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IT IS OKAY. I UNDERSTAND THAT REAL LIFE HAPPENS. Hell, it even happens to me occasionally. So, no worries! And yesssss tl;dr, I'm so excited.

As for the trip, I'll be making an entry about it, but for summary: it went REALLY NICE, but my parents were a pain in the ass. But the scenery is gorgeous and I saw lots of deer and a grizzly bear and BIGHORN SHEEP, AHHHH (I've always wanted to see one). Here, have a photo, because I feel like teasing you:

It was SO GORGEOUS OMG. But you'll have to wait until the post for the rest. Anyway, no, we didn't go see the dinosaurs. When we pulled into Drumheller, it was too late for that - and since my grandmother lived there, well, we've seen the museum several times, so we don't go every time we're in the area. I'd like to see it again, though - it's been a few years since I was last there.

As for education - I guess you're right about learning from mistakes and so on. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, considering my current location, but when I really think about it, you're right.
As for the whole going outside thing, ehh... well, I don't know. I tend to feel awkward about that, because when I was younger I wasn't really allowed outside. Well, okay, I could go outside, but I had to stay in the yard. There was a park right across the street but I wasn't allowed to go anywhere or do anything, even up until I was 13. I did have a bicycle, but I was expected to ride it in the driveway. Er. Sooo I spent a lot of time inside playing Sonic and reading novels. On the whole, I think childhood memories are a bit overrated anyway, so I don't particularly care.

Anyway. Hetalia fandom. I've never been in big fandoms or anything, really, and my last big involvement was so long ago that it doesn't really matter (years and years and years) so this is all new to me. I actually became involved in it because of the wank - I saw mention of it on

sf_drama and thought the idea was interesting. I'm glad that I became involved when I did (early January), though I do wish I had jumped in even earlier, because it's just so much fun.

Oh derp, history books - I've been mentioning and never bothered with titles. My entire European history collection is very small. It is thus -
*A Concise History of Finland by David Kirby
*A Concise History of Sweden by Neil Kent
*The Baltic Revolution by Anatol Lieven
I'm also slowly acquiring a collection of literature (because I feel you can't really learn about history without reading the literature as well). Thus far I have a mishmash of Icelandic sagas, Norwegian plays (Ibsennnnn), Baltic poetry, aaand also a copy of the Kalevala is on its way to me. But that's all so far.

When it comes to school (high school, at least) I've given up on trying to hope that anyone will learn anything. My mother is a teacher up in Fort Mcmurray, and the state of the public school system there right now is even worse than when I left it. I'm told it's much the same in the rest of the province. Ugh, I'm so glad that I graduated when I did, else I'd be going crazy.

I did hear about that PSA in the states; in fact, an acquaintance of mine, who lives in Georgia, asked me if it was true that our system is exactly as they say. Ugh. Ugh! Stuff and nonsense. It just makes me want to throw up my hands in despair. People are so ridiculous.

Anyway. Parallels between Finland and Canada, eh. Well, this is going to be REALLY GENERAL because it is early in the morning and I have not had my coffee yet and it's been a little while since I have read my history book. But anyway. A lot of the similarities I see are actually kind of superficial and limited, but... I see them regardless (maybe I just want to see them)
Firstly, geography. Okay, so, the whole of Canada isn't much like Finland - Canada is a pretty big place, after all. But the part that I'm most familiar with is very much like it. Northern Alberta. Pine forests filled with lakes. Seeing photos my friends take, I swear, it looks like Alberta. It's just that Finland is flatter.
Secondly, isolation. This partly goes along with geography. Canada = big place with lots of snow and trees and nobody lives there. Finland = smaller place with lots of snow and trees and nobody lives there. Fff. But in all seriousness, both have populations that are small (for their size) and spread out and kind of isolated. True for the past, less so for the present but still there.
Thirdly, just kind of a general thing - both were colonized, and that had a very significant effect on the development in terms of culture/identity/etc. But that's speaking very generally.
And fourth, just a bit of silliness that reminded me of Canada - I've seen Finns complain about having to learn Swedish, particularly if they don't live in an area with Swedish-speaking population. "Arrrgh, why do we have to learn this, I'm never going to use it!" Reminds me very much of having to learn French when living in Alberta. ;p Same deal. "OH MY GAWD, why do we have to learn French, we'll never use it!".

Anyway, there is more, and certainly more specific things, but I can't remember them at the moment. Ffffff anyway.

I AM GLAD YOU WENT TO THE LIBRARY. AND I AM GLAD YOU FOUND WHAT YOU WERE LOOKING FOR. Best feeling ever, when that happens. (Oops, this reminds me that I need to go to the library too. I need to take back a bunch of textbooks from last year. Gaahhhh I am so lazy. Luckily, as a graduate student, my sign-outs are good until September...) Anyway. I understand the feeling. My family, well - they unfortunately don't. So I have to talk to people online about it. Sob sob but WHATEVER. IT'S GOOD.

Anyway, gahhh. Yeah. I realize that getting published can be very difficult, that publishers will only pick up certain things. But there's always the chance that I'll write something good that will sell.
Or maybe I'll just write something crappy and Twilight-ish ffor the money, and publish it under a pseudonym, so I can get rich. Hah.
But in all seriousness, I dunno... most of the stuff I write isn't very publishable. I mean, fanfiction aside, I mostly write poetry, and everyone knows that nobody reads poetry. Sigh.
Of course, I'll have to write academic books too, but those don't make any money and they don't count.

And. askldjf. OKAY I will try to post more frequently... when I write something worth posting. 8D Your kind words make me all a-flutter. Feels excellent hearing those things. <3
For the most part, I try to only post things that I am satisfied with, and that have something resembling a plot, because I think it makes the best impression. But I've decided that I might try to post a bit more, just because a lot of people seem to like reading what I write, and because I write unusual things that people might be looking for but can't find (I remember someone saying a short while ago that there's no Est/Fin around... well, no, there is, I just only post it to my journal, sob D: )
But. Yes. I'm going to get off my butt and do some edits to some old things and post them up to the main comm, or maybe kalmarunionen I guess (now that they have non-Nordic tags. Perfect for me, considering)

Anyway. Languages. UGH. I wish they taught French properly. But as you said, everyone would be whining about it. And fffffu one of my friends is trying to persuade me to learn Finnish and I'm like... aksdfj. But I kind of want to try. And at least I would have them to practice with (and they wouldn't tease me about my horrible Finnish too much... I think). But I don't know if I will have the time.

In some ways, I like being able to recognize people too. I like being able to identify who I'm talking to, even if it's by an alias (tl;dr draw-anon, Salmiakki anon, etc). But anyway, yes, a lot of the newer people who post under their name - I'm not sure what to think of them. But, that might be because I don't know them very well yet, thus don't know anything about their personalities. Maybe.

It does upset me too when someone targets a person who is posting under their name. For me, it's because when someone targets an anonymous poster, they don't really know who they're directing it toward. But when it's someone with a name, they know precisely who they are aiming their hate at, and it seems more personal that way. That's what bothers me most.

Anyway. People being able to identify me - yeah, it's probably the way I write. The word choice and sentence structure and so on. I realize that some parts of my vocabulary are, er, a little bit archaic (shan't/shall, remarkable/unremarkable, etc). Sob, I do try to make my writing a little less notable when anon, but a lot of the time it doesn't work. And I don't think I could ever bring myself to mutilate my grammar. Fff.

Oh well. I WILL FIGURE SOMETHING OUT. Yes. 8D

... Also, holy shit. Teal deer is really really really teal today.

why would you crash on me like this, computer. why. ~~it's a good idea i had half this reply saved, at least~~

I remember back in the day, when I was just a young little thing, I was amazed by you having a reply of 5022 characters. Oh, how times have changed :') It's strange cause your reply doesn't even really seem all that long. You should get a prize or something for it, though. I got such a kick out of it.

/feels teased. Aah, that picture is so lovely. The mountains are the greatest, though I think they're even more gorgeous in the winter, right after a fresh, heavy snowfall (I'm a winter-sort of person anyways, so I might be speaking with a bias). But I swear, I have been to the mountains way too much to see as few animals as I have. I've actually seen bighorn sheep a few times ( Back in my Harry Potter days I would like to imagine that my ~patronus~ would've been one of those. ) but I've never seen a bear in real life, hell, I've never even see a moose outside of the zoo before. It seems like the only time they ever appear is when my dad isn't taking me out to the wilderness with him.

I haven't been to Drumheller in, wow, ten years? Last time I went our car broke down on the way home and we were stuck on the side of the rode in thirty degrees for a long time. Fun stuff!

. . . And I thought my parents were over-protective. I just wasn't allowed to go to other people's houses very often, though either way I wouldn't get to do that much as most kids thought I was too weird to talk to, pff. Far as childhood memories are concerned though, uh, I'm putting a large emphasis on them at the moment because I fail at focusing on ~now~ and I look to the past too much (the future too, now that I think about it)? Which is nuts, cause at my age I hardly have anything to look back on :|

I think. . . I think I might have forgotten what it's like to not be in fandom. Darn. Was it more productive? I do not know.

Your view on how you should read the literature to better understand the history is so hardcore /high fives. Then again, you've already said you've got an interest in that kind of thing and most research I hear about is just a quick wiki search. I'd be a bit reluctant to try out reading those old pieces of literature, even if I ever decided that I did want my knowledge of a country/history to get so in depth. Ah, sorry, I know you love and adore old literature but I'm so intimidated by it because I'm not sure if I'll be able to understand what I'm reading and just not getting something is the worst feeling in the world for me. It was a pain for me to get through any Shakespeare in school (yes yes I know that not all old stuff are written the same but the fear shall always be there, regardless of what I'm reading). though it'd also depend on the time it was written? and if it's a poem/story/play/etc etc etc and I really don't know anything about this kind of stuff to be honest so I'm going to shut up

People who want to learn will learn. I like to learn. Hell, I should just spend the rest of my life in a university or something. Learning is just super.

ikr. I mean, I'm pretty sure that if we were in the states, my dad wouldn't have gotten the surgery he needed last week (cause while it was a big problem, it wasn't life threatening). I guess we Canadians can just sit over here with our shiny higher standard of living and point and laugh (or feel sympathy) at the people supporting those PSAs.

's cool, general is fine.
Re: Isolation.
You know how you say the population is small for its size? Man, I used to think that 30mil for Canada was really, really small, and I suppose that with regards to how much land we have it is, but it's sad, I was really surprised when I learned about how small of populations some countries have. I even used to think that Calgary, having a population of one million people, would make it a "small" city. Then I realized it's just because we're beside the third most populated place on the planet (ten Americans for every Canadian, i think?)
Re: Bilingualism.
That made me laugh out loud.

I am so terrible when it comes to returning books or movies or anything on time. I make sure to bring money every time I go return stuff because I know it's going to be overdue. Can you seriously take stuff out for a year?

I wish you luck~ after all, Twilight's probably the exception. Also, it's one of "those" YA books so it's not like it's expected to be brilliant. 'sides, if you go and try to publish something like Twilight, I swear that you will become dead inside. Your dignity and will to live will be reduced to nothing. Do you think you could even write something like that if you tried? Maybe if you made it a goal to use every synonym for "pretty" that's listed in the thesaurus, you could. Hurr, I don't know. It's not like the only successful books are crap, so again, here I am wishing you luck. And even if academic books don't make you money, you'll at least get a ton of intellectual cred. And publishing poetry will give you that artsy cred and all the hipsters will want to be friends with you (okay, that last part may be a bad thing)

Things you're satisfied with, eh? Well, what happens when you are your own worst critic? I don't know if you are, I'm just sayin. I guess if you're worried about writing too much random drabbles/porn you can just fit all of them into one post? Really though man, a lot of people probably don't ship those things you like not because they don't like the dynamic, but because they haven't considered it before. By posting you are converting people to your crazy obscure ways.

If you want to learn Finnish,err, try to see if Pimsleur has a course for it. They're terribly good CDs and you can even just listen to them while going on walks. They don't tell you how to read and write it but out of all the language learning products I've seen this is probably the best (It's really long and repetitive but it does a good at teaching you pronunciation and drilling everything into your head). I don't know if they have one, though (I'm googling it but my google-fu is week today). I wouldn't recommend anything from the Teach It Yourself books, those are. . . pretty subpar when it comes to learning languages.
So, what would you learn Finnish for? I mean, anything else than perhaps talking with Finnish anons/users on lj.
:)

You can't really tell anons apart, so it's not like you can really direct it at anyone specific either. Who knows if an angry!anon today was really the same anon, or three different anons. Being an angry!anon is a troublesome ordeal anyways. You don't feel any better by being bitchy to people (well, any happiness you get from that isn't going to be real happiness).

You know what else you say a lot? Anyway. Haha, I don't know, you said it quite a lot just right now. Or maybe that's only when you're rambling. of course I've been known to use "though" twice in a sentence so I'm not one talk.
I always change the way I type depending on my mood (and sometimes because I end up posting like, five itt threads a day and I don't want people to assume that it's all the same person --not that they'd be able to tell anyways). I couldn't even pay attention to my grammar for the life of me. I'll look over what I've just typed and not notice entire words missing, or ends of words (like "ing") or what have you. I would be the worst beta in the world.

. . . It took me maybe five hours to know what you meant by teal deer. I even googled it. Clearly, today is an off day.

Computers choose to screw up at the worst moments. (Fortunately, mine doesn't crash often, but I do type up my responses in a document for that purpose, just in case). They just never seem to do what you want them to. Come to think of it, I still haven't seen about fixing what is wrong with my laptop battery, ahhhh ;~;

To be honest, the over-9000 character comment was quite a surprise to me, too. Clearly I really do never know when to shut up. I'm very glad that you didn't get bored, though!

The last time I was in the mountains, I was 10 or so, and it was Banff. I don't really remember much about it, so this trip was a real treat. So gorgeous, ahhhhhh. But I wish I had been able to enjoy it better. Wish I could have gone hiking. Maybe another time.

Since I grew up basically in the middle of the bush, we'd get deer and moose and bears and stuff in town all the time, so seeing them wasn't too unusual (though seeing deer so close was awesome). I always find it kind of startling when people say they haven't seen much for animals, but I guess if you live in a big-ass city it makes sense.

I kind of miss Drumheller. We would go down at least twice per year - for Christmas, and for Canada Day. I spent most of my childhood summers there, and I really miss going. Not all that fond of the roadtrip, mind you. On the other hand, I've only been to Calgary once, and that was so long ago that I can't remember it. (I've been at the airport a squillion times, but that doesn't count).

Part of the reason I try not to focus on my own past is because there's nothing much to think about. I went to school. I came home from school. I read novels of dubious quality. I wrote really awful stories (and had fun doing it). Aaaand that's it. Not much to think about. I'd rather look to the future. And the present is okay too, I guess.

Fandom: I think that when I was not in fandom, I was more productive in terms of creative output. By that I mean I wrote original things. Fanfiction is all well and good, but... it's fanfiction. So, when I wasn't in fandom, I just wrote other things... which I feel is a (slightly) better use of my time. On the other hand, I tend to get involved in a fandom when I have absolutely no original ideas whatsoever, so I guess it kind of works out in the end. I still have an idea or two filed away, but I don't know if I'm going to write them. One involved a pair of brothers who worked at a haunted restaurant. Was going to have lots of scary poltergeist activity and such. I'm not particularly good at writing horror though - maybe that's why I was never really able to get into the groove for that one. Guess I need to read more ghost stories.

The thing about reading the literature to understand the history is something that I take from my background in both classics and medieval literature. In these cases, we know what happened, but reading the literature is the best way to find out what society - or at least, the educated classes - felt about what was going on, what had happened previously, and how things should be. The literature produced by a society - novels and poetry, but also things like fairytales and epics - says quite a bit about the ideals, aspirations, thoughts of people in ways that historical records do not - because, after all, the literature is produced during that people's own time. That's why when studying Rome, for example, one shouldn't just read history books written in the 20th century - we should also read histories written by Romans, as it comments on what they thought, as well as poetry like The Aeneid, as it speaks to the ways that the powerful classes thought things should be - and similarly, but a bit differently, Catullus's love poems say more about relationships between the sexes in his time than any history book ever could.

This is part of why I want to read the Kalevala. There are two things about it - firstly, the stories themselves, the old consciousness of Finland. It could, I think, say so much about the culture itself, expressing the... hmm.. sense, upon which everything is now based. Secondly, the compilation itself. National epic. Put together at a time when Finland was experiencing much change. Not too long afterward, the nation gained independence. So, its very existence speaks volumes, too. But ahh, I wish I didn't just have to read translations. It would be so much better to read it in Finnish.

... Whoa, uh, I got off track there. Sorry. Anyway, when it comes to reading old literature, part of the thing is that when one does it for something other than an assignment in school, it is done for pleasure - and many of these things really are interesting to read. Take Ibsen, for example. His plays are taught in schools (You may have had to study A Doll's House, possibly Ghosts as well) but the stories themselves are quite good, and thought-provoking. These were written in the 1800s, and of course, when we read them we are reading them in translation, so the languagae itself isn't difficult. And of course, there are Andersen's works as well, which were also written in the 19th century, and the language used for translations tend to be relatively modern, if a little nostalgic. As for the sagas and such, I haven't started reading them yet, but I expect them to be much like Welsh tales: weird, and with a sort of logic that makes sense, but bizarre sense. Fairy-tale logic.

The thing about Shakespeare VS the sort of thing we're talking about here is that Shakespeare is not read in translation. Well, some of it is, but it should not be. On the otherhand, with Nordic literature, of course people like myself have no choice but to read it in translation. Generally, the language used is quite easy, so even if it was written in the medieval period, or in the 19th century, it isn't that much different from reading something written in the 20th century, except for content.

Anyway. Those PSAs... man. I just don't understand it. I can always tell that I'm watching American television when I see a ridiculous PSA of that nature. The sad thing is, people seem to actually fall for it. How is it that people can be so... so... Ach, I can't even think of the word now.

About countries and population: It's kind of crazy, isn't it. I always get rather startled when I find out just how small some places are. I mean, Calgary - that's a city, but it has a population nearly as large or larger than some small countries (Estonia, for example, is only about 1.3 million, for the entire place). And I tend to think that Saskatoon is quite a small city, but compared to other places, it's pretty decently sized. So strange to think of.

I'm terrible at returning books on time too, which is why I'm very glad to be able to check them out for so long. And yes, I can keep them for an entire year, unless a professor recalls them. As far as I know, that's the standard for graduate students. Considering most of us need the books for thesis research and so on, it makes perfect sense.

When it comes to publishing, I could always write something for the lulz. Then again, that would be out of character for me and I doubt I could actually do it, hah. But anyway, eventually I'll come up with an idea that is good enough for me to want to finish it, annnnd then hopefully it will get picked up. First I'll have to find a good idea though....

Hmm. I know that some people are their own worst critic, but I like to think that I'm not quite that bad. Generally I can at least find a few things that I like about something - if I don't like it at all, I scrap it, and that has only happened to three fics out of thirty-ish so far. Sometimes I write something that's pretty okay, and I realize that it's pretty okay. So, there we are. Mostly when I post something to a community, I do so because I feel there's something of substance there. Not necessarily for length, mind, because I've posted prose-poetry before - but something of higher quality than my usual work.

Anyway. Yeahhh, I realize that a lot of the time, people just haven't considered the pairing. That's a comment I get a lot, especially when it comes to the really unusual stuff lik Can/Pol, Can/Nor, Pol/Est... I like converting people to weird stuff.

Pimsleur? Haven't heard of that, but I'll take a look. I was considering snooping about to see if I could find it for Rosetta Stone, considering I have the main program. Mostly I'm concerned about reading, as I'm text-oriented, but being able to understand spoken Finnish would be pretty cool. As for what I'd use it for - aside from ~~flirting with~~ talking to Finnish users, I'd probably use it for literature. As I already mentioned, I'd love to be able to read the Kalevala in the original form, and now that I've been reading some Finnish poetry, I really wish I could also read that in the original, because really - when it comes to poetry in particular, translations never do it justice, due to things like rhythm and internal rhyme and so on that are extremely difficult to imitate when going from one language to another. Right now I have LJ set to Finnish. I feel like a huge nerd.

~~Ffff, I only realized how much I said 'anyway' in that previous one, just now. I think I was very tired at the time~~
I hardly ever start threads, but I guess if I did I would try (very very hard!) to change my typing style. Though it's difficult. Gawd, even with the RP thread I started the other day, I was internally panicking. But, couldn't be helped. Finland wanted to play, and it was my turn to start topic. I don't even know why I get so nervous about starting topics... blah.

adsf. This is long and I am tired. And now, to bed.

My computer doesn't screw up often, but I suppose that when you've a word document, five firefox browsers open with twenty or so tabs in each, along with itunes, photoshop, SAI, and two folders open one should probably expect it. (what's wrong with your battery?)

I just went and looked at a map of Alberta (I knew where Fort McMurray was about, but just to get a clearer idea and all), and christ, how long does it take to drive to the mountains from there? The distance is even longer than I thought it was! As for me, err, I don't think there's ever been a year when I haven't visited the mountains. A few years ago, practically every weekend in winter was spent at the mountains cause we'd go skiing (oi, does this mean you've never been skiing/snowboarding? D:) Did you get to do anything in the mountains, or were you just passing them by?

Hey now. Don't think we don't get any animals in Calgary. Okay, so, maybe we don't get moose or bear wandering about but we do get deer in the suburbs every so often. (this is a picture i took a few months ago or so: http://i31.tinypic.com/af8qyb.jpg there were like six deer on our front lawn. My sister and I spent like, half an hour watching them.) Aaaaand, I'll admit, maybe having deer everywhere isn't that big of an accomplishment. Now if there was a tiger wandering about. . .

There's probably not much to remember, honestly. I feel compelled to sell the wonders of the city to you, but I've got nothing. If someone was visiting Calgary, I don't think I could even advise them on what to do here. I could just be a poor salesman, though.

Ah, I see. Now I'm just reminded of that saying, time you enjoyed wasting isn't wasted time. If I could drill that philosophy into my brain, I'd be good to go.

I'm just wondering, when you'd go about writing original stories, do you write all of them with the intent of having them published? Or do you just mostly write for kicks, and just every so often there might end up being one you'd want to publish?

I'm not huge into the horror thing, honestly. I remember in elementary everyone would go around buying books about "real" ghost stories but after that I kind of grew out of it (I'm not much into horror movies anymore either, though that's because 97% of them are absolutely terrible as they don't really rely on suspense or story telling or anything). I don't know if I've ever read a fictional book that could be classified as "horror." Well, I mean, other than Interview With The Vampire, which according to Chapters is horror. Oh, I remember when I thought vampires were the coolest things ever. . . For a year or two I was one of those teenagers.

It'd be hard writing horror, I'd imagine. I don't think I could take myself seriously while doing. I'd write a bit and then I'd have to ask myself "pff, who am I kidding?" How many good horror writers get genuinely freaked out by what they're writing, even?

i just stared at that paragraph for like ten minutes and I have no idea how to reply to it with anything other than YOU ARE SO RIGHT, MAN. /BROFIST and it's a shame because it's a very nice paragraph and I happen to like it quite a bit but I have no insights of my own to share. hahaha this is embarrassing.
I hope that smalltext didn't kill your eyes. I assure you that the small text was necessary, as to hide my shame. I'm afraid that kind of thing applies to the next paragraph as well, for the most part D:
Can I just say I want national awakening fic with Finland? Man, that would be super. . . and probably really hard to write. Actually, I'd love that kind of idea for any nation.

Mm, even if the language in Kalevala isn't all that hard, you'd still have to learn Finnish for quite awhile just to make it through. Even if only because it's, well, I'm just going to guess here and say that it's long. Translations are a scary thing, not just cause as you said later in reply, stuff gets lost, but, i dunno, sometimes they can be so different from each other. I've seen comparisons of some old stuff, the same passage, translated by two different people and the difference is insane. I mean, they talk about the same thing, but just the style/words/everything else seem different from one another. how are you ever supposed to know which one to chose? :o

(I sort of figured but like I said, the fear's still there.)

By the language being easy, you mean it gets translated into fairly easy to understand English, then? I don't know why that surprises me. Maybe it's because (I apologize if I offend your very being by saying this) the only piece of medieval literature I know about is Beowulf sorry! and the people I know who had to read it for school seemed to complain about it a lot, though I suppose they can find a lot of reasons to complain other than how hard the words are.

Suddenly, I feel compelled to visit a Renaissance fair.

Well, seeing how free health care is only for communists. . .
People just like the idea of capitalism too much? And there were government people and news stations influencing their opinions and saying why they shouldn't want it. [insert deleted rambling here]. . . I shouldn't even be rambling about that stuff cause it's irrelevant and I don't even have any real solid opinions on government and the economy and social welfare cause I don't know enough about life to have an intelligent opinion. and i'm worried about sounding like one of those naive young hippies even though it's not like I think capitalism is ~EVIL~ cause I don't but I think America might be a bit too big of a country to not at least get a bit of help? idk idk idk i'm tired and embarrassed to even talk about this
and I have no idea what word you were trying to think of. i am no help whatsoever 8D

Not as bad as Iceland, which is like in the 300,000s. It's pretty exciting to see someone on the internet from a country with such a small population, though! A few years ago a few people from Iceland added me on msn because they liked the fic I wrote (sadly, they only wanted to talk about a7x and how much they hated iceland D:). I've actually seen more people from Iceland than Estonia, I just saw my first Estonian yesterday after they commented on some picture of mine on devart.

When was the last time you posted to a comm, anyways?

We need more love for the rarepairs~ Especially ones that can make sense, hah. It's a shame going to the kinkmeme or something and seeing the same three ships/prompts being filled out over and over again. I remembering requesting a rarepairing on there once, only to realize that it was probably useless to do so.

Ohhh, I didn't consider that. I guess it was designed more for people who were going to be going to the said country. Finnish kind of looks like keyboard smashing, to me. Keyboard smashing with lots of umlauts :) I probably get too much of a kick at going on wikipedia and seeing how every page looks in a different language. Arabic!wiki's even got a whole different page layout! Hell, even simple english is interesting and useful, sometimes. All I know about the string theory is from what I read on it's simple english translation page hah
Sigh, wiki, why can't I ever quit you.
maybe my eyesight is bad but I can't tell the letters apart in the அரபு_மொழி pages. What is அரபு_மொழி anyways?)

Aww. I wish I could give some advice for that but alas, I do not RP, nor have I ever RP'd. I don't think it matters much on what topic you start, cause as long as you start talking it's bound to turn into something interesting eventually.

so much for waking up feeling rested blahh :|

Uh... yeah. When you have that much open at the same time, you should probably expect it to work like shite, bro. Mine runs pretty well, but then again I usually just have AIM, MSN, Firefox with ~5 tabs, Notepad, maybe itunes. I guess I'm accustomed to trying to only run stuff in minimal amounts because the computer I had to use back home - before I moved out and everything - was a total piece of shite. We got it in like, 2001 or something like that. Runs Windows ME (still runs it, matter of fact). Slow as molasses. Blue screen 'o doom is far too familiar. So... there we are.

To be honest, I have no idea wtf is wrong with my laptop battery. For some reason, the computer can't detect it (I get an error saying "no battery detected" when I turn on the computer, and if I unplug the cord the laptop turns off). I've been told that sometimes batteries crap out, but I don't know if it's it. I mean, I've only had this computer for about a year. So I really need to sit down and see what's what, but I haven't gotten around to it yet because I'm lazy and I actually don't use it without the cord very frequently anyway.

Fort McMurray is wayyyy far from everything, swear to gods. It took us about 16 hours total driving time to get from there to Waterton, if I recall correctly - and that's why we split the drive into two days. Otherwise it would have been just too much. I'm used to distance - it takes something like five hours to get to Edmonton - but even so, that was pretty bad. When we got there, we uh... we didn't really do much. I mean, we were right in the middle of the mountains, but we didn't really do anything. We just kind of looked at them, 'cause they were pretty. Er. And Dad went fishing in one of the lakes, but I didn't get to because mum decided that was the perfect time to drag me around to souveneer shops and.... yeah. Argh. Parents. If I'd been there on my own, surely I would have done quite a bit, or at least would have enjoyed it more.

does this mean you've never been skiing/snowboarding? D:
Haha, no! Fort McMurray has a lot of steep hills; it's in the middle of a valley, so it isn't flat like, say, Saskatoon. I mean, our ski hills aren't anywhere near as impressive as skiing in the mountains, but we still have it. I haven't done it recently, but back in high school I used to go out and do it. But I kind of stopped after I had an accident. Nothing broken, but my nose was banged up pretty badly and I was really shaken up and after that I didn't really want to do it any more.

HOLY SHIT. DEER. Usually up in Fort Mac they don't come out and wander around in the residential areas like that - we haven't had that sort of mixing. You're more likely to see them on the side of the road (same goes for the bears and elk and such). But we do get little red foxes coming in and wandering around our yard.

While it's true that in general time that is enjoyed is not wasted, I would say this only applies provided one isn't supposed to be doing something in particular - because then you don't really have time to waste.

When it comes to original stories, mostly I just write them for fun - and also because it sucks having an idea in my head and not doing anything about it. When I want to write, I really really want to write, soooo might as well do that. Usually the "stories" turn out to be novel-length, and usually after a while I start thinking, "Man, if this turns out to be good, maybe I could get it published". I think the desire to be published, for me, is mostly out of a desire to share it with people. I want people to be able to read it. But a little money would be good too. I figure if I wrote something and actually finished it, but didn't manage to get published at all, I'd probably just put it on the internet or something.

To be honest, I'm not big into the horror thing either. Stephen King's old work is okay though. A lot of the stuff I have read in the genre falls short, and I think that the reason is, as you mentioned with the movies, it falls short when it comes to both suspense and storytelling. ...Fff, Chapters labels IWTV as horrow? Gawdno. What are they thinking, I don't even-- ahh, well. As for me, I do like Rice's novels, even though they're terrible, but... yes. Definitely not horror. Stoker's Dracula comes closer, though it's not quite there. To be honest, I still like vampires - and did try to write a vampire novel once - but man, most of the novels out there suck.

The "pff, who am I kidding?" this is partly why I was never really able to do this ghost story. I try to write scary scenes and they just turn out so... well... not-scary. But there must be some way to figure out how to do it, because I really like this idea, it just... Argh! Can't do it! D:

Anyway. Hah, no, the smalltext didn't kill my vision. ♥ I dunno where that big long paragraph came from, man. I guess I just tend to get carried away when talking about literature.

National awakening fic with Finland
Oh. Fuck. Do want. DO WANT DO WANT YES. ... Unfortunately I'd never be able to write it. Sob. I've come to the conclusion that when I want something in this fandoml, I usually have to write it myself, so frustrating... but argh. No, someone who knows more about Finland than I do would have to write that one. (I am going to file the idea in my pocket though. Ff.)

Speaking realistically, I know I'll probably never be able to read the Kalevala in the original. But ah, I can dream~ You're correct that it's long - I received the volume yesterday, and in this translation it's like, 650 pages - 50 cantos, averaging about 400 lines per canto, coming out to 20,000 lines (probably more like 21,000). Pretty hefty book - lucky that it's a paperback. What I would love to have is an edition that has the original on one side of the page, and the translation on the other - I used to have an edition of Beowulf like that, as well as a copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that was much the same (because though it's in Middle English, it's a very difficult dialect) and it was just excellent to have.

You're correct about translations being scary. Though personally, when it comes to differences in translation, I'd say it's more frustrating than frightening. Personally, I've determined that when it comes to translations, at least of old literature, the best way to go about it is thus. Firstly, try to read current, scholarly editions - ones put out by university presses etc. In these cases, usually the translator is more concerned about getting the meaning across than translating in a way that results in a pretty sentence. Avoid old translations - from the 19th and early 20th century, etc, for this reason. Secondly, read multiple translations of the same work. Since, as you mentioned, two translators will translate things quite differently, I find it's helpful (as well as interesting) to read different versions to get a feel of what differences there might be, and then determine for myself what sort of meaning might be gathered from a passage. But this can be time-consuming. ... Basically, though, just stick with scholarly versions. Yep.

You mean it gets translated into fairly easy to understand English, then?
Yes. This is generally the case. The language is not usually complicated, because there is no need for complication, if you understand what I mean. Since you mentioned Beowulf, I'll talk about that one a while. When I was teaching it, my students complained about it quite a bit too. The reason was not the language itself, but various factors. Many of the names are weird and often hard to pronounce. Also, the style is very circular, very repetitive. This is typical of epic literature, because it started off as oral literature. It was not written down. So the same thing might be repeated three different times in the same sentence, and the same tale might be relayed twice or three or more times, in different ways. Those are some of the reasons my students didn't like it...

Here's an example from one of my copies of Beowulf, so you can see what the language is like:
I will tell the truth -
I had greater strength on the sea,
more ordeals on the waves than any other man.
When we were just boys we two agreed
and boasted - we were both still
in our youth - that out on the great ocean
we would risk our lives, and we did just that.
We had bare swords, when we swam in the sea,
hard in our hands; we thought to protect
ourselves from whales. Nor for anything
could he swim far from me on the sea-waves,
more swiftly on the water, nor would I go from him

And as another example, this time translated into prose, here is a bit from the Irish epic, the Tain bo Cualigne:

Three times fifty warriors went out to meet them, and they all fell at one another's hands at Lia Toll, the Pierced Standing-Stone. Not a soul came out alive of all those choice children except Follamain mac Conchoboir. Follamain swore he would never go back to Emain while he grew breath, unless he tool Ailill's heat with him, with the gold crown on top. But that was no easy thing to swear: the two sons of Berthe mac Bain, sons of Ailill's foster-mother and foster-father, went out and attacked him, and he died at their hands.

Relatively modern language. The names are what trip most people up. Anyway - you say you don't know much about medieval literature, and I guess I can't really blame you for that, as most places don't teach it in high school any more, except for Beowulf. Back in the day they used to teach it a bit, not so much any more. And it seems that people have a funny idea of what 'medieval' is. If I say it, people ask, "Like Shakespeare?" Well, no. The medieval period was over by about 1500 (when people ask, I usually give 1492 as the cut-off date, though it's much more complicated than that). So, with this period, we need to think about King Arthur, not King Lear. I generally name titles like Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur and Chretien's Lancelot, though also Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as well. Those are the ones most people have heard of, aside from Beowulf.

...Er. Well. Moving on.
The thing with the whole capitalism bit... I just don't understand it. We're similar up here, yes, but not as extreme of course, and I find that when I think of the system that y'all down south have in place I get kind of disturbed. I don't consider myself much of a hippy, but at the same time I feel that some people are just in unfortunate situations, and when they're unable to get help (especially when it comes to things I feel should be available to everyone, like health care) it just seems so... not right. Ah, well.

Iceland VS Estonia - it's the opposite for me; I've run into several Estonians over the years (and I'm glad for it, as otherwise I wouldn't have become interested) but only know of one Icelander - and we haven't spoken directly. I find it kind of interesting how some people have a tendency to run into people from certain areas, and others, different areas entirely.

The last time I posted to a comm was May 19, when I posted my Eurovision fic. I haven't really written much since then. Gahhhhhh.

The kink meme is frustrating indeed. So few fills for things that are unusual - or even not all that unusual, but not like, you know. The usual three pairs. Nn. Sometimes I would request things, but mostly I've given up on that now. I'll just try to fill the occasional rarepair request instead. I have a couple that I am working on, but editing them is going slowly - I'm just so frustrated with everything right now, bahhh. (And thinking about it now reminds me that I need to update the index. Ooops.)

I suppose Finnish does look like keymash - but I think Polish looks more like keymash. At least wish Finnish I can look at it and say, "Oh, yes, that looks like a word". But Polish... fff, no. Just keymash. Or sometimes it looks like a sneeze.

Anyway. I guess you're right about RP. I'm just... not comfortable with it yet, I guess. I suppose things will change, eventually. <3

Okay, was LJ down two nights ago, all of yesterday and this entire morning up until like, now or was my computer just being a massive dick by saying that it can’t connect to livejournal (from the looks of the meme, it looks like it was up for everyone else?) Maybe I can get only get on right now because I’m not on my computer, I’m typing this at the library and good lord is it awkward going on livejournal in the library. But I don’t feel like donig the schoolwork I took home from the summer so pff. For some raeson spellcheck isn’t even working on this Microsoft Word so be prepared for some nasty typos. Let’s see if I can remember how to spell embarrassing right today (it’s one of those words that aren’t hard but always throw me off :|) OKAY MOVING ON.

Oh god. The blue screen. That alone probably scarred me more than anything else growing up.
Windows ME is Windows 2000, right? I've always heard it called Windows 2000. Man, I totally forgot that even existed. Awhile ago I came across some computer running Windows 95 and it weirded me out. I'm starting to feel like the kids of today, the kind that wouldn't know what the hell a walkmen was if you showed them. Aah, I kind of wish it was still common to see people carrying them around, some people I know think I'm weird for still buying CDs from time to time.

Here is the part where I wish I was tech savy enough to help you, but alas ~~I just my cousin to come over when I have a problem~~. Maybe there's a troubleshooting thing for it? You know, in the Windows Help/Troubleshooting area part of computer. I've usually found it to be surprisingly helpful. I sure wouldn't rule out your battery just crapping out, as you said, cause those sorts of things don't require a set amount of time to pass in order to happen. If anything, it’d be strange to own a laptop you never unplugged. What are laptops for, really .

I don't think I'd be able to handle that (well, okay, I can seeing how I've had to go through it before. Though we spaced it out a lot more and had a lot more stops along the way). Unless I'm asleep, which rarely happens because I find it near impossible to fall asleep in vechicles, I start to feel uncomfortable after being in a car for just thirty minutes. Oddly enough I find myself pretty comfortable in planes. As long as the person in front of my hasn’t gone and tilted their seat all the way back)

Souvenier shops, you say? Tell me, is your mother one of those. . . tourist-y type people? Cause I find that there's rarely anything special to see in Souvenier shops but that might be just me. If it's of any comfort to you, you'd need a permit to go fishing anyways. If you have one, err, pardon me for assuming that you don't. You should maybe find a buddy to go with you next time. I do think that enjoying the great outdoors is better if you've got someone else with you, and I'm saying this as someone who is accused of liking their alone time a bit too much. Though I guess it's a matter of finding the right person to go with, you know, someone who can accept you being alone and checking stuff out by yourself instead of dragging you to little shops which are probably very similar to most other little shops you've been in).
Then again, I'm thinking of camping more than just dicking around so (I really wouldn't recommend someone to go camping by themselves unless they were like, Surviorman or something. And in that case they would be the coolest person alive).

/facepalm RIGHT. You can skill on hills oh man how did I forget that when I’ve gone skiing on hills too brb feeling dumb forever>
How'd you manage to get into that accident? I remember that I used to be this reckless, flying beast of death when I skiied. I'd flip over flimsy fences all the time and come back the next week to find that they'd be replaced with wooden ones and once time I got a dent in my helmet that was an inch or two deep from sliding on ice and hitting a tree. Now, my wild youth is behind me, and I value keeping my bones in tact. I wonder how I ever managed to avoid breaking any in the first place, when people tell me stories of breaking their arm by just falling down .

Most of the deer live in this park, which eventually branches out into the wilderness. We won't usually see them grazing on school fields or anything though. I couldn't imagine seeing a bear without, well, shitting my pants. The entire news crew would be on it in five seconds here, and they'd probably close down the area.

But of course.

It’s nice to see you have that kind of attitude towards writing. I don’t know, it’s refreshing to hear someone say that they want what they write to be published for the sake of sharing it cause most of the reasons I’ve heard are, err, a bit different. Oh man, every once in awhile on F!S you get a secret and someone says that they hoped to be published so they can have a hugeass fandom and they like thinking about who the readers will end up shipping and everything. And then I read those secrets and I laugh because, I don’t know, I think wishing/expecting a fandom for what you publish is stretching it. I know most books I’ve read, even bestsellers, don’t have fandoms. I don’t even think that’s a bad thing, honsetly.

It was labelled horror when I bought it years ago, hah. Sometimes I don’t understand the way Chapters labels things at all. I never had any interest in reading Dracula, I remember the one civil conversation I ever had with my grade nine English teacher, and he told me that he thought Dracula was a bit “dry” and not very interesting. I figured I could trust him on that, cause dsepite the fact that we didn’tget along our taste in books and comics and movies were pretty much 100% the same. As far as vampires are concerned in general, I’m just tired of them. Especially that ~sexy hot vampire~ trope. The YA vampire books are even worse, my friend tried to get me to read one so she could have someone to fangirl over it with and. . . I couldn’t bring myself to read it. Especially after she explained it to me. It had everything from funny coloured blood to different vampire clans (the good righteous vampires, the selfish evil vampires, the usual).

Get someone else to read it! Maybe you just can’t get scared by what you yourself think up. Knowing what’s going on must kill a lot of the suspense, after all.

I think the proper solution is to get a Finn to write it. I’m sure you’ve got connections. Bribe them into doing it with dirty personal favours or something. I’d be scary to write, I imagine, especially considerring how many Finns there are in the fandom (I’m always too afraid to say anything post something in say, kalmarunionen because so many people there actually come from those countries. If I got the wrong impression of a country or just get anything wrong. . . hooo boy, that’d be humiliating.)

Well, I won’t crush your dreams then. DREAM ON, YUU. (and I mean that in a positive/hopeful way, I swear!)
I like having big books like that in hardcover, honestly. Then agani, I like having everything in hardcover. I always ruin paperbacks. Too bad hardcovers are always twice the price.

Hey hey, does this mean you can read/understand Middle English? Or did you just have a copy like that cause, as you said, it’s excellent to have?

That’s a lot of steps to just read a book, though. The few translated books I’ve read were newer translations, though (my reasoning wasn’t the same as yours though, pff). And, err, sorry to say this buddy, but I think I’ll skip out on reading multiple translations of say, a 700 page book. That would take a year! Though I guess you’re talking more about poetry?

Ooh, I see what you mean. Reading that Beowulf excerpt kept throwing me off simply cause I kept on going, whoa, didn’t I just read that? I feel like I should probably try reading them outloud (you did say it started off al ~oral literature~ afterall), but err, the library’s probably not the best place to do that.

~~I thought the medieval perioud ended before that.~~

Wait, is that how you got interested in Estonia? By meeting Estonians? Did you perhaps meet them and ask yourself, “my my, what is this mysterious place named Estonia~?”

If I recall correctly, there’s a really good fanartist from Iceland in this fandom. I think.

Speaking of your fic, you totally need a “fic” tag on your journal. Everyone will be very glad for it because tags are simply that wonderful. You don’t even need to limit yourself to just that, think of the possibilities. . .

When looking at the kinkmeme aid I curse myself that I don’t ship us/uk (I really did try to like it but I really can’t). What’s just as bad is how repetitive some of the requests are. Or how some of the requests are ideas that you can probably find in 10 fics posted to the main comm.

Haha I think Finnish looks like a keysmash cause it’s just a lot of really long words strung together. Poland really does too, now that you mention it. Probably never occured to me cause I could read it, which probably affects how key-smash-y something looks.

Everytime your Estonia posts in one of those confession/secret/letter threads I cry a bit inside ;___; this is your cruel and heartbreaking way of converting people into shipping it, isn’t it? you sly bastard.

It was down? For me, it was down for a short while, but not that long. Maybe just a couple of hours. I think it was that was for most people. Comment notifications, on the other hand, haven't really been working properly for days, and it's starting to annoy me quite a bit. It seems that they might be fixed now... maybe. (As for your lack of spell check, don't worry about it; I usually forget to check my comments before I send them to you, and then when I look back I keep catching all these errors and it's like, askdjf. Yes.)

The blue screen of doom is an awful, awful thing, but after having to put up with it for so long I eventually got used to it. There was nothing else. As for ME VS 2000, they were released in the same year, but ME came later. 2000 was made for business, whereas ME was intended to be more of a personal system. Unfortunately for me, IIRC, 2000 was the more stable system. Argh.

I feel so weird using new systems. I've spent so long using archaic ones that getting used to Vista is... troubling. I can find my way around ME and Win 95 pretty well, even Win 3.1 too (ahh, I remember using 3.1, good times~) but these new systems just baffle me. Nothing is ever where I expect it to be, seems there's no logic at all to the way things are set out. But maybe I'm just cranky.

People think you're weird for buying CDs? People think that of me, too. I don't understand it. Sure, I have a fancy ipod, but I also have an excellent sound system, and I fully intend to use it. Besides that, I love having the cover art, the case, and holding the actual CD in my hand. Unwrapping a new CD gives me a most delightful feeling - I can hardly even explain it.

Anyway. Back to my computer problem. I know you can't really help me, but it's the thought that counts. I'll probably poke at it a while, run some troubleshooting things, and if I can't fix it, I'll call the company. I do have a warranty, after all. It's just so frustrating. I wish I knew more about computers than I do. People are always coming to me, expecting me to be able to help them with their computer problems, but I can't because I don't know anything about computers. I just kind of fiddle with things and poke at them until either they work or I give up, whichever comes first. Nobody listens to meeeeeeee.

As for road trips, I don't mind long ones so much, provided I can get out from time to time. I frequently read in the car, and I've trained myself to write in moving vehicles too, so it's not really a big deal for me. I hate flying, though. I find airports so, so stressful, and seats in airplanes are uncomfortable, and overall it's just so unpleasant. That sucked for me, when I went to school at one end of the country and my parents lived at the other. Coming home for Christmas was such a pain in the ass.

You would be correct - my mum is one of those tourist-y type of people. She spends ungodly amounts of time in little shops, and occasionally will drag me to tourist traps (though we don't spend much time at those, fortunately) and we barely spend any time actually enjoying the place that we went to. On our Waterton trip I would have loved to go hiking, or fishing with my father, or even have just spent time relaxing by the lake and enjoying the fresh air... but no, no. Can't be having anything of the sort. On the subject of fishing, you do need a permit, yes, but at parks like Waterton you can buy day-permits if you do not already have a fishing liscense, and those only cost about $15 or so.

I'd love to find someone to go hang out with me on national park trips/camping/etc. Unfortunately, I... well. I don't really have anyone who I could go with. I mean, I do have a lot of friends who would love to come, but they're all far away... Ah. Well, this is what I get for being shy and non-social offline, I guess. Not that I can help it, I suppose.

Skiing on hills = all I've done, though I wish I could try it in the mountains sometime. As for how I got into the accident, well... I was a bit reckless, going down like a "flying beast of death" as you described yourself. There was a snowboarder coming, and he tried to cross in front of me, but he wasn't quick enough - or rather, I was going too quickly - and we collided. He was perfectly fine, thankfully, but I was pretty banged up. Bruises everywhere, and my jaw hurt like a bitch, and my nose bleeding like hell (I was so terrified that it was broken). I think I was maybe 14 at the time, can't really remember... Anyway, after that, skiing wasn't really the same again. Didn't enjoy it as much. I could probably do it now though - now that I'm not as reckless.

I couldn't imagine seeing a bear without, well, shitting my pants.
I just find that so funny - maybe it's just because bears aren't all that usual around Fort Mac. I mean, they don't often come into the city, and when they do things have to be done about them of course, but... I don't know, I just don't find them all that frightening. Maybe it's because we mostly get black bears, which are relatively small. Moose are what I'm afraid of. Those things are bloody huge, and if one is standing on the side of the highway when we pass by, I get so terrified because I'm worried it'll spook and run across the road and hit us.

I think wishing/expecting a fandom for what you publish is stretching it.
I agree. I've seen the type of F!Ss that you're describing, and I don't understand it much. I mean, okay, if a series has a large fandom, that usually means it's pretty popular, and it sells well. So, people are reading it and you're getting money from it. However, at the same time, I can't really understand writing with the desire that it will result in fandom. I think it is more logical/realistic to desire success. In my case, ultimately, what I desire for my work - in the event that I do finish something and get it published - is that it will be widely read and widely enjoyed. Fandom doesn't matter all that much to me.

... Though I do admit that I have had the "I wonder what pairings people would make up" conversation in relation to my original work, hah. Though in one case, that was with a friend who had read my work, and in another case, with someone who (upon me mentioning the ghost story idea) compared it to Supernatural, and said that people would probably pair the brothers up. *facepalm*

Anyway. When it comes to Dracula, you're right, it is a little bit dry. However, I do enjoy literature from that time period, and I found it very interesting to go to the source material, then look at modern versions of the vampire idea and see how things have changed ... But then again, I'm a nerd like that. To be honest, I agree with you on the matter of being tired of the 'sexy hot vampire' thing, as much of it can b pretty ridiculous, though I admit that one of my failed vampire novels was pretty ridiculous as well. Sigh. (It was like... the mafia. With vampires. And alchemy was involved somehow, too. Pfft.)

On the matter of the national awakening fic idea, I do think you're right. A Finn, and specifically a person well-versed in history, would probably have to write it. Unfortunately for me I'm not well-acquainted with anyone who would be able to do it (most of the Finns I know don't write fic). Though of the ones I know of (rather than the ones I know), Kainoliero does come to mind... ah, I'd love to see her handle something like that. She knows her stuff, from what I've seen, or at least isn't afraid of doing research when necessary - and by the gods, can she ever turn out the most lovely sentences. (This reminds me that I need to find the time to read her latest fic - I tend to save them for when I have a quiet moment, so that I can savour them).

...Er. Sorry about that - never mind me, slipped into fanboy mode for a moment there. Anyway, this:

I’m always too afraid to say anything post something in say, kalmarunionen because so many people there actually come from those countries. If I got the wrong impression of a country or just get anything wrong. . . hooo boy, that’d be humiliating.

Oh. My. Gods. THIS. Just... THIS. There is a reason I haven't posted any fic there yet, and also a reason that I rarely comment there. That would be it. I find it so intimidating, and I'm constantly terrified of saying something wrong - or in the case of fic, Doing It Wrong. It's a similar problem with this Swe/Nor Union fic I've been working on - it's intended to be a giftfic for a Swede, and gods, I'm so afraid of getting something wrong. I wish I could relax a little when it comes to those anxieties, because people keep assuring me that it's unnecessary, and yet... yet... Well, I don't know.

I SHALL CONTINUE TO DREAM. Though I realize that in this case, it's probably just a dream. But at least it's a good one. <3 As for hardcover VS paperback, I agree with you - hardcovers are so much nicer, and occasionally they're very beautiful. However, paperbacks are less expensive, take up less room, and they are easier to replace if you are, say, moving across the country and have to leave much of your collection behind. *cough*

Anyway, yes, I can read/understand Middle English. Most people can, actually, as it isn't that much different from modern English, except that the spelling is rather phonetic (but not in accordance with modern pronunciation) and nonstandardized. In most cases, translations for Middle English works are unneeded. However, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is an exception. Though this work was written at about the same time as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it was written in a northern dialect that was, at that time, less modernized, and was very close to Old English. So, it's much more difficult to read than works written close to London, and though I did read the original I would often find myself having to glance at the translation as well, just to ensure that I fully understood the passage. In most cases, though, the works I read are only in Middle English, with no translation whatsoever.

I'm not sure if you've read anything in Middle English before, so here's an excerpt as an example. This is from the poem "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell", dating to around 1450:

Of alle kynges Arthure beryth the flowyr,
And of alle knyghtod he bare away the honour
Wheresoever he wentt.
In his contrey was nothyng butt chyvalry
And knyghtes were belovid by that doughty,
For cowardes were evermore shent.

Nowe, wyll ye lyst a whyle to my talkyng,
I shall you tell of Arthoure the Kyng,
Howe ones hym befell-
On huntyng he was in Ingleswod
With alle his bold knyghtes good-
Nowe herken to my spell!

As you can see, most of the words are familiar, but the spelling is different. Some phrases are archaic ('beareth the flower', instead of saying 'was the best') and some of the words have fallen out of use ('doughty' for man, 'shent' for ruined) but on the whole it's not too different. After a while of reading this stuff, it isn't difficult to read at all - especially if one is used to deciphering netspeak. Though I do find that after reading or studying something in Middle English, my speech patterns tend to be more old-fashioned than usual, and my spelling worse than normal.

These factors - phonetic spelling and archaic vocabulary - are the reason that translations should be avoided when reading Middle English literature. When it comes to poetry, if the words are translated or the spelling modernized, it throws the rhythm and rhyme off (as some words are pronounced differently - "Nowe" and "Alle", though they mean Now and All, have a slightly different sound than the modern and the ending E would be pronounced). And words that are no longer used have particular means that sometimes can't be translated, of course.

Edited 2009-08-09 03:10 (UTC)

I guess going to so much effort as to read several translatons of a thing is a bit much. I just tend to be obsessive, and I like reading different translations of things because in some ways, it's like reading an entirely new story (I've gone through three different versions of The Iliad, for example). And yes, when it comes to 700-page books, I generally mean poetry. Usually prose translations are about the same length as a modern novel, though the text is sometimes denser and harder to follow (I love my prose translation of The Iliad, for example, but fuck me if I can ever find a specific passage in it...)

When it comes to literature that was originally oral, reading it aloud is best. This applies for Middle English too; though that literature was written down, reading was as much a public act as it was a private one, and often books would be read out-loud to several listeners, much like story time for children. Though yes, doing it in the library would probably not be the best thing. ;p (... I hope that some day I find a lover, or at least a friend, who won't mind me reading out loud to them. I love doing that.)

I thought the medieval perioud ended before that.
Well, yes and no. It's a tricky thing, and it depends on who you ask. Basically, there are three main things that helped the western world move from the Middle Ages to the Rennaissance. 1. the Reformation, 2. the Italian Renaissance, 3. European overseas exploration. However, these are all different time periods. Martin Luther didn't write his Ninety-Five Theses until 1517, and the Italian Rennaissance began at around the 1300s - and during the Italian renaissance, much of the western world (I.E. the British Isles) were still very medieval. Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, for example, wasn't printed until 1485. So, that's why I decide to go with exploration and use Columbus/1492 as a cut-off.

Now, moving on to Estonia - Yes, running into Estonians online was how I got interested in Estonia. Here's the story. When I was 15 or so, I played an online dog breeding game (Furry Paws was the name of it - don't know if you've heard it before. Kind of like Neopets I guess). There weren't many people who specialized in my breed, and when I was looking for fellow breeders I came across a certain person who specialized in them, as I did. When we were discussing things, she apologized for her difficulty with English, and mentioned that she was from Estonia. I had no idea where that is, had never even heard of that country before. Thought it was down near Bulgaria or something. So, I immediately started googling things, because I didn't want to seem ignorant. I quickly found out that it is not near Bulgaria, and I found out many other things as well. We hit it off, and spent a lot of time talking to each other about where we are from, and it was just... excellent. I loved hearing about Estonia, and seeing her photos (she was a photographer). And... yes. That's how it started.

If I recall correctly, there’s a really good fanartist from Iceland in this fandom.
Hmm, I wonder if you're thinking of Fukkafyla? They're the Icelander I knew of, but hadn't spoken directly to. I love his style - it's different from the sort of thing I usually see in fanart; quite unique. (He's excellent at cosplay as well. Makes an A+ Iceland, wow)

Nnngeh. I've been reluctant to tag things because I'm old and stuffy and they seem so newfangled. Love them on communities, mind you, but I can't be bothered to do them in my journal (especially since my entries are all the same....). I have all my fic in memories (and this is mentioned in my profile), and I figure that's enough... though who knows, maybe one of these days I will get with the program and tag everything.

Edited 2009-08-09 03:11 (UTC)

As for the kink meme, I am completely apathetic toward US/UK, and can't be bothered to read or write it, and... I don't know. It bothers me that so many of the prompts are repetitive (though this should not concern me) and it also bothers me that occasionally there is a prompt that would be very very good for an anyone/anyone, but of course, it's US/UK. Sigh. Sometimes I figure I'll just steal the prompt idea and write the story with whoever I like, just for myself. On the whole, though, many of the requests are just lame. Or... I don't know. I was working on the Baltic Index the other day, and arrrgh. So much rape. *facedeskx10* Oh, well.

Everytime your Estonia posts in one of those confession/secret/letter threads I cry a bit inside
IS THAT SO. BRB, breakin' hearts 8D Though I think I'll be toning that whole thing down a little bit now. I've been doing an awful lot of that recently.

Aaaand that's all for now. Holy shit, this was long!

!!!
askfsaodfjaskfaspdfjasdjfasf
asdjfoaisjdf16000charactersholyshitiosjdfioasjfioaj!!!
how.
you don't even know it but my day was made :')

Now I cry because my tl;dr-fu will never come close to that. So, if my tl;dr will be lacking, I might as well compensate for it, yeah? Or maybe this is an attempt to put the "draw" back in "tl;dr draw anon." Well, either way, here you go man: http://i32.tinypic.com/24pxmac.jpg. . . but yeah, you know, I was just thinking about how it's a time period that isn't really explored a lot in this fandom and how awesome it would be if someone got around to writing it.
:D
consider this my mediocre cheerleading for your fic.

http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html was posted on the meme today. Maybe you should try that? On kamikaze mode.

I am in a strange strange state of being in which I want to reply to this but I don't feel like typing so half of this might sound like nonsense.

My LJ's working again~! I just realized that most of what I do on the internet happens to be LJ related. From the looks of it, 4/5 tabs will always be on LJ. What would I do without this beautiful site, really.

I thought the blue screen of doom was one of those things you could never really get used to. Though maybe you can get used to everything /shrugs.

Pff, even if you could usually easily feel at home with new systems, using Vista will always be troubling. Vista is, to be blunt, a piece of shit. It made me reinstall my old tablet (which I only had for a short period of time a year ago, which explains my lack of tablet skills now) at least once a week. And for some reason it keeps on turning on the french keyboard, despite the fact that I've gone and changed it so it shouldn't about four times now.

How was 3.1 like? I don't think I've even seen one of those. I do know I've used those really really old Apple ones. My grade five classroom had a ton of them and we'd go around playing old school Oregon Trail on them :)

I love having the cover art and the little lyrics booklet and everything too. I really don't want to buy songs off of itunes or something. If something happened to your computer or ipod, the music you paid for would just disappear. And it's very damn likely that something would happen to your ipod, because those things aren't even that good of quality. I swear that they build them to die after a few years so you'd be forced to get another one. My one friend has the worst luck with ipods, he's gone through five (luckily he managed to score some of his friends' old ones for free, cause paying for five ipods would hurt). Even yesterday, I found out that my ipod is corrupted and it doesn't want to charge or play anything D:

I find that kind of funny. Maybe you give off a computer-genius kind of vibe? I used to be a whiz for my age regarding computers when I was younger, so people still have that impression of me. Except the questions people ask me are, "how do you download this file?" I tried to guide a friend through opening and extracting a .zip file. It was beyond him :(
hey man ,even if they listened to you, it doesn't mean they'd be able to help you.

I've never found airports stressful, but I usually have quite a bit of time to spare at them? I just don't like having to spend five hours at one, which I had to do once. And I don't feel as stuffy in a plane as I do a car, so. . . different strokes for different folks, eh?

I've never found airports stressful, but I usually have quite a bit of time to spare at them? I just don't like having to spend five hours at one, which I had to do once. And I don't feel as stuffy in a plane as I do a car, so. . . different strokes for different folks, eh?

Ahh, does that mean she puts more effort into showing she went somewhere than actually visiting that place? Or is she not that bad?
I'm not sure what exactly counts as a tourist trap. Cause I'm thinking of some wildly popular tourist spots, but I don't know if I'd call it a trap if it'd really be worth seeing. I mean, I don't know, if I went to Paris I would damn well like to check out the Eiffel Tower among all those other typical places.

There, there. /pats on back. How long have you been living in Saskatchewan anyways? Surely you'll find someone sooner or later.

When you're on top of the mountain, I don't think you feel as high as you really are. For me, anyways. BUT HEY, YOU'RE ALIVE, AREN'T YOU? (I don't know if it's just me but I'd feel worse if the other person was hurt, than myself). You should try doing it again when you're able to, it's a nice hobby. It's the only sport I enjoy, really.
It's okay, you can blame the snowboarder. It's always okay to blame the snowboarder :| I got into that kind of crash with three other people (who I knew, oi), but nothing happened. I must've not been going as fast, obviously. My dad (and my friend's dad) saw it from the chair lift and made fun of us, though.

Touche, touche. And at the very least, you can fight bears off with. . . bear spray or something. But there is no moose spray. I've also heard the stories of people fighting off bears and all, but never a moose. So I guess that the moose is nature's deadliest killer? It just had to be a goofy looking animal, didn't it.

Planning on becoming a bestselling author is just about as silly as wishing to become a rockstar or something. Having a fandom is an even stranger request because bestselling =/= fandom. Idk, I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to dream of getting that kind of success but when you write it as a goal I'm always kind of skeptical about if they're writing for the sake of writing (though some people could just be overly ambitious, but really, the typical life of a writer is hardly glamourous).

Oh man, they so totally would! I was going to try and get into Supernatural back in the day, and then I learned about the fandom. And then I stayed away, knowing that the show didn't seem thaaaat interesting to me.

So, how have the versions of vampires changed?
GOOD GOD MAN WHAT ARE YOU ON THE MAFIA IS ALWAYS THE GOOD KIND OF RIDICULOUS. Well, okay, maybe I have a soft spot for ridiculous mafias. We're allowed to have our guilty pleasures, alright?

She was the person I was thinking of, then again she's the only Finnish author I know. I would've thought that you'd be the first person to read that sucker (I don't even know how I know this, you admit too much on the meme). I should probably save a bunch of fics I should read when I'm actually in the mood for it. Usually I just try and search for some when I'm in the mood, and that doesn't usually turn out as well as I'd like to D:

I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but if you're worried about that kind of thing, then you're probably careful enough not to go and make too glaring a mistake. Those people (including myself) who are telling you to relax about all of it probably do mean it too. At some point there was this really big discussion post on the characterizations of the characters or something, and you had a bunch of people from the area taking. While it was intimidating it was a pretty good read, I'd say. You read it, right?
lucky I'd just probably post art there so I have less to worry about \o/ all i have to worry about is offending people with eyes due to my less-than-perfect on anatomy (hello, understatement).

Do you have to leave all those books behind? Couldn't you get someone to send all those books to where you are now? Then again, I don't think I'd trust the post enough. I don't trust the post at all, ich.

Well in that case, my former impression of Middle English was completely wrong. I thought it'd be more like Old English, or something, to get a special ~name~ for it.

SAYING THAT OUTLOUD IS SO MUCH FUN. I keep picturing myself as this crazy bearded guy from back in the day, with leaves in his beard and all, telling my story to a bunch of village people while drinking some ale that tastes like piss. I'm probably pronouncing everything wrong.

When I hear the word "doughty" the last thing I'm going to think of is "man." So thanks for those translations. I'd probably have to print out a little mini dictionary if I was to read any of these.

I used to re-read things a lot, but now my main goal is just to try and read as many different books as I can. I've got a ton of really important books to read, argh. You know that meme/survey thing, and it lists a bunch of books and you bold which ones you read, which ones you hated, which ones you're planning on reading soon . . . And I just feel like I haven't read enough of them.

ajdslfoiasj;gj what the hell man that is adorable (and not surprising at all). I hope you find someone :')

Ooh, I see. ~~the things you say make me smarter but I have no response to them pff~~

Was this before neopets got popular? The only dog/dog breeding thing I played was Dogz when I was like, seven but you had to download that so. . .
That's a nice little story! Please tell me you haven't lost contact with her :(
I sometimes feel like getting back in touch with people I talked with yeaaaaars ago. I actually stumbled upon the myspace of a girl I used to talk with all the time but I'm unsure if I should even just say hello. I don't know if she even remembers me or has any interest in talking to me or anything.

. . . he's a dude? Aw damnit, I hate it when I assume someone's a girl and then I realize it was a guy. I must have missed the memo or something, idk. But yes, that's who I was talking about. I haven't seen him as Iceland, maybe I should go lurkin for a picture one day.

TAGS ARE YOUR FRIEND. Seriously, about a year ago I went and tagged all the entries in my lj from it's first year, back when I didn't use it. It was surprisingly fun, let me tell you.
I thought I read your profile, but as usual, it appears I missed some things. aioejaoeijtaet you wrote more than I thought you did. One day I am going to get myself some tea and a bowl of fruit and I'll put on a robe and I'll go on a reading spree through all of your fics and it will be awesome.

Those repetitive prompts just take up space though, you know? People are requesting what they want, so I guess if they want to just have it as us/uk, then fine. It'd be nice if they could list a few pairs they might like to see the prompt with, but then it's likely that the one being filled would be, you guessed it, us/uk.

Let me guess, a lot of those Baltic fics involved Russia too. It must be tough being a Baltic fan, I can't even imagine. The things you do for the characters you love.

hey hey does this mean we get more ~sparkly~ Estonia. (I don't even know what that means, I've just heard other anons refer to him as such).

IT'S OKAY MAN. I ENJOYED IT.

Haha, I have no idea how that happened, mate. How it got so long, I mean. Even reading over, it doesn't look like that much to me, even though it tookup so many comment parts. It doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of substance in what I was saying. Well, that's just how it is, I suppose! At any rate, I'm glad it made you happy.

... That picture. Oh. My. God. Congratulations, you managed to make Norway look like a man (a hot one, at that). So many people fail at making him look like a guy - it's the same problem as with Finland, really. (I see your white-text flailing, and I say, don't worry about it. Looks fine to me. I imagine getting the hang of a tablet is difficult - you seem to be doing pretty well, at any rate!)

You're right that it's a period that isn't explored in fandom a lot. Come to think of it, even when it comes to certain characters that you'd expect to have lots of stuff written with them dealing with that period, you don't see it. Take Canada fic, for example - he's a very popular character, and you'd expect a ton of stuff dealing with the War of 1812, but I haven't really run into a lot of that, nor anything that deals with the Riel Rebellion either (though that was more mid-1800s, hmm). Really, it's kind of surprising.

how awesome it would be if someone got around to writing it
Workin' on it, darlin'. I actually wrote a whole page of it today! -- Though most of it just involved Denmark being a jackass. But, er, at least I was working on it. I've had such a hard time motivating myself to write, but I think it's slowly coming back. This is good! Now, if only I could get the will to edit the two kink meme drafts and five anonmeme drabbles that have been sitting around for over a month, I'd definitely be in business.

I saw the write-or-die thing, and I love the idea, but unfortunately for me I can only write well when I'm doing it by hand. I can't write on a computer at all. I need to be able to scratch things out, and use arrows and there's something about physically seeing the pages that really helps me out. I might try the write-or-die thing for when I'm typing up fic, though. Usually I get distracted and it takes me about fifty million years to type something up (this may be an exaggeration).

I'm glad LJ is working for you again. <3 Most of the things I do online nowadays are LJ related. In previous years I had online games that I'd play as well, but not as much any more. In fact... now that I think of it, except for Wiki research and geeking out while reading medieval blogs, pretty much the entirety of what I do when I'm on the internet is LJ. I don't know where I'd be without it. Been on this site since 2002, and I really can't imagine not having it.

Now, when it comes to computers, in my defence I wasn't the one who bought this thing. If I had, it likely wouldn't have had Vista, and it likely wouldn't have been a Dell. Sigh. Though thus far I haven't really had any problems with the system not working. Mostly my issue has been not knowing how to do stuff. ...Well. Except for this whole battery thing, which I still haven't gotten around to fixing.

3.1 was... wow, that was so long ago. It's hard to remember. I recall that going back to using 3.1 (on an old computer) after using Windows 95 for a while was really jarring. The windows for various folders were always open; you didn't open them yourself, they stayed on the desktop like that. There wasn't a start-bar. If I closed the windows I didn't know how to get it back. To be honest, I've always been more comfortable with DOS than with Windows 3.1; DOS is a pain in the ass, but as long as I knew the commands to run my games, I was good. Easy-peasy.

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