff is stonestuff, with three firstbits, three bernstonebits, and its own share of neitherbits. And so it goes, on through such everyday stuffs as coalstuff (six firstbits) or iron (26) to ones more lately found. Ymirstuff (92) was the last until men began to make some higher still.

      It is the bernstonebits that link, and so their tale fastsets how a firststuff behaves and what kinds of bulkbits it can help make. The worldken of this behaving, in all its manifold ways, is called “minglingken”. Minglingers have found that as the uncleftish tale of the firststuffs (that is, the tale of firststuffs in their kernels) waxes, after a while they begin to show ownships not unlike those of others that went before them. So, for a showdeal, stonestuff (3), glasswortstuff (11), potashstuff (19), redstuff (37), and bluegraystuff (55) can each link with only one uncleft of waterstuff, while coalstuff (6), flintstuff (14), germanstuff (22), tin (50), and lead (82) can each link with four. This is readily seen when all are set forth in what is called the “roundaround board of the firststuffs”.

      When an uncleft or a bulkbit wins one or more bernstonebits above its own, it takes on a backward lading. When it loses one or more, it takes on a forward lading. Such a mote is called a “farer”, for that the drag between unlike ladings flits it. When bernstonebits flit by themselves, it may be as a bolt of lightning, a spark off some faststanding chunk, or the everyday flow of bernstoneness through wires. Coming back to the uncleft itself, the heavier it is, the more neitherbits as well as firstbits in its kernel. Indeed, soon the tale of neitherbits is the greater. Unclefts with the same tale of firstbits but unlike tales of neitherbits are called “samesteads”. Thus, everyday sourstuff has eight neitherbits with its eight firstbits, but there are also kinds with five, six, seven, nine, ten, and eleven neitherbits. A samestead is known by the tale of both kernel motes, so that we have sourstuff-13, sourstuff-14, and so on, with sourstuff-16 being by far the most found. Having the same number of bernstonebits, the samesteads of a firststuff behave almost alike minglingly. They do show some unlikenesses, outstandingly among the heavier ones, and these can be worked to sunder samesteads from each other.

       Most samesteads of every firststuff are unabiding. Their kernels break up, each at its own speed. This speed is written as the “half-life”, which is how long it takes half of any deal of the samestead thus to shift itself. The doing is known as “lightrotting”. It may happen fast or slowly, and in any of sundry ways, offhanging on the makeup of the kernel. A kernel may spit out two firstbits with two neitherbits, that is, a sunstuff kernel, thus leaping two steads back in the roundaround board and four weights back in heaviness. It may give off a bernstonebit from a neitherbit, which thereby becomes a firstbit and thrusts the uncleft one stead up in the board while keeping the same weight. It may give off a “forwardbit”, which is a mote with the same weight as a bernstonebit but a forward lading, and thereby spring one stead down in the board while keeping the same weight.  Often, too, a mote is given off with neither lading nor heaviness, called the “weeneitherbit”. In much lightrotting, a mote of light with most short wavelength comes out as well.

     For although light oftenest behaves as a wave, it can be looked on as a mote, the “lightbit”. We have already said by the way that a mote of stuff can behave not only as a chunk, but as a wave. Down among the unclefts, things do not happen in steady flowings, but in leaps between bestandings that are forbidden.  The knowledge-hunt of this is called “lump beholding”.  Nor are stuff and work unakin. Rather, they are groundwise the same, and one can be shifted into the other. The kinship between them is that work is like unto weight manifolded by the fourside of the haste of light.

     By shooting motes into kernels, worldken folk have shifted samesteads of one firststuff into samesteads of another. Thus did they make ymirstuff into aegirstuff and helstuff, and they have afterward gone beyond these. The heavier firststuffs are all highly lightrottish and therefore are not found in the greenworld.  Some of the higher samesteads are “splitly”. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome.  With enough strength, lightweight unclefts can be made to togethermelt. In the sun, through a row of strikings and lightrottings, four unclefts of waterstuff in this wise become one of sunstuff. Again some weight is lost as work, and again this is greatly big when set beside the work gotten from a minglingish doing such as fire.

    Today we wield both kind of uncleftish doings in weapons, and kernelish splitting gives us heat and bernstoneness. We hope to do likewise with togethermelting, which would yield an unhemmed wellspring of work for mankindish goodgain. Soothly we live in mighty years!

 Uncleftish Beholding - Poul Anderson.  

Basic - In English from Latin thru french. Same word german. Atomic - same thing. As basic, hummmmm. Physik - used the German and didn’t even bother trying any else. Ideas @blondgingersaxon

#uncleftish beholding #poul anderson #normans had lost the battle at battle

[nimium-amatrix-ingenii-sui]

18 Questions Tag Game

I got tagged by @independence1776​ weeks ago but never got around to it. Now I have a bit of a breather, so here goes!

1. Why did you choose your URL? I wanted “uncleftish beholding” but that was already taken in all variants I could think of, and my usual fandom handles felt too short/boring for Tumblr. The description of Ovid as “too fond of his own wit” (nimium amator ingenii sui) came to mind and struck a chord, so I used the feminine form and went with it.

2. Any side blogs? Nope.

3. How long have you been on Tumblr? Since 2017, IIRC. I’m a late adopter.

4. Do you have a queue tag? Yes, “queuerated”. Because the queue is curated. Haha. (See note above on “too fond of her own wit”)

5. What did you originally start this blog for? DW felt pretty much dead because all the fun fandom interaction seemed to have moved here, and though I resisted for a long time because I wasn’t so sure about the reblog format, eventually the desire for instant gratification won out. Another reason was that I was already reading a couple of Tumblr blogs of fandom friends individually and it was beginning to be annoying a) to visit them one by one and b) not to be able to reblog or comment except through asks. So yeah. Fandom interaction.

6. Why did you choose your icon? It’s from a little graphic I made for the SWG’s “Revolution” challenge and turned into an icon later. It says “Day shall come again” in Quenya, and though in canon that daybreak turned out to be... hm... very much delayed, it still sums up my basic attitude.

7. Why did you choose your header? I painted Eärendil and the birds taking on Ancalagon for the SWG’s celebration of the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Silmarillion. I’m kind of proud with how that turned out, flaws and all, so I used it for my header.

8. What’s your post with the most notes? The Eruvision Song Contest shitpost. I regret nothing.

9. How many followers do you have? 431. No idea how that happened.

10. How many blogs do you follow? 151. When I started here I followed pretty much everyone who interacted with my posts, but then I could no longer keep up with my dashboard and cooled it down.

11. Have you ever made a sh*tpost? Several. They tend to be more succesful than my “serious” stuff, too...

12. How often do you use Tumblr every day? More often than I should. The rush of “eee! new content! must check!” is too strong for me. On a work day, it might just be once, but if I have a little more time, I check it all the damn time.

13. Have you ever had a fight with another blog? A fight, not really. Heated discussions, on occasion.

14. How do you feel about “you have to reblog this” posts? Not to revert to my native German, but ‘n Scheiß muss ich. That is to say, I ignore them on principle.

15. Opinion on tag games? Fun!

16. Opinion on ask games? Have mostly stopped reblogging them because I rarely get any asks for them anyway, but I like the idea behind them.

17. Which of your mutuals is Tumblr famous? I don’t know if any Tumblr famous people are mutuals with me.

18. Do you have a crush on any of your mutuals? Maybe?

I’m tagging @elennare​, @catilinas, @vefanyar​ and/or anyone who reads this and feels like it!

#thanks for the tag! #tag games #18 questions #about the author