Video: So, You Wanna Make a Language?

On May 29th of last year, I did a webinar/workshop/thing on making up languages. It went really well, and it got recorded, which means I can share it with you all right here. I didn't put it up right away, though, because Google wanted my cell number before it would let me put up a video that was longer than 15 minutes onto Youtube, and I wanted to find an alternative to doing that.

Since I originally did the event on Vokle, I checked there today (finally) and discovered that there was an embed code for my video.

Well. That was easy.

*rolls eyes*

*shrugs*

I hope you enjoy and, if you have any questions, leave me a comment and I'll answer them as best as I can! :)

What Amateur Linguists Do For Fun

So, today I was totally going to write something serious and important or something, but then I got very distracted by playing around with a font I made yesterday. You see, yourfonts.com had a thing going on yesterday whereby you could make a font from your handwriting for free if you had the coupon code... and I had the coupon code.

The unfortunate thing is that I didn't have any time to immediately play with said font, because homework was eating my life (thankfully, I can say without sarcasm that it was the funnest homework I've ever done, because I got to try deciphering Chinese characters and figuring out which English words several Japanese loan words came from based on what they sound like. This may not sound like your cup of tea, but it is totally mine \o/), which meant that I didn't have time to play with it until today.

Today's Post Has Been Postponed...

...today got eaten by homework. I will put up the post tomorrow, and it will be awesome. *crosses fingers*

Also, I'm thinking that I should just change my posting day to Thursday anyways, because I've got this evening class on Wednesdays now and it's really been cramping my style here. Yes. I have decided. From now on, I'll be posting on Thursdays and it will be wonderful. *crosses fingers*

Anyways. See you all tomorrow!

In Which Thea is Not Exactly a Feminist

My younger brother and sister (and probably my parents) get a little tired of me pointing out the overwhelming number of male main characters in movies, and the lack of a realistic sample of female main characters in books.

I know my sister didn't like it when, after we watched the trailers just before the Hobbit, I pointed out that not one of them portrayed a movie with a female main character. This wasn't a comment on the apparent quality or creativity of the movies (because we were both pleasantly surprised with the apparent originality of Oblivion, and can't wait to see it). This wasn't to say that those movies were somehow evil for all having male leads. All I was saying was that every single one had a male lead.

You know what you say with the main character of your story? You show through who they are, the things they do, the values they hold, the change(s) they undergo, and the consequences at the end of it all what makes a person important, what makes them worth thinking about. And, whatever you say, if you say it often enough, without any notable challenge or alternative, people tend to believe it.

Surviving a Lifetime of Shyness

When I was really, really little (like, younger than four), my parents took me to Sunday School for the first time. I went in the room, saw the group of kids, freaked out internally, and hid under a table. This happened for a few weeks, my mom dropping me off, me hiding under the table, her coming back and getting me. I wasn't hysterical, I just was frightened of all these kids that I didn't know. Well, after a while of watching all these kids doing fun things, and getting bored with the table, I finally got out and joined them.

2012: The Year the World Didn't End

I've seen several people reflecting on their blogs about what went well/not so well the past year, and I rather liked that idea. It seems a more productive thing to take a moment to see where you've been and then organically growing from there than it is to just decide where to go next. Context allows us to see more clearly what's needed, and can give us ideas for how those needs can be met. At the very least, context is great for picking up new vocabulary. :)

What went well this year?
1) My writing. I finally proved to myself that I can finish things, not only by finishing the first drafts of several short stories (via Written Arpeggios), but also by self-publishing my anthology. On top of that, I completed the first draft of a novel for the first time ever this summer. How much I enjoyed doing all these things has only confirmed to me that I love writing. :D