He Who Fights With Monsters by Shirtaloon

I love treasure planet, and I hate that Disney sort of refuses to do anything with the property. I’m not clamoring for a remake or sequel or anything, I just want there to be more merchandise and such out there for it. The map would make for a great knickknack to display on my shelf (yes, they’re out there, and I may buy one someday)

I went to Disney world for the first (and so far only) time a few months before the movie released, and I feel like someone who had some sway over park operations was excited for it to come out and was trying to drum up some hype, I remember there being some behind the scenes stuff on display somewhere and it had me excited to see it.

And yeah, reading in another language is an interesting experience, like I said I’m far from fluent, so I have to stop a few times every page to look up some words, or cross-reference the English version to make sure I’m understanding a sentence properly (luckily it’s in the public domain so it’s easy to pull up on project Gutenberg) I think this was a good choice for me as a first book in Esperanto, it’s an easy enough reading level, I’m very familiar with the overall story so I have a general framework for what’s supposed to be happening but have no famiarity with the actual text, so imcant just coast by on having read the book before to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

And I’m just fluent enough to have the occasional opinion on whether I like how something was translated or not. The first time that happened was kind of cool, I figure it means that I am kind of getting the hang of the language if I have an opinion on something like that.

Names are definitely interesting, I’m not sure which other languages have similar features to this, but in Esperanto nouns end with O and there’s various suffixes that might be added on for various reasons, so if you have a name that doesn’t end in an O some of that can get a little awkward. Sometimes names end up getting esperantized, other times they just let it be and you just kind of have to roll with it.

Stop reading here if you don’t want a mini Esperanto lesson. I’d stop myself but I find writing this kind of thing out is helpful for my learning process.

To kind of illustrate what I’m talking about, there’s the English saying that “Hurt people hurt people” meaning that people who have been hurt tend to hurt other people

In Esperanto the sentence would be something like “Vunditaj homoj vundas homojn”

You have the root words vund- having to deal with injuries (from the rame root as “wound”)

And hom- meaning person (same root as the homo in homo sapiens, or the French “homme” for “man” for example)

-o- makes it a noun

-as is a present tense verb

-j- makes it plural

-a- in an adjective

-it- shows that something has been done to something. “Vunda” would be “hurtful,” and “vundita” is “hurt” or “injured”

-n indicates the direction of the action, so which person is the one being hurt and which one is doing the hurting, sentence structure is a little flexible in Esperanto so “homojn vundas vunditaj homoj” in essentially the same sentence as the original, it would probably be understood more like “people are hurt by hurt people,” and if you move the n around to make it “vunditajn homojn vundas homoj” it would be “hurt people are hurt by people”)

So without those vowels at the end of nouns and adjectives, it gets hard to add the j, n, and other suffixes on

And you can kind of play around with those and other suffixes. “Vundo” would be an injury, -e is adverbs, so “vunde” would be something like “hurtfully” or “injuriously,” “vundito” would be a person or thing that has been hurt, “homa” would be an adjective describing something as being human-like, “homas” would theoretically be a verb meaning something like “personing,” (which feels like it pulls from the same millennial slang dictionary as “adulting”) etc.

In a way it’s almost like someone built a language after really enjoying the Calvin and Hobbes strip about how “verbing weirds language”

Also, now that I’m thinking about it, “dolor-” might be more appropriate than “vund-” it’s sort of the difference of being “in pain” vs being “injured.” But that’s sort of in the realm of poetic license and word choice, and it’s kind of cool that I’m at the point where I can start thinking about that kind of thing. I’m too lazy to go back and change what I wrote so I’m leaving it as-is, it illustrates my point well enough.

I haven’t read sword of truth and I actually started reading because I am a Sanderson fan. But they are good. A bit slow to be honest, and apparently it will get even slower, but the world is fucking awesome. The world is set in an age which lasted for 3000 years, and there are significant things that lead to the creation of this age and Robert Jordan makes it feel like so. The world has a deep fucking history.

There is a part in book 4 where the main character gets to know events of the past (This is the best I can say without spoilers) and that had me in tears man. I would tell you to read upto there at least, then decide. I know it’s a long journey but I am loving it.

Magnet link for high seas people

As someone who has been a fan of the Sword of Truth series, I can confidently say that Wheel of Time is superficially similar but definitely better. Both main characters are unknowing chosen one’s with mysterious lineages, who go on their heroes journey to save the world. Both have an interesting magic system, and mostly engaging and enjoyable characters. Both have a morally headstrong lead character who has a hero complex after being thrust into the position, who are genuinely fun to root for as they grow into the hero they become.

Wheel of Time is a much larger story, more grand epic in comparison, with a larger cast and 5 “main” characters that are followed with their satellite characters. The timeline and scope start out with the entire world and remain on that scale in comparison, and Jordan is a significantly better writer in my opinion. I would say that Wheel of Time is like if J.R.R. Martin wrote the Lord of the Rings, so there is more individual depth (almost too much sometimes) and so the story takes longer to tell but is incredibly “lived in”.

I have a real soft spot for Terry Goodkind, having found the series in the late 90s or early 00s. It was one of my first big high fantasy series and before Wheel of Time. That said, i just couldn’t really get further than Confessor in the series. It looks like there were only 4 more books in the series, so I may have to go back and try and finish it and see if it gets better. Goodkind has a habit of pulling new powers out of Richard’s butt or changing how magic works when he seems to have written himself into a corner, which eventually killed my suspension of disbelief. And as much shit as Jordan gets for “men writing women”, his female characters are significantly better written than Goodkind’s. Both stories are rather traditional male power fantasy, but Goodkind can be kind of egregious there.

I am not ragging on Goodkind even if it seems like it, honestly, but read Wheel of Time because it is that good. The best way I can describe the difference is that it feels like going from a YA or main stream series to adult literature. You won’t be disappointed.