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comicteaparty · 4 years

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April 15th-April 21st, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from April 15th, 2020 to April 21st, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

If all webcomics everywhere suddenly costed money to read, how much would you be willing to pay to read them?

carcarchu

i've currently spent about 10 dollars reading paid webcomics and got about 60 chapters with that much. i'll be buying more webcomics in the future but if it's too pricy i'll be less inclined to buy

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I buy the print volumes of my favourite webcomics, which is about £10-15 for around 100-200 pages? Depends on the comic. But I do get a book to leaf through, so dunno if that counts.

carcarchu

as an added note the app i use to buy webcomics has an interesting feature where u can purchase "food" to donate to the author directly without / in addition to buying the chapters themsevles(edited)

oh now that chalcara mentioned it i also buy the physical copies of webcomics as well and i've probably spent close to 100ish on that

also also that same app gives u daily login coins and u can also watch up to 5 video ads per day to gain extra coins which u can use to buy more chapters or donate directly to the author

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I DID try a monthly subscription to a rather specific comic content webpage, but I don‘t like that comittment. Vastly prefer buy-once-keep-something-forever; even if it‘s just pdf.

Yeah, have bought pdf‘s of comics before because of shipping expenses.

So yeah, buy once, get something, yay! Subscription, boo.

carcarchu

i had to buy a monthly subscription thing for a webcomic once too but it was a completed comic and the app has a download button so i just downloaded all the chapters of it all at once. i could see the monthly payment being annoying if u had to keep paying it in perpetuity though

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i've paid for comics before

I'd probably pay to keep reading the comics I love

but I'd be reluctant to invest money to read a new comic i don't know is good or not

i'd need a good friend, person I follow, or well written review's recomendation first(edited)

Feather J. Fern

I will buy physical copies most of the time. I do like having the print in my hands. If it was like a site sub though, like you can put your comics on a site and everyone gets paid a share, then I wouldn't mind because you get options.

But if it is just one comic though, I would be worried,

For example, if people were paid to upload onto Webtoons, but you have to pay like 5 dollars for reading for 1 month, I wouldn't mind because I still can choose what to read

But if for example, my comic is five dollars to read monthly by itself, I don't htink people want it

Especially new readers

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah i think that I wouldnt want to have to spend money to try a comic. Im really very picky and I wouldnt want to risk basically just losing money because I dont like a comic. To continue reading the ones I like I think I'd spend money, but honestly I'd probably only do that once they're complete, too. A monthly payment/subscription for a service with many comics, though, I could see myself paying for

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Depends. I’m fine with paying it at once to read it in one go, but not necessarily per month

Also would pay if I got to see a preview first

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

As a reader, I also prefer to know what the comic is about first, before committing to pay to read it, like going in blind. I prefer the subscription option to read any comic but not per comic chapter. I like to support the authors if the story appeals to me or purchase their ebooks(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I would likely pay to keep reading the ones I'm already into. But I would be very reluctant to check out new ones if I had to pay to even check them out. The first few pages aren't enough in most cases. I also wouldn't be averse to the subscription idea, assuming the platform isn't like, catering to a genre that I'm not interested in. Physical volumes actually don't interest me in most cases. Storage is a huuuuuge issue for me.

DanitheCarutor

Depends on digital vs. physical, the amount of content and quality. Usually I prefer a physical copy since I like collecting indie comics and am willing to pay 10USD - 30USD, I'll even pay high price for hardcover collector editions if I really, really like the creator's work. Like, I actually have a section of my bookshelf dedicated to printed webcomics, which isn't very full yet but I plan on practically overcumbering it someday. Digital copies and subscriptions, I'm oddly a little more stingy about. I tend to forget about stuff like that very easily, so to save myself from wasting money I would have to be almost a mindless fanatic about the webcomic to buy it digitally or keep up with a weekly/monthly pay subscription. As far as price, if it's a subscription I can't afford a whole lot since I'll probably be trying to take on multiple comics, a digital copy I may pay around the same amount as with a physical book.

I'm not too picky about what I would buy, if it looks really good or interesting I'll maybe subscribe to give it a look through, or buy a chapter/volume if I can afford it. Worst that would happen is I didn't like it after all but supported an indie creator trying to get their work off the ground. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I actually have in fact read many pay-to-read webcomics, and my experience has been somewhere in the middle. I think the most important thing is that the webcomic in question has the first few chapters as free-to-read so that new readers can get a feel for the story, because I wouldn't pay for something I didn't know I would like. The other things is for comics to be affordable. I'm not very wealthy, so the price of a comic chapter needs to be pretty cheap for me to invest. $1 per chapter is the absolute highest limit, and the chapter has to be at least 10+ pages. I'm way more willing to spend more money on print comics because it is something physical that I can put on my shelf, and because I know printing costs can be expensive.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

No way I'd pay to read a comic without having at least the first chapter free. Even if people are recommending it to me, I still want to see it for myself first. But even then... I don't know if I would spend money on an online subscription - I'd probably wait to see what people are saying about it, save my money, and shell out a bit extra for a print edition (if that's in the cards for the comic). If a comic is free online, I feel even more like supporting it with a physical purchase. If a webcomic is locked behind a paywall... I get it, but it certainly discourages me as a reader.

Eilidh (Lady Changeling)

Same here really. I much prefer giving money to a Patreon or buying merch for something I love than pay to take a chance on something I might not like

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

I agree. I don't mind subscription if it's someone's work I enjoyed but I'm more inclined to buy physical copies or get my own digital pdf of the same thing tbh

Feather J. Fern

I wouldn't mind an idea of like, you get 1 page free a month (Slow I know) but you can buy the full thing now as an Ebook or something. That system would help the author get money (for people who want to support and love their comic from the slow post rate) and great for people who can't afford comic, and read them free at the library becuase they can't even afford computers at home.

I like the print comics too for libraries, gives comics more free access

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

ah imagine if we could check out print webcomics at the library now

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

there is a few libaries that are doin that

Feather J. Fern

Yes! Actually, a few librarians went to Vancaf as long as it has an ISBN it makes it easier (Well we hope there is a copy catalogue somewhere lol) And I know in the US there are a lot more librarians grabbing comics for their shelves

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yesss which makes it super good

makes me wish I could go to my local libary but like everything else here, it's currently closed orz

Feather J. Fern

Hell, from a podcast I know there is a large interest in comics for libraries, and I know recently they are using comics to try to bring more literacy to people who don't want to read.

This might be off topic I will move it somewhere else

Eilidh (Lady Changeling)

Maybe when I get mine printed I'll go see if the local library would like a few

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

that is why I'm going to be a teacher. Get more people use comics for education lol

GuildmasterPhill

The tricky thing would be finding new comics to get into... how would you get exposed to them? And there are so many, how would you know which ones are worth whatever pricetag goes with them? It would certainly change the whole landscape of webcomics, to be sure.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It would probably increase the demand for webcomic reviews.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

yeah

And again, the first few chapters being available as a sample would be really important.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Put in requests for webcomic print collections at your local library! They probably won't get bought during the lockdown, but at least your interest will be on record when the librarians get back.

Mine stocks some, although it's skewed toward really well-known ones -- Homestuck, Digger, Nimona, Cucumber Quest, Skin Horse, Penny Arcade, Gunnerkrigg Court (there's more, I just can't remember them off the top of my head).(edited)

Capitania do Azar

If I have to pay before I can know if I'll like the contents? I'd probably pass, unless there was some other big incentive for me to read it (like a friend's recommendation). Paywalls can be a big turnoff if you don't know what you're paying for, that's what I'm saying. However, if there were previews or free chapters, and then I had to pay to read the rest? I'd probably invest those €€€.

kayotics

I read Stand Still Stay Silent at the library, actually. That’s how I managed to actually get into it, I felt like it was a better experience. As for paying: I will sometimes buy a physical book of a comic I want to read but haven’t yet, just because reading on paper is easier on my eyes. So, sometimes I’ll pay money if I’m really interested in it. But it usually takes me a while to get to that point. If every webcomic went to a paid platform, I’d probably be less likely to read Webcomics.

Feather J. Fern

A thought occurred to me, if all webcomics are paid to read, how would the newbies, or highschoolers, get an audience at all if no one would buy to read their comic?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The under 18 creators does pose an interesting question -- are they allowed to make money at all? Would they have to get their parents to sign a thing for them?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I believe so

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

As for small creators with no existing fans, I imagine they'd have to rely on subscription platforms where readers don't have to pay for their comic specifically.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, or just make no money like now

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

well, it would just also mean no readers because in this world, there isn't even an option to make no money in this world, the webcomic emperor has decreed that all webcomics must cost money to read, and you shall be thrown into The Pit if you make yours free

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Exactly

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

actually i guess you could kinda get around it by making your comic cost a penny

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

But yeah, you'd also not have readers and be unable to build a following

Basically the barrier to entry shifts and becomes more like traditional print publishing

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Slightly different from trad publishing since anybody CAN still post up their comic -- even if no one would read it X'D

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

TRUE

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

actually you know what it would kinda be like? steam like basically any game devs from the smallest indie devs to the massive corporations publish their PC games through steam. and to my knowledge, all games on steam cost at least some money so indie creators' only option to get eyes on their comic would be the same as indie devs getting eyes on their game. find someone popular willing to review it, and hope for some word of mouth.

Feather J. Fern

Odd take, hold a seminar or not really that but a group gathering where people pay like, 2 dollars, because money still needs to happen, so a bunch of newbie comic artists and pitch their first chapter or something

Oh wait I know what my brain was thinking

like comixlogy

If you can have like a section like "New comics starting out, you can read the whole first chapter for just 0.99" then I might scroll through and be like "You know what, I wouldn't mind some entertaiment"

I think also defintely reviews are really important with this situation

If someoene was like "This art is good, plot is good, grammar is good" I woudl be like "Yeah I would read the first three chapters"(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Steam sounds about accurate

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

I definitely think that in this case, good reviews would be like gold

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Even Print comics do freebies to rustle up new audience. And steam has a pretty lenient „don‘t like this game? Get your money back“ policy.

RebelVampire

For me the answer here depends on a lot of factors. If it's a one time "bulk" purchase, I'd probably go from $5-$10 depending on amount of pages, time to read, and just overall quality. I'd of course have to be interested as well, but that's an aside point for me in terms of what I'd be willing to pay. Anything past $10 is just kind of too rich for my blood sort of thing, unless it's like a super volume or something. As a subscription, this would heavily depend on the service. How are they curating content? Do they add more content regularly? How much content do they have? How are they innovating to improve my experience as a reader and to be able to find content? How is the industry as a whole? Are there a few competitors making it an affordable option, or is it becoming like tv cable because everyone wants their slice of the pie? With this many questions, it's hard to put a price on a subscription service. Definitely no more than I pay for Hulu or Netflix. But honestly, with the state of the industry right now, I don't think the price would be justified if they made it even like $10/month. Cause as it stands none of the hosts really do anything to improve my experience as a reader and only make things harder for everyone.

Feather J. Fern

This topic makes me love webcomics more, people are giving it to us for free, and It is amazing the internet can give someone an outlet to do so. Thank you internet

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

@Feather J. Fern dang I would sign up so fast if there was a good subscription service like this. And same time it helps give something back to New creators!

Feather J. Fern

To be honest, if I had the money, and the power, and the programing skills I would. I would love to support creators like this. Becuase it also gives people confidence too.

#ctparchive #comic #indie comics #webcomics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #reader favorites #comics

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yaakash · 4 years

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Trip to Comic Con Bangalore in 2019

I have recently been to Comic Con Bangalore, which happens to be my first ever Comic Con in my freaking life. It was way-back in 2017 when it seeded my mind going to convention one day 😃

After beginning streaming on Twitch, I kept asking about experiences of other streamers on their comic con visits, who were much advanced artist who themselves exhibited at Comic-Con San Diego & other places.They straight-up mentioned some do’s and don’t to artists over at convention, which were:

Cosplay is not consent (means ask for permission before taking pictures or anything related artists consent).

Ask for portfolio reviews only if they are free and respect their time.

Don’t spend too much on merch,rather show support to artists by buying artworks.

Be Polite.

Keeping that in mind, I went ahead booking arrangements for it. There was one core reason I was planning this trip, that is to go along with never-met-before, friend from another dimension. For which I was pretty excited, so we sorted out the schedules for the event.

To my surprise, Bangalore was ahead of what I imagined, being in a Tier 3 City myself. It was a much crowded, fast pace and traffic place to first appearance, but advance in terms of accessibility (metros, rent bikes etc.)

I stayed at place called Zostel (truly a backpackers den). It was pretty much dorm sharing system where people are free to cook anything they like in a shared kitchen. Here, a lot of people from different countries like Germany, Australia came for work, sharing dorms. Even to some, I smiled and greeted. I had fun playing some game of carrom with work-person from shilong (I did lose twice) & Tekken in PS4 with guy from Mumbai. Also had couple of Dosa at breakfast.

On the day of event, I made sure that we better not be late and reached before 11 am. Now there was way too many people in costumes, fan shirts. To embrace the Comic-Con spirit, I wore a Flash T-shirt 😃. Now while waiting for event to open its gates we saw bunch of volunteers going berserk to keep up the thrill and excitement in the arena.

Gate opened !

We received some goodies, Yay !

They gave us a poster of Wonder Woman and short Archie storybook with a carry bag. And went ahead for count down to opening of another main gate (what a fuss!).

But, But, BUTT... After entering, it was really a view to what an Otaku might call mesmerizing. So, it balanced it.

The exhibitions was lined up in counter fashion. Where Indian artists, Foreign Artist, Merchandise Stores, Book Stores, International Cosplayers, Art Institutes

and...

Sponsors had their counter waiting to be engaged. I did buy and interacted with some artists, restraining myself to over spend. My friend did helped me with the WiFi connectivity issue while paying up at the stores.

Here is the event exhibition store map:

So, we began marching to all counters and stumbled upon XP-pen counter, they had doodle competition going, in which I participated & chose to draw Atomic samurai. It was also first time using 22 inch Screentouch, which happens to be competition prize.

While many people spending time over participating at sports, i decided to wander around artists section and interacted with couple of them, also bought some artworks to support them. I did ask them about their journey and time they spent since they pursuing seriously. One of artist @navs.art mentioned that it took her 3 years to reach at a level of creating sell-able artwork. You can see some artwork from her I brought:

check more about navsart here: @navs.art

Another counter was of “Abstract art and life”, who were frankly allowing us to pay whatever price we can, which was generous of them. They had their abstract artwork of fine detail printed on the covers of sketchbooks and other products. I did brought some sketchbooks which I needed the most. Also I have allowed to mention that they allowed me to pay afterwards when i met with payment connectivity issue (really generous). here are some prints i brought from them:

Art by: @abstract_life_and_art

There were series of interviews, comic screening & competition giveaways happening on the main stage with artists, cosplayers and mascots. I could feel the goosebumps when people applauds at the screening of new or nostalgic comic

previews on stage screens. It was delightful to experience so many people with common interest at one place.

We roamed at lot, sometimes crossed same counter THRICE. There was range of comics available like toons, Indian stories, mythological, Childrens story book, mangas at book stores. Here are some Books, Mangas & Posters brought from there:

I stayed at Bangalore for two days, the first day was event. Next day I called up a batch-mate of mine Gaurav, living at the city. Its always quite assuring to hear his voice of care. We planned to visit the Samsung Opera House and Cubbon Park, visted via metro. Now it became quite used to metro up until now.

Since only I was the common friend to both of my friends, it was quite balanced conversations, but frankly it took less than a day for both both of them be in rhythm. We participated in couple of tech equipment's at the opera house like 4D VR, Boat Pedaling, and Cycle Race.

After finishing up lunch, it was time for me head back to catch my train. Gaurav being generous enough to company me to station, we had engaging conversations on living & future endeavours ahead of us.

To Summaries the experience, it was a creative pill went awestruck. I had never experienced the aura of creative people at one place that much. Viewing Interacting with artists have broadened my horizons to become humble as well as persevere to keep working as artists. We managed to be every place which made us tired at the end of our exit. Meanwhile on my way back, I completed the Manga brought at the store 😄

#comiccon #2019 #comicconbangalore #otaku #artlife #design

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lingthusiasm · 6 years

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Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 22: This, that and the other thing - determiners

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 22: This, that and the other thing - determiners. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 22 shownotes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics! I'm Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: And I'm Lauren Gawne, and today we're talking about this, that, and the other thing! The other thing of course being determiners. But first: We met our recent Patreon goal to do a live show!

Gretchen: Yay, live show! I'm excited! We will have more news for you about where and when that live show is gonna be, but stay tuned!

Lauren: Thanks to everyone who helped us meet this goal, all of our fabulous patrons who make these main episodes happen ad-free and available for everyone, and who, of course, as a thank you from us, get a bonus episode every month as well!

Gretchen: And if you're a patron, you'll also have seen the advance announcement that since we also met our art goal a while back –

Lauren: Yay, art goal!

Gretchen: – we now have preview art up on Patreon which you can see, a sample sketch, and we're announcing here that the theme for this art is space babies!

Lauren: Space babies! We are so excited. Space babies have been with us since Episode 1, where we talked about what would happen on the International Space Station, given that they speak both Russian and English as their daily languages, if we sent a whole bunch of babies to space to grow up.

Gretchen: Yes, if all the astronauts and cosmonauts started having babies together, what would the babies speak? So we have an international array of cute babies floating in space, very unethically, we are not sending any actual babies to space, but they're very cute when they're cartoon versions!

Lauren: We just couldn't get the ethics.

Gretchen: To be honest, we didn't try to get the ethics, we knew we couldn't.

Lauren: We've talked about space babies in a couple of other episodes, and of course we always love to chat about just what great language learners babies are, so we're very happy to have some cute little mascots for the show. And we'll be launching merch for those very soon!

Gretchen: And this has been one of our most popular quotes with you, the listeners, all the way through, so you will get to wear, or have stickers of, small, cute babies very soon! And you can see this preview and listen to two new bonus episodes – one about forensic linguistics, and another about homonyms – by becoming a patron.

[Music]

Lauren: Okay, Gretchen, it's time to determine who knows the most determiners. Are you ready? This is not a competition, but, you know, I love framing things as a competition.

Gretchen: It's a competition! It's on! Okay. I'm gonna start with "the."

Lauren: Oh, damn, you chose the easy one! I'm gonna go with "a."

Gretchen: My.

Lauren: This.

Gretchen: Your?

Lauren: That?

Gretchen: Her.

Lauren: Its.

Gretchen: His.

Lauren: Many?

Gretchen: Their... I did all the possessives, I'm sorry, it's really easy.

Lauren: That's very possessive of you, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Our!

Lauren: Some?

Gretchen: A.

Lauren: Three.

Gretchen: And also "an," because "an" is just kind of the same one.

Lauren: Okay, you get half a point for "an" because I had "a."

Gretchen: Uh, those.

Lauren: Four.

Gretchen: These.

Lauren: Five.

Gretchen: Some.

Lauren: Six.

Gretchen: Okay, if you're gonna do numbers we can be here... all day.

Lauren: Seven.

Gretchen: Like, until eternity.

Lauren: Eight, nine... okay, we have literally an infinite number of determiners ahead of us. It's probably not gonna make for a good episode if it's just me counting to infinity.

Gretchen: I think we need to declare it a tie, because we can't count who knows the most infinity numbers.

Lauren: Yup. And it's a good conclusion. Thanks for playing our game, Determiners Determinered.

Gretchen: Determiner Determiner Game. But determiners are really cool! And there are a lot of them, and I know when I learned about them, it kind of blew my mind that all of these different things that I thought of as different kinds of parts of speech actually had this hidden thing in common.

Lauren: Yeah, so even though that sounded like a grab bag of words that you think of as coming from different categories – like numbers, and possessive pronouns, and articles, and things that you've talked about as different parts of speech – if you've ever done any grammar, are actually part of the same group of things called determiners. And it's like discovering that all of these people that you thought were really cool all have something in common that makes them even cooler?

Gretchen: Like they all have a mutual friend with you, or – in my case, it's like discovering that all your friends are all also left-handed, because this happens to me periodically. It's like, "You're left-handed, too! Great!"

Lauren: Or it's like when I discover that a bunch of my friends are vegetarian and I'm like, "Yes! Dinner parties at my house!"

Gretchen: I will still come to your dinner parties even though I'm not vegetarian.

Lauren: Okay, thank you, tolerant carnivore.

Gretchen: Omnivore!

Lauren: But that's like, you know, there are some omnivores who will turn up to the party, and they might be doing different things at other parties sometimes, but they're very happy to be vegetarians at my parties. And that is kind of like determiners, these parts of speech that might have other jobs, but they have this job as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, and what I really like about determiner is that they're these tiny little words, and they can really drastically change the course of a story you're talking about, just by influencing the perspective or the relationship that you have with the main noun in the sentence. So if you start with a story like, "I was walking home last night and I saw a cat." So far...

Lauren: Great story.

Gretchen: Oh, it's a good story, any story with a cat is a good story. But so far it's a pretty straightforward story. Nothing surprising here.

Lauren: But it's clearly a cat you don't know.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: Or we think you don't know, at this point in the story.

Gretchen: But if I say, "I was walking home last night and I saw the cat..."

Lauren: Oh my god, your cat got out and then you saw it!

Gretchen: So maybe that's my cat, but maybe that's just, like, The Cat of Doom.

Lauren: Mmm!

Gretchen: Or, like, "I was walking last night and I saw that cat."

Lauren: Aw, has it been scratching up all of your plants again?

Gretchen: That darn cat! Or if I say, "I was walking home last night and I saw your cat..."

Lauren: Oh! I mean, that's surprising given that you live in a different city and I don't have a cat, but, you know...

Gretchen: We live in different continents, like, your cat is a good swimmer! "I was walking home last night and I saw many cats..."

Lauren: Oh, lucky you!

Gretchen: Well, depends on how many. "I was walking home last night and I saw a million cats!"

Lauren: "I was walking home last night and I saw at least ten cats."

Gretchen: Like, I'm scared now. You know that thing about “would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or a thousand duck-sized horses?”?

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: Like, a million cats, I don't want to fight them!

Lauren: No.

Gretchen: And I don't even think I want them all to sit in my lap, because I think I'd be crushed.

Lauren: Yes, that is a lot of fluff.

Gretchen: Yeah. So what's interesting about determiners is they can – you know, all of these were the same story, except for the determiner. And it's really having a huge influence in terms of what happened and the relationship between the noun "cat" and the rest of the sentence, the rest of the story. It determines which cat I'm talking about, or – "which" being another determiner – or what kind of relationship that cat has to the sentence as a whole.

Lauren: I always think of determiners as a really important reality check in terms of semantics. We often think about whether it was a cat or a dog, like that part of the meaning is really important. It's like, well, that part is, but the determiner is the part that makes it clear just how real it is, if it's a hypothetical cat, if it's a real dog, if it's my cat or my dog.

Gretchen: And especially it tells us things like whether it's been previously mentioned in conversation. Like if I say, "I saw a cat" or "I saw the cat" – if I say, "I saw the cat," that implies that it's been mentioned somehow before, it's an aforementioned cat, or it's a cat that's been previously relevant. Or if I say, "I saw this cat" versus "I saw that cat," those cats are different distances from me. Or, you know, "Do you want this book or that book?" The "this book" is closer and the "that book" is further away.

Lauren: I like to think about this proximity distinction a lot, because English has squandered the opportunity to have yet another proximity distinction. Because we used to have "yon" or "yonder" as part of the regular vocabulary, which was, like, further away than "that." And so I could say, "Tell me about yon cat," and that would be like, "Tell me about the cat that's all the way over there" in the story that you're telling.

Gretchen: That would be great. I think we should bring back "yon."

Lauren: We should bring back the far distal demonstrative.

Gretchen: I'm into it. I was walking home last night and I saw yon cat!

Lauren: Well, I mean, it was the size of a horse, so it was pretty easy to see.

Gretchen: That's why I could see it from so far away.

Lauren: Yep. And there are some languages that still have these distinctions, I think Portuguese is a language that has it.

Gretchen: Yeah, I know Spanish does. You can have, like, "ese gato" and "aquel gato," I think.

Lauren: Yep. And you can have a distinction between "essa," which is like me/you in Portuguese, but you can have "aquela," which is like over there, away from both of us. Which, in terms of like asking people to fetch cake for you, which is a context I think about a lot, distinguishing between the cake that's near you and the cake that is further away on the table and not near either of us, like, English doesn't do that very elegantly.

Gretchen: I think it's really important, you know, if you're going to a bakery or something and you're looking behind the glass and you're saying, "Yeah, I want three of these, and three of those, and three of yon."

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: The cakes over yonder!

Lauren: So English, even though it has a lot of distinctions, we're still missing out on some good semantics.

Gretchen: Yeah! And some languages don't have this distinction between "a" and "the" at all, really! Like, some languages do just fine without it, and it's clear based on the discourse which one is there. One of the other cool things that I really like about determiners is that they can let us do – like a lot of these little little, tiny parts of speech, these little words that are kind of the glue between the big, important content words that have all this very vivid, drawable or picture-able or pointable meaning – you know, you can draw a picture of a cat, you can't draw a picture of a "the" or of a "this." I mean, maybe you want to try! I'd like to see someone try, but I don't know what's in that picture! And so when you're thinking about the type of things that can be pictured, one of the things that lets us bring in and integrate new words, or nonsense words, or fake words, or be really creative with language, is these little building blocks that tell us, when we're bringing in a new fake word, what we're actually trying to do with that word. So it's not just an entire string of gibberish, it's gibberish that sounds like it could be kind of English-y, which is a really interesting halfway point.

Lauren: And it does this by leveraging things like determiners.

Gretchen: Yeah! And determiners are a huge part of this. So if you have a poem like Jabberwocky, which is a great poem...

Lauren: Good old Jabberwocky! I give this to my students and I say, "Well, how do you know what part of speech 'wabe' is?" Because "wabe" is not a real word.

Gretchen: So this is a poem by Lewis Carroll which begins, "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe." So it's English-y! It's got some English in there, there's an "and," and there's a "the," and there's a "did," and there's an "in," but there's also all these words that aren’t English: brillig, and slithy, and toves, and gyre, and gimble, and wabe. And yet we know that if you say, "'Twas brillig," that the "brillig" there is gonna be an adjective, and the "slithy toves" – "slithy" is also gonna be an adjective, but "tove" has got to be a noun.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: And the reason we know that is because of the "the" there.

Lauren: And similar with "the wabe." There's only one wabe in the Jabberwocky, there's not a million wabes.

Gretchen: Yeah! And you know that because of the "the."

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: And it creates – if you said, "'Twas brillig and some some slithy toves did gyre and gimble in a wabe..."

Lauren: You'd be like, "Oh, just one of those common wabes, yeah, we've all got one."

Gretchen: Exactly! So it really kind of creates a different attitude of perspectives and speakers, like, okay, this thing is common knowledge. We don't know what a wabe is, but we know it's a thing that is previously mentioned in the discourse, or that there's only one of, the way you might say "the sea" or "the ocean" rather than "a puddle."

Lauren: Of course Jabberwocky's all well and good, but I like to use snek memes as my diagnostic tool.

Gretchen: So this is the meme with the snakes in it.

Lauren: And snakes, of course, like all animals in picture memes on the internet, talk really funny!

Gretchen: Yes. And they're particularly good at making things nouns that aren't supposed to be nouns?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Or that weren't originally nouns. So the classic snek sentence that I always think of when I think of the snek meme is, "Heck off, you're doing me a frighten!"

Lauren: And there are a few others that we have from Snekville here: "I do a flat." "I am much venom." "Snek ned a boopings." "I'm doing a protec."

Gretchen: And so all of these – you have "a frighten." "Frighten" normally in English is a verb, but here the "a" is what's making it into a noun. And you parse it as a noun, that's what makes it work, but the determiner is really what's telling you. It's kind of the traffic signal for the streets that your noun and verb cars run down, that tell them where to go.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: And the same thing with "much venom," the "much" there, another determiner, is telling you, okay, "venom" here, which would be a noun, is now actually I guess kind of...

Lauren: It's a different kind of noun, yeah. It's changing the flavor of the noun.

Gretchen: Yeah. Or "snek need a boopings," you know, you don't normally put "a" with a plural noun. "Boopings."

Lauren: Because "a" is one specific thing.

Gretchen: Yeah, there's a lot of things there that – like, the thing that makes snek an interesting and creative meme is that it has the determiners telling you here's why these nouns and these adjectives and stuff sound weird.

Lauren: I like that you pointed out, when we were assembling our mini snek corpus for the episode, that snek is really obsessed with the use of "a" rather than "the."

Gretchen: Mm, yeah. So snek doesn't say, "You're doing me the frighten," or "I do the flat," like I do the twist, or "snek need the boopings," "I'm doing the protec." Those don't sound very snek-like to me!

Lauren: No, there's something about the indeterminate. Everything is possible for snek, everything is multitudes.

Gretchen: Yeah, whereas when I think of earlier memes, especially the kind of lolcat memes that often respelled "the" as "teh” –

Lauren: Yeah. Well, I think it's just 'cause the "the" as "teh" was so much more salient, because it was graphically irregular, that it kind of seems much more prominently "cat."

Gretchen: Yeah, I think of "teh" as cats and "a" as snek. So each each animal meme gets its own characteristic determiner. Well, and we can even think of, like, the doge meme, which has like, "wow such meme!"

Lauren: Doge was very obsessed with "such" and "much" and these, like, quantifying...

Gretchen: And "many."

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Yeah, all these quantifier determiners. So, yeah! They tend to draw on a characteristic set of determiners, which I think is kind of interesting.

Lauren: Yeah. "Do me such frighten" would be more doge-y.

Gretchen: Yeah, and like, "Do me teh frighten" might be more lolcat-y.

Lauren: Yeah. Gosh, imagine if Lewis Carroll was alive in the time of animal memes!

Gretchen: I feel like Jabberwocky is already almost a meme. If you put that on some images, it would kind of look meme-like. And I think you can even see – so we did an episode a little while back about the wug test. So the wug test is, you show people a picture of this cute, little, nonsense animal, and you say, "This is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two..." And you leave open that space for them to fill in "two wugs," which is how you know people can generalise the plural to words they've never heard before, even little kids.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: But the thing that makes that test possible is that we have certain expectations and certain relationships with determiners. "This is a wug." So here's a new piece of information to you, you haven't necessarily seen one of these before. And then saying, "Now there are two of them. There are two..." You know, numbers are also determiners, so "there are two..." fills in, okay, you want to say this again, you want to say this noun again.

Lauren: I wonder if you could mess up kids doing the test by saying, "This is the wug."

Gretchen: Hmm!

Lauren: Because if you say, "This is the wug", and imply that there's, like, one, saying there are two could potentially confuse them.

Gretchen: Yeah, that's interesting! Because there are some things that... Can you do this? Because I'm thinking of, like, there are some proper names that you can say, like, "The Flash," for a superhero, but I don't think you can say, like, "Now there are two of them, there are two... The Flashes?

Lauren: The Flashes.

Gretchen: Like, what if The Flash was in some sort of, like, clone/evil twin weird movie where there was a second The Flash, are they now called The Flashes? How does that work?

Lauren: The Flashes. It sounds like a really bad band or a spate of petty criminals.

Gretchen: This is my band, The Flashes.

Lauren: Yeah, so the wug test also relies on determiners in a really low-key way, but it's still really important for it.

Gretchen: And this kind of brings us into determiners and how they interact with names of people or names of places and other types of proper nouns that are unique and singular.

Lauren: Yeah. So we've said so far that determiners, you just whack 'em on a noun and it's all good, but there are a bunch of nouns that they don't work too good with! And proper nouns are definitely those, so people names and place names.

Gretchen: Yeah, like I am not "the Gretchen," I don't think anyone can say that. Welcome to Lingthusiasm, I'm the Gretchen McCulloch!

Lauren: But you are the Gretchen of Lingthusiasm. Someone could ask if you're the Gretchen from All Things Linguistic.

Gretchen: That's true, yeah! Like, "Are you the Gretchen that's on Lingthusiasm or are you some other Gretchen?" I think maybe it's easier with your name, Lauren, because "Lauren" is a far more common name.

Lauren: Well, yeah, I am definitely a Lauren. Like I talk about being a linguist Lauren on Twitter, and how much I love all the other linguist Laurens.

Gretchen: I know many linguist Laurens.

Lauren: And saying, you know, in the 2000s that someone was a real Britney...

Gretchen: Mmm!

Lauren: It takes on a kind of adjectival title property of that name being very trendy at that time and having certain connotations and extra meanings.

Gretchen: Yeah, like, a Britney is definitely different from a Karen.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: You have different associations between those. So, I read this really weird short story called "And Then There Were (N-One)" by Sarah Pinkser.

Lauren: Hang on. "And Then There Were N Minus One"?

Gretchen: Yeah, it's a pun on the Agatha Christie story, "And Then There Were None."

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: And the premise of the story – I guess this is a spoiler. It's a great story, though, you should read it. I won't spoil the ending.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: I'll just spoil the premise partway through. So the author is Sarah Pinsker, and she kind of involves herself as a character in this story. She gets a mysterious letter that says, "We have discovered the theory of multiple universes such that every decision that anybody has ever made has created a proliferation of universes. And we're inviting you to a convention with all of the other Sarah Pinskers.”

Lauren: Ah, so she's just a Sarah Pinsker.

Gretchen: Right! And so you're gonna meet the Sarah Pinsker that didn't move to Seattle, or you're gonna meet the Sarah Pinsker that didn't end up dating your girlfriend. Like, you're gonna meet all of these different, other Sarah Pinskers.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: And some of the Sarah Pinskers have changed their last name, but they're still a Sarah. And so the story has a lot of her trying to identify the different Sarahs once she meets them. So she's like, "Okay, so this is the Sarah that was wearing the band t-shirt," or, "This is the Sarah that was wearing the cute dress,” or, "This is the Sarah that had her hair in a long braid."

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: Or she'll go into a room and she'll be like, "Well, there were seven Sarahs in the room." Or like, "One Sarah said, and then another Sarah said..." And so you're doing all of these determiner things to this proper name, because suddenly "Sarah" has become a type rather than just a unique referent.

Lauren: "Sarah" just sounds like any other noun right now.

Gretchen: Yeah! Right? Like, you're totally semantically satiated on "Sarah" because it just doesn't even feel like it's a person's name anymore. And by the time I got to the end of this short story, which was very interesting in terms of what it means – you know, interesting questions of identity – it was like, what do all of these Sarahs mean and what does this mean about your ability to make these types of decisions? But grammatically I also thought it was very interesting because you don't often get to have proper names being pluralised and "the Sarah" and "a Sarah" and "one Sarah," "another Sarah," and these kinds of things.

Lauren: Certainly not sustainedly.

Gretchen: Yeah! So you have this whole short story where it does that. We'll link to it, it's a great short story.

Lauren: I find it interesting – we were talking about this briefly the other day when we were talking about this topic – how superhero names do this, and I couldn't find anything, because this is definitely not my genre of popular entertainment, but if you have any links about the use of "the" or not in front of superhero names. It's kind of interesting, because we have, you know, The Flash and The Phantom, but it would be really weird to have The Superman.

Gretchen: The Batman!

Lauren: The Wonder Woman.

Gretchen: Well, I was actually also thinking of this in terms of other mythical creatures! 'Cause you have, like, Santa Claus, not the Santa Claus. But then you have –

Lauren: But you have the Easter Bunny!

Gretchen: The Easter Bunny! And the Tooth Fairy!

Lauren: Hmm! Santa, special status.

Gretchen: Right? And all the reindeer, too. Like, you have Rudolph, not the Rudolph.

Lauren: The Mrs. Claus.

Gretchen: The Mrs. Claus! I guess you have "the elves," because they don't have unique identities, but that's a little bit less distinctive.

Lauren: Yeah. Poor elves.

Gretchen: Well, and the same thing goes for other types of generic items. So you have, like, the internet, but something people kind of make fun of sometimes is often older people who talk about, like, "the Google" or "the Facebook."

Lauren: Well, the Facebook was The Facebook and they made –

Gretchen: Yeah, it was originally called The Facebook!

Lauren: The mysterious forces of branding and naming were like, "It's not cool, just make it Facebook."

Gretchen: I was trying to think of any other major companies that had "the" in them. I'm sure I'll think of one as soon as I stop trying to go for it. Like, you don't have like "The Amazon," or "The Microsoft," or "The Coca-Cola." You know, like... The Coca- Cola?? The Pepsi??

Lauren: It doesn't really work.

Gretchen: The McDonald's? I don't know if there are any that really do that.

Lauren: English isn't that big on putting determiners in front of proper nouns, unless it's in sci-fi.

Gretchen: And you do have, sometimes, "the" in front of other words that are just kind of generic, like you say, "The power went out."

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: It's the power, it's not a power. Like, the electricity is out. It's a specific thing, but it's also kind of not.

Lauren: Yeah. And this is what makes languages always fun to learn, because what you do by default in one language and use determiners all over the place in one context, you might not in another language.

Gretchen: Yeah, absolutely. Like in countries. Most countries in English you don't say, you know, "the Canada" or "the Australia."

Lauren: Welcome to the Australia! It does not sound natural or native to my English speaker intuition.

Gretchen: No. But a few of them – like, you say "the United States" or "the United Kingdom," partly because those are compound phrases.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: You don't say "the Great Britain."

Lauren: No.

Gretchen: Or "the England." And then you also have some like Ukraine, which used to be known as the Ukraine, and now they're like, "No, please call us just Ukraine, because we want to be like all the other countries." But there are still a few countries like the Vatican or the Hague that go by "the"s.

Lauren: Uhh, The Hague is a city.

Gretchen: Is it a city? Okay. Well, so there we go.

Lauren: So there are a few places like the Vatican and the Hague that are still using determiners in English, but it's definitely not a standard convention.

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly. But in French, for example, you do put determiners in front of all your countries. So you have "le Canada," and "la France," and "l'Australie," and these kinds of things. So these are these, like, weird, little subtle variations that even when a language seems like they have direct equivalents, they get used slightly differently in different contexts. My favourite ridiculously complicated word having to do with determiners...

Lauren: Yep. I've already used the word "proximal" in this episode so you're gonna beat me.

Gretchen: This is a word that you only ever use because you can have it, and I've only ever seen linguists use it to be like, "What a great word!" And I've never actually seen it in a context where someone wasn't sign-posting how great a word it was? So definitely don't think you have to know this word to be a linguist, but also a lot of linguistics really like this word. And this word is "anarthrous." I think I'm pronouncing it right.

Lauren: Anarthrous?

Gretchen: Anarthrous. And this means "not having a 'the.'"

Lauren: Mmm! That's a really obscure word for saying "this word doesn't have a 'the.'"

Gretchen: It's such a complicated word for such a simple concept. And so "arthrous," without the "an-", would be "having a 'the,'" and "anarthrous" would be "not having a 'the.'"

Lauren: Anarthrous also just sounds like a really great roller derby name for a linguist nerd.

Gretchen: Hi, my name is Ann! Ann Arthrous.

Lauren: Yep, done.

Gretchen: So a context where you might use this, and a context where I recently saw this word, was in Lynne Murphy's book, which we talked about in a recent episode, where she talks about how Americans will say, "I'm in the hospital," and Brits will say, "I'm in hospital." And so for Brits, "hospital" is anarthrous. And for Americans, "hospital" is arthrous, as in, you put a "the" there. And you can do it with similar things, like, you go to school, you don't go to the school.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: But you go to, like, the grocery store, which is the generic grocery store, even if you mean a specific one.

Lauren: That's a good word. Try to use it in a sentence today.

Gretchen: Use it today! No one will understand you. And then you too will get to explain what it means! This is the thing that's always stopped me from getting any active use of the word, 'cause I know no one else would get it either.

Lauren: We'll post a link to that in the show notes, so you also know how to spell it.

Gretchen: Lynne's got this great point in her book where she talks about the "in hospital" thing, and then she's like, "It's anarthrous!" And then she puts in brackets, "A word which I only use because it's so great, and here's what it means." And I'm like, yeah, I see what you did there.

Lauren: Pretty much.

Gretchen: I would have done the same thing.

Lauren: So we mentioned briefly that even English can't agree on when you use articles and determiners and when you don't use them, and that varies even more cross-linguistically. We saw it with English and French, but I also like that different languages have different resources to draw on. And we talked about how determiners are this diverse group of words that can kind of be invited to the same party and hang out together and do a similar thing. And I think it's really interesting, if you've learnt a couple of languages, you might notice that some of the languages you speak have a distinct word that meets the function of "a" or "an," but some languages just co-opt their word for "one" in doing that.

Gretchen: Oh yeah, that's true!

Lauren: Yeah. So, Syuba is a language like that, the Tibeto-Burman language of Nepal that I work with. So if you want to refer to an indeterminate, just any particular one of a thing, you would say "gùri tɕí," "one cat," and that does the same job as "a" without having to invent a whole other word.

Gretchen: I think there are a bunch of European languages that do that too, because I know French and Spanish do, and German does, you have "un chat," or "un gato," or "eine Katze." And those are all the same as the word for "one" in those languages.

Lauren: And there's a there's a really great WALS map – we've talked about the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures before – that shows where there are languages that have a distinct type determiner and languages that use the numeral one for that function.

Gretchen: Oh, that's very cool. So we can click on this link and see a map of different coloured dots where the word for "a" is the same as the word for "one" and where it's different.

Lauren: Yep!

Gretchen: That's really neat!

Lauren: And the definite equivalent, so the "the" equivalent, is "dì," and that's the same as the word for "this."

Gretchen: Oh, okay!

Lauren: So they don't have a separate "the" and "this," they just have this one form, "dì." They have a distal, and they have a "somewhere between far and near" as well, super cool. And what's really cool is that for the "the" equivalent, you say "dì gùri," or "the cat," and in this case the determiner is before the noun, and with the number, it was after, it was "gùri tɕí" so that's "cat one" as a kind of literal translation. And it's really, again, a nice reminder that determiners can have such different functions and they can occur in different parts of the sentence in relation to the noun, but they still all have this same function.

Gretchen: And there's a map of that, too, of which languages have their word for "this" and their word for "the" as the same.

Lauren: Yep. Thanks, WALS!

Gretchen: What I find is kind of the most interesting thing about determiners as a category is the way that they kind of unify a bunch of things that we think of as similar. Latin actually has this thing that's very similar to what's in Syuba, which is their word for "this," which was "ille, illa, illud" in Latin, became the Romance "le, la, les" or "el, los, las."

Lauren: Ahh! I was gonna say, they sound familiar.

Gretchen: Yeah! And so the Latin word for "this" became the word for "the" in the Romance languages.

Lauren: Mmm!

Gretchen: So this is a thing that happens from language to language, even when they have no contact with each other, and they've never heard of each other, and they're nowhere near each other geographically. This is just a trend that languages seem to have. And the same thing for – have you ever wondered why we have two forms, "a" and "an"?

Lauren: Yes? But it's because – I mean, I know the environments that they occur in, that "an" occurs before something vowel-y or something H-y, but that's a complicated historical complication.

Gretchen: Yeah. But "an" is actually older than "a," right?

Lauren: Ahh! Yeah.

Gretchen: And the "an" that's an "an" is because it has the same root as the word "one" in English.

Lauren: Mmmm! I have the Etymonline links, as I always love to do, for "a" and "the" that I'll put in the show notes.

Gretchen: So if you go to Etymonline and you look up the word "one," you can see that it's the same root as "only," or "alone," or "atone," which is like, "at one," "all one."

Lauren: Mmm!

Gretchen: And in the dialect form "good'un" or "young'un," that "un" is a "one" as well. But the "one" pronunciation came up later, and "an" was also a version of that.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: And so if you have "own" and "an," you can hear how those are very similar to each other, and they're from the same root. So English actually has that connection. But the thing that makes me the most excited about thinking about determiners as a group is that it helps explain a few things about how we use determiners. So if you have a word like "the," you don't just go around saying "the" by itself in a sentence. Like, you can't say, "I saw a cat, and then the kept going on," or something like that. Because that does not work.

Lauren: You missed a word, Gretchen!

Gretchen: It needs a noun there, for support. But other determiners like "this" and "that," they can act by themselves without support. So you can say, "I saw this cat, and then this kept going on." Maybe that's not particularly good sentence, but you can say, like, "Give me this book and then I'll move this here," or something like that.

Lauren: Yep.

Gretchen: And so you can, you know, like the title of this episode, "this, that, and the other thing," the "this" and the "that" in that sentence can each refer to specific things without there being a noun there for support. And what's interesting is that the pronoun "they" in English comes into English from Old Norse, and it has the same origins as "this" and "that" and "the." They're all related to each other in terms of, like, "that one" or "those ones" or "these ones." All of those "the" forms are related to each other. So some theories of determiners group all pronouns together with determiners, because a determiner by itself – at least the ones that can appear by themselves, like "this" and "that" and "many" – act a lot like pronouns as well. And other languages also seem to have this set of relationships between what some of the pronouns can be and what some of what we think of as articles or something can be. And so if we group them into this category of determiners, it actually explains why these seem to have these weird similarities with each other.

Lauren: It explains why everyone's at the same party!

Gretchen: Yeah! It's like seeing into the underpinnings, or the behind-the-scenes view of language and saying, actually, these things, if we think about them from a certain perspective, they do have a lot of weird similarities.

Lauren: So like with Syuba, we have "dì" being both "the," which has to be part of a noun phrase for it to make sense as a "the" equivalent, but it also has its own full life as "this" and can occur independently. And so the thing I like about thinking about all of these things as determiners, rather than thinking about pronouns and articles and all of this, is that it makes a lot of sense as something that would otherwise be really confusing and you'd be trying to give it a kind of double identity that's unnecessary.

Gretchen: Yeah, and it's weird to me that "determiner" as a name for this particular category is actually around 100 years old. It's pretty well-established. And it's weird for me that all through school, I never learned about determiners, I just learned about articles, and demonstratives, and pronouns, and possessive nouns, or possessive adjectives, or whatever they called all of these individual things. And I didn't learn that there was a name for the super category? And you can talk about articles separately if you want to, but it wasn't until I started doing linguistics that I learned there was actually a name for this whole category, even though this is something that's not controversial among linguists, and it's something that's generally accepted and, you know, you walk into Ling 101 and they might start talking about determiners. And it's weird to me that this hasn't necessarily trickled all the way down to high school grammar education, or elementary grammar education.

Lauren: It does make me sad you have to wait until you're in a linguistics undergrad class to know that there's even a party going on and the determiners are all there!

Gretchen: Yeah! And, like, I'd studied a bunch of language and I'd learned what I thought were my parts of speech, and then I walk in and I'm like, "What is this determiner thing? And how is it everywhere? And why is it so cool?" So I think people should know about determiners! I also have some determiner haikus to leave us with.

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: Do you want to hear my determiner haikus?

Lauren: Sure, go for it, now that we know all about them.

Gretchen: Okay. So this is a multi-authored set of determiner haikus from Tumblr a couple years ago, and the first one is:

The best thing about the definite article is that it is the

A good thing about indefinite articles is that they are a

The best thing about using the demonstratives is when you go, 'This!'

Lauren: That was beautiful.

Gretchen: All that my best thing re: some those determiners is all the above

Lauren: Thank you for those. I'll link to them on the show notes if you want to reread them and process them.

Gretchen: You should definitely do that in case people want to write their own grammar haiku. If you write a grammar haiku, tag us in it, and we will retweet it.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: And I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, and my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistic questions, and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include forensic linguistics, homonyms, navigating linguistics grad school, and our second sweary episode, and you could help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. Can't afford to pledge? That's okay, too. We also really appreciate if you can rate us on iTunes or recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire, our editorial producer is Emily, and our production assistants are Fabianne and Celine. Our music is by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#linguistics #lingthusiasm #transcripts #episode 22 #determiners #syntax #grammar #noun phrase #the #this #that #articles #parts of speech #lexical categories #functional categories #etymology

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parivalgames-blog · 6 years

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Dev Update #12: Minami, Neato News

Happy Sunday! Paradise here with a more text filled than normal update but definitely worth the read! First, some updates from this point on may be delayed by a few days, but I'll still try to keep to the Sunday schedule. School is freaking hectic and heck it, takes too much time!! But yeah, delayed updates would just mean I'd have an exam or something to study for! Anyway, enjoy the update!

What's Happening: 1) Plot News 2) Important Update 3) Minami Outfit Preview 4) Questions

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1) Plot News

More plot news! Jun's route is practically finished! The only thing left for his to write are the endings and the sex scenes (yes that's right, SCENES). I'll update his final word count when everything is written out, but right now it'll most likely be around 100k. All of the other routes should equate to about the same within a 10k-15k difference. And yes, that's ATOP the common route word count which is around 65k words! So the game is going to be like--fucking massive.

However, don't worry! The final script will be completed in a couple of months and we should still be set to release in late summer of 2019, potentially even earlier if I can find a CG artist! (With school, it's almost impossible for me to do everything with the CGs, so we'll see how that goes. If I do have to do the CGs myself, the game may release a little later than we plan.) The game will still have 40-60 CGs and yes, we'll plan on CG previews. Unfortunately, the full CGs will most likely be available on patreon. Hiring a CG artist was not in the KS funds, so it is an excess cost that has to be accounted for. We'll plan on 4 CGs per month, including 1 NSFW CG. The cost on patreon will be between $3-$18 with 1-4 tiers. I really hate to do this but even if we get like $50 a month, that would help with costs. I wanted to keep the updates 100% free, but any additional income for the game will help with its progress. I'll make another update once CGs are in-progress when I do find an artist.

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2) Important Update

So the majority of feedback of the demo has been positive, but there are always a few negative reviews and I've made it my business to address those issues. To some people, Rei's sarcasm is just that--sarcasm. However, some people take it as just anger or 'more effect than cause'. Yes, Rei can be brash, but I don't want him painted as just an angry young adult (because let's be honest, millennials already have a bad rap). Another comment has been about Minami's scene. Some felt like it drew out too long and some were just waiting for it to end. I really don't want people to feel like they need to skip through any scene.

Another thing is, so many of the characters sprites have changed and I feel like the demo does not represent the game any longer. For example, there are the purple twins, Jun's updated sprite, Mido's sprite, etc. I don't feel like the demo shows the complete quality of the game at this point.

What I'm changing: 1-How Rei interacts with some characters 2-Minami's scene 3-Sprites in the demo 4-CGs in the demo 5-Demo Script 6-Basically, the demo

Yes, that's right, the demo is getting an update! Not right away of course, but we will definitely be releasing a brand new 1st Degree demo by the end of the year! (I know I said there wouldn't be an updated demo but I literally decided on it like yesterday.)

Unfortunately, not everyone will be pleased, but that's a fact of life. Just know that not every voice will NOT be the same. We will be reopening a casting call in the future to fill in some voices (that includes a few female side characters~). We know it's not expected of voice actors to stick around a project for over a year of not working for them, so I will be in touch with the voice actors to get things rolling to see if any of them are still interested. Looking back, I definitely wish I was a bit more prepared, but hey, can't turn back now. Live and learn. I'll be more prepared for our next game, so I hope you'll be patient as we finish up 1st Degree!

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3) Minami Outfit Preview

Yay! Minami's getting some attention! Been awhile since he's been in an update~ This week, he's got his cute little school uniform! Now his friend Lucas usually wears the standard gakuran, but Minami definitely prefers the shirt and tie approach. Can't help but be a classic cutie!

Now based on the other sprites, I now feel like Minami's BASE sprite is out of place. The super spunky colors don't really fit the aesthetic of the game, so sorry, it's being scrapped. Minami's new base sprite will be either variations of his school uniform. (I also feel like he looks more innocent.)

Either way, I hope y'all will still adore the little ball of sunshine!

Definitely gonna be feelin' up that waist memeu!

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4) Questions

1) What do you think makes a route good?

2) Are you looking for more drama and angst, or something more oriented towards JUST porn?

3) Anything you didn't like about the demo? Things you did like? Now's your chance to really break it down!

4) What do you think Minami's favorite position is? huehue

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Finally, someone in our discord server has been making fucking 1D memes and I love them.

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Thanks again for reading and I hope you liked the update! If you have the time, please feel free to respond to the questions section! As always, if you have any questions, please send an email to [email protected]

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Feel free to join our discord! You can chat with me and the other devs, as well as a bunch of other weirdos~ Previews are also posted earlier on our discord!

https://discord.gg/6T6vVaP

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Remember, we have a ko-fi! Any money will go towards furthering the game, buying merchandise, and maybe even going towards an optional narrator if we get enough~

http://ko-fi.com/parival

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Want to buy merch? Now you can! Here's an easy way to access our merchandise. Please visit red bubble and search for anything that interests you!

https://www.redbubble.com/people/parival?asc=u

#eblg #yaoi #vn #evn #visual novel #boys love #gay #english visual novel #parival #1st degree #murder #mystery #drama #kawaii #minami

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thekittenbomb · 6 years

Photo

SUP GUYS! Just a preview of my con merch that i am struggling to make! These will be acrylic charms as well as stickers and other stuffs! I’ll be posting a pre-order of these on my ETSY next weekend! YAY

#acrylic #charms #merch #merchandise #artist alley #chibi #sailor moon #sailor #moon #acrylic charm #stars #etsy #buy my stuff #toronto artist #devilman #crybaby #devilman crybaby #ryo askua #akira fudo

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kierongillen · 7 years

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Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine #27

Spoilers, obv.

In short, you do it to yourself, you do, and that’s what really hurts. But as Mark E Smith put it to the Inspirals, Nobody ever said it was gonna be easy. That was a pretty indie start to the notes. Also, incomprehensible to anyone outside of certain demographics. Well, we all have google now. We’ll be fine.

Normally hard issues are hard for everyone. Jamie and Matt go down with me. In this case, the brunt of the problem was mine and mine alone…

(Well, Jamie had to wrestle with the establishing shots in the space and Matt had to do 10 pages with about 2 issues’ worth of colour schemes (and try to solve a visual logic puzzle too) but for once I think this mainly fell on my neck.)

But we’ll get to that, as the results of a lot of heartache are only in a certain section. The rest is relatively easy. Relatively.

Jamie’s cover: we’ve smiled at this a little, in that the discussion of Baphomet’s hair is the closest WicDiv has come to the debate around Billy’s hair in Young Avengers.

I personally just like that he’s still rocking his big metal pole.

Alison Sampson’s cover: Alison is one of those creative force of nature sorts. There are artists who can just be givenn a “Draw this character” instruction but Alison isn’t one of them. She really needs to know everything, so we talked a bunch, and ended up with something distinctly oblique, about confusion. If anything about this issue says that we’re not making it easy, this would be it.

While we’re talking, Alison’s collaboration with Steve Niles, Winnebago Graveyard has just been solicited, and you should order the living shit out of it.

Page 1

The idea for this scene occurred to me – marking your death day – and was so instantly upsetting that I obviously had to write it. Generally speaking, that’s our magnetic north.

Yeah, a WicDiv calendar does seem like an obvious Merch thing to do for Christmas. We’re trying to sort it out.

Having Amaterasu on the page torn out was Jamie’s choice, and an obviously good one given Minerva/Amaterasu’s enmity.

On a craft level, you’ll see how absolutely basic this is – establishing shot with dialogue to link it to internal scene (with dialogue individual enough for readers to know who’s saying it.) Five panels. Two characters. I wanted it simple, if only for contrast – but also a suspicion that the middle section would be harder than it was, and Jamie needed to save his energies.

As a writer in comics, you’re always spending resources. They’re not always money.

Page 2-4

August 9th would be the week after the Ragnarock we saw in issue 6. Putting that whole sequence at the cusp of the world being upended is clearly a thing.

Man, I love Minerva’s hair.

I suspect I was thinking IT with the darkness coming up the sink. IT is the King book which sticks with me, shall we say.

This is an unusual comics “thing” we have to consider – Image ask us what pages we want to send out as previews, and we generally speaking cut it as tight as we can. We’d like to keep as much fun stuff for when people read the issue. It’s a teaser taste, not a first course. So cutting on page 3 would be the place to go… which we didn’t, because that would leave whether Minerva in peril unresolved, which would imply that’s what the rest of the issue about. That’s not what the issue is about in any way, and we’d loathe to give that impression as i) it’s not true and ii) that would be boring impression to give.

Page 4 has some great panels – the pummelling by Baal with Minerva curled behind him. Minerva shell-shocked. Baal’s big-brother glance back. Nice.

Page 5

Enigmatic!

Six panel grid grounds it, obviously.

Page 6

Once more, a return to the five panel. Robust comics. If you're writing a comic, and you don't know the artist, defaulting to a five panel is rarely a bad move. Study Garth Ennis comics. It's not the flashiest of choice, but it's dependable and gives the artist a lot of freedom.

(There's sparser panel selections you can use, but they're a big risk to take if you're not sure you're going to get it back in the art.)

The thing I think of here is Jamie being very annoyed that I’d settled on May 1st, as that meant the panel had to be that wide to fit the calendar design bits in.

Page 7

“Phased” probably says it all.

Page 8-9

Okay. I suspect this is the bit that anyone other than the regulars will be reading this for.

Let’s get the basics out of the way first – each story is delineated by the colour block behind it. Read from left to right in any individual sub-story.

So on this first spread, the top 4 panels of the spread (signified by that big red block behind them all and the outlines) first, then the six bottom panels on the left (orange), the six bottom panels of the right (green), etc.

Obviously we were worried about this for comixology (It’s almost impossible to read in a PDF, obv) so we talked to them about the guided view, which actually walks you through each of the sub-stories perfectly. Yay comixology

It’s printed a little less bright than we’d hoped, so we’ve considered garishing it up a bit for the trade. That said, we’ve had far less “huh”S than we were perhaps expecting.

(In practise, being lost in a whirl of time and space was part of the intent – as the title says, PHASED. You can absolutely read it like you're looking at snowflakes.)

What’s it about? Well, bar the aesthetic effect of decentralising the narrative (and other things) there was the problem of 27 and 28 having a lot of work to do. I had… a lot of solutions. At one point I was thinking that ALL of 27 and 28 would be like the Phased section, just to do everything I wanted them to do, with issue 27 just ending with a page which read <CONT.>

(The one idea which made me smile was playing with doing the whole issue like Ray Fawkes' magnificent graphic novels The People Inside and One Soul. The chapter title would have been BUY THE PEOPLE INSIDE, IT’S REALLY GOOD.)

In the end, I started writing without thinking about how I was going to present it, and generated a bunch of scenes. Far more than was required. After doing all that, I stepped back, and everything tilted a little, and I saw the way through the maze. A lot of the material could just be excised and (after I’d killed a darling) moved to in Imperial Phase Part II. As such, it was a case of arranging what we had into something that felt like a meaningful sequence.

And it ended up actually fitting into 10 pages. I’d budgeted 12, which meant I had 2 spare pages which I used in the final scene for added mood. PHEW!

Oh – the other general thing to say before actually talking about the specifics is that I’ve always wanted to do a comic that runs at the pace of the PREVIOUSLY ON bits of TV shows, and this is the closest we got to that.

On a craft point, it’s worth noting how we tried to introduce various ideas to it. The first 4-page sub-story with Sakhmet/Persephone is the first thing you see and stretches across the spread, with the two other stories as simple blocks. Plus you can read those first two panels as their own things. The coming back to that scene at the start of the page would hopefully make you realise they form a line, and have another look at the colour blocks. The more challenging layouts come later, after the ground-rules have been introduced.

Or so’s the theory.

Anyway! Content! Obviously a lot of closing off stuff people would be wondering about given the last few issues. If WicDiv isn’t doing that story here. Or, at least yet. I know I would be wondering about what London made of a multi-story monster appearing to attack the shard.

(That the first baal scene is commented upon by the second baal/norns scene is another hand-hold to get people through it.)

Man, I still love Baal’s beard.

Page 10-11

More attempt at hand-holding – the top of both pages being six panel stories, and the second story running across the bottom page, and able to be read by itself.

I suspect the actual hardest thing is the phone messages – partially as the natural order of phone messages confuses the reading of a panel (as in, the new messages are at the bottom) and partially as it turns the Baphomet/Persephone sequences in story in a story. As in, we are now in the present day with Persephone texting Baphomet while thinking about what happened at Christmas.

Not easy. But – y’know – Phased.

Cass continues to go for most sweary character of 2017. I occasionally read people don’t like WicDiv saying that all the characters swear too much. I can imagine Cass leaning into their face and screaming “I SWEAR TOO FUCKING MUCH! MOST OF THE REST JUST SWEAR A LOT. PAY SOME ATTENTION, FUCKNOSE!”

Yes, “someone creates apparitions of your dead family so you can have Christmas dinner with them” may have been one of those “Yeah, that’s really upsetting. Let’s do that” ideas.

We had to work on the colouring here to get the desired effect. In the first pass it was much brighter, which left it too cheery. A “they may be in heaven” sort of vibe. We ended up with something much more sickly.

Persephone’s expression though. :(

Page 12-13

Now we start just going across the page to pummel that in.

If this sequence has a backbone, it’s the Norns, of course. All other stuff is fragmentary – there’s a throughline with Cass.

The nomenclature ShinTwo(tm) only came to me as writing, and made me basically bang my head against the table. I’ve had quite a few people ask if I’m referencing one random star or another. No. This is just the sort of thing a certain sort of pop-star does.

Sticking TM at the end of a sentence and fucking with the punctuation is a joke I first fell in love with circa-Amiga Power. Never forget how ludicrous a corporation’s attempt to own language is. Give them the respect they deserve.

Cass’ body language throughout the dance sequences is just a joy. The first panel on the previous page too. I’m a dancer – by which I mean, I throw myself onto the floor with joy and little care of how bad I look… but god knows I’ve got enough friends who find the whole thing hard. I’ve played Dionysus here IRL enough.

The Cass/Dio conversation here is something I was worried about, and pleased it seem to have gone down well.

Page turn, to show change of direction, obv…

Page 14-15

…and into Cass experiencing another god’s power. I can imagine her end of year list updating.

And this spread is where we start tearing at the morings, and doing a horizontally aligned six panel grid across the middle of the page. Yes, writing this issue was very much like solving a puzzle – as I said, I’d written far more stuff just in terms of raw dialogue and ideas, and working out what could be arranged artistically was the thing.

The middle block also creates a time gap between the opening scene and the latter one.

That the backbone to all of this is a rave sequence draws a lime to where we’ve done similar things – namely, issue 8. However, where it’s 8 panel was about beat and flow, this is about confusion.

Page 16-17

Yeah, another mix up. Shifting sands are shifting and another set of moments.

The Sakhmet panel is bleakly amazing. Nice work, guys.

Man, this spread is a world of awesome. I’m glad I ended it with a joke of the BEEP.

Er… it’s been an odd arc for me. I was writing it with an idea what I wanted it to be, and was annoyed with myself that it wasn’t for what I felt was too long. Drugs, decadence, self-destruction, sex, awfulness… and it was mainly tying up necessary business from Rising Action. I wanted it more awful, and I was frustrated as I couldn’t get it there.

That’s no longer a problem. I think the themes of the arc are undeniable, both in form and content. I should have relaxed a little – the point of these two arcs was always the slow burn. For better or worse, it really is what we wanted.

Page 18

The Cassandra Project was a game mod I wrote for in the early 00s. I did say everything I've done gets worked into this fucker.

(Lead character Charlotte Williams is certainly a early example of a Gillen character – a self-described Sylvia Plath With A Sniper Rifle. Even if you can get it working with whatever current Deus Ex is, I wouldn’t recommend it for my writing. It’s an exciting mess of my influences. It may as well have been called THE CASSANDRA PROJECT: KIERON HAS JUST READ PLANETARY AND STILL REALLY LIKES THE INVISIBLES.)

Page 19

Jamie added the insert panel to show David Blake, as it’s been a while since we’ve actually crossed paths. This led to a somewhat intricate series of questions over how to actually letter the fucker to get the exchange between Blake and Cass to work. We ended with the ellipsis speech balloon, which is always a sweetie.

(For those who are following craft, I wanted the big panel on the machine to reintroduce it as a larger thing. The whole issue has been so cramped and it needs to breathe. Or rather, loom.)

As an aside, “Loom” is a word I over-use in my panel descriptions.

Page 20-21

Yeah, those spare pages I had were really useful at this point.

I played with cleverer grids, but a straight STATEMENT/JUXTAPOSED IMAGE six-panel seemed to do the trick.

Lots of set up for the specials here, most obviously the “rumours about 455.” Also, at the half-way point of the whole two-part thing, we get the meaning of the title. Imperial phase.

I suspect this sequence was strongly influenced by the research for 455, generally. It’s easy writing Blake when you’ve been wallowing in research.

The bathing-in-blood is a nod towards the ever-popular Countess Bathory, who actually invented the bath. True fact.

Madness is a loaded word, and I wish Blake didn’t throw it around so casually – hell, Cass too. It’s much more about obsession and addiction and excess. Still: we’ll try to walk this line.

Lots of lovely Imagery from Jamie here. The Dark Knight Returns Baal/Minerva is the one which makes me smile most, and Dionysus’ is the one which breaks my heart.

Page 22-23

And we finally mention a question that’s been asked ever since the Norns appeared in the book.

Man, Skuld and Verðandi are getting chatty.

Page 24

Man, getting to end an issue with a splash image for dramatic effect. This must be what BKV feels like ALL THE TIME.

Seriously, Matt and Jamie do some wonderful things here. Getting the level of oppressive looming darkness is absolutely what the issue is about, and it’s a testament to that.

Page 25

Comrade Rossignol, my old partner in crime, game developer and co-writer on The Ludocrats, and I have a line we tend to quote to one another. It’s a paraphrase of a quote from Ballard: “My advice to anyone in any field is to be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker.”

We quote it as: “stay true to your obsessions and your obsessions will be true to you.”

It’s basically been our respective careers’ magnetic north, but there’s certainly times when I wonder how good it's proved for us as human beings.

Next issue is the end of Imperial Phase Part 1, which – thanks to all the hyper-compression of this one – actually lets to linger with space. But we'll get to that soon enough.

Anyway – thanks for reading. See you next month.

#WicDiv #the wicked and the divine #Writer Notes

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