Alicornutopia

I actually really like writing for Prime. I can be as sarcastic as I want with him, it's great!

I asked a friend who is fluent in French to translate the line with Darren's spell:

"Light, heat, sunlight brought to life, come forth, come forth without harm to any but darkness," he nearly whispers. "And do some fucking smiting."

After a moment, he gave me:

"Lumière, chaleur, soleil mis en vie, venez, venez sans mal a rien que la noirceur," il presque chuchote. "Et fait un peu de dégât, putain."

He struggled a bit with "do some fucking smiting" - he first gave me " "Et fait un peu de putain enchantement." and then settled on "Et fait un peu de dégât, putain." as better conveying the sentiment.

So if you're wondering what Darren might have been saying when he cast that spell, here's a possibility!

<3 Excellent.

Eeee I am excited by having things translated into French for Darren's spellcasting! I would go back and change it if it were possible, have it actually be in French, but alas, Dreamwidth. I have a few friends who are fluent in French (This is, in fact, why I picked French for Darren.) but I was impatient about tagging and did not want to put a proverbial roadblock on my writery energy . I think in the future I might try and get a few things translated beforehand, but often plans change, so that might not be very viable while still avoiding the writery roadblock.

If this were a traditional setting, I'd write up what I'd want him to say in English, keep writing from there, and get it translated later while editing, but. Dreamwidth. Everything is the first draft.

That's a good reason to pick French! But yeah, it's not always possible to get phrases translated in advance, and who wants to wait when you're in the middle of an exciting scene?

The lack of editing after response seems like a really frustrating thing about Dreamwidth - I'd probably be too perfectionist to put up with it. Knowing that you guys are forced keep everything a first draft makes it all even more impressive.

Actually, while I'm thinking about it, I've got a couple of questions about how chanting works. I'm not familiar with the canon the story is based on, though, so they might be redundant. What's the rationale for chanting being 'neater' in a non-native language (or is it just "because magic")? I'm imagining it having to do with psycholinguistic effects of using a non-native language (ie, blunting the emotional impact of things like swear words and terms of intimacy, but also decreasing some cognitive bias). Also, does chanting have to be done through spoken language? Could you chant in ASL? Could you chant over IM, or a text-to-speech device?

I'm a bit frustrated by it, especially when I read things over and find inconsistencies or typos, but honestly it's a problem I'm fine with working around. I think it's better for me as a writer, because I am the type to get myself stuck in the editing phase for an eternity and never actually finish anything. So, this forces my hand - boot, out the door, it's done and out on the first draft. It's sort of like drawing with pen, you're going to mess up no matter what you do, at least at first. You have to minimize your mistakes as much as possible, and roll with the ones you make. The little fiddly details being perfect helps with the overall piece, but if they're minimal and you work around them anyway rather than stopping entirely, most people won't notice. At least, that's what I tell myself so I don't get grumpy about just how many times I've screwed up.

The canon we're working from has precious, precious little to work off of on 'How magic works' - the entirely of Phixable's rune system is basically of our own design, with like - things we saw in canon once. Chanting itself was based off of a book the both of us had read (Its name escapes me right now, unfortunately) that required practitioners to say their spells in a non-native language. The concept was interesting and we liked the idea of using it. Psycholinguistic effects are my personal go-to rationale, but I haven't talked it over with Alicorn so I'm afraid I can't give you a perfect answer.

I think we decided that chanting has to be through spoken language, and it definitely has to be done by a person, in the same way that the runes have to be drawn by a person.

The canon with the non-native chanting is the Patricia C. Wrede series "Magic & Malice".

Can one do magic in a conlang, and if so, can this be abused by creating a conlang specially tailored to the needs of spellcasting?

...that's a really, really good question. I will talk to Aestrix. This risks hella brokenness but it would be so cool.

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD DO THE THING DO THE THING