L

it’s his day

What’s up late night folks? Here’s an eerie shot I took down a pitch black road in the middle of the night

Extracting from the original tags: this is an 8 minute exposure — it was indeed pitch black

I like drawing him 😊✏️💜

This is my first fully digital portrait of Sam and I had such a good time drawing him. He's incredibly beautiful!

romanogers meme ★ [1/2] action scenes ↳ Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

As a note, when I for example say that they are doing the books, I do not mean that they follow all the pages paragraph by paragraph. But they have said they do the books and despite all the changes they did arrive at all the big story beats and I think that will not change for season 2. (And they have already thrown in plenty of stuff for the later books). So yes, I fully expect the main focus to be Louis and Claudia and their journey.

People have said early on though (me too) that it could be that we could get Armand‘s POV in s2 for things and I mean… Armand knows a lot of things, so this is a delightful, but not exactly surprising update for me.

Apart from that I completely agree, though I think that the connections for s3 will be set up already, and in detail that will call back to s1, too. 🙃

I don't know, it seems to me that book fans pick and choose depending on the day. When it's a change they like then it's "the show is doing the books and those naive show fans are in for a rude awakening" but when it's something they don't like then it's "we haven't seen the real Lestat yet" and "the real Lestat would never do that."

The reality is that the way you tell a story in a book cannot be the same way you do it in a visual medium like tv, especially when adapting a book like IWTV that's very slow-paced and introspective. Sure, they will hit similar story beats, but the way they will arrive at that will be very different, just like it was in season 1.

In the book, Lestat is at death's door when he arrives in Paris whereas show Lestat is nearly two centuries old and will probably be fully recovered by then because he wasn't even swamped or burned—which changes A LOT of things. Book Claudia is helpless on her own and that's the main reason she resents both Lestat and Louis. Show Claudia is capable of travelling alone and does not require a parental figure. She hates Louis because he selfishly betrays her in the final episode, which will change a lot of things. Book Louis had no knowledge of Nicki or the history between Armand and Lestat. Show Louis is fully aware of both and that too will change a lot of things. And I could go on and on.

So yes, similar story beats but very different story arcs and sequence of events.

I’ve watched CA: The Winter Soldier a while ago and it’s easily my favorite Marvel stand-alone. Decided to sketch my faves (i.e. all of them).

Gosh I just love book Legolas. He's immortal. He's a teenager. Elrond picks him instead of Glorfindel because he's average and won't draw attention to the Fellowship. He's the comic relief guy and resident Little Shit, but he can also shoot a Nazgul out of the sky in the pitch black like a one-man elf anti-aircraft defense system. He wants everyone to know that he's, like, really old. He forgets the task at hand because he wants to look at trees. His greatest qualities are that he can become friends with anyone and his loyalty is unending. He shows up to Valinor a century late with Starbucks in hand and his dwarf bestie at his side. Iconic.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Audio Commentary:

I die of love for him, perfect in every way, Lost in the strains of wafting music. My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body And I do not wonder at his beauty. His waist is a sapling, his face a moon, And loveliness rolls off his rosy cheek I die of love for you, but keep this secret: The tie that binds us is an unbreakable rope. How much time did your creation take, O angel? So what! All I want is to sing your praises. - abū nuwās, love in bloom

i know it's been said many times before but i will never get over how jacob anderson, a british man with a british accent, not only nailed a louisiana creole accent but also developed a studiously (almost eerily) generic accent that louis uses in the present AND showed the first accent bleeding into the second accent at key moments as a way of aurally externalizing his character's inner journey. what did god put in this man when she created him.

@dedalvs anything to add about jacob anderson's accent/valyrian pronunciation work?

Pardon me, but is someone praising Jacob Anderson without letting me praise him first?!

Backing up. It's October 2009, and my Dothraki is chosen as the official version for HBO's Game of Thrones. Absolutely the job of a lifetime. Conlangers were never hired to create languages for big budget productions, and language was central to A Song of Ice and Fire. The fact that this was on HBO guaranteed that it was going to be huge, and now I was going to get to be on the set of a TV show, work with actors, go to Hollywood parties, and create a language that would be as popular as Klingon.

June 2011, only one of those four things had happened, and of all things, it was going to a Hollywood party—the season 1 premiere event for Game of Thrones. It was very cool! None of the cast attended, but it was cool! But as for the rest, the idea that I would ever actually talk to any of the actors or be on the actual set was, apparently, laughable. And as for Dothraki, it had a very loyal following of about 6 or 7 people, all of whom I came to know personally. Dothraki was discussed in the press, sure, but nobody was going to learn it; there were never going to be any Dothraki conventions. It wasn't the next Klingon.

June 2012, and by this point I'd gotten used to seeing my work on screen—and by that I mean I'd gotten used to seeing it performed…so-so. Every so often it was really good, but for the most part, I got used to hearing jumbled consonants, dropped syllables, missed words… I've always been a perfectionist, so this was difficult, but I didn't have much choice. I had absolutely no control over it. I never got to work with any of the actors, so all they had were my recordings, and a series of dialect coaches who had absolutely no idea what they were doing with my stuff. (And, as I would learn later, just because an actor nails 9 out of 10 takes doesn't mean the editor won't like the one take they screwed up. Sometimes that's the take that makes it to the screen.) Basically, if someone has an English line on a TV show that goes "It looks like the mechanism got screwed up somehow", and what they say is "It locks like a manism got scroot up someho", they're going to reshoot the scene until the actor says it right. If that happens with a conlang, no one will notice or care. This was now my life.

July 2012, I get the opportunity to create High Valyrian (yay!), and then a "dialect" of High Valyrian to be spoken in Slaver's Bay. Knowing the history from GRRM's books, I knew this "dialect" was actually a full daughter language with lexical/phonological material from an extinct language (Ghiscari) that I wasn't being asked to create, so I was going to have to create two languages at once, and at least have an idea for a third one—and, in fact, there was going to be a lot of dialogue in this new daughter language. Consequently my focus was split. I can honestly barely remember creating Astapori Valyrian, because I wanted to be sure that High Valyrian was right (I knew book fans didn't care about Dothraki, but did care about HV). Despite the lack of attention, I did realize that Astapori Valyrian had a cool sound and a great flow (it really does!). I wish I'd had more time to appreciate creating it as a daughter language (I wish High Valyrian had been as complete as Dothraki was at that point), but I was pleased with the result. I was curious to see how the actors would handle it.

April 21, 2013. I am absolutely over the moon. I'd just for the first time saw a scene that I loved in the books because, for once, I predicted what was going to happen (as a reader, I'm sitting here thinking, "How do you trade your entire army to someone and not wonder if they're going to use it on you after they get it?!"), and it actually plays better in the show than the books, and it all hinges on a language I created. I still get chills watching that scene: Episode 304, Daenerys revealing she speaks Valyrian. To this day that's still the best thing I've done. The same issues I mentioned above were present, as always (watching thinking, "Did she say mebatas instead of memēbātās…?"), but they're minor. The scene is outstanding. I realized that whatever was going to happen after this, I would always have this scene. That was a good night.

April 28, 2013. After last week's episode, I wasn't really waiting for anything. In episode 305 there's only one scene with any conlang work in it—nothing really major. Introducing Grey Worm, characterization, etc. Everything in this episode is about what's going on in Westeros. At this point I'd heard a fair amount of Astapori Valyrian in Slaver's Bay. It was good! Definitely good enough. Did the trick. The prosody wasn't quite what I did with it, but it was good. I was somewhat interested in this introduction in 305. Grey Worm only speaks Astapori Valyrian at this point, so this actor wouldn't have had had any other speaking lines, and aside from one short line and saying his name at the beginning, his next line is a huuuuuge speech, comparatively speaking. I was curious to see how he would do.

Critters and gentlefolk, that night I witnessed a miracle.

NEVER had I heard ANYONE speak one of my languages better than me until that night.

Every word, every syllable, EVERY SOUND OF EVERY CLAUSE Jacob "You Heard My Name" Anderson uttered was ABSOLUTELY FLAWLESS.

I was stunned. My mouth literally hung open—probably for the rest of the damn episode, at which point I went back and watched that scene—again, and again, and again.

And so you don't have to go searching, this is Grey Worm's line (not the first two short ones—the big one [note: j is [ʒ], except in Daenery's High Valyrian name, where it's [dʒ], dh is [ð], q is [q], r is [ɾ] and y is [y], in IPA]):

That was my translation of this English line:

That is a LOOOOOOOOOONG ass line. And go watch that scene. There is nothing on the screen but his face. It's a closeup the entire time. Any slight deviation would be visible as well as audible. Take a look:

This...KING just casually dropped the greatest performance I have ever witnessed on screen at a time when I had already given up on ever seeing a truly great conlang performance on screen.

And then he proceeded to do it again and again and again and again and again for the rest of the entire show. I don't think it's a coincidence that the very last conlang line of Game of Thrones is his. They knew how much I loved him—I told them. I told anyone who would listen and twelve people who wouldn't, along with their next of kin. He didn't take my language and make it his own—no, no. He is graciously allowing me to claim that I created his native tongue—the one he's been speaking since birth. THAT'S how good he is.

So yeah, accent work? In English? I guess I'm not surprised he's pretty good at that. Something like that to this…adonis, this living, breathing Master Class™ in perfection is like yawning to an ordinary human. Jacob Anderson can walk into my house in the dead of night, take anything out of my refrigerator, and then leave the door to the fridge and the house open when he leaves. He has earned no less.

To sum up:

I love how they look like they're courting each other here

Massive Minnesota W read em for yourself

I was planning to drop the items from the linked tweet thread onto this post, but there are SO MANY new bills that it became a wall of text - line after line after line of incredible things Minnesota has enacted in a single session.

I'm.... actually blown away. the political landscape often feels so hopeless, but the DFL pulled themselves together, getting every member on board for these changes - real changes that are going to protect health, keep people out of jail and housed, and improve work conditions massively. this should be a beacon for every other state democratic party - change doesn't have to be incremental. things can get better and they can get better right now. get crackin'.

You spend an hour alone with him and you’re breathing in sync together.