dhampyresa

The chances of anyone else having had the following specific experience are pretty much nil: When I read Tracy Deonn's Legendborn, I got tripped up by a false friend between Breton and Welsh.

Legendborn is a YA fantasy book in which a Black sixteen year old girl ends up involved in a secret society of descendants of the Arthurian knights who fight demons. They call the demons by Welsh names, so when "isel" and "uchel" had been explained already and "goruchel" was brought up I kinda skipped over the explanation going "it's uchel + gor as in korrigan with a mutation, cool, got it, moving on" and it... Was not that. So it was a bit of a record scratch when the goruchel's actuality showed up. NOT THAT THE AUTHOR COULD HAVE BEEN EXPECTED TO THINK THIS WOULD HAPPEN


More widely applicable review:

I enjoyed it. I like Bree and Sel a lot, both separately and together. Alice is MVP. LOVED the healer guy. I'll read the sequel.

I did think the pacing at the start was a bit slow and at the end a bit too fast -- expect for when Bree gets into a mental conversation with a ghost for however long it is and I was like "is time standing still for everyone else or are they having deadly swordfights while she's just chilling?"

There were too many characters. When one of them was revealed as a traitor, my only thought was "who the fuck is this?!"

I am not a fan of love triangles, but this one was ok because (a) it's Arthuriana, I was braced for it and (b) it's an actual triangle, ie one of the two dudes have an important relationship/care about each other.

I cannot speak about how the themes of Black (generational) trauma were handled, but the author is a US Black woman. Saw reviews saying it was welldone.

I liked how the grief was handled.

I did like

bit of Merlin lore

that it used the "son of a demon" Merlin origin story

.

One thing that really REALLY bugged me though was the complete and utter lack of any reference to any of the female characters in Arthuriana. This is especially egregious when you consider that the titular descendants of the Knights of the Round Table include descendants of ARTHUR AND LANCELOT. #JusticeForGuinevere2023

Overall: Enjoyed it. Cover is gorgeous. Curious about where it's going, will read the sequel.

Some time back, I mentioned having seen some graffiti in Brezhoneg (Breton) for the first time. I have now seen some for the second time!

Given that it was in the same place and a similar hand, it's probably by the same person. Last time it read "Peseurt koc'h! Boikot!" ("This is shit! Boycott!"), this time around just "Boikot!", which likely reads as a misspelling of the French word "boycott" to the immense majority of the people reading it. But I know. And it makes me happy.

Entry title explained: none of the three orthographies of Brezhoneg, peurunvan, skolveurieg or etrerannyezhel, use "c" on its own in Breton words. It only appears as part of the digraph "ch" and the trigraph "c'h".

For the first time in my life, I have seen graffiti in brezhoneg (Breton). I... have my doubts at how efficient this is at conveying the message of "This is shit! Boycott [brand of graffitied ad poster]!" but it made me happy to see brezhoneg in the wild, as it were.

Both yhlee and ljwrites (no relation, afaik) recently posted the fact that Korean (한글) doesn't define colour the same way English does. Specifically, both pointed out the lack of a blue/green distinction.

This reminded me of a similar thing in Breton, but rather than derail either post with the following explanation of why Breton both does and does not have that distinction, I thought I'd post about that here instead.

Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany, the westernmost part of France. It's closest extant relative is Welsh.

Much like Korean and Welsh, Breton uses one word for both blue and green -- glaz/glas -- except in the one very specific case of artificial green.

Turns out the blue/green distinction is a nifty thing to have, to the point that if you really need to, you can use it in Breton, by saying sea-bluegreen or grass-bluegreen. Which is kind of cumbersome, because sure glasmor/sea-bluegreen, but the sea isn't always blue?

Unlike Breton, French has a blue/green distinction. The French word for green is "vert". It is an homonym of, among other words, "verre" ("glass").

The Breton word for glass is "gwer". I'm sure you can see where this is going.

Breton just fucking wholesale grabbed an unrelated noun to become a colour adjective because it sounds the same in another language. A purely, if you will, artificial word.

A word so artificial it is only used to describe artificial colours. A green light? Gwer. Green algae? Glas.

Why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ At what point does a colour become artificial/shift from glas to gwer? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Why do some people use glaswer and where does it find in the glas-gwer spectrum? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I feel like crap currently :(
Here's an incomplete list of stuff I read since uuuuuh the beginning of the year, I guess?

La Mort du Temps by Aurélie Wellenstein

( French novel )
All in all very reccomended.


Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them by The Lady Of The Manners (Jillian Venters)

It's very nice!

( English nonfiction )

La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu by Jean Giraudoux

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trojan_War_Will_Not_Take_Place

( French play )
Twas good.


My Chemical Romance: This Band Will Save Your Life by Haydn Reinhardt

Because apparently I had this?????

Anyway it was interesting, I shall plunder the images for references for drawing the martian punks, but also it was originally published in 2008 so it's missing the last 5 years of the band, including their last album.


Poésies by Arthur Rimbaud

V good poetry. Me likey.


Chevaux de foudre by Aurélie Wellenstein

Bit too romance focused and not a fan of the love interest remaining Marcus in the narration after the Dramatic Reveal that he was a slave too and his name was Diego.

Gave good Fuck You Rome and good lightning horse too. Alix is fun character. Nice YA overall but probs won't reread it.


"J'accuse" by Emile Zola

Never read the whole thing before! Zola has no fucks to give with the Army's antisemitisism and incompetence. It is -- and ends with -- him basically shouting COME AT ME BRO to the then-president Félix Faure's face.


a 19th century translation of Sappho into French
Twas [fragment missing] good.

Crown of Ptolemy by Rick Riordan

I know all the demigod series(es?) of Riordan's are set in the same universe, so the crossovers are a thing that makes sense, but THE WORLDBUILDING MAKES NO SENSE ARGH

Was fun other than that.


70 solutions to common writing mistakes by Bob Mayler

Eh. It was a writing how-to book. Not bad, but not mindblowing either.


Breizh v1 by Thierry Jigourel and Nicolas Jarry (writing) and Daniel Brecht and Erwan Seure-Le Bihan (art)

( French comic )


Alix Senator v7 by Valérie Mangin (writing) and Thierry Démarez (art)

( French comic )


Ar-Men, l'enfer des enfers by Emmanuel Lepage (art and writing)

The history/story of "the most inaccessible lighthouse in Brittany, which to say, of the world". In the parlance of French lighthouse keepers, paradis ("heavens") are lighthouses on the mainland, purgatoires ("purgatories") lighthouses on islands and enfers ("hells") lighthouse out at sea.

Really REALLY good use of the comic medium. I am blown away.

Really interesting story (stories) too!

The lighthouse was built in the 19th century on a rock that was only uncovered at low tide during the spring tide so lol it took them 15 years to built the lighthouse.

Also holy shit the art is AMAZING

Also the last panel showing words written inside the lighthouse: "Le feu est clair; tout va bien" (The fire is bright; all is right) made me fucking cry.

Since it's apparently poetry time, have a poem in Breton! It's Anjela Duval's Karantez-Vro. You can listen to it here. (I based the English translation more on a French translation than on the Breton itself.)

Karantez-vro I E korn va c’halon zo ur gleizenn ’Baoe va yaouankiz he dougan Rak siwazh, an hini a garen Na gare ket ’r pezh a garan Eñ na gare nemet ar c’hêrioù Ar morioù bras, ar Broioù pell Ha me ne garan ’met ar maezioù Maezioù ken kaer va Breizh-Izel ! II Ret ’voe dibab ’tre div garantez Karantez-vro, karantez den D’am bro am eus gouestlet va buhez Ha lez’t da vont ’n hini ’garen Biskoazh abaoe n’am eus en gwelet Biskoazh klevet keloù outañ Ur gleizhenn em c’halon zo chomet Pa ’gare ket ’r pezh a garan. III Pep den a dle heuilh e Donkadur Honnezh eo lezenn ar Bed-mañ Gwasket ’voe va c’halon a-dra-sur Pa ’gare ket ’r pezh a garan Dezhañ pinvidigezh, enorioù Din-me paourentez ha dispriz Met ’drokfen ket evit teñzorioù Va Bro, va Yezh ha va Frankiz !

Love of the country I In an angle of my heart there is a scar, It has been there since my youth Because, alas, the one I loved Did not love what I love. He liked only cities, Deep seas and farway lands; And I liked only the countrysides, The beautiful countrysides of my Lower Brittany. II I had to choose between two loves, The love of the country, and the love of a man; To my country I offered my life, And let my beloved go Since then I never saw him again, Never heard of him gain - The scar is left in my heart, He didn't love what I love. III Each one of us must follow their Fate It is the law in this world. Yes my heart was wounded, But he did not love what I love. To him, wealth and honors To me, poverty and contempt. But I would not trade for any treasure, My country, my language and my freedom.

Alright everybody settle down, it's story time! I'm going to talk to you about the Arthurian legend as I know it in the hope of making you see how wrong on the internet you are.

But first, some context: my first memory of anything Arthuriana related is being wee (let's say six years old or so) and reading a book. I'm pretty sure the book was La Forêt aux 100 sortilèges or at the very least another from that line of illustrated choose-your-own-adventure books. I was reading the book and I stopped. I carried the book all the way to where my mother was, taking care not to lose  my place.

The book was wrong.

On the double-page spread, one I can still see in my mind, the choice you had to make was how to save an emprisonned knight of the round table. So far, so good, right? No, because Morgane had put him there and that simply couldn't be right. I mean, water is wet, fire burns, Morgane is good, everyone knows that.

So I asked what was wrong with the book, why was Morgane evil in it? "Sometimes, in books, Morgane is evil."

That was the moment I started paying attention to Arthurian legend(s).

What's interesting to me, though, is that I have absolutely no recollection of ever learning about Morgane, Viviane and Merlin before this incident -- it was just of those immutable facts of the universe that you just know. Because of this, there are moments in what I'm going to retell where I could tell you who told me (my uncle, my grandma, my great-uncle, that one dude from [town on the other side of Brittany where they get the story wrong]...), but mostly I can't, so you'll just have to take my word for it that that's how the story goes.

(I don't know if you've ever tried to build a narrative out of oral tradition, but it's hard and I'm no Elias Lönnrot. Also, I translating from French and breton French at that, so cut me some slack. Seams are gonna show.)

( In which Morgane is good and Merlin is not AS IT SHOULD BE )

Okay, that should cover most of it, I think. (Also the Fisher King/le roi pecheur is Perceval's grandfather.)