TheJ.R.Douglas

For whatever reason, I guess it’s tangentially related, this reminded me that PPAP exists Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, for anyone reading this who doesn’t know, is a song about how the Japanese just be shunting words together to make up new words

If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion, Duolingo has a pretty good system for practicing Kanji. Even if you don’t vibe with the regular lessons, the Kanji practice is pretty solid. You get to read, listen, and practice writing them. Another small point, because Japanese uses particles, you can mess with the structure of sentences ever so slightly. But that can get confusing because of how we structure sentences in English. I found it fascinating when I first started taking Japanese classes. Bah, but anyway, I’ll be following this thread now. I love Japanese, language and culture both.

What does it mean to mean tho?

Johnny Depp for Hoid, anyone? He is a master of disguise

I wish it were I’m just a nut job, unfortunately, and thought my naming convention was clever Sorry for getting your hopes up Maybe one day when I’m not so embarrassed by how quickly I jumped the gun on this post I will revise it and change the title to reflect Happy Holidays by the way, one and all

No no, you misunderstood. Perhaps I need to return to my drawing board

You're right. I perhaps should have refined this down into a more concise format... The real theory is that, It has been some time since I read that, I had forgotten it was described that way. And I appreciate you linking that WoB, my remembrance of them can be shoddy, and I should probably have done more research. I definitely did not have the proper definition for corrupt investiture... Also didn't know about his WoB, thank you again.

Possible Spoilers Ahead! If you aren’t caught up on the Cosmere beware! Also, I apologize for grammatically inconsistencies, I copied this straight from my notes app because I wanted to get this out there before DS Nexus. Also not sure if this theory is already out there. Thoughts? I know I’ve raised more questions than answers, but that’s what WoBs are for, right?

UPDATE!!! With World Con fast approaching I’ve been revising my pitch, and I think I’ve settled on one that works! I asked a bunch of friends what they thought of various different pitches I can up with and the following is the winner! What do you folks think? This next one was the runner up

Hey all! I’m watching this one YouTube this morning I’m writing this, and when Brandon unveiled his story idea I just… well you’ll see. Ever heard the saying “infinite monkeys…”? Very basically it’s that no idea is original, and if you’ve thought of it then it’s been thought of before by someone else. Brandon dreamed himself up a story where Dracula is back in the far future and a woman having an archive of old media properties has to summon them to fight him. I stopped when I got about six minutes in to write this. Anyway I literally have a story idea placeholder in my pages folder of my iPad for what I called “The Public Domain Heist”. Slightly different from Brandon’s in the sense it’s a person summoning public domain characters like Dracula, Winnie the Pooh, Moriarty, Peter Pan, etc. to steal a first edition of a book. And that’s when I started thinking about infinite monkeys and thought to see if any of you folks have had a similar experience? I just find it funny

I used Microsoft Copilot to do mine, and I found you have to be very precise in your wording to get what you want. If you like, I can share the prompt that I fed it to give you and everyone else a head start. Otherwise once I finish fiddling with the program and polishing it up, I will probably share it regardless. If I can get it to where it will do multiple languages, I think it could help a lot of people

UPDATE I found an interesting solution… since generating literally any word using the Japanese Consonant-vowel pair alphabet was giving me so much trouble, I turned to technology. I had remembered there was a program that Mary-Robinettw Kowal had mentioned on an early episode of Writing Excuses that could come up with words, I can’t remember the name and I have looked previously and never found it. I would write one of these myself but my coding skills are basic at best. So, naturally, I asked an AI to right it for me. Now… I realize this might be taboo, since there is a lot of uproar involving AI and its thieving people’s work, however I felt like having it write a program to make up fake words was acceptable since I made up the initial word set that it’s basing everything else on. Well it worked. Sort of. I have some minor issues with their first incarnation of the program, but I’ve found ways to improve it drastically. It works so well in fact that I think if you replace the bits of code that specifically work to make the words generated more Japanese sounding, you could pretty much generate a language to sound however you want. Assuming you do the work to come up with a decent number of words it can feed off of first

I determined I need to create about 80 words I’ve come up with about 30 already, but 11 of those are numbers that won’t even appear in this novel I’m definitely not going to create my own grammar, that’s just too much. I’m using Japanese grammar, and the alphabet with a few exclusions. Plus I have an intermediate Japanese grammar book from my college days for reference The larger issue is that I don’t like the sounds of words I make so it’s hard to settle on one for translation. It took me forever to decided to use ‘Yiji’ to mean mountain (the Japanese is ‘Yama’). ‘Tatsu’ for river (kawa/gawa) Maybe the problem is my closeness to the Japanese language. My insecurity with my ability to create something that I feel doesn’t do it a disservice. Or maybe I’m just tripping lol

Anything is helpful, thank you! I had a friend who took Latin. I salute you, she told me it wasn’t easy

I had a couple of Spanish classes in high school. But I college I did 4 classes of Japanese language and 3 different Japanese history and culture classes. Yourself?

Some of you may know I’m working on a novel, I’ve been very blatant in all my posts about it (I’m sorry for that btw, I just have no other creative ppl to talk to). Anyway, I’m creating a language for my book because from listening to writing excuses I realized I can’t outright use Japanese in my book for MANY reasons, no matter how much I know and study the language. I settled for using the alphabet to create a similar feel, but I’m not sure if using the same particles is wise. More over, I’m having trouble coming up with words that I feel fit. I’m even going so far as to create my own kanji. If you fantastic folk have any tips, recommendations, or any advice at all, then I’d love to hear it. I have my first draft done and I’m looking to have my language done soon so I can get it in the second draft before August rolls around

If you don’t feel like making up your own city, you can always find maps of London online. That way you can set it during any era you want and still be accurate when you describe distance and travel. Just a thought Oh, and I love this idea. I always love a story set in “London”. And the monster hunting elements tickles my fancies as well! What era London are we talking? My mind always defaults to Victorian I do have on other question, could it also be called an Urban Fantasy if you set it in London, or a London like city? I ask because I realized I might have written an Urban Fantasy myself and need clarification

Well folks I finished the first draft of my very first novel yesterday! I feel like that SpongeBob scene where he’s writing the essay, and just drops a smoking pencil on the desk. But now that I’m done I’ve been thinking more about the pitch I’ve put together for it. Then I had another thought, and I checked the forums, I don’t think we have a thread for pitches! Here marks the creation of just that thread! Feel free to put pitches here for opinions, if you’re seeking them, and if you are not pitching feel free to leave a few notes on the pitches you see fit. Even if you don’t like a pitch, maybe let the person know where the pitch lost you. I would be a fool if I didn’t also stress this: Please be kind always. If you don’t like a pitch, don’t trash talk it. So without further ado, I’ll give you a one sentence pitch. Then I’ll put a slightly longer one in a spoiler. An extravagant fantasy, where a suspicious drug addled widower stumbles into becoming an agent for an ancient proclaimed god. I can’t wait to see what everyone pitches

In response to the wise teacher, the ear is an older invention than spelling words with hedges. Evolution, over millions of iterations until the perfect formation of components was achieved, is one explanation for its existence. One could say yes, the ear did grow that way. But, who’s to say evolution is not just the hand of a deity creating a perfect ear like one would shape a hedge. Its not my belief… but I won’t deny its validity

In my view? In my view it would be inherent, but this is likely a result of my own moral compass as I strive for net positivity. The issue is that morality is not only an element of self, but an element of society. Say I were to give you the old trolley problem, pull a lever and save one life or don’t and save three. My moral choice may be different than that of a group making said decision. If there were an established church, that would be more easily determined. But then there would be the chance for corruption, which is what turned me from religion… Let me be clear so I’m not misunderstood: I am absolutely not saying I’m the moral decider I’m saying this is the first time I’m putting my views out there, so I’m aware there are flaws, some I have seen and some I haven’t

I haven’t read the ENTIRE forum, but… I, like many of my generation I’d think (I am the ripe age of 24), were raised with religion and religious values. But upon seeing the darker side religion can bring out of people, I abandoned my belief in the 7th grade. I was… 13 or 14? I became an Atheist from that moment forward. Now, forgive me, but to get to my point I must provide context. (Or maybe I don’t I just feel the want to do so). Near the end of my stint in college I began to reform my ideals and views, again. Suffice it to say I had some… issues to work through, and I did so by going ‘full nut job’ and researching Confucianism (and then writing my own interpretations based on modern views. Cringe, I know). This was mostly brought on by my fascination with East Asian culture. I was a Japan studies major at one point, switched to minor, but I still practice my Japanese language skills after my drop out. From this stemmed my interest in Shinto. All of this culminates into my religious view, you see. I believe everything has energy, EVERYTHING. And in a scientific sense it does. The only vacuum where there are no particles is outer space, the greatest unknown. Even still, there are rogue particles which carry charges. More to the religious point, I believe it is the morality of our actions that determines our charges as we progress through life. We are all born into this world with a neutral moral charge, and as we progress we accrue charge, positive or negative. When we die… Well I don’t know the logistics of moral energy ghosts, but your moral charge determines your reincarnation (I forgot to mention my brief interest in Buddhism). Well at any rate, the point in my making this post to begin with was to get help putting a name to this belief of mine. I must express, I do not believe in a deity. If anything, much as Shinto, I believe we are all deities in our own right. I believe the universe was born of neutral energy and thus we were all born at the beginning of time. We are merely manifestations of the universe experiencing itself. I guess I’m one of those folk from Stormlight, I feel bad for having forgotten the name of the religion. But again I digress, and now I throw the ball to your alls court, the court of public opinion. How nuts am I, oh great jury of my peers? Or better yet, what think you of my belief? I am genuinely curious. Oh, and please help me identify my a name for this. Thanks for coming to my ted talk

So we all love Dan telling us the Food Heist of the week. We’ve even had some honorable mention Food Crimes. But…. What about Crimes Against Food? I’m sitting here watching some of the worst cooking videos on the internet, and man oh man, this is disgusting. This is horror, I bet Dan would love it. Would it be uncouth to perhaps send an email over to IBS with the suggestion and perhaps an example? I realize videos would not work, as Brandon had to be signing stuff, so perhaps just screenshots of the finished food

My submission!: Real?

Hmm… if there be any mods whom see this perhaps a thread/community board for requests like animation and art. Sorta like Nexus Mods has (Are you there mods? It’s me J!)

Why, that would be Hoid! Something about a snarky, planet hopping, wit really tickles my fancy! But if you had to make me pick another one, I would pick Kaladin Another ATLA nerd I see! Love it!