See here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4skIeaShLZkcERlTXQ3SnJhZjA
Soaking a book underwater! After leaving it in there a day or two we'll update you with further results. :)
Saturday, May 10, 2014
Little Mermaid inspired scene
Sooooooooooooooooooooooo this just came into my brain last night and I had to write it up! Unlike the Disney version I imagine it’d take place around Jamaica-ish (or a fantasy equivalent). I’d definitely have to do WAY more research about the area and culture and imagine how I’d think that would influence the underwater culture, but hey! It’s a thought!
This is just a scene without a whole story to accompany it, but if you know the little mermaid it's implied! The Andersen version is about her wanting BOTH to marry the prince AND to have an immortal soul; the Disney version is JUST about wanting to marry the prince, so this one will be JUST about wanting an immortal soul. I’ll see if a romance crops up in my brain or not, but for now this is it as far as writing goes cause it’s definitely not on my list of writing priorities.
True story: my sister and I literally took a book I disliked and put it underwater so I could see how it would behave. I’ll link the video as soon as I put it up!
*
“Do you even know what ‘witch’ means?” the sea witch asked me. She traced a shell-like fingernail across the spine of one of her bound collections, mouthing the foreign title’s pronunciation.
A tremor wriggled its way through my body, making the webbing between my fingers flutter in the current. “It means…a woman who does magic,” I said, my gills contracting unevenly. I folded my arms tightly around my dark brown, scaled torso and flushed my fins forward so I could back away – subtly, or so I thought. “Evil magic,” I added in a mutter, avoiding her eyes.
The sea witch turned away from her shelves of accumulated records and gave me a long, unimpressed stare. Then she turned back to her books. “No.”
I waited silently, aware that I was very vulnerable, alone in her territory, asking for her help. I shook my head quickly making my clouds of floating, tightly curled, seaweed-textured hair billow around me. “What does it mean?”
“Well, scholars can never agree. People don’t keep track of their words, you see.” She pulled out several of those bound collections I recognized to be human books, handling them with a delicate touch. “A human once theorized it came from the Old English word wita, ” she explained, pointing to a certain page and then reading from it. “Which means… ‘to know.’ I personally liked that, but…”
The sea witch lifted another book, letting it drift in front of her. The shifting patterns of light drifting through from the surface played across the swishing page ends. “More likely, according to another humanic record, Deutsches Wörterbuch, it’s derived from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘weik-,’ meaning ‘to separate,’ or perhaps, as they say here – ” She delicately thumbed through another book, careful not to further rip its fragile pages. “ – ‘weg-,’ which means ‘to rouse’ or ‘wake.’ Or in other words,” she finished, squeezing the pages slowly closed and back into their unnaturally flat, compressed shapes, “everything we do, everything we are, is about knowledge.”
“Knowledge,” I repeated blankly, my gills pulling oxygen from the water flow around me more consistently now that my heart beat had slowed.
“Yes,” the witch answered firmly. She spun slowly through the water toward me, keeping her eyes locked on mine even while she turned. “Simply put, we teach. You think you came to me because you want magic. But really, you want to be awakened. You want me to separate the truth from lies. You know that I have studied humans in the past, and have heard of these ‘immortal souls’ your grandmother spoke of.”
My throat felt oddly full. Grandmer had told me how humans cried, but we could not, and so we suffered more. I had been confused, but I wondered if this feeling was that…the desire to cry.
I pursed my lips. “Yes.”
Her eyes scanned me up and down, evaluating, searching for I don’ know what.
“Come,” she said finally. Her fins powered her upward. “I will teach you.”
This is just a scene without a whole story to accompany it, but if you know the little mermaid it's implied! The Andersen version is about her wanting BOTH to marry the prince AND to have an immortal soul; the Disney version is JUST about wanting to marry the prince, so this one will be JUST about wanting an immortal soul. I’ll see if a romance crops up in my brain or not, but for now this is it as far as writing goes cause it’s definitely not on my list of writing priorities.
True story: my sister and I literally took a book I disliked and put it underwater so I could see how it would behave. I’ll link the video as soon as I put it up!
*
“Do you even know what ‘witch’ means?” the sea witch asked me. She traced a shell-like fingernail across the spine of one of her bound collections, mouthing the foreign title’s pronunciation.
A tremor wriggled its way through my body, making the webbing between my fingers flutter in the current. “It means…a woman who does magic,” I said, my gills contracting unevenly. I folded my arms tightly around my dark brown, scaled torso and flushed my fins forward so I could back away – subtly, or so I thought. “Evil magic,” I added in a mutter, avoiding her eyes.
The sea witch turned away from her shelves of accumulated records and gave me a long, unimpressed stare. Then she turned back to her books. “No.”
I waited silently, aware that I was very vulnerable, alone in her territory, asking for her help. I shook my head quickly making my clouds of floating, tightly curled, seaweed-textured hair billow around me. “What does it mean?”
“Well, scholars can never agree. People don’t keep track of their words, you see.” She pulled out several of those bound collections I recognized to be human books, handling them with a delicate touch. “A human once theorized it came from the Old English word wita, ” she explained, pointing to a certain page and then reading from it. “Which means… ‘to know.’ I personally liked that, but…”
The sea witch lifted another book, letting it drift in front of her. The shifting patterns of light drifting through from the surface played across the swishing page ends. “More likely, according to another humanic record, Deutsches Wörterbuch, it’s derived from the Proto-Indo-European root ‘weik-,’ meaning ‘to separate,’ or perhaps, as they say here – ” She delicately thumbed through another book, careful not to further rip its fragile pages. “ – ‘weg-,’ which means ‘to rouse’ or ‘wake.’ Or in other words,” she finished, squeezing the pages slowly closed and back into their unnaturally flat, compressed shapes, “everything we do, everything we are, is about knowledge.”
“Knowledge,” I repeated blankly, my gills pulling oxygen from the water flow around me more consistently now that my heart beat had slowed.
“Yes,” the witch answered firmly. She spun slowly through the water toward me, keeping her eyes locked on mine even while she turned. “Simply put, we teach. You think you came to me because you want magic. But really, you want to be awakened. You want me to separate the truth from lies. You know that I have studied humans in the past, and have heard of these ‘immortal souls’ your grandmother spoke of.”
My throat felt oddly full. Grandmer had told me how humans cried, but we could not, and so we suffered more. I had been confused, but I wondered if this feeling was that…the desire to cry.
I pursed my lips. “Yes.”
Her eyes scanned me up and down, evaluating, searching for I don’ know what.
“Come,” she said finally. Her fins powered her upward. “I will teach you.”
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Language as a Gatekeeper
Okay, so you know me. I am a LOVER of vocabulary. I love how the use of extensive vocabulary can be not only beautiful but full of specific meaning that simpler words can't quite capture.
But MAN! Sometimes, people get all into themselves over a discussion and start using highly specialized jargon and extremely elitist language and I all I can think is, "You know what? You're not actually contributing to your meaning or this discussion with this language. All you're doing is cutting out the people who don't understand those words, and 'proving' how superior you are."
I think that is total crap.
I had entered into an awesome and friendly discussion on a friend's FB page about evolution vs creation and if they were contradictory. It was really cool to see a FRIENDLY, open discussion on that subject, which can get really sticky! But ultimately, two guys ended up commandeering the whole discussion with their stilted language and oily attitudes and debates and definition arguments.
I bowed out. Because I don't think that helps anyone. By the time you've reached that point, you are limiting the conversation to two people who already are firmly entrenched in their opinions, and no one else reading is going to learn anything from it because they're using their language as a gatekeeper to filter out anyone not "qualified" to understand.
Well, here's what I think: use specialized language when it best serves your meaning, but in a situation like that? Explain for those who don't get it, if you've got to use those words! Right now is an exciting time where people who failed out of high school can get the equivalent of a college education online for free if they're disciplined enough, because the gatekeeping barriers of knowledge have been breaking down. The internet and social media have their down sides, but ultimately they've become the modern parallel to translating the Bible from Latin to English (William Tyndale is my hero <3) - people can check it out for themselves instead of relying on the words of those from the ivory towers.
Well-educated people are sharing what they know casually and kindly. Previously uneducated people are learning quickly and providing incredible insight. Teenage girls, plural, are coming out with incredible inventions and discoveries, like (for example) a water wheel that also powers an mp3 player so women who used to have to walk for miles with a pot of water for their home can now carry gallons more AND learn as they go! People are inventing cheap microscopes literally made of paper so doctor's offices in poverty-stricken countries and areas can properly diagnose and treat their patients.
Some people feel threatened by the slew of free-flowing information, as if it somehow might invalidate their very expensive degree-obtained knowledge. I don't think it does. Some things you can only learn and understand by devoting so much time (and money!!!) to learning. But just because you did that doesn't mean you should use the way you speak to everyone else as a way to keep them out of the knowledge you gained. There doesn't need to be a division between the "wonderers" and the "instructors." We're all both.
Getting into an excited conversation with someone else who shares your specialized knowledge and feeling free to communicate with them is one thing. I do that all the time. Since finishing massage school I've been constantly using anatomy terms because they've become second nature to me.
But it is my hope that I will never, EVER, use those terms - that language - to purposely shut out people who haven't learned it. Or to make it seem like I'm somehow better than them. That's bull. I just happened to make a choice that brought me into a situation where I learned all of those things. And I'm happy to explain and share in layman's terms for anyone who cares to hear.
This has been an opinion.
Lauren out.
But MAN! Sometimes, people get all into themselves over a discussion and start using highly specialized jargon and extremely elitist language and I all I can think is, "You know what? You're not actually contributing to your meaning or this discussion with this language. All you're doing is cutting out the people who don't understand those words, and 'proving' how superior you are."
I think that is total crap.
I had entered into an awesome and friendly discussion on a friend's FB page about evolution vs creation and if they were contradictory. It was really cool to see a FRIENDLY, open discussion on that subject, which can get really sticky! But ultimately, two guys ended up commandeering the whole discussion with their stilted language and oily attitudes and debates and definition arguments.
I bowed out. Because I don't think that helps anyone. By the time you've reached that point, you are limiting the conversation to two people who already are firmly entrenched in their opinions, and no one else reading is going to learn anything from it because they're using their language as a gatekeeper to filter out anyone not "qualified" to understand.
Well, here's what I think: use specialized language when it best serves your meaning, but in a situation like that? Explain for those who don't get it, if you've got to use those words! Right now is an exciting time where people who failed out of high school can get the equivalent of a college education online for free if they're disciplined enough, because the gatekeeping barriers of knowledge have been breaking down. The internet and social media have their down sides, but ultimately they've become the modern parallel to translating the Bible from Latin to English (William Tyndale is my hero <3) - people can check it out for themselves instead of relying on the words of those from the ivory towers.
Well-educated people are sharing what they know casually and kindly. Previously uneducated people are learning quickly and providing incredible insight. Teenage girls, plural, are coming out with incredible inventions and discoveries, like (for example) a water wheel that also powers an mp3 player so women who used to have to walk for miles with a pot of water for their home can now carry gallons more AND learn as they go! People are inventing cheap microscopes literally made of paper so doctor's offices in poverty-stricken countries and areas can properly diagnose and treat their patients.
Some people feel threatened by the slew of free-flowing information, as if it somehow might invalidate their very expensive degree-obtained knowledge. I don't think it does. Some things you can only learn and understand by devoting so much time (and money!!!) to learning. But just because you did that doesn't mean you should use the way you speak to everyone else as a way to keep them out of the knowledge you gained. There doesn't need to be a division between the "wonderers" and the "instructors." We're all both.
Getting into an excited conversation with someone else who shares your specialized knowledge and feeling free to communicate with them is one thing. I do that all the time. Since finishing massage school I've been constantly using anatomy terms because they've become second nature to me.
But it is my hope that I will never, EVER, use those terms - that language - to purposely shut out people who haven't learned it. Or to make it seem like I'm somehow better than them. That's bull. I just happened to make a choice that brought me into a situation where I learned all of those things. And I'm happy to explain and share in layman's terms for anyone who cares to hear.
This has been an opinion.
Lauren out.
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