Foreshadowing Is So Fun! Even Though I'm Still On Draft One Of My Novel, I May List Which Of These Elements

not only are there no bad languages there are also no bad or annoying dialects

There's something about Wen Ning kneeling to apologize for everything that went wrong, and Wei Wuxian kneeling down with him as if to say nothing is your fault that isn't also my fault. Either we'll stand together or we'll kneel together.

They are the secret third thing.

Don't leave students in red states behind

This week, a teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, Idaho was reprimanded by the West Ada school district for having a sign up in her classroom reading "Everyone is welcome here" she refused to take it down and went to the media with her story. The district responded saying everyone has to be a team player and the poster was discriminatory and distracting.

So students walked out.

This afternoon, a student-led walkout protest happened at the West Ada district office. Children are the future. Just because Idaho is a red state does not mean that rights violations and whitewashing are normal or par-for-the-corse.

this is not normal.

read the story here

The best kinds of people start their explanations with "okay, so..."

more of my silly oc band au— honestly, are they even your best friend if they won’t help you write a concept album where your characters are totally in love?

i fucking love writing a healthy best friendship between a man and a woman without making it weird or having them fall in love

hmm another cool Tagalog thing that isn't in modern English (to the extent of my knowledge, that is) - and which can be found in other languages too! - are gender neutral pronouns and words for people. this wasn't something I noticed until I started reading more and more English books, because I realized that a lot of these words have no direct equivalent in English.

the word siya, meaning he/she, singular. I wouldn't say it's an equivalent to the English gender neutral "them" as it is purely used as a singular pronoun.

anak, meaning son/daughter. For me the English translation "child" is not 100% accurate, since child could also mean a random kid that isn't your son and daughter, while anak quite literally means child as in offspring.

a few more familial terms like pamangkin (nephew/niece), bienan (parent-in-law), manugang (child-in-law).

and then there are ones like kapatid, sibling, and asawa, spouse, but I think these are more often used in casual conversation compared to their English equivalents.

and then we have the aspects of the language that were directly influenced by Spanish, so we have some gendered words in usage, hence the terms Filipino/Filipina. however, in these instances, people generally aren't very strict on using the "correct" gendered word when talking casually. really threw me for a loop when I started learning romance languages that had gendered nouns, lol. thank you for listening to my random rambling~

you really believe in that "Han Dynasty" crap?

What?

I wrote about 2200 words of Meiste today while flying home from Albuquerque. Since I had no wifi to load up my google doc (peak writing setup, I know) I instead began working on Part 2 (out of how many? Not even I know!)

For the most part, I have a vague idea of the main characters, how they grow together, and where they end up, but part of the fun in writing is surprising myself in the moment. Like, today, the two characters who will wind up in a relationship by the end of the book, I wrote their introduction and first outing. It was glorious.

Day 35 (1:05) of rewriting my novel

Today was a "bridge the gaps" day.

Yesterday, I wrote about Vimir. The day before that, I wrote about Taguchif. In order to bridge those scenes with what I already had, I wrote for, like, 4 hours and about 2,100 words piecing it all together. Now, Part Three is like 12,000 words, and I'm probably just over 1/3 of the way there? I'm staring down the barrel of probably 40,000 words necessary for Part Three.

To be clear, in no way is Meiste meant to be consumed in four parts. Later, I plan to block off chunks as chapters. But not until after I've gotten all four parts to places where they can reasonably be split off into chapters.

Part of what I mean by that is this: Part One was really rushed, comparatively. My "alpha" reader pointed out that the pacing is really rushed in Part One, and that's been on my mind this whole time, but that was really so I could work up the motivation to get through Part Two.

Part One is even, comparatively, short compared to parts Two and Three: it stands at just 12,000 words. And mostly as an introduction to the other three parts. That was a critical flaw in choosing what has become, essentially, in media res to start a fantasy novel.

I plan on adding a scene at the end, once this is all said and done, where Izi, Vimir, and his boss are all at church. With that I can do several big things:

Lay out Zenestian religion. While the Constitution of Zeneste is inherently a religious document, Zenestian government has strayed so far from its original intents to suck power from its citizens that the religion has almost become a sort-of government worship. This was one of the big reasons my "alpha" reader was confused in the first chapter by everyone just accepting that "the Constitution said Izi is Emperor, so Izi is Emperor." It's a level of Orwellian brainwashing that is crazy deep.

Lay out what Izi's world even looks like. At this point in the story, he's just an eighteen-year-old worker in a rice farm taking a single evening of rest to go and worship with his community, including his best friend and most loyal ally.

Set up the windows scene in Part One. In Part One, Izi's astounded by the lack of designs in the Old Chapel of Zeneste, and when he finds the old windows in the attic, he hires somebody to come and replace the windows for him. Since the reader doesn't have context for this, it might make Lozerief's outburst even more confusing.

Foreshadow his mom being the Hero of Life. Like, the Hero of Life appears everywhere, and I don't wanna give away Izi's mom being the Hero of Life too early, but I can afford to drop more hints.

This, alone, would add probably 2,000-3,000 words.

In addition, she recommended changing the pacing so Izi has more like a month in the palace (instead of the 3 days that I wrote in originally.) I definitely could use this to illustrate what the Zenestian government is like: a bunch of corrupt politicians figuring out how they can get more power (Lozerief is an exception).

This has mostly become me ranting about novel plotting, and what I have to do later, but feel free to let me know your thoughts! I'm always open to hear other peoples' opinions (except when they necessitate the disenfranchisement of others.)