Randomness

[flemmings]

1. petronia departed in Sunday's mist and falling leaves, and now my house is indubitably my house once more, rather than the Otherwhere it becomes when someone else is in it. Don't know why it shifts identity that way (mind says sardonically, and with some truth, 'because it's never this tidy when you're here alone') and anyway it only works with people I've known for less than 20 years. But recent acquaintance alter it quite out of recognition, and I miss the strangeness when it, and they, are gone.

2. I thought that the misidentification of a painting in the last Patricia Briggs I read would become a plot point. Someone says 'Here's the martyrdom of St Stephen. He's crucified upside down, as in the legends.' Ah, surely this man is an imposter! Um, no. The only significance is that Briggs didn't google 'martyrdom St Stephen' and let herself be led astray by her memories of the martyrdom of St Peter. This annoys me more than it should.

3. Reason the whatever why one should never tidy (unless there are guests.) Half my winter tops have vanished. I wouldn't have given them away, either because they were too ratty for Goodwill or not ratty enough. I must have put them away somewhere, and not in a drawer, because I've been through all my drawers. Must start opening suitcases next.

4. Have been wondering exactly which of the Kai generation Irene's Kai is. Not any of Gouen's, obviously, because Gouen is an uncle. Not anyone's heir either, I surmise, because heirs are not lendable to Libraries. One of Kaiei's younger brother's? (Not Kaisou, unless he's outgrown his bumptiousness.) Or one of Gouron's perhaps? I know they're technically cousins, but I'm given to understand that cousins in different generation turn into uncles and nephews without trying.

5. Another niggle. The use of may for might, and not in direct quotation. "I was aware Holmes may be in danger but there was nothing I could do." Dunno if might would be conditional or subjunctive there, or if it's just sequence of tenses; but whatever it is, it's what you use, not the present may.

Comments

[incandescens]

One of Kaiei's younger brothers, I think. When I started (a while back) I was considering him as the eldest, but then your point made itself felt: the eldest would never be allowed to go off and do anything this casual. Maybe he's next after Kaimyou.

I haven't yet decided who his mother is, though of course she is of a proper rank and bloodline. Female dragons are going to have to come into things at some point.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Next after Kaimyou is Kaishin, a green dragon, mother undecided. After him is Kaiten, colour undecided though I *was* noticing a lack of black dragons in the Kai generation; mother is Chihao, Third Prince of the Southern Continent, also mother to Kaimyou. As evidenced here at the end (http://flemmings.livejournal.com/155855.html).

Edited for borked html

[incandescens]

Well, if Kaien (my current thought on Kai's real name, though still unstated and open to change) comes after Kaiten then that makes him sixth. Certainly Goukou has no lack of sons.

I suspect that like "ocean", "continent" is going to mean something in how dragons perceive groups of alternate worlds, but be completely untranslatable to Librarians.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

On a tangential point that I never got clear. How do librarians handle the languages in the alternates? Do they go by the French they learned in whichever alternate they were educated in? Then does French not alter in different worlds? or is there a kind of ur-French/ Platonic Form French that will be understood *as* French in all the alternates, but that sounds accented?

And if Librarians have little truck with dragons, how do they speak whatever language it is dragons use? Or do dragons speak Chinese?

[incandescens]

They go by the language that they learned wherever they were educated: this can differ between worlds, and can create problems when (to pick an example on the fly) two very different versions of history have resulted in widely differing versions of French. And that's not even going into language families like Chinese or Urdu. There isn't really an ur/prime/Platonic type of each language, but there is usually a version of it which is more common than other versions.

Sometimes the reason for a particular assignment for a Librarian may simply be that they are the most convenient person with a knowledge of the language which is most similar to that alternate's variant.

Dragons... I don't think dragons or fae have their own language. They use human languages. But very powerful fae, and probably very powerful dragons too, can make themselves understood in any language. I think that's more of a quasi-telepathic thing than a linguistic thing, though.

(The author reserves the right to have a better idea on this one, as she can see it's rather wobbly...)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Not wobbly at all. I can see dragons and fae communicating half by body language and half by THINKING VERY LOUDLY by everyone else's standards, to the extent that people who don't think of themselves as psychic at all somehow understand quite clearly.

It's possible I'm thinking of my largely non-verbal interactions with totally non-verbal young humans here, of course; and partly of the totally nonverbal messages I received from the Japanese around me, which were utterly head-screwy because no one had actually said anything or looked at me or done anything, but the impression of censure was overwhelming.

[incandescens]

That makes sense. And people around them "hear" it in their own language, and don't actually realise that the dragon wasn't necessarily speaking it.

Though I think that only very powerful dragons/fae do this. Certainly Kai is confined to the languages he knows, with maybe a bit of an ability to "shout" in an emergency.