Hi Wastelanders, Raiders, Settlers, Brothers and Sisters of Steel, and Mutants!
After a long time, I returned for a bit of fun and I seek some advice.
Here is my build:
https://nukesdragons.com/fallout-76/character?v=1&s=f634e59&d=sq2s32sr2sx2sg2pe2p02eh2cr0cu2id2ip2i71im1in0s12a04l20lt2lu2l71&lp=x13xn3xq3xb3x33xj3&m=19cef
Most of all: I play alone. I try to avoid teams.
I'm a power armor user, currently, its a T-65. I left when it could not rolled as legendary, so, its in a mess like now, I have to roll some better prefixes for them. Since I do not have access to the Union PA right now, I try to built what I have. I may change to the Hellcat's PA when I have opened the mods for it. Since I mostly wont use overeaters, I'll try to mix and match some reduction from enemy types (ghoul, human, and such)
My weapons are (I was lucky to craft some cool "new" weapons. New, for me), and I want to make my build around them.
-Aristoctrat's, +50% VATS hit, +1 Perception Plasma Caster (for snipeing and doing the "criple" chellenges) -Vampire's, +25% weapon speed, +15% reload speed Flamer (for survive almost everything) -Anti-armor, +25% weapon speed, +1 Perception Cremator (for tagging thing in events) -Aristocrat's, +25% weapon speed (no third star) Gauss Minigun (when I'm filling that th Cremator is not enough)
Mods on them maybe not the best, and the Cremator's mods are not fully opened yet (only slow-burn and heavy barrels are in place).
So, please, rate me.
Should I swap perks, legendary perks? Should I drop/take mutations?
Thank you for your time.

FOR SCREENSHOTS OF MOST STEPS TO AID WITH FOLLOWING THIS GUIDE, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

✰ Where/how do I download UTAU? ✰

Here is the official download for the latest version of UTAU, updated as of 23/05/24 with support for Windows 11. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this version of UTAU if running on Windows 11.

✰ How do I install UTAU correctly? ✰

It is necessary to change your system locale to Japanese (Japan) before installing UTAU. This will not change the language your operating system or other software uses, it simply allows the Japanese-encoded text within UTAU + voicebanks to display correctly, rather than as symbols/boxes or garbled Latin characters. It does not cause any damage or harm to your hardware or any other software you already have or software you may download/purchase in the future.
Open the Start Menu and navigate to Settings. From there, select Time & Language > Language & Region > Administrative Language Settings > Change system locale... and select Japanese (Japan) from the drop-down list. You will be prompted to restart your PC, follow this instruction.
Once this has been done, extract the .zip file you downloaded and run the executable (.exe) file - this is the installer. As of version 4.19 for Windows 11, a dialogue box stating "Windows protected your PC" will appear upon running the installer. Click on More info in the dialogue box, then Run anyway. A second dialogue box stating "The app you're trying to install isn't a Microsoft-verified app" will appear, select Install anyway. A third (and final) dialogue box asking for administrator permission to run the installer will appear, approve this action. The installer will be in Japanese, as it should be, DO NOT PANIC. Follow the install wizard by clicking the box with (N) and allow it to install to the automatically selected directory. Once the install has completed, close the install wizard by clicking the box with (C). UTAU should now be installed correctly and the majority of its user interface should automatically be displayed in English.
If it isn't displayed in English automatically, go to ツール(T) > オプション(O)… > 全般 > その他 > Select the checkbox next to インターフェイス言語を強制する and then select en from the dropdown menu. Restart UTAU, its user interface is now forcibly displayed in English.

✰ How do I install a voicebank? ✰

Download the voicebank you'd like to use (preferably from the voicebank author's official sites or social media) and extract it from the .zip file. You can simply drag and drop the extracted voicebank folder into an open UTAU window and it will automatically load the voicebank into the current project.
A second method that I'd personally recommend doing for all voicebanks you download and intend to use is placing the voicebank folder(s) into the voice folder in UTAU's directory.
Right-click on the UTAU icon on your desktop and select open file location, this will open the folder where UTAU + necessary components are installed (make a mental note that this is also where the plugins and resamplers folders are both located.) Drag your voicebank(s) into the voice folder, these are now "installed" into UTAU's voicebank directory. Open UTAU, navigate to the top-left and click on the name of the currently loaded voicebank (by default, this will be "デフォルト") and select the voicebank you'd like to use from the drop-down list next to Voice Bank in the dialog box. Click OK. The voicebank is now loaded and ready to sing!
MYST'S PERSONAL FAVOURITE VOICEBANKS*: CZloid VCCV 2015 [ENGLISH], Kikyuune Aiko RockLoud CVVC [JAPANESE], Kikyuune Aiko RockLoud CVVC [ENGLISH], Iris Libra VCCV [ENGLISH], Iris Libra -florelle- [CVVC JAPANESE], Sukottei v3.1 [VCV], Matsudappoiyo "Strong" [VCV], Yamine Renri "Normal" [VCV], Kasane Teto "Smooth Voice" [VCV], Namine Ritsu "Normal" [VCV], Namine Ritsu "Strong" [VCV], and, of course, デフォルト [CV] (AKA uta, Uta Utane or Defoko,) which comes bundled with UTAU!
*(All links are the same links provided by the authors of each voicebank.)

✰ How do I make a voicebank sing? ✰

You will need to load a .ust file or import a .midi file into UTAU. You can either create your own .midi + .ust or download them, please remember to give credit for any work that isn't your own where appropriate.
The most common way to create a .ust from scratch is to create your own .midi in a DAW of your choosing. Typically, and personally, I'd recommend FL Studio for creating .midi files. FL Studio has an unlimited trial version but it is not fully functional, so please read the information first.
Once you've got your .midi finished, open UTAU and navigate to File(F) > Import(I)… and select your .midi, this will load it into UTAU and, by default, all of the notes / lyrics will be displayed as [あ]. You will have to input the lyrics for your song manually. This will look different based on what language your target song is in, how the voicebank you're using is configured, what type of voicebank it is etc.

✰ I've installed UTAU correctly, loaded a voicebank, opened a .ust but it won't sing, help!? ✰

This can be determined by a few factors, but most commonly it will be because the notes / lyrics in the .ust are not configured correctly for the voicebank you're using.

FOR JAPANESE VOICEBANKS:

Japanese CV (Consonant-Vowel) voicebanks are now considered obsolete but they are arguably the easiest to use and create for beginners. CV voicebanks require the .ust / lyrics to be parsed in a consonant-vowel format. This uses solely either hiragana or romaji if the voicebank is configured to utilise it.
Notes will be parsed like this: [あ] [り] [が] [と] [ご] [ざ] [い] [ま] [す] or [a] [ri] [ga] [to] [go] [za] [i] [ma] [su] if using romaji.
Japanese VCV (Vowel-Consonant-Vowel) voicebanks are now the most common voicebank format and are much smoother-sounding than their CV predecessors. They are easy to use once you understand the principle of VCV parsing but they can sometimes be intimidating for beginners. VCV voicebanks require the .ust / lyrics to be parsed in a vowel-consonant-vowel format. This will almost always be using a combination of romaji and hiragana, however some VCV voicebanks may be configured to utilise entirely romaji.
Notes will be parsed like this: [- あ] [a り] [i が] [a と] [o ご] [o ざ] [a い] [i ま] [a す], or [- a] [a ri] [i ga] [a to] [o go] [o za] [a i] [i ma] [a su] if using romaji.
Notice how the beginning always starts with the preceding vowel? This is the additional initial vowel portion in VCV. The prefixes will always be in romaji and will always be a vowel.
Japanese CVVC (Consonant-Vowel-Vowel-Consonant) voicebanks are somewhat uncommon and sit between CV and VCV in terms of smoothness. CVVC is smoother than CV, but less smooth than VCV. The main highlight for a CVVC voicebank is that it requires much less recording than either a CV or VCV voicebank, so it's a good step-up for beginners from making a CV voicebank. I would, however, consider it the hardest of the three to use, especially for a beginner. The principle however is the same, in that the notes / lyrics have to be parsed to match the format, and like VCV, utilise a combination of romaji and hiragana. There may be some CVVC voicebanks which are configured to utilise entirely romaji, however these will be very rare, if they even exist.
Notes will be parsed like this: [- あ] [a r] [り] [i g] [が] [a t] [と] [o g] [ご] [o z] [ざ] [い] [i m] [ま] [a s] [す] or [- a] [a r] [ri] [i g] [ga] [a t] [to] [o g] [go] [o z] [za] [i] [i m] [ma] [a s] [su] if using romaji.
Notice how [ざ] + [い] has no extra parsing? That's because [ざ] + [い], [za] + [i] is VV, Vowel-Vowel. The extra parsing is only required for the VC parts of the lyrics, as all Japanese phonemes, except for vowels, are always consonant-vowel.

FOR ENGLISH VOICEBANKS:

The current standard for English voicebanks is VCCV, therefore most will be configured in this way, however there are some English voicebanks which are configured as CVVC and will need to be parsed slightly differently. English (+ other non-Japanese) voicebanks are undoubtedly the most difficult to work with, especially as a beginner, and are the most time-consuming to record and configure. They both entirely utilise "romaji" (Latin alphabet) + symbols/numbers as their phonemes. Learning an entirely new set of phonemes and what sounds they make can be tricky, frustrating and time-consuming, especially for beginners.
Japanese phonemes by nature, with the exception of vowels, will always start with a consonant and and with a vowel. English CVVC mostly follows this rule, but where Japanese CVVC is strictly always going to be [C V] + [V C] etc., English CVVC could be a string of [C V] + [C V] + [C V] or [V C] + [V C] + [V C] or a mixture, [C V] + [V C] + [V C] / [V C] + [C V] + [C V].
As an example, the word "synthesized" using an English CVVC voicebank can only be parsed as [s y] [y n] [th e] [s i] [i z] [e d]. It's about thinking of the language phonetically. In this example, y is treated as a vowel, as it's pronounced with an ih (ɪ) sound, and th (θ) is treated as a single consonant. Keeping that in mind, you can see that it is parsed as [C V] [V C] [C V] [C V] [V C] [C V].
English VCCV, however, is recorded and parsed differently to both Japanese and English CVVC. English VCCV is split up and recorded in various strings to allow for a much wider combination of sounds.
English VCCV can essentially be parsed in any combination of V, VC, VCC, CC, CCV, CV and VV. For example, the same word, "synthesized", could be parsed in a few different ways. Two examples are: [s y] [n th] [e s] [i z] [e d] or [s y] [y n] [n th] [th e] [e s] [s i] [i z] [z e] [e d]. How you parse lyrics using English VCCV will differ from word to word and can sometimes be down to personal preference, how the voicebank sounds using different parsing combinations and/or which type of English accent the user is intending to replicate, as some words can sound completely different depending on whether the accent is USA, CAN, GBR, AUS, NZL, IND, SGP or ZAF English. There are actually over 160 recognised English accents worldwide, so the possibilities and combinations are almost endless!
SOMETIMES A VOICEBANK WILL STILL NOT SING DESPITE FOLLOWING ALL OF THE ABOVE GUIDANCE. THIS WILL MOST LIKELY BE BECAUSE THE LYRICS REQUIRE ADDITIONAL SUFFIXES IN ORDER TO BE RECOGNISED, SUCH AS A PITCH OR APPEND\ INDICATOR.* THERE IS AN EASY, QUICK SOLUTION FOR THIS.

✰ Thanks! The voicebank now sings, but it sounds choppy, what's wrong with it!? ✰

There's a very easy fix for this that can be applied to all .usts, providing the oto.ini has been configured correctly and optimally by the author of the voicebank. Select all of the notes in your .ust (CTRL + A) and right-click on any of the notes. Select region property and the "Note Properties (selected range)" dialog box will open within UTAU. Next to Preutterance and Overlap, click the Clear button. The value boxes that may have been greyed-out or had numbers in previously will now be cleared. Whilst you're still in this dialog box, "clear" the Modulation and STP boxes, too, by clicking inside of them and pressing the spacebar, then click OK.
Next, select all of the notes again and navigate to the toolbar at the top of the UTAU window. You'll see the play, pause and stop buttons, along with some MIDI buttons. Further along to the right of these buttons, you'll see five more, ACPT, P2P3, P1P4, OPT and RESET respectively. You'll utilise three of these five buttons in this specific order: RESET > ACPT > P2P3 > ACPT. Without getting too technical, these buttons optimise the pre-utterance and overlap of your lyrics, resulting in a much smoother, more natural sound.

✰ Now the voicebank sings smoothly, but it's a little...flat? How can I change that? ✰

You're going to want to utilise something called pitch-bending, or tuning. In UTAU, you can adjust certain parameters, such as intensity, vibrato and pitch. Intensity is how loud (or quiet) certain note(s) will be when sung. Vibrato is that "wobbly" sound that singers sometimes produce on elongated notes. If you're unfamiliar with this word, or don't know what it sounds like, here's a video demonstration. Pitch is exactly that - it determines the pitch at which a note starts on, scales up or down to, and finishes on. Tuning in UTAU can be daunting at first for beginners, but once you understand how it works, it's mostly about experimentation and figuring out what sounds good / eventually developing your own "style" of tuning. Some people prefer to make their tuning sound as human-like as possible, others prefer to tune their vocals in an un-natural, extreme way, making use of large, sudden pitch-bends. Each style of tuning has its advantages and disadvantages, so play around and find out what you enjoy most! Here is a video tutorial on how to tune vocals in UTAU.

✰ WAIT! What about those resamplers and plugins folders you mentioned earlier? What are they for and what do they do? ✰

Great question! A resampler is, simply put, a standalone program/engine that makes the notes in UTAU sing. There are many different resamplers available for UTAU which can produce varied results depending on the voicebank it's used with. This is not a 100% complete list of resamplers, but I've compiled a folder of the most well-known resamplers for use with UTAU. (Please note that the TIPS resampler is not included as I do not have permission from the developer to redistribute it.) Just download the .zip file, extract it and place the extracted folder into the UTAU directory. To change which resampler you're using at any given point, go to Project(P) > Project Property(R) and next to Tool 2 (resample) click […] and select which resampler you'd like to use. Don't be afraid to experiment and try out different resamplers with different voicebanks, as some will sound much better with certain resamplers than others. Sometimes voicebank authors provide in the "readme" of the voicebank which resampler they personally think provides the best sound for their voicebank.
Resamplers also utilise something called flags. These are essentially "effects", the parameters of which can be changed in order to produce different results. A full list of flags + explanations for UTAU's default resampler can be found here. An almost-complete list of flags + explanations for moresampler can be found here. Flags can be input by selecting Project(P) > Project Property(R) and inputting your desired flags + parameters into the Rendering Options box. Again, don't be afraid to experiment with different flags with different voicebanks! Sometimes voicebank authors provide in the "readme" of the voicebank which flags they personally think provides the best sound for their voicebank. A "baseline" combination of flags which will provide a good sound for most voicebanks is Y0H0B0F0L99C.
As for plug-ins, these are essentially quality of life tools for use with UTAU, again, standalone programs which work within UTAU. They can range from things such as automatically converting a .ust from romaji to hiragana (and vice versa), automatically converting a .ust from CV to VCV and importing .vsqx (VOCALOID) files. Plug-ins can be extremely useful when utilised properly and makes using UTAU much quicker, more efficient and less frustrating. Again, this isn't a 100% complete list of plug-ins, but these are some of the most useful. (In line with the Terms of Redistribution, I'm required to inform you that the developer of back2cv is 遊牧家族 / Nomadic Family.) To "install" the plug-ins, repeat the extraction + placement into UTAU's directory process, as you did with the resamplers, except when prompted if you'd like to overwrite the existing file(s) with the same name, accept the prompt.

✰ YAY! My Japanese and English voicebanks now all sing beautifully! ...now I want to record my own voicebank! How do I do that!? ✰

The easiest way to record any voicebank is using the software OREMO. I would also highly recommend downloading its counterpart software setParam to aid with creating oto.ini files for your voicebank(s), however an oto.ini can also be created and configured within UTAU, too.
There are, thankfully, many video tutorials on how to create Japanese CV, VCV and English VCCV voicebanks. There is a written tutorial on how to create a Japanese CVVC voicebank, however it doesn't appear to be fully comprehensive. There unfortunately doesn't appear to be any comprehensive tutorial for English CVVC, however there is SEL which uses X-SAMPA/ VOCALOID phonemes. This is more akin to CC + VV rather than CVVC, though. (Thanks to reddit user ScarletPandaOFC for recommending this to me!)
Recording + otoing a Japanese CV voicebank.
Recording + otoing a Japanese VCV voicebank.
Playlist showcasing how to record and oto an English VCCV voicebank + how to format .usts for English VCCV.
It is worth noting that many voicebanks these days are VCV multipitch, meaning that they are recorded (and re-recorded) in various different pitches in VCV. This has become somewhat of a standard as it allows for much more versatility; the same voicebank can sing "optimally" in lower and higher pitches, adding to its "natural"-ness. Many voicebanks are also recorded in different styles, often called appends\, such as a "whisper" voice, a "strong" voice, a "relaxed" voice, a "shouting" voice etc. *For a** beginner, I would recommend only recording a voicebank that is your natural singing "style" and at the pitch your voice is most comfortable singing in with minimal strain or discomfort.
Additionally, you can also record omake - extras. These can range from breath samples (short + elongated inhales + exhales,) ending breaths (stand-alone vowels whilst exhaling, for additional realism,) glottal stops, English "L" and "R" sound(s), a trilled "R" sound, etc. Omake can also include things such as concept or bonus artwork of your character, a short audio recording of your "character" introducing themselves etc. Omake can essentially be whatever you'd like and helps give more "personality" to your charactevoicebank, so have fun with it if you choose to include them!

✰ I've made my own voicebank, made it sing a .ust in UTAU, tuned it, and now I want turn it into a full cover with music! …how do I achieve that? ✰

Once you're happy with how your vocals sound in UTAU, you'll need to render these vocals as a .wav file to work with them in a DAW. Open your completed .ust, select all of the notes and navigate to Project(P) at the top of the UTAU window. Select Render wav File(R)…, name your file accordingly and select where you want to render it to. For the sake of simplicity and cohesion, I'd recommend saving any and all files related to each cover you make to a folder of the same name on your desktop. Click save and a DOS window will open - this is completely normal and is how the resampler processes the .ust and outputs it as a .wav file. The length of time that this takes to complete will depend on how large your .ust is, which resampler you're using, whether or not the .frq files of your voicebank have been generated prior to rendering and your CPU's processing power, be patient and allow it to complete.
You've now got your UTAU vocals as a .wav file! You can now take this file and import it into a DAW of your choosing. The three DAWs I'd recommend most for this is Audacity, REAPER and FL Studio.
Audacity is 100% free but is relatively basic in its capabilities. The biggest pro with Audacity is that it's easy for beginners.
REAPER has an unlimited, fully functional evaluation period but will prompt users to consider purchasing a license for 5 seconds at each start-up. REAPER is more advanced than Audacity but still retains an ease of use, even for beginners.
FL Studio, too, has an unlimited free trial, however it doesn't provide the full functionality of its licensed versions. FL Studio is the most advanced of the three and can be intimidating for beginners.
Once you've imported the .wav file into a DAW, and downloaded and imported the corresponding instrumental, you can begin mixing your vocals into your instrumental. This video is a good starting point for a basic, solid mix, tailored specifically for synthesized vocals. It exclusively showcases how to achieve this in FL Studio, but the principles can be applied to and achieved in other DAWs, too.
Once you're happy with how everything sounds in your DAW, I'd recommend rendering your finished project as both a .wav and .mp3 file. .wav is a lossless, uncompressed file format and is the highest quality you can output, whereas .mp3 is a lossy, compressed file format, but outputting at 320kbps is the highest quality .mp3 can achieve and will be more than good enough for almost all listening experiences. From there, you can go on to upload the .mp3 or .wav to an audio sharing website of your choice (most commonly SoundCloud) and/or create a video in a video editor (OpenShot is a solid, free option) to upload to a video sharing website of your choice (most commonly YouTube and/or NND.)

✰ Thank you SO much! One last question...I'd like to distribute my voicebank, but I don't know how... ✰

Distributing your voicebank is thankfully very easy! Once you've recorded and configured an oto.ini for your voicebank, there are a few little "bells and whistles" that are recommended to include within your voicebank's folder.
First: a character icon for your voicebank which will be displayed in the top-left square within UTAU. Most commonly this is a close-up of your voicebank's character's face (if it has a character assigned to it) but can also be a logo associated with you or your voicebank, too. The image should ideally be a 100px x 100px bitmap image file, BMP for short. This file type is most commonly associated with Microsoft Paint. Open your image with Paint, crop it to your liking and resize it to 100px x 100px. Save it as a BMP image. This image can be named anything you'd like but I'd recommend simply icon.bmp.
Second: a character.txt file. In this text file you'll need two strings of text, as follows:
name=[nameofyourvoicebank] image=icon.bmp
These are fairly self-explanatory. This file as a whole simply allows the icon and name of your voicebank to display correctly in UTAU. The name text should be what you want your voicebank's name to be displayed as, and the image text should match what you previously saved your character icon as.
Third: a readme .txt file. Typically, readme files contain some basic information about your voicebank's character, such as its name, gender identity/pronouns, age, birthday, height etc. and also the name of you, the author! You can also detail any restrictions you'd like to place on your voicebank, such as the prohibition (or permission) of use in 18+ content, prohibition (or permission) of commercial use etc. and recommended resamplers + flags for your voicebank.
Make sure all of these files, along with the oto.ini and all voice recordings are placed within the same folder. Ideally, this folder should be named whatever you'd like your voicebank to be called + its format and pitch. For example "[JPN CV] Voicebank [G3]" or "[ENG VCCV] Voicebank [D4]" - this is how I personally like to format my voicebank names, as it makes it easy to recognise exactly what it is without having to open the folder. You are welcome to name your voicebanks however works best for you, though!
Once you've got the folder fully compiled, right-click it and select Compress to ZIP file. Windows will then compress this folder and "zip it up", decreasing the file size making it easier and more accessible to download. You'll then see the .zip file next to the uncompressed folder. You're going to take that .zip file and upload it to a secure and trustworthy file sharing website, such as MediaFire, Dropbox or your Google Drive account. Once you've uploaded it to the website of your choice, you can copy the shareable link and distribute that link wherever you'd like! Now everyone that you've shared this link with will be able to download and use the voicebank that you created! Congratulations!
VOILÁ! You now have UTAU installed and working with a strong set of resamplers and plug-ins, voicebanks that all sing correctly, as well as your very own voicebank(s) which you can distribute wherever you'd like!

✰ THAT'S ALL FOLKS! HAPPY UTAU-ING! ✰

=BACKGROUND=

Gwýsene ⟪ثِتونج ځوېٓسِنہ⟫ ⟨th'Tundj Gwýsene⟩ /θɛˈtund͡ʒ ˈʝyːzɛnɛ/ (or "the least Germanic Germanic language") is a Germanic language descendant from Old English spoken in Nabataea (modern-day Jordan, Sinai, and northwestern Saudi Arabia). It takes place in a timeline where the Anglo-Saxons get kicked out of Britain by the Celts, therefore they sail all the way to Nabataea (I pride myself on my realism here) and settle there. Most of them eventually convert to Islam, and, as a consequence, Arabic becomes elevated to the language of academia, nobility, and poetry.
"English" as we know it still survives in-timeline as Englisc — basically Middle English with some modifications — spoken as a minority language in southeastern Britain (or Pritani as the Celts call it in-world).
==ETYMOLOGY OF GWÝSENE==
⟨Gwýsene⟩ ⟪ځوېٓسِنہ⟫ is derived from ځوېٓسِن (Gwýsen) + ـہ- (-e, adjectival suffix), the former from Middle Gwýsene جِٔويسّمَن (ɣewissman), a fossilization of جِٔويسّ (ɣewiss, "Geuisse") + مُن (mon, "man"), from Old Gwýsene יוש מן (yws mn, yewisse monn), from Old English Ġewisse monn.
⟨Tundj⟩ ⟪تونج⟫ is loaned from an Arabized pronunciation of Old Gwýsene תנג (tng, tunge) (from which descends the doublet ⟨Togg⟩ ⟪تُځّ⟫ /toɣ(ː)/, "tongue")
The Englisc exonym is ⟨Eizmenasisc⟩ /ɛjzmɛˈnaːsɪʃ/, From Brithonech (in-world Conlang) Euuzmenasech /ˈøʏzmə̃næsɛx/, from Middle French Yœssmanes /ˈjœssmanɛs/ (hence modern in-world French Yœssmanes /jœsman/ and Aquitanian (in-world) ⟨Yissmanes⟩ /ˈiːsmans/), from Middle (High) German \jewissmaneisch (hence modern in-world German *Jewissmännisch** /jəˌvɪsˈmɛnɪʃ/, Saxon Jewissmannisch /jɛˌvɪsˈma.nɪʃ/, and Hollandish Iweesmanis /iˈʋeːsmanɪs/), Ultimately from Middle Gwýsene جِٔويسّمَن (ɣewissman). Doublet of Englisc ⟨iwis mon⟩ /ɪˈwɪs mɔn/ + ⟨-isc⟩ /-ɪʃ/

=PHONOLOGY=

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	/m/		/n/
Plosive/Affricate	/p/ /b/		/t/ /d/	/t͡ʃ/ /d͡ʒ/¹		/k/ (/g/)²
Fricative	/f/ /v/	/θ/ /ð/	/s/ /z/	/ʃ/ /ʒ/¹	(/ç/)³ (/ʝ/)³	/x/ /ɣ/
Tap/Trill			/ɾ/ /r/
Approximant	/w/		/ɹ/ (/l/)⁴		/j/	/ɫ/

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	/i/ /iː/ /y/ /yː/		/u/¹ /uː/¹
Near-Close	(/ɪ/)⁵ (/ʏ/)⁵
Mid	/e/ /eː/ /ø/ /øː/		/o/ /oː/
Open-Mid	(/ɛ/)⁵	(/ɐ/)⁵	(/ɔ/)⁵
Open	/æ/ /æː/		/ɑ/ /ɑː/

1. Nonnative phonemes
2. allophone of /k/ inter-vocalically & /ɣ/ before /ɫ/
3. allophones of /x/ /ɣ/ near front vowels
4. allophone of /ɫ/ when not near any back vowels and/or velar consonants.
5. allophones in unstressed syllables

These are the phonemes of Standard Gwýsene, and, expectedly, they differ from dialect to dialect.
==EVOLUTION FROM OLD ENGLISH==
The Phonological evolution from Old English to Old Gwýsene are as follows:

• /g/ /j/ => /ɣ~ʝ/
• /h/ => /x/
• /f/ /θ/ /s/ => /v/ /ð/ /z/ word-internally
• /l/ => /ɫ/
• /x/ /ɣ/ => /ç/ /ʝ/ near /i/ /e/ /ø/
• /eo/ /eːo̯/ => /iɔ̯/ /iːɔ̯/
• /æɑ/ /æːɑ̯/ => /iɐ̯/ /iːɐ̯/
• /iy/ /y/ => /ø/
• /iːy̯/ => /øː/

From Old Gwýsene to Middle Gwýsene:

• /ŋk/ /ŋg/ => /kː/ /ɣː/
• /w̥/ /r̥/ /l̥/ /n̥/ => /fː/ /sː/ /ʃː/ /nː/
• /-çt/ /-xt/ => /-ç/ /-x/
• /r/ => /ɹ~ɻ/ post-vocalically
• /iɔ̯/ /iːɔ̯/ => /iɐ̯/ /iːɐ̯/
• /i/ /y/ /u/ => /ɪ/ /œ/ /ʊ/ when unstressed
• /e/ /ø/ /o/ => /ɛ/ /ɛ/ /ɔ/ when unstressed
• /æ/ /ɑ/ => /ɐ/ /ɐ/ when unstressed

From Middle Gwýsene to Modern Gwýsene:

• /p/ /t/ /k/ /b/ /d/ => /b/ /d/ /g/ /v/ /z/ word-internally
• /p/ /t/ /k/ /b/ /d/ => /f/ /s/ /x/ /v/ /z/ word-finally
• /wi/ => /wy/ => /yː/
• /ɪ/ /œ/ /ʊ/ => /ɛ/ /ʏ/ /ɔ/
• /ɔ/ => /ɐ/
• /i(ː)/ /u(ː)/ => /y(ː)/ /o(ː)/
• /o(ː)/ /æ(ː)/ /ɑ(ː)/ => /ɑ(ː)/ /e(ː)/ /æ(ː)/
• (/æː/ /uː/ => /i/ /ɑ/ in open syllables)
• /eː/ => /i/
• /iɐ̯/ /iːɐ̯/ => /eː/ /iː/

==DIALECT GROUPS==
Gwýsene has 4 main dialect groupings:
1- Southern Dialects
Spoken around in-world Áglästrélz /ˈɑːɣɫɐˌstɾeːɫz/ [ˈɑːʁɫ(ə)ˌsd̥ɾeːɫz]. Speakers of these dialects tend to pronounce:

• /Vm/ /Vn/ /Vɫ/ as syllabic [N̩] [ɫ̩]
• /ɹ~ɻ/ as [ɰ] in non-rhotic accents
• /w/ as [ɥ] near front vowels
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ]
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [b̥] [d̥] [g̊] word-internally
• /ɛ/ /ɐ/ as [ə]

Regarded as the oldest dialect by Gwýsens as it encompasses the original "homeland" (if we don't count the Anglo-Saxons that is). They're also considered the most "posh", and the standard accent is loosely based on the southern dialects.
2- Central Dialects
Spoken around in-world Keü-Nüvátra /keʏ ˌnʏˈvɑːtɾɐ/ [kɛɨ ˌnɨˈvɒːtɾɐ]. Speakers of these dialects tend to pronounce:

• /ç/ /ʝ/ as [h] [j]
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [pʰ] [tʰ] [kʰ]
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [p˭] [t˭] [k˭] word-internally
• /Vɹ/ /Vːɹ/ as [Vʴ] [Vʴːɹ]
• /ʏ/ /y/ /yː/ as [ɨ] [ʉ] [ʉː]
• /u/ as [ɯ] (though not that common)
• stressed /e/ /ø/ /o/ as [ɛ] [œ] [ɔ]
• /ɑ/ /ɑː/ as [ɒ] [ɒː]
• /æ/ /æː/ as [ä] [äː]

Central Dialects are considered posh by northerners and westerners, but not by southerners.
3- Western Dialects
Spoken in in-world Ettúr /ɛtˈtuːɻ/ [ətˈtuːɽ]. Speakers of these dialects tend to pronounce:

• /ç/ /ʝ/ as [x] [ɣ]
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [p˭] [t˭] [k˭]
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [b] [d] [g] word-internally
• /b/ /d/ as [β̞] [ð̞] word-internally, instead of /v/ /z/
• /ɹ~ɻ/ as [ɾ~ɽ]
• stressed /e/ /ø/ /o/ as [ɛ] [œ] [ɔ]
• unstressed /e/ /ø/ /o/ as [ə] [œ] [ə]
• /eː/ /øː/ /oː/ as [ɛː] [œː] [ɔː]

4- Northern Dialects
Spoken in in-world Ämma̋n /ɐmˈmæːn/ [(ʕ)ɐmˈmæːn]. Speakers of these dialects tend to pronounce:

• /ç/ /ʝ/ as [h] [j]
• /ɫ/ as [l]
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [p˭] [t˭] [k˭]
• /p/ /t/ /k/ as [b] [d] [g] word-internally
• /b/ /d/ as [b] [d] word-internally, instead of /v/ /z/
• /ɹ~ɻ/ as [ɾ~ɽ]
• /Vɹ/ as [Vː], or [Vɾ] in rhotic accents
• /Vːɹ/ as [Vːː] or [Vː], or [Vːɾ] in rhotic accents
• /ʏ/ /y/ /yː/ as [ɨ] [ɨ] [ɨː]
• /ø/ /øː/ as [ə] [əː] or [ɵ] [ɵː]
• /ɑ/ /ɑː/ as [ä] [äː]

==LEXICAL DOUBLETS==
The differing analyses of the Old English sequences /xe͜o xæ͜ɑ/ & /je͜o jæ͜ɑ/ when the change from /e͜o æ͜ɑ/ to /iɔ̯ iɐ̯/ was taking place led to:

• In the south, /i/ was elided into the palatal /ç/ /ʝ/, yielding Modern Southern [χɑ xæ] [ʁɑ ɣæ]
• In the (at the time) North, /i/ was fully pronounced, yielding Modern Central [heː] [jeː]

For example, Old English heofon & geofon evolved into:

• [ˈχɑvɱ̩] & [ˈʁɑvɱ̩] in Southern dialects. Used natively in the south and the west and were adopted as the standard forms /ˈxɑvɐn/ & /ˈɣɑvɐn/
• [ˈheːvɐn] & [ˈjeːvɐn] in the Central dialects. Used natively in the center and north and considered nonstandard.

=ORTHOGRAPHY=

Gýsene uses the Arabic script natively alongside a romanization
==SCRIPT BACKGROUND==
Since Gýsen use of the Nabataean & then Arabic script preceded the Persians by centuries, the Gýsen Arabic script differs quite a bit from the Indo-Persian system:

1. Rasm: Gýsens writing in Nabataean (& carrying over to Arabic) tended to follow Aramaic & Hebrew convention for representing consonants, while the Persian convention was derived from the most similar sounding preexisting Arabic consonants, leading to drastic differences in pointing convention (i‘jām). As Islam spread, the 2 conventions spread in their respective halves of the Muslim World: The Indo-Persian-Derived Eastern convention, and the Gýsen-Derived Western convention:

(Loose) Consonant ↓	Western ↓	Eastern ↓
//v//	⟪پ⟫	⟪و⟫ ǀ ⟪ڤ⟫
//tʃ//	⟪ڝ⟫	⟪چ⟫
//p//	⟪ڢ⟫	⟪پ⟫
//f//	⟪ڧ⟫	⟪ف⟫

1. Vowel Notation: The western convention has a definitive way of expressing vowels when diacritics are fully written, while in the eastern convention diacritics often serve dual-duty due to limitations of Arabic short vowel diacritics.

==Script keys==

Romanization ↓	Arabic ↓	Standard Phoneme ↓
ä ǀ a	◌َ	/æ/ (stressed) ǀ /ɐ/ (unstressed)
e	◌ِ	/e/ (stressed) ǀ /ɛ/ (unstressed)
o	◌ُ	/o/ (stressed) ǀ /ɔ/ (unstressed)
a̋ ǀ ◌́	◌ٓ	/æː/ (standalone) ǀ /◌ː/ (coupled with other vowels)
a	ا	/ɑ/ (stressed) ǀ /ɐ/ (unstressed)
b	ب	/b/ ǀ /v/ (intervocalically)
g	ځ	/ɣ/ ǀ /ʝ/
d	د	/d/ ǀ /z/ (intervocalically)
h	ھ	/ç/
w ǀ u	و	/w/ (glide) ǀ /u/ (vocalic)
z	ز	/z/
ch	خ	/x/
t	¹ط	/t/
y ǀ i	ي	/j/ (glide) ǀ /i/ (vocalic)
k	ک	/k/ ǀ /g/ (intervocalically)
l	ل	/ɫ/
m	م	/m/
n	ن	/n/
tj	ڝ	/t͡ʃ/
-	¹ع	/Ø/ ǀ /◌ː/ (post-vocalically)
p	ڢ	/p/ ǀ /b/ (intervocalically)
s	¹ص	/s/
k	¹ق	/k/
r	ر	/ɾ/ ǀ /r/ (geminated) ǀ /ɹ/ (post-vocalically)
s	س	/s/ ǀ /z/ (intervocalically)
t	ت	/t/ ǀ /d/ (intervocalically)
y	ې	/y/ (stressed) ǀ /ʏ/ (unstressed)
f	ڧ	/f/ ǀ /v/ (intervocalically)
ö	ۊ	/ø/ (stressed) ǀ /œ/ (unstressed)
-	ء ǀ ئـ	initial vowel holder
v	پ	/v/
th	ث	/θ/ ǀ /ð/ (intervocalically)
tj	¹چ	/t͡ʃ/
dj	¹ج	/d͡ʒ/
dh	ذ	/ð/
j	¹ژ	/ʒ/
sj	ش	/ʃ/
dh	¹ض	/ð/
dh	¹ظ	/ð/
g	¹غ	/ɣ/ ǀ /ʝ/
v	¹ڤ	/v/
a ǀ ä	²ـى	/æ/ (stressed) ǀ /ɐ/ (unstressed)
e	²ـہ	/e/ (stressed) ǀ /ɛ/ (unstressed)
'l-	لٔـ	/‿(ə)ɫ-/
th'-	ثِـ	/θɛ-/

1. nonnative
2. only occur word-finally

=GRAMMAR=

Gwýsen grammar is extremely divergent from the Germanic norm, having been brought about by extremely harsh standardization efforts by the ruling class while backed by academia & scholars. It's heavily influenced by Arabic — being the encompassing liturgical, academic, and aristocratic language during the Middle to Early Modern Gwýsen periods.
==PRONOUNS==
^\this entire segment will use the romanization only]) The Pronouns themselves have remained relatively true to their Germanic origins, apart from the entire set of Arabic 3rd person pronouns & the genitive enclitics. Gwýsene still retains the Old English dual forms, but they're only used in formal writing:

1st Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	ih /iç/	wi /wi/	wi /wi/
Accusative	mih /miç/	án /ɑːn/	ós /oːs/
Standalone Genitive	min /min/	ág /ɑːɣ/	ór /oːɹ/
Enclitic Genitive	-min /-mɪn/	-ag /-ɐɣ/	-or /-ɔɹ/

2nd Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	thách /θɑːx/	gi /ʝi/	gi /ʝi/
Accusative	thih /θiç/	in /in/	iw /iw/
Standalone Genitive	thin /θin/	ig /iʝ/	iwar /ˈiwɐɹ/
Enclitic Genitive	-thin /-θɪn/	-ig /-ɪʝ/	-iwar /-ɪwɐɹ/

3rd Person Masculine	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	chá /xɑː/	chama̋ /xɐˈmæː/	chám /xɑːm/
Accusative	hin /çin/	chama̋ /xɐˈmæː/	chám /xɑːm/
Standalone Genitive	his /çis/	chama̋ /xɐˈmæː/	chám /xɑːm/
Enclitic Genitive	-his /-çɪs/	-chama /-xɐmɐ/	-cham /-xɐm/

3rd Person Feminine	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	hi /çi/	chana̋ /xɐˈnæː/	chán /xɑːn/
Accusative	hi /çi/	chana̋ /xɐˈnæː/	chán /xɑːn/
Standalone Genitive	hir /çiɹ/	chana̋ /xɐˈnæː/	chán /xɑːn/
Enclitic Genitive	-hir /-çɪɹ/	-chana /-xɐnɐ/	-chan /-xɐn/

==NOUNS==
Middle Gwýsene inherited the Old English nominal declension, but due to merging & reduction of (final) unstressed vowels, all endlings were dropped except for the accusative & dative plurals which were later generalized. Middle Gwýsene also dropped the neuter gender, merging it with the masculine & feminine genders based on endings

Regular Noun Declension	Singular	Plural
Masculine	-	-an /-ɐn/
Feminine	-	-as /-ɐs/

This has been standardized to all nouns, with some ablaut irregulars:

"Man" (man) ǀ "Bách" (book)	Singular	Plural
Masculine	man /mɑn/	menan /ˈmenɐn/
Feminine	bách /bɑːx/	bitjas /ˈbit͡ʃɐs/

...and some nouns retain colloquial plural forms more reminiscent of their Old English counterparts:

"Tjylz" (child) ǀ "Chänz" (hand)	Singular	(Standard) Plural	(Common) Plural
Masculine	tjylz /t͡ʃyɫz/	tjyldan /ˈt͡ʃyɫzɐn/	tjylro /ˈt͡ʃyɫɾɔ/
Feminine	chänz /xænz/	chändas /ˈxænzɐs/	chända /ˈxændɐ/

===Possession===
Gwýsene has two distinct methods of indicating possession dur to the dropping of the genitive case:
1. A loaned version of the Arabic construct state (present in the standard language, urban areas, and most of the Northern and Western dialects). the Arabic definite article (-الـ) was loaned with its use in the construct state into Late Early Modern Gwýsene as a separate "letter form" [-لٔـ] and prescribed by Grammarians ever since as a "genitive" maker. This method also assumes definiteness of the noun it's prefixed to; it must be prefixed to eneg ("any") for indefinite nouns.
Bách 'lgörel /bɑːχ‿ɫ̩ˈʝøɹɛɫ/ ("the boy's book")

bách 'l - görel book ɢᴇɴ.ᴅғ - boy 

2. Use of a prefixed fär (equivalent to English "of", cognate with English "for") (present in rural areas and is generally viewed as a rural or "Bedouin" feature). This method does not assume definiteness, and a definite article is required.
Bách färth'görel /bɑːχ ˌfɐɹðəˈʝøɹɛɫ/ ("the boy's book")

Bách fär - th' - görel book of - ᴅғ - boy 

==ADJECTIVES==
Much like Nouns, adjectives decline for number and gender:

Regular Adjective Declension	Singular	Plural
Masculine	-	-an /-ɐn/
Feminine	-e /-ɛ/*	-as /-ɐs/

\due to its similarity with the common adjectival suffix* -e, adjectives derived that way would not decline for gender in the singular
==VERBS==
Gwýsen verbs are the most mangled, both by Arabization and regular phonological development. Gwýsen word order is VSO. Due to pronouns coming after the verb, they merged with the preexisting endings and formed unique endings that were later generalized to standard verb declension (rendering Gwýsene a pro-drop language)

Present Verb Conjugation	---
Infinitive	-en /-ɛn/
Present Participle	-enz /-ɛnz/
Past Participle	ge- -en /ʝɛ- -ɛn/
Singular Imperative	-
Plural Imperative	-on /-ɔn/
1ˢᵗ singular	-i /-ɪ/
1ˢᵗ plural	-swe /-swɛ/
2ⁿᵈ singular	-tha /-θɐ/
2ⁿᵈ plural	-gge /-ʝʝɛ/
3ʳᵈ singular masculine	-scha /-sxɐ/
3ʳᵈ dual masculine	-schama /-sxɐmɐ/
3ʳᵈ plural masculine	-scham /-sxɐm/
3ʳᵈ singular feminine	-sche /-sxɛ/
3ʳᵈ dual feminine	-schana /-sxɐnɐ/
3ʳᵈ plural feminine	-schan /-sxɐn/

the subjunctive is formed with a prefixed les- (if the verb is consonant-initial) or let- (if the verb is vowel-initial)
As a consequence to the fusional suffixes, the preterite suffixes completely merged with the present ones, so weak verbs need an auxiliary to indicate simple past, which segways us to-
===Auxiliary Verbs===
Most auxiliaries have 2 conjugations: an auxiliary conjugation & a standalone conjugation:

Sőn ("to be") Conjugations	Auxiliary	Standalone
Singular Imperative	ső /søː/	ső /søː/
Plural Imperative	sőn /søːn/	sőn /søːn/
Singular Subjunctive	ső /søː/	les-... /ɫɛs-../
Plural Subjunctive	sőn /søːn/	les-... /ɫɛs-.../
1ˢᵗ singular	ém /eːm/	émi /ˈeːmɪ/
1ˢᵗ plural	synz /synz/	synzwe /ˈsynzwɛ/
2ⁿᵈ singular	érs /eːɹs/	értha /ˈérðɐ/
2ⁿᵈ plural	synz /synz/	syngge /ˈsynʝ(ʝ)ɛ/
3ʳᵈ singular masculine	ys /ys/	ysscha /ˈyssxɐ/
3ʳᵈ dual masculine	synz /synz/	synzchama /ˈsynzxɐmɐ/
3ʳᵈ plural masculine	synz /synz/	synzcham /ˈsynzxɐm/
3ʳᵈ singular feminine	ys /ys/	yssche /ˈyssxɛ/
3ʳᵈ dual feminine	synz /synz/	synzchana /ˈsynzxɐnɐ/
3ʳᵈ plural feminine	synz /synz/	synzchan /ˈsynzxɐn/

There are 4 tense-related auxiliaries: Wesan (past auxiliary, "was"), Sőn (participle auxiliary, "be"), Bín (participle auxiliary, "be"), and Víden (future auxiliary, "will"):

Auxiliary Declensions	Wesan ↓	Sőn ↓	Bín ↓	Víden ↓
1ˢᵗ singular	wes /wes/	ém /eːm/	bí /biː/	va̋ /væː/
2ⁿᵈ singular	wir /wiɹ/	érs /eːɹs/	bys /bys/	vés /veːs/
3ʳᵈ singular	wes /wes/	ys /ys/	byth /byθ/	véth /veːθ/
dual/plural	wiran /ˈwiɹɐn/	synz /synz/	bíth /biːθ/	va̋th /væːθ/
Singular Imperative	wes /wes/	ső /søː/	bí /biː/	víz /viːz/
Plural Imperative	weson /ˈwezɔn/	sőn /søːn/	bín /biːn/	vídon /ˈviːzɔn/
Singular Subjunctive	wir /wiɹ/	ső /søː/	bí /biː/	víz /viːz/
Plural Subjunctive	wiren /ˈwiɹɛn/	sőn /søːn/	bín /biːn/	víden /ˈviːzɛn/

===Stong Verbs===
Most of the strong classes remain in Gwýsene, albeit with completely unorthodox ablaut patterns. They've been re-sorted based on patterns that I've Grammarians have found. Strong verbs also never need the past auxiliary.

Type (Gwýsene)	Corr. Type in Old English	Present stem vowel	Past singular stem vowel	Past plural stem vowel	Past participle stem vowel
I	VII.c	é /eː/	í /iː/	í /iː/	é /eː/
II	IV	e /e/	e /e/	i /i/	a /ɑ/
III.a	I	ý /yː/	a̋ /æː/	y /y/	y /y/
III.b	III.a	y /y/	ä /æ/	o /o/	o /o/
IV.a	II.a	í /iː/	í /iː/	o /o/	a /ɑ/
IV.b	II.b	a/á /ɑ(ː)/	í /iː/	o /o/	a /ɑ/
IV.c	III.b	é /eː/	é /eː/	o /o/	a /ɑ/
V.a	VI	ä /æ/	á /ɑː/	á /ɑː/	ä /æ/
V.b	VII.a	a̋ /æː/	i /i/	i /i/	a̋ /æː/
V.c	VII.e	á /ɑː/	í /iː/	í /iː/	á /ɑː/

=TRANSLATIONS=

==NUMBERS==

Number	Cardinal	Ordinal	Adverbial	Multiplier
1	A̋n /æːn/	Föress /ˈføɹɛss/	Mer /meɹ/	A̋nfélz /ˈæːnˌveːɫz/
2	Twin /twin/	Áther /ˈɑːðɛɹ/	Merdén /mɛɹˈdeːn/	Twýfélz /ˈtyːˌveːɫz/
3	Thrý /θɾyː/	Thryzz /ˈθɾyzz/	Thrémra̋s /ˌθɾeːˈmɾæːs/	Thryfélz /ˈθɾyˌveːɫz/
4	Fíwar /ˈfiːwɐɹ/	Fíradh /ˈfiːɹɐð/	Fírmra̋s /ˌfiːɹˈmɾæːs/	Fíwarfélz /ˈfiːwɐɹˌveːɫz/
5	Fýf /fyːf/	Fýfedh /ˈfyːvɛð/	Fýfmra̋s /ˌfyːvˈmɾæːs/	Fýffélz /ˈfyːfˌfeːɫz/
6	Sysj /syʃ/	Sysjedh /ˈsyʃɛð/	Sysmra̋s /ˌsysˈmɾæːs/	Sysjfélz /ˈsyʃˌfeːɫz/
7	Sévan /ˈseːvɐn/	Sévadh /ˈseːvɐð/	Sévmra̋s /ˌseːvˈmɾæːs/	Sévanfélz /ˈseːvɐnˌveːɫz/
8	Éht /eːçt/	Éhtadh /ˈeːçtɐð/	Éhmra̋s /ˈeːçˈmɾæːs/	Éhtafélz /ˈeːçtɐˌveːɫz/
9	Nygan /ˈnyʝɐn/	Nygadh /ˈnyʝɐð/	Nygamra̋s /ˌnyʝɐˈmɾæːs/	Nyganfélz /ˈnyʝɐnˌveːɫz/
10	Tőn /tøːn/	Tődh /ˈtøːð/	Tőmra̋s /ˌtøːˈmɾæːs/	Tőnfélz /ˈtøːnˌveːɫz/

==THE COLD WINTER IS NEAR==
‎‫بېث نيٓھ ثِوېٓنتِر ڝِٓلز، پِٓث ڝۊٓمسخى ستارم سنِوى. ڝۊم وِثنَن خُٓمسمين وِٓرم، برآثَرمين. سَلٓم! ڝۊم ھېذ، سېځّ ءَنز شّيٓڧ، ڧرِس ءَنز درېھّ. بېثِّس خُطَّمين. ھِپّسوى وِتِر، ءَنز زۊٓثِن، ءَنز مِٓلخ، بېثِّس ڧِرش ءُٓسڧرى ثِکآ. ءوٓ، ءَنز براث وِٓرم!‬
Byth ních thʼwýnter tjélz, véth tjőmscha starm snewe. Tjöm withnän¹ chósmin wérm, bráthärmin². Säläm³! Tjöm hydh, sygg ænz ssjíf⁴ ⁶, fres⁵ änz dryhh⁶. Bytthes⁷ chottämin⁸. Hevvswe weter, änz zőthen⁹, änz mélch, býtthes fersj ósfrä¹⁰ thʼká. Ó, änz brath!
be.3.ꜱɢ.ᴘʀᴇꜱ near ᴅꜰ-winter cold , ꜰᴜᴛ.3.ꜱɢ come-3.ꜱɢ.ᴍᴀꜱᴄ storm snowy . come.ɪᴍᴘ.ꜱɢ in house-1.ꜱɢ.ɢᴇɴ.ᴄʟ warm , brother-1.ꜱɢ.ɢᴇɴ.ᴄʟ . Welcome ! come.ɪᴍᴘ.ꜱɢ hither , sing.ɪᴍᴘ.ꜱɢ and dance.ɪᴍᴘ.ꜱɢ , eat.ɪᴍᴘ.ꜱɢ and drink.ɪᴍᴘ.ꜱɢ . be.3.ꜱɢ.ᴘʀᴇꜱ-that plan-1.ꜱɢ.ɢᴇɴ.ᴄʟ . have-1.ᴘʟ water , and beer , and milk, be.3.ꜱɢ.ᴘʀᴇꜱ-that fresh from ᴅꜰ-cow . Oh , and soup !

/byθ niːç θə‿ˈyːnzɛɹ tʃeːɫz veːθ ˈtʃøːmsxɐ stɑɻm ˈsnewɛ/
/tʃøm wɪðˈnæn ˈxoːsˌmɪn weːɹm ˈbɾɑːðɐɹˌmɪn/
/sɐˈɫæm tʃøm çyð syʝʝ‿ɐnz ʃʃiːf fres‿ɐnz dɾyçç/
/ˈbyθθɛs ˈxottɐˌmɪn/
/ˈçevvswɛ ˈwedɛɹ ɐnz ˈzøːðɛn ɐnz meɫχ ˈbyθθɛs feɹʃ ˈoːsfrɐ θəˈkɑː/
/oː ɐnz bɾɑθ/

1. the words for “in” and “on” merged to än, which was kept for “on”.‬
2. Gwýsens tend to use “brother” as an informal form of address‬.
3. Säläm is only used by Muslim Gwysens. Christian Gwysens prefer Pastos /pɐsˈtos/ (from Ancient Greek ‬ἀσπαστός).
4. comes from Old English hlēapan.
5. comes from old English fretan.
6. Drykken & Ssjípan are within a class of verbs that have a differing imperative stems than the usual inflected stems due to sound changes. In this case the usual stems are Drykk- & Ssjíp-, while the imperatives are Dryhh & Ssjíf. In the central and Low Northern dialects this particular /k/ => /ç/ is not present, and the imperative stem is also Drykk.
7. contracted from of Byth thäs (“that is”)‬.
8. from Arabic خُطَّة.
9. from Latin zȳthum.
10. contraction of old English ūt fra (“out of”).

Hey out there! Long-time lurker, first time poster to this sub. Title is the gist of it, but some background below:
I'm 21, I've been binding with the same GC2B binder since I was a junior in high school, and I'm really just looking for a new binder that I might (shocker) actually like wearing. I've gotten a second binder since high school, also from GC2B, and I'm just not impressed with the quality of the product, the material, the durability, the feel - any of it, really.
I want to bind more frequently at work these days, but I can't use tape and my second binder is bright red and the edge sticks out of any shirt I wear. First binder is a blank tank, and my place of work gets toasty on hot days and when lifting/moving stuff. TL;DR I want something better quality, more comfortable, and more worth the price I'm paying.
There are a lot more options out there than even 5 years ago, but I have very little knowledge of what binders/brands are worth their salt! I've heard wonderful things about Shapeshifters' custom binders, but they're a bit out of my price range atm. I've also seen a bit of talk about this binder and this one TikTok but... well it's TikTok. The zipper on the second one does seem appealing, though.
ForThem has had a lot of talk around it too, but from what I understand it's been a bit of a let down in the compression department (more like a tight sports bra). Then of course there's the old Underworks standby (what's the consensus on that bindecompression top these days?)...
I haven't been impressed with TomboyX's materials before, so I'm skeptical to try their compression tops lol
Also side tangent: I'm planning on getting trunks from Humankind for this summer and ditching my old ones, so for those of you who have bought from them: how has their apparel held up? Also, if you've tried their compression tops, how do you like them??
Thank you in advance for anyone who takes the time to respond! I'm just looking for real experiences with binding - and ofc feel free to give other recs besides the one I mentioned! Y'all have a good one!!
ETA: I’m nonbinary/agender! I prefer they/them pronouns :)

This is the part of a series of sticky threads for anyone soliciting or offering online sponsorship. (Last month's thread may be found at https://redd.it/1bssgqn)
While most of us feel that face-to-face sponsorship offers greater facility for transmitting/receiving sobriety, and that there are great advantages in having a big crowd of local friends, online sponsorship (via phone, WhatsApp, Facetime, Zoom, or Western Union) can work^* and for some seeking or offering sobriety it is sometimes the only practical solution for getting started. (But to any extent that online sponsorship is being sought as "an easier, softer way" - that's already spelling trouble!)
The pamphlet "Questions & Answers on Sponsorship" (https://www.aa.org/questions-and-answers-sponsorship) can answer many/most of the questions frequently asked about this sponsorship business - some selected examples:

How does sponsorship help the newcomer? How should a sponsor be chosen? Should sponsor and newcomer be as much alike as possible? Must the newcomer agree with everything the sponsor says? Is it ever too late to get a sponsor? 

 

Suggested Format

Start with "Seeking:" or "Offering:", optionally a name, sobriety date or length of sobriety, gender, location (also optional,) perhaps some brief biographical information, perhaps a brief drunkalogue about one's drinking and drugging career when making a "Seeking:" comment.
"Gender" may not always be relevant, but per the sponsorship pamphlet, "A.A. experience does suggest that it is best for men to sponsor men, women to sponsor women." It's a good guideline albeit not a strict rule carved in stone.
"Location" may be very general or as specific as wanted, and of course is optional. It may come in handy if the sponsor and protégé (p.92) prefer to be in the same time zone or may possibly wish to meet face-to-face sometime down the road to happy destiny.
"Biographical information" would also be quite optional. I've seen situations where young people prefer to be sponsored by other young people or even the opposite, wanting to be sponsored by a grandparent figure.
For any comments other than "Seeking" or "Offering" it might be best to prefix the comment with something like "Commenting".
Any replies to "Seeking" or "Offering" comments should ideally be limited, with the correspondence shifting to Reddit private messages, chat, email or phone calls relatively quickly.
It is strongly suggested to avoid posting phone numbers or email addresses in the public forum:

"Posting phone numbers is a violation of Reddit Content Policy for sharing personal information" (I've seen "[Removed By Reddit]" a few times over posting phone numbers. I suppose this might be in part due to the potential for publishing other people's phone numbers for harassment purposes.)

Lastly, it might be nice to get some sort of measure about the effectiveness of this these threads - perhaps we might edit "Seeking" and/or "Offering" comments to add the word "FOUND!" when a relationship is first made.
* Footnote: In the 4^th Edition Big Book on page 193, "Gratitude In Action - The story of Dave B., one of the founders of A.A. in Canada in 1944" relates the story of an alcoholic who started his recovery by exchanging letters with the folks in the new A.A. office in New York; an excerpt:

I was very surprised when I got a copy of the Big Book in the mail the following day. And each day after that, for nearly a year, I got a letter or a note, something from Bobbie or from Bill or one of the other members of the central office in New York. In October 1944, Bobbie wrote: “You sound very sincere and from now on we will be counting on you to perpetuate the Fellowship of A.A. where you are. You will find enclosed some queries from alcoholics. We think you are now ready to take on this responsibility.” She had enclosed some four hundred letters that I answered in the course of the following weeks. Soon, I began to get answers back.

If Dave could get sober via U.S. Mail, we can get sober with the cornucopia of communication facilities available in the 21^st century!

I don't currently like Mtsqrveli's verb conjugation. I want it to make considerably less sense and be more needlessly complicated. It's currently just straightforward agglutination with no allomorphy and no history behind why the affixes are what they are, and that bores me.
Mtsqrveli's aesthetic is inspired by Georgian. I have been trying for a very, very long time to find an alternate way to mark TAM that 1) is more interesting than what I'm doing now, 2) is conducive to the overall morphophonological "shape" of verbs I want, and 3) isn't exactly the same as Georgian. It seems kind of, you know, like I'm trying to make a shitty Georgian relex, if I'm stealing both the sound and grammar of Georgian.
But Mtsqrveli is distantly related to another one of my languages called Apshur, and Apshur's verb conjugation is directly based on Georgian verb conjugation. So, defeated at the task of finding a different TAM scheme that meets all 3 requirements, I'm sort of giving up and dropping the "not like Georgian" requirement. Because then it's more like Apshur (as it's supposed to be, since they're related), and I do still have a known way to make TAM cooler than simple agglutination that is conducive to the right "verb shape".
Speaking of which... what do I mean by "verb shape"? Well, from a combination of aesthetic preferences (=mimicking Georgian) + paralleling the structure of Apshur verbs (=which themselves mimic Georgian verbs), I already know that I want Mtsqrveli verbs to follow this basic template:

Slot 1	Slot 2	Root	Slot 3	Slot 4	Slot 5	Slot 6	Personal endings
Ø-, m-, g-, d-	Ø-, a-, i-, e-, u-, vi-	...	-e, -o	-b, -g, -s, -l, -n	-d	-i	-...

What I haven't figured out yet is what these slots are actually supposed to do.
Let's work backwards.
Slot 6 -i is almost certainly a stative marker, or at least originally a stative marker, and so probably ends up either as a marker for a irregular class of stative/copular verbs that don't match the rest of the paradigm, or else maybe used in the present or perfect.
Apshur's current verb setup also has a -d- in basically the same spot as Slot 5, and it's used for the subjunctive mood. (The Proto > Apshur sound changes actually sort of imply that its -d- is supposed to come from */j/, and so presumably it's actually supposed to be cognate with Slot 6 -i. But that may just be a sound change problem and not a grammar design problem.) So this may be involved with realis vs. irrealis marking. I was thinking that, instead of actually being used for irrealis, it would be cool if what was originally irrealis evolved to mark the negative and/or the future.
This is where it starts getting dicey.
Apshur also has an equivalent suffix in Slot 4, but it doesn't really have a specific meaning beyond "it just has to be there for verb conjugation". In Georgian, slots 3 + 4 (which are just one slot in Georgian) make up the "stem formant" or "thematic suffix", which show up in the present, imperfect past, future, conditional, perfect, pluperfect, and the infinitive, but not in the aorist past or optative. Nobody seems to know what they are or do, exactly, but this paper posits that (if I understand correctly) that they initially marked Aktionsart/lexical aspect, like states of being vs. achievement vs. accomplishment.
Now... in Apshur these Slot 4 suffixes look suspiciously like case markers, especially a couple locative/directional case markers. I've asked before if verbs can be derived from locative constructions on nouns, and people have suggested that, yeah, you could diachronically do something like "he's in the garden" > "he's gardening". Naturally different locative/directional modes could yield different lexical aspects. Maybe:

• -l- "allative; going towards" > change-of-state
  
• -b- "at; near; next to" > "engaged in doing something" > activity
  
• -s- "in; inside of" > also "engaged in doing something" > also activity (different allomorph)
  
• -n- "genitive; from; of?" > ???
  

Slot 3 complicates this. In Apshur and Mtsqrveli, the choice of vowel here is simply fossilized and basically meaningless. However, in a 3rd language in the family, Menua, I had been planning to make verbs have to explicitly mark transitivity (-u- for transitive, -a- for intransitive active, -i- for intransitive passive), and this, Slot 3, is where I was planning to put that vowel. But if the verb evolves from what was originally a noun that a locative (Slot 4) is applied to, then... and affixes appear in the order they were grammaticalized, then... I'm meant to believe speakers of the proto starting marking transitivity of a noun, before converting it to a verb? How does that make sense?
Slots 1 and 2 is where it gets really dicey.
So, in Georgian, before the root there's a prefix called the preverb. And from what I understand, linguists are more clear that they used to be a perfective marker, since they show up in the aorist past, future and infinitive, but not the present or imperfect past. It's this combination of "perfective, yes or no" and "whatever the hell it is that the presence of a thematic suffix signals, yes or no", that narrows down the tense of the verb. The tense information arises from a combination of affixes that don't inherently have anything to do with tenses. IINM PIE also did this "tenses arise from a combination of aspects" thing.
So that's what I assume I should be doing here. Not make these slots tenses per se, but something that helps imply a tense. But specifically what they should originate as, I can't decide.
Currently in Mtsqrveli m- is a fossilized marker of... telicity? Intentionality? It is found prefixed specifically on transitive, semantically active verbs like mčeva "to make war", mqva "to kill" or mdigva "to vow; to swear an oath" that would not happen without the agent actively choosing to cause them to happen. g- and d- are currently not really anything, but whatever they are, I've put them in Slot 1 as well because I don't want them to co-occur with m-. But I don't know what's supposed to specifically not co-occur with telicity. Also, hmm, if m- has fossilized to just become part of the root, also occurring in the present and imperfect, then I guess it can't be part of the affix we remove to change tense?
I guess that leaves Slot 2! These look superficially like a different Georgian morpheme called versioners which kinda-sorta mark whether there's an indirect object or not. That would be a neat idea, except, wait, isn't explicit valency marking... what Slot 3 was supposed to be? Or, they also remind me of the "conjugation prefixes" in Sumerian that nobody knows what they're supposed to do. Some people say focus (I have no idea what "positively focussed for locus" is supposed to mean btw), some people say voice... but how would those generate tense?
Not all combinations of Slots 1 & 2 are allowed either. Like, m-, me-, mi- and *mu- (> mo-) are allowed, but *ma- and *mvi- are not (or at least, *mvi- would just assimilate to mi-). g-, ga-, gi- and gvi- would be allowed, but ge- and gu- would not. d-, da-, de-, di- and dvi- would be allowed, but du- would not. I cannot for the life of me figure out what would pattern like this, except valency-marking + voice marking, where the disallowed combinations would be logical contradictions like "passivized, but transitive". But again - 1) isn't that what Slot 3 was supposed to be, and 2) how does that yield a tense?

In fan-created works, Maedhros and Fingon are often depicted as a couple. Here I’ll argue why this is a—although not the only—possible interpretation of the text. I will begin by giving a short overview over their characters (1.). Then I will argue that characters in the Legendarium in general need not be straight, including Elves (2.), and that in particular, Maedhros and Fingon likely aren’t (3.). In (4.) I will discuss why they make most sense as a couple, both (a) in terms of character choices and actions and (b) in terms of parallels to Beren and Lúthien, followed by (c) a discussion of a potential Ancient Greek parallel. Of course, there are (5.) counter-arguments. However, I will (6.) conclude that despite these, reading Maedhros and Fingon as a romantic couple in the tragedy that is the Silmarillion is a valid interpretation of the text and fully in the tradition of the epics. This is a substantially reworked version of an essay I posted over a year ago here and here.
1. The Characters: Maedhros and Fingon

• Maedhros is the eldest son of Fëanor: diplomatic, intelligent, a general; tall, copper hair, beautiful; indomitable and dangerous—“Maidros tall/the eldest, whose ardour yet more eager burnt/than his father’s flame, than Fëanor’s wrath” (HoME III, p. 135). He is doomed through his Oath and his actions as a Kinslayer and the Doom of Mandos.
• Fingon is the eldest son of Fingolfin: “Of all the children of Finwë [Fingon the valiant] is justly most renowned: for his valour was as a fire and yet as steadfast as the hills of stone; wise he was and skilled in voice and hand; troth and justice he loved and bore good will to all, both Elves and Men, hating Morgoth only; he sought not his own, neither power nor glory, and death was his reward.” (HoME V, p. 251) He is also doomed, because he too is a Kinslayer.

2. Characters in the Legendarium Need Not Be Straight
There are several characters in the Legendarium who are explicitly said never to have married for reasons that can very well be read as something other than heterosexuality. Several characters remain unmarried because they are not interested in marriage; instead, they much prefer to spend their entire lives in military environments populated entirely by men, for instance:

• The last king of Gondor before Aragorn: “Eärnur was a man like his father in valour, but not in wisdom. He was a man of strong body and hot mood; but he would take no wife, for his only pleasure was in fighting, or in the exercise of arms. His prowess was such that none in Gondor could stand against him in those weapons-sports in which he delighted, seeming rather a champion than a captain or king, and retaining his vigour and skill to a later age than was natural.” (LOTR, p. 1052) This really could be a description of Richard the Lionheart from Ivanhoe.
• Boromir: “Rather he was a man after the sort of King Eärnur of old, taking no wife and delighting chiefly in arms; fearless and strong, but caring little for lore, save the tales of old battles.” (LOTR, p. 1056)

Concerning Elves, we are told that “it is contrary to the nature of the Eldar to live unwedded” (HoME X, p. 255), and the Elves tended to marry young, just after reaching majority (HoME X, p. 210). However, not every Elf actually marries. LACE specifies: “Marriage, save for rare ill chances and strange fates, was the natural course of life for all the Eldar” (HoME X, p. 210), which would account of Aegnor, who loved a human woman, never marrying. (More specifically, some 10% in each later generation do not marry (NoME, p. 111).) I would argue that these strange fates—as LACE terms it, I wouldn’t call it that—can include Elves being gay.
3. Maedhros and Fingon Might Not Be
Fingon was born in Y.T. 1260 (NoME, p. 164) and Maedhros would very likely have been older. This means Fingon was some 2280 sun years old when he reached Beleriand (I’m going with the HoME version of calculating years and ages because I really have trouble with squaring the NoME version with the Annals, the Silmarillion and LOTR).
Turgon, Fingon’s younger brother, is married and has a daughter before the Noldor leave Valinor. Curufin, Fëanor’s fifth son, and Angrod, Finarfin’s second son, are married and have sons. Maglor and Caranthir, Fëanor’s second and fourth sons respectively, also seem to be married (HoME XII, p. 318).
Maedhros and Fingon are definitely the two most eligible bachelors among the Noldor. Quite apart from the political desirability for anyone to bind their family to Fëanor’s eldest son (and heir: the Noldor seem to follow primogeniture, as the Shibboleth speaks of Fëanor’s “position and rights as his eldest son”, HoME XII, p. 343), Maedhros is explicitly said to be beautiful: his mother-name Maitimo means the “well-shaped one”, and “he was of beautiful bodily form” (HoME XII, p. 353). Fingon is the first son and heir of Fingolfin, the only other person who seems to have been as important as Fëanor among the Noldor: “High princes were Fëanor and Fingolfin, the elder sons of Finwë, honoured by all in Aman” (The Silmarillion, p. 70). While we never get much of a description, Fingon is given a name beginning with the element fin for hair, and “In the case of Fingon it was suitable; he wore his long dark hair in great plaits braided with gold.” (HoME XII, p. 345) We know that Elves find “hair of exceptional loveliness” attractive (HoME XII, p. 340). So we have two attractive and politically highly desirable princes here.
Yet Fingon has “no wife or child” (HoME XII, p. 345), while “Maedros the eldest [son of Fëanor] appears to have been unwedded” (HoME XII, p. 318).
Would it really be so surprising if these two princes, quite certainly among the most eligible bachelors in Valinor for any parents looking for a political match for their daughters, over two millennia old by the time we meet them and with a lot of married much younger siblings and cousins, but still unmarried, might not be straight?
4. Why I See Them as a Couple
(a) The Plot
We don’t know anything about what Maedhros and Fingon were doing in Valinor, apart from the facts that they were friends, that Morgoth’s lies came between them, and that Maedhros went into exile in Formenos with Fëanor (and Finwë) after Fëanor had drawn a sword on Fingolfin.
In Beleriand, Maedhros runs a military from his icy fortress on the Hill of Himring, while his younger brothers run kingdoms as his vassals. Meanwhile, Fingon spends most of his time in Beleriand fighting Morgoth; the driving political force of the non-Fëanorian side of the Noldor seems to be Fingolfin.
I would argue that a lot of Fingon’s and Maedhros’s actions and reactions make a lot more sense if seen through the lens of love for each other and a partnership that was broken in Valinor by Morgoth’s lies but was rekindled after Thangorodrim.
(i) Fingon
Fingon’s stated reasons for wanting to go to Middle-earth—exploring Middle-earth and building a kingdom there—don’t make sense. Fingon never does anything even remotely connected with building his own kingdom from the moment he sets foot on Beleriand—and yet he’s the driving force behind Fingolfin leaving Aman. He jumps in at Alqualondë, (probably) thinking that the Noldor under Fëanor were attacked. Afterwards he keeps driving the Noldor forwards, even after the Doom of Mandos. He is one of the leaders across the Helcaraxë. Yet the first thing we are told he does upon reaching Beleriand is going after his father’s main political rival—who Fingon thinks abandoned him to the Helcaraxë. Maedhros has been a captive of Morgoth for thirty years, and even his brothers apparently never tried to rescue him. But Fingon decides to do it anyway and succeeds through sheer stubbornness with some very convenient divine help. He then proceeds to fight Morgoth’s armies and monsters for four hundred years. When Fingolfin gives Fingon’s fiefdom to the House of Hador, Fingon doesn’t have a problem with it. When Fingolfin dies, Fingon becomes High King and Maedhros immediately starts acting as the new High King, organising an alliance against Morgoth called the Union of Maedhros. Maedhros does all of the planning and even appoints the day of the Fifth Battle (HoME XI, p. 165). (See also here.)
However, Fingon is involved in all of this: “Fingon, ever the friend of Maedhros, took counsel with Himring” (The Silmarillion, p. 224). Fingon doesn’t seem to have the slightest problem with Maedhros apparently usurping him, exactly like he doesn’t have a problem with Fingolfin handing Dor-lómin to his human vassal.
I would argue that all of this makes sense if we assume that Fingon’s primary motivation is Maedhros. Maedhros has sworn the Oath, he will go to Beleriand, so Fingon has to follow. Fëanor’s army is fighting and it isn’t looking good for them, so Fingon has to jump in. Maybe he saw Maedhros in the fray. He follows Maedhros to Middle-earth. Once in Middle-earth, he follows Maedhros to literal hell on Earth and gets him out. And when he becomes High King, he and Maedhros seem to run the office with an arrangement where Fingon, the beloved hero, is the figurehead and Maedhros, who, unlike Fingon, is unlikely to be popular anywhere outside of East Beleriand due to his own and his brothers’ actions but is a politician born and bred, does the planning. But then, in a battle orchestrated by Maedhros, Fingon is brutally killed.
(ii) Maedhros
Maedhros confronts his obviously dangerous and mad father about returning for Fingon and is the only son of Fëanor to break through whatever hold Fëanor has on them at that point to stand aside at Losgar (note that Celegorm and Curufin don’t request that Aredhel be given passage and don’t refuse to burn the ships), even though “Morgoth’s lies came between” Fingon and Maedhros in the past (The Silmarillion, p. 97).
After being rescued by Fingon, Maedhros recovers from his decades of torment at Morgoth’s hands, returns to politics and keeps his brothers under control. Importantly, Maedhros renounces his claim to the crown and hands the kingship to Fingolfin, Fingon’s father. He also gives Fingolfin horses “in atonement of his losses” on the Helcaraxë (The Silmarillion, p. 135), which seems strange because it’s not like Fingolfin fought in the theft of the ships that he was later denied passage on by Fëanor—only Fingon would have had a moral “right” to be allowed on the ships. But maybe it’s of interest that the commander in Fingolfin’s army whose fighting style relies on horses is Fingon (“Then Fingon prince of Hithlum rode against [Glaurung] with archers on horseback, and hemmed him round with a ring of swift riders”, The Silmarillion, p. 132).
[Note: The question whether Maedhros had to “atone” for anything he did to Fingolfin is a thorny one. As Fëanor’s heir, Maedhros did inherit a responsibility for Fëanor’s actions (as well as the privileges coming with being the eldest son of the eldest son of Finwë). On the other hand, Maedhros himself had nothing to do with the burning of the ships by Fëanor; he openly opposed it. Moreover, Fingon, not Fingolfin, had fought in the battle where the Fëanorians won the ships, and Fingolfin had already begun to call himself “Finwë Nolofinwë” before Fëanor burned the ships: “Fingolfin had prefixed the name Finwë to Nolofinwë before the Exiles reached Middle-earth. This was in pursuance of his claim to be the chieftain of all the Ñoldor after the death of Finwë, and so enraged Fëanor that it was no doubt one of the reasons for his treachery in abandoning Fingolfin and stealing away with all the ships.” (HoME XII, p. 344, fn omitted) Neither Fëanor not Fingolfin was entirely blameless in this mess between them, but Fingon had nothing to do with this.]
When Fingolfin dies and Fingon becomes High King, Maedhros and Fingon seem to work perfectly in tandem. Maedhros orchestrates and plans the Fifth Battle—but the field is lost because of treachery in his own army. And then, Fingon is brutally killed in this battle which Maedhros had planned.
After the Nirnaeth Maedhros completely shatters. He retreats to a hill in Beleriand named Amon Ereb (The Silmarillion, p. 140), which reminded me of another character who retreats to a hill after a grave loss. After Aragorn’s death, a mourning Arwen lies down on a hill, Cerin Amroth, to die (LOTR, p. 1063).
But of course Maedhros doesn’t die yet. This story isn’t kind enough for that. Instead, he falls deeper and deeper into a cycle of blood-shedding: first Doriath, then the Havens of Sirion, and then the guards of Eonwë. And then Maedhros becomes the first and only Elf to successfully kill himself.
(iii) Some Descriptions Of Their Relationship
We know that Fingon and Maedhros used to be very close in Aman, but that they were estranged through lies—and that despite the estrangement and his belief that Maedhros callously abandoned him in Araman, Fingon can’t forget their bond: “Long before, in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros; and though he knew not yet that Maedhros had not forgotten him at the burning of the ships, the thought of their ancient friendship stung his heart.” (The Silmarillion, p. 124)
Yet they manage to overcome their estrangement: “Thus he rescued his friend of old from torment, and their love was renewed; and the hatred between the houses of Fingolfin and Fëanor was assuaged.” (HoME XI, p. 32)
In the LQ2, Tolkien inserted a new subheading for this story of Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros from Thangorodrim: “Of Fingon and Maedros” (HoME XI, p. 177). This is reminiscent of three other titles in the Silmarillion: “Of Aulë and Yavanna”, “Of Thingol and Melian”, “Of Beren and Lúthien”—three married couples.
Then there are the gifts. Gifts of jewellery are an important part of the marriage rituals of the Noldor; for instance, the bridegroom’s father would give a jewel to the bride (HoME X, p. 211).
In one version, Fëanor gives Maedhros the Elessar and Maedhros gives it to Fingon: “at the top of the page my father pencilled: ‘The Green Stone of Fëanor given by Maidros to Fingon.’ This can hardly be other than a reference to the Elessar that came in the end to Aragorn” (HoME XI, p. 176–177). The Elessar was later used as a (pre-)marriage gift by Galadriel, taking the role of Arwen’s mother, to Arwen’s future husband Aragorn (HoME X, p. 211). Meanwhile, in another origin story of the Elessar, Celebrimbor, who in this version is in love with Galadriel, creates the (second) Elessar for her and gives it to her as a gift (UT, p. 324–325). The Elessar seems to be associated with the concept of being given as a gift for reasons of romantic love.
Moreover, during the siege of Angband, Maedhros and Fingon would regularly send each other valuable gifts, such as the Dragon-helm forged by Telchar: “Maedhros afterwards sent it as a gift to Fingon, with whom he often exchanged tokens of friendship, remembering how Fingon had driven Glaurung back to Angband.” (UT, p. 98) This seems to have been such a regular occurrence that it wasn’t a problem for Fingon, who wasn’t strong enough to properly use the Dragon-helm, which had not been made for an Elf, to give it to the human Hador (see UT, p. 98).
Here it’s also important to discuss just how little material we have about Maedhros and Fingon. They don’t get any dialogue together apart from the rescue scene, and both appear far less often in the Silmarillion overall than Celegorm and Curufin, purely because they aren’t protagonists of one of the three Great Tales, but the protagonists of the frame narrative, the War of the Jewels. There’s also the fact that in-universe, the narrator of the Quenta Silmarillion is Pengolodh, a subject of Turgon who was born in Nevrast and spent most of his life in Gondolin (HoME XI, p. 396–397). Turgon, his king, notoriously hates the Sons of Fëanor because his wife Elenwë died on the Ice (HoME XII, p. 345). Turgon wouldn’t have liked any chatter concerning his brother’s close relationship with the chief son of Fëanor, obviously, as u/xi-feng points out. And yet, their affection shines through anyway, even though the narrator clearly hates the sons of Fëanor.
Here I think it’s also important to discuss the meaning of the word “friend”. Maedhros and Fingon are always referred to as friends, not as lovers, of course. But in the early 20^th century, language was different. “Friend” could be used by a man for his male lover. In Maurice, the title character says this to Alec—upon waking up after spending the night together: “‘Did you ever dream you’d a friend, Alec? Nothing else but just “my friend”, he trying to help you and you him. A friend’, he repeated, sentimental suddenly. ‘Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.’” (Maurice, ch. 38, p. 175) Or later, when Maurice is discussing the Code Napoleon with Mr Lasker Jones, Maurice asks, hopefully: “You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?” (“share” in this context means, to quote Mr Jones, “unite”) (Maurice, ch. 41, p. 188). As such, the use of the word “friend” does not mean that they can’t have been lovers.
(b) The Shared Motif With Beren and Lúthien
Apart from the titles (“Of Fingon and Maedros”, “Of Beren and Lúthien”), there’s a very impactful parallel between the stories of Maedhros and Fingon and of Beren and Lúthien: the motif of “rescue with singing”.
The motif of a rescuer singing a song to ascertain where a prisoner is being kept is inspired by the story of Richard the Lionheart, who’d gotten himself kidnapped in Europe on his return from a crusade, and his minstrel Blondel de Nesle, who “went from castle to castle, searching for the king who was held in an unknown location, and singing one of Richard’s favourite songs. When he came to where Richard was imprisoned, the king joined in, revealing his presence.” (Wayne & Scull, A Reader’s Companion, p. 603–604)
Tolkien uses the motif twice in the Silmarillion: for Lúthien’s rescue of Beren from Sauron, and for Fingon’s rescue of Maedhros from Morgoth (Wayne & Scull, A Reader’s Companion, p. 604). [And once in LOTR, for Sam’s rescue of Frodo from the Orcs of the Tower of Cirith Ungol—but my argument here is not about Frodo and Sam.]
I would argue that this element, which is central to the love story of Beren and Lúthien, who went against everyone she knew to search and find Beren against terrible odds, invites seeing the other story in the Silmarillion where exactly the same happens—and which in fact happens before the story of Beren and Lúthien—as a romance, even more so since Tolkien gave this element to Beren and Lúthien first and then, ten years later, to Maedhros and Fingon. In other words, this powerful element can double as a tertium comparationis.
(i) Beren and Lúthien
“In that hour Lúthien came, and standing upon the bridge that led to Sauron’s isle she sang a song that no walls of stone could hinder. Beren heard, and he thought that he dreamed; for the stars shone above him, and in the trees nightingales were singing. And in answer he sang a song of challenge that he had made in praise of the Seven Stars, the Sickle of the Valar that Varda hung above the North as a sign for the fall of Morgoth. Then all strength left him and he fell down into darkness.” (The Silmarillion, p. 204–205)
(ii) Maedhros and Fingon
“Therefore [Fingon] dared a deed which is justly renowned among the feats of the princes of the Noldor: alone, and without the counsel of any, he set forth in search of Maedhros; and aided by the very darkness that Morgoth had made he came unseen into the fastness of his foes. High spoon the shoulders of Thangorodrim he climbed, and looked in despair upon the desolation of the land; but no passage or crevice could he find though which he might come within Morgoth’s stronghold. Then in defiance of the Orcs, who cowered still in the dark vaults beneath the earth, he took his harp and sang a song of Valinor that the Noldor made of old, before strife was born among the sons of Finwë; and his voice rang in the mournful hollows that had never heard before aught save cries of fear and woe. Thus Fingon found what he sought. For suddenly above him far and faint his song was taken up, and a voice answering called to him. Maedhros it was that sang amid his torment.” (The Silmarillion, p. 124)
(iii) Parallels
There are several parallels between the stories of Beren and Lúthien and of Maedhros and Fingon. There is the parallel of the titles. There is the element of a rescuer going into incredible danger in lands controlled by a Dark Lord (Sauron’s fortress and Morgoth’s realm respectively). There is the element of the song sung by the rescuer and taken up by the captive. There is the element of some very helpful divine intervention through animal-shaped followers of the Valar: Huan, the hound that Oromë gave to Celegorm in Aman, who takes Lúthien to Beren’s dungeon and fights Sauron and his wolves (The Silmarillion, p. 202, 204–205), and Thorondor, the Eagle of Manwë who stays Fingon’s hand and takes him up to where Maedhros hangs (The Silmarillion, p. 124–125). (Tolkien considered Huan and Thorondor as beings of the same order, although what exactly, Maiar or animals “raised to a higher level”, see HoME X, p. 410–411, isn’t consistent throughout his writings.)
Since the tale of Beren and Lúthien is the love story of the Legendarium and it’s the couple that others are compared to and held up against—the references in the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen (LOTR, p. 1058–1059) are not subtle—I argue that reading Maedhros and Fingon, whose story contains the same very distinct elements, as a romantic couple too does not go against canon.
c) Ancient Greece and the Influence of the Classics
The Silmarillion, despite all the Germanic and other Northern influences and Catholic elements, reminds me of nothing so much as a Greek tragedy or epic. There is a Greek influence throughout the Legendarium, both in terms of plot and themes, especially in the War of the Jewels, and in terms of small linguistic elements. Lúthien before Mandos reads like a gender-swapped Orpheus and Eurydice before Hades with a somewhat better ending. Tolkien himself calls the tale of Beren and Lúthien “a kind of Orpheus-legend in reverse, but one of Pity not of Inexorability” (Letters, Letter 153, p. 193).
If Lúthien and Beren are Orpheus and Eurydice, based on Lúthien’s song moving Mandos to pity and making him return Beren (and her) to life, I posit that Maedhros and Fingon are Orestes and Pylades, who were considered lovers in Antiquity: see (Pseudo-)Lucian’s Amores, at [47]. This is not an exact parallel, of course, but when reading the Silmarillion, I was reminded of them, with elements from both Euripides’s Iphigenia in Tauris and Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris:

• The princes who are cousins and faithful friends.
• The element of kinslaying, with the cursed lover bearing significantly more responsibility than the other lover, who is however also involved (Orestes kills his mother Clytemnestra; Pylades is either instrumental in Orestes’s killing of Clytemnestra (Aeschylus) or at least present during it (Euripides).
• Orestes is cursed due to kinslayings (in Euripides and Goethe). The curse of the house of Atreus (also known as the curse of Tantalus) affects his whole family. This curse is a prophecy by the gods that says that in every following generation of the family, there will be a kinslayer, and that every member of the family will be drawn into a cycle of death and destruction.
• Orestes demands of Pylades that he leave him to die and save himself (Euripides). Orestes wants to die because he thinks this is how he can escape from the Erinyes (or Furies), the personification of the curse he’s under.
• Orestes is saved from torment and “hell” by Pylades and Iphigenia (Goethe).
• The characters eventually escape with a lot of divine intervention by Athena (Euripides).

A drama of kinslayings and curses and torment and an eventual escape with the help of divine intervention—but it’s also a tragedy about two warriors who love each other. Because they did love each other, as lovers: Goethe has Orestes liken Pylades to a butterfly, and Pylades respond with “Da fing mein Leben an, als ich dich liebte”—“My life began when I loved you” (Goethe’s Iphigenie, Act II, Scene 1).
In fact, in the 19^th century, saying that two men were like Orestes and Pylades became a way of saying that they were gay (see Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Vol. III (Marius), Book Fourth—The Friends of the A B C, ch. 1; moreover, Lord Byron uses “Orestes and Pylades” to describe his relationship with a male lover in his Letter 75—credit to u/Mastermaid).
Certainly, there are also many differences, but then there are also many differences between Orpheus and Eurydice and Beren and Lúthien, and yet, the inspiration is there. I would say that comparing Maedhros and Fingon to Orestes and Pylades is valid, and it’s certainly one element of why I read them as a couple.
5. Counter-arguments
Of course, there are many reasons not to read Maedhros and Fingon as a couple.
a) Elves and marriages between (half-)cousins
Maedhros and Fingon are half-cousins, and there’s a statement in the Silmarillion which could be read as a definitive statement on whether Elves would marry among first cousins: “The Eldar wedded not with kin so near, nor ever before had any desired to do so.” (The Silmarillion, p. 161) However, this is repeatedly contradicted in the text, including in LACE, which states that first cousins “might marry, but seldom did so, or desired to do so, unless one of the parents of each were far-sundered in kin” (HoME X, p. 234), and in one version, Galadriel and Celeborn are (full) first cousins (UT, p. 299) (see also here).
b) Fingon’s motivation was to heal the feud
You could also point to the statement in the Silmarillion that Fingon’s motivation was at least partly to avoid a civil war between the two hosts of the Noldor: “Then Fingon the valiant, son of Fingolfin, resolved to heal the feud that divided the Noldor, before their Enemy should be ready for war; for the earth trembled in the Northlands with the thunder of the forges of Melkor underground.” (The Silmarillion, p. 124) However, I would point to the sentence immediately following this one, which is: “Long before, in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros; and though he knew not yet that Maedhros had not forgotten him at the burning of the ships, the thought of their ancient friendship stung his heart.” (The Silmarillion, p. 124) Fingon certainly seems to have been more motivated by emotions than logic or politics in this scene. The politics side of the equation certainly goes out of the window when Fingon agrees to mercy-kill Maedhros, or when he prays to Manwë to help him kill Maedhros. Also, rescuing your father’s main political rival who everyone on your side thinks is as much of a traitor as Fëanor doesn’t seem like a great way to deflate tensions between two trigger-happy armies. This point also doesn’t take away from the parallels with Beren and Lúthien.
c) Fingon is Gil-galad’s father in the published Silmarillion
Christopher Tolkien says that he himself inserted the “son of Fingon” into the passage in Aldarion and Erendis in UT (HoME XII, p. 351) as well as in the Silmarillion (“in the published text […] Fingon is an editorial alteration of Felagund”, HoME XII, p. 349). He further says that Gil-galad son of Orodreth was JRR Tolkien’s “last word on the subject”, that it “would […] have been much better to have left Gil-galad’s parentage obscure” in the Silmarillion published by Christopher Tolkien, and that JRR Tolkien’s idea of Gil-galad son of Fingon was “ephemeral” (HoME, p. 351). Tolkien’s last words on the issue were that Fingon has “no wife or child” (HoME XII, p. 345). It’s also really important plot-wise that Fingon has no heir, and Fingon’s lieutenant Húrin, just before making an accurate prophecy concerning Eärendil, says to Turgon: “For you are the last of the House of Fingolfin, and in you lives the last hope of the Eldar.” (CoH, p. 58) (See also here.)
d) Maedhros and Fingon were melotorni and not romantic lovers
Carl Hostetter (u/cfhostetter) argues that Maedhros and Fingon would have been melotorni. The term melotorni comes from the following passage about love: “In this matter the Elven-tongues make distinctions. To speak of Quenya: Love, which Men might call “friendship” (but for the greater strength and warmth and permanency with which it was felt by the Quendi) was represented by √mel. This was primarily a motion or inclination of the fëa, and therefore could occur between persons of the same sex or different sexes. It included no sexual or procreative desire, though naturally in Incarnates the difference of sex altered the emotion, since “sex” is held by the Eldar to belong also to the fëa and not solely to the hröa, and is therefore not wholly included in procreation. Such persons were often called melotorni ‘love-brothers’ and meletheldi ‘love-sisters’.” (NoME, p. 20)
However, I don’t argue that given the textual evidence, Maedhros and Fingon can’t have been melotorni. I don’t argue that they can’t share philia (the friend bond), using C.S. Lewis’s terms for similar concepts from The Four Loves, and that eros (romantic love) is the only possible interpretation. I argue that the text points in the direction of a romantic relationship for reasons I have already mentioned: in particular, the surprising fact that both of them, the oldest of the third generation of the House of Finwë, were unmarried and never showed interest in marrying (unlike Finrod, for example); the gift of the Elessar, which has romantic connotations when Celebrimbor gives it to Galadriel and is in fact used as a marriage gift between Aragorn and Arwen; the parallels with Beren and Lúthien, the preeminent romantic relationship in the Legendarium; and the Greek influences.
By the way, again about the Elessar: it seems that everyone accepts that Celebrimbor is in love with Galadriel in that one version in UT, p. 324. And yet, all we know of what Celebrimbor feels for Galadriel is this: “But you know that I love you (though you turned to Celeborn of the Trees), and for that love I will do what I can, if haply by my art your grief can be lessened.” (UT, p. 324) The term used is “love”, not “in love with”. Still, no-one would doubt that this is romantic love, given the circumstances (that is, Celebrimbor mentioning Celeborn and giving Galadriel the Elessar). But love is also the term used for Maedhros and Fingon’s relationship (HoME XI, p. 32). So why, given the term and the circumstances (the Elessar and the parallel with Beren and Lúthien) can’t this be romantic—and in this case, requited—love too?
e) Elves don’t experience sexual desire without a concomitant desire to have children
Concerning marriage among the Elves, we are told that “The ‘desire’ for marriage and bodily union was represented by √yer; but this never in the uncorrupted occurred without ‘love’ √mel, nor without the desire for children.” (NoME, p. 20)
This seems quite definitive, doesn’t it? But it’s clear that this isn’t how things were in practice: note the term “in the uncorrupted”. By any interpretation, the Kinslayers of Alqualondë would not fall under “the uncorrupted”. This is confirmed by HoME X, p. 210: “Even when in after days, as the histories reveal, many of the Eldar in Middle-earth became corrupted, and their hearts darkened by shadow that lies upon Arda, seldom is any tale told of deeds of lust among them.”
And many, many expressions of innocuous free will among Elves are stated to be products of Arda Marred, the Shadow, corruption and the like. Indis loving Finwë while he was married to Míriel? “The Shadow” (HoME X, p. 247). Finwë accepting the severance of his marriage to Míriel through his second marriage to Indis? Accepting (and implicitly furthering) “the marring”, as Manwë tells Finwë: “For the severance cometh from the marring of Arda; and those who accept this permission accept the marring, whereas the bereaved who remain steadfast belong in spirit and will to Arda Unmarred.” (HoME X, p. 260). Míriel’s wish to remain unhoused? “The Shadow” (HoME X, p. 222). The Noldor leaving Aman, and the Sindar never getting there? “[T]he effort to preserve the Elves incorrupt there had proved a failure if they were to be left free: many had refused to come to the Blessed Realm, many had revolted and left it.” (HoME X, p. 401) For some of the Valar, even all unrequited love among Elves is part of Arda Marred/the Shadow (while for other Valar it’s part of free will) (HoME X, p. 211). That is, many, many natural and innocuous expressions of free will are expressions of “corruption”/Arda Marred/the Shadow.
In this context it’s also important to say that the term “corrupted” doesn’t necessarily mean evil in the Legendarium. It’s not always a moral statement, but can simply denote that something—or someone—is part of Arda Marred. Basically everything is part of Arda Marred, especially Elves and Men (see e.g. HoME X, p. 244, 254–255). And importantly, this “corruption” is necessary for the Third Theme, with Eru taking notes from the Discord of Melkor and weaving them into his own music, and saying, “And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’” (The Silmarillion, p. 5–6) (See in general here.)
f) As a Catholic born in the 19^th century, Tolkien would never have countenanced a romantic relationship between two male characters
Tolkien greatly appreciated Mary Renault’s writings (Letters, Letter 294, p. 377, “I was recently deeply engaged in the books of Mary Renault; especially the two about Theseus, The King Must Die, and The Bull from the Sea. A few days ago I actually received a card of appreciation from her; perhaps the piece of ‘Fan-mail’ that gives me the most pleasure.”), nominated E.M. Forster for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954 (see Dennis Wilson Wise, Mythlore), and was close with W.H. Auden (Letters, Letter 327, p. 411–412, “I regard him as one of my great friends”, credit to elethiomel on AO3). So I wouldn’t say that Tolkien being a Catholic is a major obstacle.
And it’s not like Tolkien had to personally agree with everything he wrote his characters, even his heroes and protagonists, as doing. Tolkien wrote Túrin marrying his sister and both Túrin and Nienor killing themselves, none of which is very Catholic either. The argument that Tolkien had to approve of homosexual relationships for Maedhros and Fingon to be in love is strange anyway—Maedhros in particular is a murderer many times over, and a suicide. But Maedhros loving Fingon romantically would be beyond the pale and impossible for a Catholic to write?
6. Conclusion
Maybe I’m too influenced by classical literature. In the Silmarillion, which I read as a Northern Iliad or Aeneid, maybe I expected to also find the element of the couple who are princes and warriors at war and who will die awful deaths in service of the tragedy. Maybe it’s because I knew of Achilles and Patroclus from Homer’s Iliad (who were seen as a couple even in English literature in the early modern period, see for instance Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II, Act I, or William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Act V, Scene 1), and of Nisus and Euryalus from Virgil’s Aeneid. So maybe I was subconsciously looking for two princely warriors who would stand in this literary tradition. But then Tolkien himself was greatly impacted by Ancient Greek and Latin literature: “I was brought up in the Classics, and first discovered the sensation of literary pleasure in Homer.” (Letters, Letter 142, p. 172) We can refer to the classics to interpret Tolkien’s works. And I would argue that the text lends itself to my interpretation. I hope that they’ll meet again in Mandos or afterwards, without the burden of the Oath and the Doom, and that they can be happy despite the tragedy that was the First Age.
Sources in the comments due to character limit. Highlights in bold in quotes are mine.

For a long while I have wondered what the *exact* number of words were in the OE lexicon. I looked it up repeatedly but could not find a proper answer. It is likely that no one has actually tried to make an exhaustive compilation of all types of words, with their variant spellings, hapax legomena of each work etc. But I wanted to get a rough number anyway.
So I went onto the Bosworth-Toller website and compiled the number of entries under each letter. Now, a lot of these entries, and I mean A LOT of them are alternative spellings, conjugated forms, prefixed or suffixed variants and so on. In most cases letters, suffixed, prefixes and etc. together with the re-spellings of the same word are counted as seperate entries. So the numbers are highly inflated.
Regardless, here are the entry numbers:
a - 3823 ae - 1468 b - 5174 c - 3023 d - 1768 e - 2793 f - 5960 g - 9681 h - 5040 i - 774 k - 2 l - 1939 m - 2181 n - 978 o - 1898 p - 502 q - 1 r - 1112 s - 5509 t - 1731 th - 1342 u - 2157 v - 1 w - 5766 y - 355
Total number of entries: 64,978
Assuming only one in every five or six of these happen to be the uninflected forms of the words and entries which are not suffixes or prefixes (which is being generous, in all likelihood), the *actual* entry count decreases to about 10,829-12,959 individual words.
This means that for a person to reliably *function* like an OE dictionary, he/she would have to memorise about 10.000 words (and possibly fewer than these), together with their grammatical inflections and conjugations.
This seems extremely doable (*not* easy), since most modern languages require around 10.000-15.000 words for academic proficiency (as far as I know, an ideal German C1 speaker knows about 10.000 words). With things like Anki, learning these many words in about a year with consistent effort would be a good challenge.

This is the second in a series of sticky threads for anyone soliciting or offering online sponsorship. (Last month's thread may be found at https://redd.it/1b3ua6h - there were a few connections made!)
While most of us feel that face-to-face sponsorship offers greater facility for transmitting/receiving sobriety, and that there are great advantages in having a big crowd of local friends, online sponsorship (via phone, WhatsApp, Facetime, Zoom, or Western Union) can work^* and for some seeking or offering sobriety it is sometimes the only practical solution for getting started. (But to any extent that online sponsorship is being sought as "an easier, softer way" - that's already spelling trouble!)
The pamphlet "Questions & Answers on Sponsorship" (https://www.aa.org/questions-and-answers-sponsorship) can answer many/most of the questions frequently asked about this sponsorship business - some selected examples:

How does sponsorship help the newcomer? How should a sponsor be chosen? Should sponsor and newcomer be as much alike as possible? Must the newcomer agree with everything the sponsor says? Is it ever too late to get a sponsor? 

 

Suggested Format

Start with "Seeking:" or "Offering:", optionally a name, sobriety date or length of sobriety, gender, location (also optional,) perhaps some brief biographical information, perhaps a brief drunkalogue about one's drinking and drugging career when making a "Seeking:" comment. (For this first month's trial run anyway, I will almost certainly put up an "Offering:" comment myself!)
"Gender" may not always be relevant, but per the sponsorship pamphlet, "A.A. experience does suggest that it is best for men to sponsor men, women to sponsor women." It's a good guideline albeit not a strict rule carved in stone.
"Location" may be very general or as specific as wanted, and of course is optional. It may come in handy if the sponsor and protégé (p.92) prefer to be in the same time zone or may possibly wish to meet face-to-face sometime down the road to happy destiny.
"Biographical information" would also be quite optional. I've seen situations where young people prefer to be sponsored by other young people or even the opposite, wanting to be sponsored by a grandparent figure.
For any comments other than "Seeking" or "Offering" it might be best to prefix the comment with something like "Commenting".
Any replies to "Seeking" or "Offering" comments should ideally be limited, with the correspondents shifting to Reddit private messages, chat, email or phone calls relatively quickly.
It is strongly suggested to avoid posting phone numbers or email addresses in the public forum:

"Posting phone numbers is a violation of Reddit Content Policy for sharing personal information" (I've seen "[Removed By Reddit]" a few times over posting phone numbers. I suppose this might be in part due to the potential for publishing other people's phone numbers for harassment purposes.)

Lastly, it might be nice to get some sort of measure about the effectiveness of this these threads - perhaps we might edit "Seeking" and/or "Offering" comments to add the word "FOUND!" when a relationship is first made.
* Footnote: In the 4^th Edition Big Book on page 193, "Gratitude In Action - The story of Dave B., one of the founders of A.A. in Canada in 1944" relates the story of an alcoholic who started his recovery by exchanging letters with the folks in the new A.A. office in New York; an excerpt:

I was very surprised when I got a copy of the Big Book in the mail the following day. And each day after that, for nearly a year, I got a letter or a note, something from Bobbie or from Bill or one of the other members of the central office in New York. In October 1944, Bobbie wrote: “You sound very sincere and from now on we will be counting on you to perpetuate the Fellowship of A.A. where you are. You will find enclosed some queries from alcoholics. We think you are now ready to take on this responsibility.” She had enclosed some four hundred letters that I answered in the course of the following weeks. Soon, I began to get answers back.

If Dave could get sober via U.S. Mail, we can get sober with the cornucopia of communication facilities available in the 21^st century!

in initial phases of learning Spring,SpringBoot + its respective web framework MVC .. Springboot Thymeleaf NOT rendering templates under src/main/resources/templates
MVC: 1 Controller portion of source code:

@Controller @RequestMapping(value="/design") @ResponseBody @GetMapping public String showDesignForm(Model obj_model_map) { List ingredients = Arrays.asList( new DomainTacoIngredient("FLTO", "Flour Tortilla", Type.WRAP), new DomainTacoIngredient("COTO", "Corn Tortilla", Type.WRAP), new DomainTacoIngredient("GRBF", "Ground Beef", Type.PROTEIN), new DomainTacoIngredient("CARN", "Carnitas", Type.PROTEIN), new DomainTacoIngredient("TMTO", "Diced Tomatoes", Type.VEGGIES), new DomainTacoIngredient("LETC", "Lettuce", Type.VEGGIES), new DomainTacoIngredient("CHED", "Cheddar", Type.CHEESE), new DomainTacoIngredient("JACK", "Monterrey Jack", Type.CHEESE), new DomainTacoIngredient("SLSA", "Salsa", Type.SAUCE), new DomainTacoIngredient("SRCR", "Sour Cream", Type.SAUCE) ); //Model is an object that ferries data between controller + whatever view is charged with rendering said data //ultimately data that is placed in an Model attributes is copied into the Servlet response attributes //method finally returns a logical name of the view that will be used to render the model to the browser //return "design" Type types[] = DomainTacoIngredient.Type.values(); for (Type type : types) { obj_model_map.addAttribute(type.toString().toLowerCase(), filterByType(ingredients, type)); //check System.out.println(type.toString()); } //obj_model_map.addAttribute("design", new DomainTacoDesign()); System.out.println(obj_model_map.addAttribute("design", new DomainTacoDesign())); //return the current set of model attributes as a Map object Map obj_Map_model_map= obj_model_map.asMap(); //iterate over keys + respective values of said Map object obj_Map_model_map.forEach((map_key,map_val)-> System.out.println("key=" + map_key+ ",value="+ map_val) ); //return obj_model_map.getAttribute("design"); return "design"; } @PostMapping public String processDesign(@RequestBody DomainTacoDesign design) { //save to taco design Log.info("Processing design: "+ design); //returns a logical name of the view // /orders/current return "redirect:/orders/current"; } private List filterByType(List ingredients, Type type) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return ingredients.stream() .filter(x -> x.getType().equals(type)) .collect(Collectors.toList()); } }@Controller @RequestMapping(value="/design") @ResponseBody @GetMapping public String showDesignForm(Model obj_model_map) { List ingredients = Arrays.asList( new DomainTacoIngredient("FLTO", "Flour Tortilla", Type.WRAP), new DomainTacoIngredient("COTO", "Corn Tortilla", Type.WRAP), new DomainTacoIngredient("GRBF", "Ground Beef", Type.PROTEIN), new DomainTacoIngredient("CARN", "Carnitas", Type.PROTEIN), new DomainTacoIngredient("TMTO", "Diced Tomatoes", Type.VEGGIES), new DomainTacoIngredient("LETC", "Lettuce", Type.VEGGIES), new DomainTacoIngredient("CHED", "Cheddar", Type.CHEESE), new DomainTacoIngredient("JACK", "Monterrey Jack", Type.CHEESE), new DomainTacoIngredient("SLSA", "Salsa", Type.SAUCE), new DomainTacoIngredient("SRCR", "Sour Cream", Type.SAUCE) ); //Model is an object that ferries data between controller + whatever view is charged with rendering said data //ultimately data that is placed in an Model attributes is copied into the Servlet response attributes //method finally returns a logical name of the view that will be used to render the model to the browser //return "design" Type types[] = DomainTacoIngredient.Type.values(); for (Type type : types) { obj_model_map.addAttribute(type.toString().toLowerCase(), filterByType(ingredients, type)); //check System.out.println(type.toString()); } //obj_model_map.addAttribute("design", new DomainTacoDesign()); System.out.println(obj_model_map.addAttribute("design", new DomainTacoDesign())); //return the current set of model attributes as a Map object Map obj_Map_model_map= obj_model_map.asMap(); //iterate over keys + respective values of said Map object obj_Map_model_map.forEach((map_key,map_val)-> System.out.println("key=" + map_key+ ",value="+ map_val) ); //return obj_model_map.getAttribute("design"); return "design"; } @PostMapping public String processDesign(@RequestBody DomainTacoDesign design) { //save to taco design Log.info("Processing design: "+ design); //returns a logical name of the view // /orders/current return "redirect:/orders/current"; } private List filterByType(List ingredients, Type type) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub return ingredients.stream() .filter(x -> x.getType().equals(type)) .collect(Collectors.toList()); } } 

1 View portion of source code:

      
Design your taco!!
  
 
 
 
Designate your wrap:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Pick your protein:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Choose your cheese:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Determine your veggies:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Select your sauce:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
 
Name your taco creation:
  Submit your taco 
 
         
Design your taco!!
  
 
 
 
Designate your wrap:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Pick your protein:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Choose your cheese:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Determine your veggies:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
Select your sauce:
 
  INGREDIENT 
 
 
 
 
Name your taco creation:
  Submit your taco 
 
   

Respective Configuration Class:

u/Configuration public class Config implements WebMvcConfigurer,ApplicationContextAware { //data private ApplicationContext obj_ApplicationContext; //method/routine/function/procedure setter for ApplicationContext public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext obj_ApplicationContext) throws BeansException { this.obj_ApplicationContext=obj_ApplicationContext; } //Template Resolver <- Template Engine <-ViewResolver @Bean @Description("Template Resolver") public SpringResourceTemplateResolver templateResolver() { //SpringResourceTemplateResolver auto integrates with Spring's infrastructure //Highly recommended //define+declare+instantiate+initialize object reference variable identifier SpringResourceTemplateResolver obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver; obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver= new SpringResourceTemplateResolver(); //setApplicationContext obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setApplicationContext(this.obj_ApplicationContext); //setPrefix obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setPrefix("classpath:/templates/"); //setSuffix //HTML is default mode obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setSuffix(".html"); //HTML is default obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setTemplateMode(TemplateMode.HTML); //template cache //template cache is set to True by default //set to false if you want templates to be automatically updated when modified //for testing it is better false obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setCacheable(false); //return SpringResourceTemplateResolver object return obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver; } @Bean @Description("Template Engine") public SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine() { // SpringTemplateEngine automatically applies SpringStandardDialect and // enables Spring's own MessageSource message resolution mechanisms. //define+declare+instantiate+initialize object reference variable identifier SpringTemplateEngine obj_SpringTemplateEngine; obj_SpringTemplateEngine = new SpringTemplateEngine(); //setTemplateResolver obj_SpringTemplateEngine.setTemplateResolver(templateResolver()); // Enabling the SpringEL compiler with Spring 4.2.4 or newer can // speed up execution in most scenarios, but might be incompatible // with specific cases when expressions in one template are reused // across different data types, so this flag is "false" by default // for safer backwards compatibility. obj_SpringTemplateEngine.setEnableSpringELCompiler(false); //return SpringTemplateEngine object return obj_SpringTemplateEngine; } @Bean @Description("View Resolver-Thymeleaf") public ThymeleafViewResolver viewResolverThymeleaf() { //define+declare+instantiate+initialize object reference variable identifier ThymeleafViewResolver obj_ThymeleafViewResolver; obj_ThymeleafViewResolver= new ThymeleafViewResolver(); //set templateEngine obj_ThymeleafViewResolver.setTemplateEngine(templateEngine()); //order + viewNames are optional obj_ThymeleafViewResolver.setOrder(1); //return ThymeleafViewResolver object return obj_ThymeleafViewResolver; } }@Configuration public class Config implements WebMvcConfigurer,ApplicationContextAware { //data private ApplicationContext obj_ApplicationContext; //method/routine/function/procedure setter for ApplicationContext public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext obj_ApplicationContext) throws BeansException { this.obj_ApplicationContext=obj_ApplicationContext; } //Template Resolver <- Template Engine <-ViewResolver @Bean @Description("Template Resolver") public SpringResourceTemplateResolver templateResolver() { //SpringResourceTemplateResolver auto integrates with Spring's infrastructure //Highly recommended //define+declare+instantiate+initialize object reference variable identifier SpringResourceTemplateResolver obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver; obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver= new SpringResourceTemplateResolver(); //setApplicationContext obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setApplicationContext(this.obj_ApplicationContext); //setPrefix obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setPrefix("classpath:/templates/"); //setSuffix //HTML is default mode obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setSuffix(".html"); //HTML is default obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setTemplateMode(TemplateMode.HTML); //template cache //template cache is set to True by default //set to false if you want templates to be automatically updated when modified //for testing it is better false obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver.setCacheable(false); //return SpringResourceTemplateResolver object return obj_SpringResourceTemplateResolver; } @Bean @Description("Template Engine") public SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine() { // SpringTemplateEngine automatically applies SpringStandardDialect and // enables Spring's own MessageSource message resolution mechanisms. //define+declare+instantiate+initialize object reference variable identifier SpringTemplateEngine obj_SpringTemplateEngine; obj_SpringTemplateEngine = new SpringTemplateEngine(); //setTemplateResolver obj_SpringTemplateEngine.setTemplateResolver(templateResolver()); // Enabling the SpringEL compiler with Spring 4.2.4 or newer can // speed up execution in most scenarios, but might be incompatible // with specific cases when expressions in one template are reused // across different data types, so this flag is "false" by default // for safer backwards compatibility. obj_SpringTemplateEngine.setEnableSpringELCompiler(false); //return SpringTemplateEngine object return obj_SpringTemplateEngine; } @Bean @Description("View Resolver-Thymeleaf") public ThymeleafViewResolver viewResolverThymeleaf() { //define+declare+instantiate+initialize object reference variable identifier ThymeleafViewResolver obj_ThymeleafViewResolver; obj_ThymeleafViewResolver= new ThymeleafViewResolver(); //set templateEngine obj_ThymeleafViewResolver.setTemplateEngine(templateEngine()); //order + viewNames are optional obj_ThymeleafViewResolver.setOrder(1); //return ThymeleafViewResolver object return obj_ThymeleafViewResolver; } } 

BUT when pointing to http://localhost:8090/design: renders String object "design"...... NOT the respective Spring Thymeleaf template..as a check on the GET request handling method it is returning the respective Model objects..

During a break from my synthetic conlang project, I just got an idea of a simpler conlang inspired mainly by Malay languages, and some Arabic, Hebrew, Finnish, Japanese and Swahili. The word order is simply SVO and adjectives follow nouns.

Phonology

Consonants

Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar / Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m	n			ɴ
Unvoiced Plosive	p	t		k	q
Aspirated Plosive	pʰ	tʰ			kʰ	qʰ
Voiced Plosive	b	d
Unvoiced Affricate		ts	tʃ
Aspirated Affricate		tsʰ	tʃʰ
Fricative	f	s	ʃ	x
Trill		r
Approximant	ʋ	l	j

Vowels

Front	Unrounded Back	Round Back
Close	i	ɯ
Mid	e̞	ɤ̞
Open	a

This language exhibits consonant and vowel harmony. Roundness harmony is applied to high vowels (anything except /a/). Here the vowel /a/ is an opaque vowel that blocks the inflection from affixes. For consonant harmony, it is applied to sibilant affricate and fricative consonants. Alveolar /s/ /ts/ /tsʰ/ and Post-alveolar /ʃ/ /tʃ/ /tʃʰ/ cannot occur in the same word.
There are rules of consonant gradation too! Some consonant clusters and affricates are said to be "hard" and are reduced to a single "soft" consonant in some environment. By the way, I am not developing the specific rules yet.

Hard	Soft
-dd-	-r-
-nd- -ngd-	-n-
-mb- -ngb-	-m-
-ld-	-l-
-tt- -tth-	-t- -th-
-pp- -ph-	-p- -ph-
-kk- -kkh-	-k- -kh-
-qq- -qh-	-q- -qh-
-ts- -tsh-	-s-
-c- -ch-	-sh-

The syllable structure is simply (C)V(C).

Grammar

The word order is basically SVO. The language is more or less agglutinative. For example:
rajal ta-miri-tora a tayar
man nonspeaker-see-progressive acc bird
A man is seeing a bird.
Verb agrees with subject in person (speaker vs non-speaker) and number (singular and plural). Subject agreement is marked by prefixes, voices are marked by prefixes, and TAMs are marked by suffixes. The building block for verbs is subject-
Subject agreement prefixes

Singular	Plural
Speaker	a-
Non-speaker (animate)	ta-
Non-speaker (inanimate)	ya-

Voices prefixes
hari- / haru- : passive voice (hari-mir-: to be seen*)*
sta- / shta-: causative voice (sta-mir-: to show)
hassita- / hasshita-: passive causative voice (hassita-mir-: to be shown)
ban-: applicative voice (bam-mir-: to be used for seeing)
divi- / duyu-: reciprocal or medium voice (di-mir-: to see oneself or to see one another*)*
Voice prefixes can be used together, for example di-sita-mir- means to show one another.
TAM suffixes

Informal	Formal
No TAMs marking	-
Progressive	-ter / -tor
Perfect	-tta
Future	-yikka / -yukka
Potential	-yad
Necessity	-rad

Derivation
As inspired by malay, nouns are derived from verbs by infixes! And the final vowel of verb stem is usually droped when it is either i or u or ï.
-un- / -in- : agent noun derivation m-in-iri = minir a viewer
-um- / -ïm- : patient noun derivation m-ïm-iri = mïmir a view
-ab- : tool noun or place noun derivation m-ab-iri = mabir eyeglasses or a binocular
-emb- / -omb- : place noun derivation m-emb-iri = membir a balcony (place to see)
Verbal nouns are formed by adding prefix kap-, for example, kap-miri = kammir
For examples
rakasta to love (from Finnish rakastaa)
r-un-akasta = runakasta : a lover; a person who loves
r-um-akasta = rumakasta : a beloved person
kap-rakasta = kaprakasta : love
katabu to write (from Arabic كتب)
k-un-atab = kunatab : a writer; an author
k-um-atab = kumatab : a journal; an article
k-omb-atab = kombatab : an office
zheza to play (from Swahili cheza)
zh-in-eza = zhineza : a player; an actor
zh-emb-eza = zhembeza : an amusement park
patahi to open (from Hebrew פתח or Arabic فتح)
p-un-atah = punatah a founder (of an organization); a pioneer
p-ïm-atah = pïmatah a project (In my language "to start a project" is "to open a project")
p-ab-atah = pabatah an opener
korosu to kill (from Japanese 殺す)
k-un-oros = kunoros a killer
k-um-oros = kumoros a murdered person
k-ab-oros = kaboros a weapon; a sword
k-omb-oros = komboros a slaughterhouse
Sample phrases from Declaration of human rights
"kul khonan tonanasumung bi hurur vava tënatatsiming hutos bi tathoki vava kapyar. tonaharukurorotorumung nabasu vava kamarif kuraso vava tënadivifakheraring bi nafis takui."
" All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
kul nunas tona-nasu-mung bi hurur vava tëna-tatsi-ming hutos bi betathoki vava kapyar
all human *nonspeakerPL-*happen-formal with freedom and nonspeakerPL-stand-formal equally with highness and potentiality/rights
tona-haru-kuroro-torumung nabasu vava kaparif qalib vava tëna-divi-fakhe-raring bi nafis takui.
nonspeakerPL-passive-prepare/provide-perfect.formal reason and knowledge heart and nonspeakerPL-reciprocal-treat-necessity with breath/soul/spirit group
LIT. All humans happen (are born) with freedom and they stand equally in highness (dignity) and rights. They are given reasons and the knowledge of heart (conscience) and they should treat one another with spirits of groups (spirits of brotherhood)
nunas meaning human (as a part of society) (from nasu to happen/ to be born and -un- agent marker)
kapyar meaning potentiality; rights (from kap- nominalizer and yaddi "to be able")
kaparif meaning knowledge (from kap- nominalizer and arifi "to know" from Arabic عرف)
qalib meaning heart; moral heart (from Arabic قلب)
So kaparif qalib means knowledge of moral heart (conscinence)
nafis meaning soul; spirit; breath (from Arabic نفس)
takui meaning heard; group; social (from Japanese 類)
So nafis takui mean spirits of groups or spirits of society.

Sup everyone!
I’m Jimmy, a former Microsoft software engineer who has spent the last 3 years preparing students for the Leetcode style coding interview. I get a lot of questions about how to prepare, which topics to focus on and the order to follow, etc so I thought I’d write a detailed guide breaking it down.
This guide splits the study process for coding interviews into four sets of questions, for a total of 75 questions. Each set is meant to achieve a specific learning goal.
Set 1: Working With Algorithm Patterns (13 qs) Set 2: Data Structures (24 qs, 16 high priority, 8 lower priority) Set 3: DFS and BFS (21 qs) Set 4: Greedy vs Dynamic Programming (11 qs) Misc: Other Topics (6 qs)
How did I come up with this guide?
My teaching experience, combined with breaking down the questions on the Grind 169 into categories, which you can find here.
There’s definitely a lot to cover! So I’m also linking some of the free resources I’ve been working on at HelloInterview to make the learning process easier.

Set 1: Working with Algorithm Patterns

This set of questions focuses on learning how to use algorithm patterns. Algorithm patterns are crucial because once you understand the fundamentals of a pattern, a whole class of related problems suddenly become a lot easier to solve.

How do you study algorithm patterns?

To learn the fundamentals of an algorithm pattern, start with a simple example problem that demonstrates why the pattern is useful. Use that problem to understand the basic structural components of the pattern. Then, apply what you learned by solving a few follow-up questions on your own.
I’ve broken down the fundamentals and created animated solutions for the follow-up questions for the following algorithm patterns, which are a great place to start because they don’t require additional knowledge of data structures beyond arrays.
Make sure you understand the types of questions that are a good fit for each pattern (covered in the fundamentals page for each pattern).
​
Two-Pointer Technique
Fundamentals

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Container With Most Water	Medium	Container With Most Water	HelloInterview Solution
3Sum	Medium	3Sum	HelloInterview Solution
Valid Triangle Number	Medium	Valid Triangle Number	HelloInterview Solution
Trapping Rain Water	Hard	Trapping Rain Water	HelloInterview Solution

​
Sliding Window
Fundamentals

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Fruit Into Baskets	Medium	Fruit Into Baskets	HelloInterview Solution
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters	Medium	Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters	HelloInterview Solution
Longest Repeating Character Replacement	Medium	Longest Repeating Character Replacement	HelloInterview Solution
Maximum Sum of Distinct Subarrays with Length K	Medium	Maximum Sum of Distinct Subarrays with Length K	HelloInterview Solution

​
Intervals
Fundamentals

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Meeting Rooms	Easy	Meeting Rooms (premium)	HelloInterview Solution
Merge Intervals	Medium	Merge Intervals	HelloInterview Solution
Insert Interval	Medium	Insert Interval	HelloInterview Solution
Non-Overlapping Intervals	Medium	Non Overlapping Intervals	HelloInterview Solution
Employee Free Time	Hard	Employee Free Time (premium)	HelloInterview Solution

​

Why are algorithm patterns important?

​

• Let's say you get a question which gives you a string, and asks you to return the longest substring within that string without repeating characters.Since this is asking for a substring within a string that meets a certain criteria (no repeating characters), you know this question is a good candidate for the sliding window.
• You know that the sliding window pattern involves using two pointers to represent the current window, along with a data structure to store the contents of the window. You can immediately start thinking about the appropriate data structure (a set or a dictionary are good choices for this problem!) to use.
• Now you’ve identified the structural components for this problem, you can begin to translate them into code, using a template for the sliding window as a starting point.

This is why algorithm patterns are important: once you’ve identified that a question is a good candidate for an algorithm pattern, you have a structured foundation from which to solve problem solving from.

Unit 2: Data Structures

This set of questions will teach you the data structures you are most likely to encounter during the coding interview, and recognizing the types of problems that are best suited for each.
Start by understanding the operations that each data structure supports, as well as the asymptotic runtimes (Big-O) of each operation. Then, work through the sample problems to get a sense of how the data structure simplifies each problem.
I’ve written up a guide and animated solutions to the follow-up questions for the Stack data structure. The rest are coming soon!
Stack
Question Types: Validating Parentheses, finding the next greatest / smallest item in an array
Overview
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Valid Parentheses	Easy	Valid Parentheses	HelloInterview Solution
Decode String	Medium	Decode String	HelloInterview Solution
Daily Temperatures	Medium	Daily Temperatures	HelloInterview Solution
Largest Rectangle in Histogram	Hard	Largest Rectangle in Histogram	HelloInterview Solution
Longest Valid Parentheses	Hard	Longest Valid Parentheses	Coming soon!

​
​
Heap / Priority Queue
Question Types: Finding the K-th smallest / largest elements, merging K sorted Lists, scheduling by priority
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
K Closest Points to Origin	Coming soon!	K Closest Points to Origin	Coming soon!
Cheapest Flights Within K Stops (djikstra's)	Coming soon!	Cheapest Flights Within K Stops	Coming soon!
Find K Closest Elements	Medium	Find K Closest Elements	Coming soon!
Smallest Range Covering Elements from K Lists	Hard	Smallest Range Covering Elements from K Lists	Coming soon!
Merge K Sorted Lists	Hard	Merge K Sorted Lists	Coming soon!

​
Linked Lists
Question Types: Linked List questions can cover a variety of question types, so being able to visualize the effects of the various Linked List operations really helps. Also know how Fast and Slow pointers and Sentinel (dummy) nodes can simplify solutions.
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Concept
Linked List Cycle	Medium	Linked List Cycle	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers
Palindrome Linked List	Medium	Palindrome Linked List	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers
Reorder List	Medium	Reorder List	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers
Remove Nth Node From End of List	Medium	Remove Nth Node From End of List	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers / Dummy Node
Swap Nodes in Pairs	Medium	Swap Nodes in Pairs	Coming soon!	Dummy Node

​
Less Foundational Data Structures
If you are tight on time, I recommend moving onto set 3 rather than working through these questions.
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Data Structure
Spiral Matrix	Medium	Spiral Matrix	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Set Matrix Zeroes	Medium	Set Matrix Zeroes	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Rotate Image	Medium	Rotate Image	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Number of 1 Bits	Easy	Number of 1 Bits	Coming soon!	Bit Manipulation
Single Number	Easy	Single Number	Coming soon!	Bit Manipulation
Reverse Bits	Easy	Reverse Bits	Coming soon!	Bit Manipulation
Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)	Medium	Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)	Coming soon!	Trie
Design Add and Search Words Data Structure	Medium	Design Add and Search Words Data Structure	Coming soon!	Trie

​
Knowing which data structure to use is often the key to solving a problem efficiently. They are either the basis of a solution, or a building block for a more complex problem, such as Meeting Rooms II, which involves sorting intervals and using a heap to process meetings as they end.
​

Set 3: DFS and BFS

This question set covers the depth-first search and breadth-first search traversal algorithms. These show up in so many interviews that if you’re short on time (and already familiar with thinking in algorithm patterns), I recommend focusing on this unit.
(The HelloInterview resources for this section are coming soon)
​
Binary Trees
These questions will get you comfortable with recursion and visualizing how a recursive depth-first search algorithm behaves on the call stack. It will also help you understand the types of questions that are better suited for DFS and BFS.
​
DFS

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Balanced Binary Tree	Easy	Balanced Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Diameter of Binary Tree	Easy	Diameter of Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree	Easy	Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Path Sum III (prefix sum)	Medium	Path Sum III	Coming soon!
Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum	Hard	Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum	Coming soon!

​
BFS (better for level-by-level order)

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Binary Tree Level Order Traversal	Medium	Binary Tree Level Order Traversal	Coming soon!
Binary Tree Right Side View	Medium	Binary Tree Right Side View	Coming soon!
Maximum Width of Binary Tree	Medium	Maximum Width of Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree	Hard	Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree	Coming soon!

​
Next, these questions cover the various applications of DFS and BFS when traversing matrices and graphs. For graphs, make sure you are familiar with both node-based graphs and adjacency lists.
​
Matrix
DFS

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Data Structure
Flood Fill	Easy	Flood Fill	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Number of Islands	Medium	Number of Islands	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Clone Graph	Medium	Maximum Width of Binary Tree	HelloInterview Solution	Graph
Graph Valid Tree	Medium	Graph Valid Tree	HelloInterview Solution	Graph / Tree
Accounts Merge	Medium	Accounts Merge	Coming soon!	Graph
Number of Connected Components in Undirected Graph	Medium	Number of Connected Components in an Undirected Graph	Coming soon!	Graph

​
BFS (better for shortest-path type questions)
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Data Structure
Rotting Oranges	Medium	Rotting Oranges	Coming soon!	Matrix
Bus Routes	Hard	Bus Routes	Coming soon!	Graph

​
Backtracking
Unlike the above section which involve using DFS to traverse a pre-existing data structure, backtracking problems sometimes require using DFS to construct your own tree-like structure. Being able to visualize what that tree looks like is crucial - more HelloInterview resources on this coming soon!
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Combination Sum	Medium	Combination Sum	HelloInterview Solution
Path Sum II	Medium	Path Sum II	Coming soon!
Letter Combinations of a Phone Number	Medium	Letter Combinations of a Phone Number	HelloInterview Solution
N-Queens	Hard	N-Queens	Coming soon!

​

Unit 4: DP vs Greedy

This last question set covers dynamic programming and greedy algorithms. The first set of questions will help you understand the different structural components of the dynamic programming pattern. The second set of questions will help you identify when dynamic programming solutions are necessary.
​
Dynamic Programming Basics
(A solid understanding of how binary tree questions from Set 3 use recursion to break down a problem into smaller sub-problems will help here!)
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Counting Bits	Easy	Counting Bits	HelloInterview Solution
Word Break	Medium	Word Break	HelloInterview Solution
Maximal Square	Medium	Maximal Square	HelloInterview Solution
Decode Ways	Medium	Decode Ways	HelloInterview Solution
Unique Paths	Medium	Unique Paths	Coming soon!

​
Optimization Problems
Next, these questions cover optimization problems, such as finding the maximum profit in job scheduling, or finding the best time to buy and sell stock. “Greedy” algorithms and dynamic programming are two different approaches to solving optimization problems.
Understanding the pros and cons of both approaches will help solve these questions. If you are faced with an optimization question, you can start by trying a greedy approach. If it doesn’t produce the optimal solution, that’s often a sign that a dynamic programming approach is necessary.
​
Greedy

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock	Easy	Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock	HelloInterview Solution
Gas Station	Medium	Gas Station	HelloInterview Solution
Jump Game	Medium	Jump Game	HelloInterview Solution

​
DP

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Longest Increasing Subsequence	Medium	Longest Increasing Subsequence	HelloInterview Solution
Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling	Hard	Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling	HelloInterview Solution

​

Misc: Other Topics

These are other questions that cover other algorithm patterns that are worth familiarizing yourself with.
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Pattern
Course Schedule	Medium	Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock	Coming soon!	Topological Sort
Course Schedule II	Medium	Course Schedule II	Coming soon!	Topological Sort
Subarray Sum Equals K	Medium	Subarray Sum Equals K	Coming soon!	Prefix Sum
Product of Array Except Self	Medium	Product of Array Except Self	Coming soon!	Prefix/suffix Product
Search a 2D Matrix	Medium	Search a 2D Matrix	Coming soon!	Binary Search
Search in Rotated Sorted Array	Medium	Search in Rotated Sorted Array	Coming soon!	Binary Search

That's it! If you found this helpful, I will be updating the material on HelloInterview to go much more in-depth into the structured approach outlined here, so be sure to bookmark the site. I'll also be posting frequently about any updates to the site here :)
Let me know if you have any questions and I will answer them!
Good luck!!
-Jimmy

Sup everyone!
I’m Jimmy, a former Microsoft software engineer who has spent the last 3 years preparing students for the Leetcode style coding interview. I get a lot of questions about how to prepare, which topics to focus on and the order to follow, etc so I thought I’d write a detailed guide breaking it down.
This guide splits the study process for coding interviews into four sets of questions, for a total of 75 questions. Each set is meant to achieve a specific learning goal.
Set 1: Working With Algorithm Patterns (13 qs) Set 2: Data Structures (24 qs, 16 high priority, 8 lower priority) Set 3: DFS and BFS (21 qs) Set 4: Greedy vs Dynamic Programming (11 qs)
Misc: Other Topics (6 qs)
​
How did I come up with this guide?
My teaching experience, combined with breaking down the questions on the Grind 169 into categories, which you can find here.
​
There’s definitely a lot to cover! So I’m also linking some of the free resources I’ve been working on at HelloInterview to make the learning process easier.

Set 1: Working with Algorithm Patterns

This set of questions focuses on learning how to use algorithm patterns. Algorithm patterns are crucial because once you understand the fundamentals of a pattern, a whole class of related problems suddenly become a lot easier to solve.

How do you study algorithm patterns?

To learn the fundamentals of an algorithm pattern, start with a simple example problem that demonstrates why the pattern is useful. Use that problem to understand the basic structural components of the pattern. Then, apply what you learned by solving a few follow-up questions on your own.
I’ve broken down the fundamentals and created animated solutions for the follow-up questions for the following algorithm patterns, which are a great place to start because they don’t require additional knowledge of data structures beyond arrays.
Make sure you understand the types of questions that are a good fit for each pattern (covered in the fundamentals page for each pattern).
​
Two-Pointer Technique
Fundamentals

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Container With Most Water	Medium	Container With Most Water	HelloInterview Solution
3Sum	Medium	3Sum	HelloInterview Solution
Valid Triangle Number	Medium	Valid Triangle Number	HelloInterview Solution
Trapping Rain Water	Hard	Trapping Rain Water	HelloInterview Solution

​
Sliding Window
Fundamentals

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Fruit Into Baskets	Medium	Fruit Into Baskets	HelloInterview Solution
Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters	Medium	Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters	HelloInterview Solution
Longest Repeating Character Replacement	Medium	Longest Repeating Character Replacement	HelloInterview Solution
Maximum Sum of Distinct Subarrays with Length K	Medium	Maximum Sum of Distinct Subarrays with Length K	HelloInterview Solution

​
Intervals
Fundamentals

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Meeting Rooms	Easy	Meeting Rooms (premium)	HelloInterview Solution
Merge Intervals	Medium	Merge Intervals	HelloInterview Solution
Insert Interval	Medium	Insert Interval	HelloInterview Solution
Non-Overlapping Intervals	Medium	Non Overlapping Intervals	HelloInterview Solution
Employee Free Time	Hard	Employee Free Time (premium)	HelloInterview Solution

​

Why are algorithm patterns important?

​

• Let's say you get a question which gives you a string, and asks you to return the longest substring within that string without repeating characters.Since this is asking for a substring within a string that meets a certain criteria (no repeating characters), you know this question is a good candidate for the sliding window.
• You know that the sliding window pattern involves using two pointers to represent the current window, along with a data structure to store the contents of the window. You can immediately start thinking about the appropriate data structure (a set or a dictionary are good choices for this problem!) to use.
• Now you’ve identified the structural components for this problem, you can begin to translate them into code, using a template for the sliding window as a starting point.

This is why algorithm patterns are important: once you’ve identified that a question is a good candidate for an algorithm pattern, you have a structured foundation from which to solve problem solving from.

Unit 2: Data Structures

This set of questions will teach you the data structures you are most likely to encounter during the coding interview, and recognizing the types of problems that are best suited for each.
Start by understanding the operations that each data structure supports, as well as the asymptotic runtimes (Big-O) of each operation. Then, work through the sample problems to get a sense of how the data structure simplifies each problem.
I’ve written up a guide and animated solutions to the follow-up questions for the Stack data structure. The rest are coming soon!
Stack
Question Types: Validating Parentheses, finding the next greatest / smallest item in an array
Overview
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Valid Parentheses	Easy	Valid Parentheses	HelloInterview Solution
Decode String	Medium	Decode String	HelloInterview Solution
Daily Temperatures	Medium	Daily Temperatures	HelloInterview Solution
Largest Rectangle in Histogram	Hard	Largest Rectangle in Histogram	HelloInterview Solution
Longest Valid Parentheses	Hard	Longest Valid Parentheses	Coming soon!

​
​
Heap / Priority Queue
Question Types: Finding the K-th smallest / largest elements, merging K sorted Lists, scheduling by priority
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
K Closest Points to Origin	Coming soon!	K Closest Points to Origin	Coming soon!
Cheapest Flights Within K Stops (djikstra's)	Coming soon!	Cheapest Flights Within K Stops	Coming soon!
Find K Closest Elements	Medium	Find K Closest Elements	Coming soon!
Smallest Range Covering Elements from K Lists	Hard	Smallest Range Covering Elements from K Lists	Coming soon!
Merge K Sorted Lists	Hard	Merge K Sorted Lists	Coming soon!

​
Linked Lists
Question Types: Linked List questions can cover a variety of question types, so being able to visualize the effects of the various Linked List operations really helps. Also know how Fast and Slow pointers and Sentinel (dummy) nodes can simplify solutions.
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Concept
Linked List Cycle	Medium	Linked List Cycle	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers
Palindrome Linked List	Medium	Palindrome Linked List	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers
Reorder List	Medium	Reorder List	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers
Remove Nth Node From End of List	Medium	Remove Nth Node From End of List	Coming soon!	Fast and Slow Pointers / Dummy Node
Swap Nodes in Pairs	Medium	Swap Nodes in Pairs	Coming soon!	Dummy Node

​
Less Foundational Data Structures
If you are tight on time, I recommend moving onto set 3 rather than working through these questions.
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Data Structure
Spiral Matrix	Medium	Spiral Matrix	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Set Matrix Zeroes	Medium	Set Matrix Zeroes	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Rotate Image	Medium	Rotate Image	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Number of 1 Bits	Easy	Number of 1 Bits	Coming soon!	Bit Manipulation
Single Number	Easy	Single Number	Coming soon!	Bit Manipulation
Reverse Bits	Easy	Reverse Bits	Coming soon!	Bit Manipulation
Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)	Medium	Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)	Coming soon!	Trie
Design Add and Search Words Data Structure	Medium	Design Add and Search Words Data Structure	Coming soon!	Trie

​
Knowing which data structure to use is often the key to solving a problem efficiently. They are either the basis of a solution, or a building block for a more complex problem, such as Meeting Rooms II, which involves sorting intervals and using a heap to process meetings as they end.
​

Set 3: DFS and BFS

This question set covers the depth-first search and breadth-first search traversal algorithms. These show up in so many interviews that if you’re short on time (and already familiar with thinking in algorithm patterns), I recommend focusing on this unit.
(The HelloInterview resources for this section are coming soon)
​
Binary Trees
These questions will get you comfortable with recursion and visualizing how a recursive depth-first search algorithm behaves on the call stack. It will also help you understand the types of questions that are better suited for DFS and BFS.
​
DFS

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Balanced Binary Tree	Easy	Balanced Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Diameter of Binary Tree	Easy	Diameter of Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree	Easy	Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Path Sum III (prefix sum)	Medium	Path Sum III	Coming soon!
Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum	Hard	Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum	Coming soon!

​
BFS (better for level-by-level order)

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Binary Tree Level Order Traversal	Medium	Binary Tree Level Order Traversal	Coming soon!
Binary Tree Right Side View	Medium	Binary Tree Right Side View	Coming soon!
Maximum Width of Binary Tree	Medium	Maximum Width of Binary Tree	Coming soon!
Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree	Hard	Serialize and Deserialize Binary Tree	Coming soon!

​
Next, these questions cover the various applications of DFS and BFS when traversing matrices and graphs. For graphs, make sure you are familiar with both node-based graphs and adjacency lists.
​
Matrix
DFS

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Data Structure
Flood Fill	Easy	Flood Fill	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Number of Islands	Medium	Number of Islands	HelloInterview Solution	Matrix
Clone Graph	Medium	Maximum Width of Binary Tree	HelloInterview Solution	Graph
Graph Valid Tree	Medium	Graph Valid Tree	HelloInterview Solution	Graph / Tree
Accounts Merge	Medium	Accounts Merge	Coming soon!	Graph
Number of Connected Components in Undirected Graph	Medium	Number of Connected Components in an Undirected Graph	Coming soon!	Graph

​
BFS (better for shortest-path type questions)
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Data Structure
Rotting Oranges	Medium	Rotting Oranges	Coming soon!	Matrix
Bus Routes	Hard	Bus Routes	Coming soon!	Graph

​
Backtracking
Unlike the above section which involve using DFS to traverse a pre-existing data structure, backtracking problems sometimes require using DFS to construct your own tree-like structure. Being able to visualize what that tree looks like is crucial - more HelloInterview resources on this coming soon!
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Combination Sum	Medium	Combination Sum	HelloInterview Solution
Path Sum II	Medium	Path Sum II	Coming soon!
Letter Combinations of a Phone Number	Medium	Letter Combinations of a Phone Number	HelloInterview Solution
N-Queens	Hard	N-Queens	Coming soon!

​

Unit 4: DP vs Greedy

This last question set covers dynamic programming and greedy algorithms. The first set of questions will help you understand the different structural components of the dynamic programming pattern. The second set of questions will help you identify when dynamic programming solutions are necessary.
​
Dynamic Programming Basics
(A solid understanding of how binary tree questions from Set 3 use recursion to break down a problem into smaller sub-problems will help here!)
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Counting Bits	Easy	Counting Bits	HelloInterview Solution
Word Break	Medium	Word Break	HelloInterview Solution
Maximal Square	Medium	Maximal Square	HelloInterview Solution
Decode Ways	Medium	Decode Ways	HelloInterview Solution
Unique Paths	Medium	Unique Paths	Coming soon!

​
Optimization Problems
Next, these questions cover optimization problems, such as finding the maximum profit in job scheduling, or finding the best time to buy and sell stock. “Greedy” algorithms and dynamic programming are two different approaches to solving optimization problems.
Understanding the pros and cons of both approaches will help solve these questions. If you are faced with an optimization question, you can start by trying a greedy approach. If it doesn’t produce the optimal solution, that’s often a sign that a dynamic programming approach is necessary.
​
Greedy

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock	Easy	Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock	HelloInterview Solution
Gas Station	Medium	Gas Station	HelloInterview Solution
Jump Game	Medium	Jump Game	HelloInterview Solution

​
DP

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution
Longest Increasing Subsequence	Medium	Longest Increasing Subsequence	HelloInterview Solution
Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling	Hard	Maximum Profit in Job Scheduling	HelloInterview Solution

​

Misc: Other Topics

These are other questions that cover other algorithm patterns that are worth familiarizing yourself with.
​

Title	Difficulty	Leetcode Link	Animated Solution	Pattern
Course Schedule	Medium	Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock	Coming soon!	Topological Sort
Course Schedule II	Medium	Course Schedule II	Coming soon!	Topological Sort
Subarray Sum Equals K	Medium	Subarray Sum Equals K	Coming soon!	Prefix Sum
Product of Array Except Self	Medium	Product of Array Except Self	Coming soon!	Prefix/suffix Product
Search a 2D Matrix	Medium	Search a 2D Matrix	Coming soon!	Binary Search
Search in Rotated Sorted Array	Medium	Search in Rotated Sorted Array	Coming soon!	Binary Search

​
That's it! If you found this helpful, I will be updating the material on HelloInterview to go much more in-depth into the structured approach outlined here, so be sure to bookmark the site. I'll also be posting frequently about any updates to the site here :)
Let me know if you have any questions and I will answer them!
Good luck!!
-Jimmy
​

This is becoming something of a pastime for me (previous editions 1 2). I find it's a good way to occupy my mind while falling asleep.
This time, I thought of Australian languages and wanted to create a phonemic inventory which would lack certain common categories. I ended up with an inventory that lacks labial consonants (attested in many Iroquoian languages), lacks voiced obstruents (attested in many languages), and limited nasality. I tried to come up with possible justifications for some of these typological oddities, not necessarily deciding on a specific history for this phonology, but at least defending its plausibility.
I also thought of the unrelated Austroasiatic languages and my beloved sesquisyllabic word pattern: words generally consist of two syllables, with the second syllable receiving fixed stress and the first syllable (so-called minor syllable) having a more restrictive syllable structure and fewer distinctions.
Some examples of words from today's sketch:
konaá [kənɒ̌ː]
sok'un [səkʼûɴ]
kirií [kiɾǐː]
ok'ée [əkʼɛ̂ː]
wolun [wəl̪ûɴ]
sowa [səwɒ́ʔ]
kitíi [kit̪îː]
kikwa [kikʷɒ́ʔ]
sili [sil̪íʔ]
ona [ən̪ɒ́ʔ]
lhutúu [ɭut̪ûː]
otháa [əʈɒ̂ː]
koq'íi [kəqʼîː]
shitíi [ʂit̪îː]
qithaan [qiʈɒ̂ːɴ]
Word structure and phonotactics
Words are generally disyllabic, with the first syllable being "minor", having a more restricted inventory of consonants and vowels available to it than the second, "major" syllable. Overall word structure is (C)VCV(N), where N is the nasal coda /ɴ/.
Onsets
Major syllables have 18 onsets available:

.	Dental/Alveolar	Retroflex	Velar	Labiovelar	Uvular
Nasal	n̪
Stop	t̪ t̪ʼ	ʈ ʈʼ	k kʼ	kʷ kʷʼ	q qʼ
Fricative	s	ʂ
Lateral	l̪	ɭ
Approximant	ɾ	ɻ		w

Minor syllables cannot have ejectives, rhotics, or the nasal /n̪/ in the onset, for a total of 10 permitted consonants:

.	Dental/Alveolar	Retroflex	Velar	Labiovelar	Uvular
Stop	t̪	ʈ	k	kʷ	q
Fricative	s	ʂ
Lateral	l̪	ɭ
Approximant				w

I consistently use a following h to distinguish retroflexes from dentals/alveolars. That is, I write /ʈ ʈʼ ʂ ɭ ɻ/ as th th' sh lh rh. Other than that, there is probably nothing surprising about how I notate consonants.
Vowels
Major syllables have a total of nine available vowel phonemes, counting long and short vowels separately:

.	Front	Central	Back
High	i iː		u uː
Mid		ə əː
Low	ɛː		ɒ ɒː

Minor syllables don't permit long or low vowels, for a total of only three:

.	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid		ə

I have used i u o e a to notate /i u ə ɛ ɒ/, with a doubling of the letter for long vowels.
Coda
There is a single permitted coda consonant /ɴ/, which is realized in free variation [n~ŋ~ɴ~ɰ̃]. It can only occur in major syllables. I notate it with n.
In major syllables, short vowels with no nasal coda following have an epenthetic glottal stop after. For instance, /ən̪ɒ́/ is [ən̪ɒ́ʔ]
Tone
For the most part, pitch/tone is not contrastive. Minor syllables are usually pronounced in the middle of the pitch space, although this may vary as they have no contrastive tone. In the same vein, major syllables ending in /ɴ/ usually have a falling pitch, and major syllables with a short vowel and no /ɴ/ are generally high in pitch.
In major syllables with long vowels and no /ɴ/ coda, there is, however, a two-way tonal contrast between falling and rising. I have notated these tones with an acute accent on the first and second vowel letter, respectively.
What's with the lack of labials?
This is a pretty stable feature in languages that have it, but if there must be an explanation, it's pretty plausible for labials to shift to labialized velars, perhaps via co-articulated consonants. That is, if there was a /p pʼ/, they could have become /k͡p k͡pʼ/ and then /kʷ kʷʼ/. This could in fact be the origin of the labialized velar series.
What's with the lack of nasals?
It's not uncommon for a language with many places of articulation to only have /m n/ for nasals. If this were originally the case, /m/ would be expected to become /ŋʷ/ in the change that turned labials into labialized velars, and to me it's a pretty natural change for /ŋʷ/ to simply become /w/, especially in a language that lacks /ŋ/.
As an alternate route, suppose a prior form of the language which already lacks labials but has a more full row of nasals: /n̪ ɳ ŋ ŋʷ/. It would be natural for ŋ to simply drop in the onset (cf. Cantonese); /ŋʷ/ would probably shift to /w/ as part of the same change. A unilateral shift from /ɳ/ to /n̪/ also seems plausible to me, although I can't find any examples of it.
Why can't /n̪/ occur word-initially?
Word-initial nasals could have denasalized into voiced stops in that position (cf. Korean), and from there devoiced, since contrastive voicing doesn't exist anywhere else in the language.
A more extreme way this could happen: perhaps a prior form of the language lacked nasal onsets altogether, but permitted the nasal coda /ɴ/ in minor syllables as well as major ones. The nasal coda could then coalesce with following plain stops to give a whole series of nasals; this series could then dwindle to just /n̪/ in the manner described above. The nasal coda could then simply be dropped from minor syllables afterward.
What's with the wonky vowel system?
I actually did envision a specific historical explanation for this. I imagined starting with a plain old T4 system /a ə i u/, which I think is attested in several Austronesian languages, with the addition of contrastive vowel length and the diphthongs /ai̯ au̯/. Pretty boring system.
First, /ai̯/ monophthongizes to /ɛː/ while /au̯/ stays put, similar to Southern US English. Then, /a(ː)/ shifts back to /ɒ(ː)/ to distance itself in vowel space from /ɛː/. Finally, /au̯/ monophthongizes to /ɒː/.
What's with the very specific tone contrast?
I envisioned this coming from a prior system where there is no tone contrast, and major syllables could have a glottal stop coda, in addition to the nasal coda. This is exactly the set of coda consonants permitted in Burmese, and similar to Japanese. Combining with the long/short vowel contrast, this gives us six possibilities for the general shape of a major syllable rime (using ə as the vowel, though any would work):

.	Short	Long
no coda	ə	əː
ɴ	əɴ	əːɴ
ʔ	əʔ	əːʔ

First, short vowels with no coda compensatorily lengthen, which simply removes one of the six boxes:

.	Short	Long
no coda		əː
ɴ	əɴ	əːɴ
ʔ	əʔ	əːʔ

From there, a tonogenesis step happens. The final "mora" before a glottal stop becomes high, i.e., short vowels become high and long vowels become rising before a glottal stop. All other vowels gain a falling tone, the default tone.

.	Short	Long
no coda		ə̂ː
ɴ	ə̂ɴ	ə̂ːɴ
ʔ	ə́ʔ	ə̌ːʔ

Tone still isn't phonemic (tonemic?) until the next step: the glottal stop is dropped after long vowels, with the rising tone becoming the primary distinguishing feature instead. Short vowels with no coda retain a following glottal stop (cf. Thai)

.	Short	Long
falling		ə̂ː
ɴ	ə̂ɴ	ə̂ːɴ
high/rising	ə́ʔ	ə̌ː

And this is exactly the system as I described it for the current form of the language!
Grammatical typology
Every word being sesquisyllabic doesn't leave much room for affixation, does it? It was certainly my vision that this language would be pretty isolating and analytical, but maybe the sesquisyllabic restriction could be relaxed somewhat. It would be pretty easy to say that words just end in one major syllable with any number of minor syllables coming before, opening the possibility for prefixes and monosyllabic stems. Many Austroasiatic languages lack suffixes entirely, and I'm comfortable saying the same thing about this language.

Hi all, I'm a newbie to python and code in general. I had a little project where I wanted to collect the entire discographies of artists from their wikipedia page. An example I will use is that of Travis Scott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Scott_discography
I have been employing Chat GPT 3.5 to write the script for me, and I'm really really close to what I want but there are a few problems. The issues that I am having are as follows:

1. There are sometimes random blank listings produced in the final print
2. I cannot get it to properly display "Non-album singles" from the singles discography table. It works fine with the ones labelled "Non-album single", but for some reason when there are multiple entries in the title column it cannot print them all out and only prints out the first one.

I am open to any solution, including one that doesn't even use code. I don't really mind. I have tried asking ChatGPT directly for this list, however due to the limits on the database (only extends to Jan 22) it doesn't work and is not future proof. Sorry if I am asking for a lot, feel free to let me know as much and I will happily delete this. I'm sure the code is probably not very well optimised and maybe it will need a rewrite and I am happy to have ChatGPT do that. If anyone has any advice at all I will be very grateful. Thanks for your time in reading this. Here is the code so far!

import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup from colorama import Fore, Style, init # Initialize colorama init() def scrape_discography(artist_name): # Construct the URL of the Wikipedia discography page for the artist url = f"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{artist_name}_discography" # Send a GET request to the URL response = requests.get(url) # Check if the request was successful if response.status_code == 200: # Parse the HTML content of the page soup = BeautifulSoup(response.content, 'html.parser') # Find all tables in the page tables = soup.find_all('table', class_='wikitable') # Initialize a dictionary to store albums and singles discography = {"Non-album Singles": []} dynamic_categories = {} # Extract information from each table for table in tables: # Find the heading or caption above the table heading = table.find_previous(['h2', 'h3', 'h4', 'h5', 'h6']) if heading: release_type = heading.get_text(strip=True).lower().replace('[edit]', '') # Ignore tables after "As featured artist[edit]" heading if release_type == 'as featured artist': break # Process the table if it's not "As lead artist[edit]" if release_type != 'as lead artist': # Process other tables (not "As lead artist[edit]") for row in table.find_all('tr')[1:]: cells = row.find_all(['th', 'td']) if cells: # Assuming the first cell contains the album title album_title = cells[0].get_text(strip=True) # Remove "US" prefix and footnote reference album_title = album_title.split('[')[0].replace('US', '').strip() # Check if the release type is already a dynamic category if release_type not in dynamic_categories: dynamic_categories[release_type] = [] dynamic_categories[release_type].append("- [ ] " + album_title) else: # Extract album titles and their corresponding albums for row in table.find_all('tr')[1:]: cells = row.find_all(['th', 'td']) if cells: # Get the album title and album name album_title = cells[0].get_text(strip=True) album_name = cells[-1].get_text(strip=True) # Check if the album is a non-album single if album_name.lower() == 'non-album single' or album_name.lower() == 'non-album singles': discography["Non-album Singles"].append("- [ ] " + album_title) # Combine dynamic categories with discography discography.update(dynamic_categories) return discography else: print(f"Failed to retrieve data from {url}") # Prompt user to input artist's name artist_name = input("Enter the name of the artist whose discography you want to scrape: ") discography = scrape_discography(artist_name.replace(' ', '_')) if discography: # Print all dynamic categories with colorized headings for category, albums in discography.items(): if category != "Non-album Singles": print(Fore.BLUE + f"\n{category.capitalize()}:" + Style.RESET_ALL) for album in albums: print(album) # Print Non-album Singles separately print(Fore.BLUE + "\nNon-album Singles:" + Style.RESET_ALL) for single in discography["Non-album Singles"]: print(single) 

Thank you once again.

Overview

Hyperbole is a single package that can significantly raise your Emacs productivity with its broad information authoring and management capabilities, including giving you easier access to existing Emacs features that are hard to find or set up correctly. Give it a try for one month and see what you think.
After an extensive year-and-a-half of development and quality-assurance, GNU Hyperbole 9.0.1, the Rhapsody release, is now available on GNU ELPA. And oh what a release it is: extensive new features, new video demos, org and org roam integration, Markdown and Org file support in HyRolo, recursive directory and wildcard file scanning in HyRolo, and much more.
Hyperbole is like Markdown for hypertext. Hyperbole automatically recognizes dozens of common patterns in any buffer regardless of mode and transparently turns them into hyperbuttons you can instantly activate with a single key. Email addresses, URLs, grep -n outputs, programming backtraces, sequences of Emacs keys, programming identifiers, Texinfo and Info cross-references, Org links, Markdown links and on and on. All you do is load Hyperbole and then your text comes to life with no extra effort or complex formatting.
But Hyperbole is also a personal information manager with built-in capabilities of contact management/hierarchical record lookup, legal-numbered outlines with hyperlinkable views and a unique window and frame manager. It is even Org-compatible so you can use all of Org's capabilities together with Hyperbole.
Hyperbole stays out of your way but is always a key press away when you need it. Like Emacs, Org, Counsel and Helm, Hyperbole has many different uses, all based around the theme of reducing cognitive load and improving your everyday information management. It reduces cognitive load by using a single Action Key, {M-RET}, across many different contexts to perform the best default action in each.
Hyperbole has always been one of the best documented Emacs packages. With Version 9 comes excellent test coverage: over 400 automated tests are run with every update against every major version of Emacs since version 27, to ensure quality. We hope you'll give it a try.

Videos

If you prefer video introductions, visit the videos linked to below; otherwise, skip to the next section.
GNU Hyperbole Videos Web Link ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overview and Demo [https://youtu.be/WKwZHSbHmPg]()    Covers all of Hyperbole    Timestamps to watch each section ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quick Introduction [https://youtu.be/K1MNUctggwI]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top 10 ways Hyperbole amps up Emacs [https://youtu.be/BysjfL25Nlc]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction to Buttons [https://youtu.be/zoEht66N2PI]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Linking Personal Info with Implicit Buttons [https://youtu.be/TQ_fG7b1iHI]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Powerful Productivity with Hyperbole and Org [https://youtu.be/BrTpTNEXMyY]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HyRolo, fast contact/hierarchical record viewer [https://youtu.be/xdJGFdgKPFY]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Koutline for stream of thought journaling [https://youtu.be/dO-gv898Vmg]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Build a Zettelkasten with HyRolo [https://youtu.be/HdlCK9w-LyQ]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HyControl, fast Emacs frame and window manager [https://youtu.be/M3-aMh1ccJk]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Writing test cases for GNU Hyperbole [https://youtu.be/maNQSKxXIzI]() ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Find/Web Search [https://youtu.be/8lMlJed0-OM]() -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Use Cases

1. Create a card catalog of published documents and reference them with simple text ids as hyperlinks in any type of document.
   
2. Single Action Key press to follow URLs with section links, Markdown links, Emacs outline heading links, Org mode links, Koutline links, file and directory links and program identifier references. See HTML Markdown and Emacs Outline Hash Links.
   
3. Jump from sections of a Table of Contents in DEMO, README and TUTORIAL files as well as Internet RFCs to the section text. Entries in a code library MANIFEST file work the same way. See Table of Contents Browsing.
   
4. Display and edit local or remote files and directories simply by pressing th Action Key on their names. Hyperbole will automatically embed certain key variables in link pathnames so that as these links are moved from site to site and the variable values change at each site, the links are properly maintained. See Path Suffixes and Variables and Path Prefixes.
   
5. Automatically translate POSIX and MSWindows paths within buffers or links to the right format for the current operating system, eliminating the drudgery of converting backslashes to forward slashes. See POSIX and MSWindows Paths.
   
6. Quickly search the web for targeted types of information such as programming questions, code libraries, images, videos, locations, word definitions, wikipedia entries or even tweets. See Hyperbole Menus.
   
7. Embed social media hashtags and user names in any text files. Then jump to the associated web page in your favorite web browser with an Action Key press. See Social Media Hashtags and Usernames.
   
8. Similarly, you can embed github and git object links in any files with a simple syntax and Hyperbole will display the associated objects with an Action Key press. See Github (Remote) References. and Git (Local) References.
   
9. Fast, multi-line, record-level full-text search across files of contacts or other record-based files in Org, Markdown, Emacs Outline or Koutline format. Then collapse all matches to a single line each while still seeing name, phone number and email information. See HyRolo.
   
   1. Select regions of structured text or source code to copy or move them between buffers with a single mouse drag or two key presses. These selectable things include: delimited pairs of (), @{@}, <>, [] and quote marks, source code functions, source code comments and matching tag pairs in HTML and SGML modes. See Thing Selection.
   2. Use the fantastic, auto-numbered Koutliner with per-item links and rapidly changeable views. See Koutliner.
   3. Rapidly and precisely control from the keyboard the layout and what is displayed in your Emacs windows and frames. See HyControl.

What's New

What's new in version 9 is described in detail here:
[www.gnu.org/s/hyperbole/HY-NEWS.html]()
Everything back until release 8.0.0 is new since the last major release announcement (almost a year and a half ago), so updates are extensive.
Below is a quicker summary of major feature additions.

Hyperbole Buttons

• Instant cross-window, typed hyperlink creation.
• Select whole regions delimited by <>, [], () or {} when on any delimiter.
• Drag to display a Hyperbole button referent into a specific window.
• Hyperbole's markup pair selection now works in mhtml-mode.

Compilation

• Native compilation is now supported with minimal warnings.
• Natively compiled functions work as button action types.
• Virtually all compilation warnings have been removed.

Documentation

• New Hyperbole Concepts document shows how the parts interrelate.
• New video talks about Hyperbole from EmacsConf 2023 and 2022.
• Hyperbole button help now works on Emacs push-buttons as well.
• Smart Keys display flymake warnings.

HyControl

• Move directionally through windows and frames with I/J/K/M keys.

HyRolo

• HyRolo full-text searching of directories of Org, Markdown Koutline and Emacs Outline files. Matching records can be expanded and collapsed as outlines as well.
• Hyrolo searching of directories or wildcard expansions of filesets. Paths may also include Environment or Elisp variables.
• Improved, fast movement and outlining keys for HyRolo matches.
• Consult and Helm grep package support for searching HyRolo files and Org Roam databases.
• Run or Edebug ERT tests from the first line of their definition.
• Unique face for highlighting implicit button names.
• Lisp identifiers recognized in byte-compilation Warnings buffer, Flymake log and diagnostics buffers.
• Now recognizes Table of Contents as cross-refs in any text-derived major mode with the text-toc implicit button type.
• Youtube snippet links to play parts or whole Youtube videos.

Koutliner

• Hash character, #, section references now work with klinks to Koutline cell auto-numbers or to cell heading strings that end with a colon or a newline.
• Org {M-S-} and {M-S-} tree promote and demote keys now work in Koutline mode. See "(hyperbole)Promoting and Demoting".
• Import indented Org outlines into Koutlines. See "(hyperbole)Inserting and Importing".

ERT Tests

• Over 400 test cases automatically run across Emacs 27, 28, 29 and the current git master on each Hyperbole update.
• ERT test symbol definition display within Elisp and Elisp interaction buffers.
• Button type to run any set of Emacs ERT tests with a common prefix.
• Expanded support for cross-reference following in compilation and ERT test backtrace buffers.

Minibuffer Keyboard Menus

• Minibuffer menu auto-column-based reformatting when lines get too long.
• Minibuffer menu movement commands now support prefix arguments.

Org Mode Integration

• Automatic fix for mixed org versions when Hyperbole is initialized.
• Hyperbole can now link to Org links in non-Org buffers as well as to Org and Org Roam IDs.
• Jump to Org code block header :dir directories in Dired.
• Clear results from an Org code block header.
• Auto-programming identifier lookup within code blocks.
• Smart Keys work the same way on Code block and results headers. Smart Keys on Org internal targets now work just as they do on radio button targets.
• Support for Org 9.7 and up with newer features.
• Cycling among Org Todo states and sets of states with the Smart Keys.
• Hyperbole Doc/ files displayed in Org mode and cycle views of the document with TAB at the start of the buffer.

Installing and Using Hyperbole

To install within GNU Emacs, use:
    {M-x package-install RET hyperbole RET}
Hyperbole installs in less than a minute and can be uninstalled even faster if ever need be. Give it a try.
Then to invoke its minibuffer menu, use:
     {C-h h} or {M-x hyperbole RET}
The best way to get a feel for many of its capabilities is to invoke the all new, interactive FAST-DEMO and explore sections of interest:
     {C-h h d d}
To permanently activate Hyperbole in your Emacs initialization file, add the line:
     (hyperbole-mode 1)
Hyperbole is a minor mode that may be disabled at any time with:
     {C-u 0 hyperbole-mode RET}
See the Hyperbole home page with screenshots.
See Hyperbole use cases or what users think about Hyperbole.
Enjoy,
The Hyperbole Team

FYI, this is a story COLLECTION. Lots of standalones technically. So, you can basically start to read at any chapter, no pre-read of the other chapters needed technically (other than maybe getting better descriptions of characters than: Adam Vir=human, Krill=antlike alien, Sunny=tall alien, Conn=telepathic alien). The numbers are (mostly) only for organization of posts and continuity.
OC Written by Charlie Stastarrfallknightrise,
Typed up and then posted here by me.
Proofreading and language check for some chapters by u/Finbar9800 u/BakeGullible9975 and u/Didnotseemecomein
Future Lore and fact check done by me.
Life footage of the Omens communication officer assigned to the specially requested air force battalion en route on the Vrul homeworld
Previous First Next
Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
*Several days later…*
"So, your plan is to... Intentionally wake the dead?"
”They are not dead… yet… >:) “
"Alright… Wake the “very long hibernated”, and then blast them with hard rock music while we mow them down with machine guns? And... remind me why YOU are the GA armada Admiral? And this is your tactical genius!?”
Admiral Adam Vir adjusted the chestplate of his space suit,
"Well first of all its tacti-cool genius. Secondly say anything in that sort of voice and it will sound stupid, but hear me out. It is much easier to take something out all at once than it is to go hunting them down one by one and having to worry about missing something. We bring in the helicopters, and the vibration of the rotors will disturb the ground causing the infected Vrul to rise. We also know the Vrul, and know, and know that complicated beats affect their ability to navigate, move and completely wipe out their fine motor control. Furthermore, they seem attracted to vibrations in the air and through the ground which means we will be able to confuse them even more and keep them away from the city. Barring that, the Vrul have their force fields up, which are more than a match for light machine gun fire and will even keep out the strange pollen. There is no better time to deal with this."
”So considering this genius tactical and thought out plan, THAT is the best way to handle it? Its totally not related to the fact that you get to fly around with a heli, blast loud music and do cool shit?”
”Basicly yeah. That last part is just a coincidental side-effect…
He tucked his helmet under one arm,
"I trust that makes sense to everyone?”
He turned around to the docking bay where over fifty men and women stood in neat rows of polished flight suits, helmets tucked under their arms. As he spoke, their heels snapped together with a loud crackle, and their hands rose into a salute.
Behind them double the amount of marines raised their hands into the air and chanted with loud voices that rose into the air with a roar.
Admiral Vir turned to the commander of the 113th graduating class of Earth's UNSC Airborne Helicopter division, which he had brought in on special loan. These men and women were yet to fly any real tactical missions, though they had all logged thousands of hours of flight already in their careers. Many of them had never left earth until this moment, and their first mission was going to be on the face on an alien planet.
He smiled,
"If you knew as much as I did about aliens, Major, you might understand why we are doing something that seems so ludicrous, but sometimes when dealing with extraterrestrials, this is what we have to do. Totally!"
He turned to where a line of fifty pod shaped objects were being loaded one by one onto a rolling rail leading towards the airlock. Beside it half a dozen small fluffy shapes were busy overseeing the attachment of fifty identical Sonic cannons to the front bottom of each. There was a break in their work as one of the small creatures came waddling across the deck.
Admiral Vir Knelt down setting his hand on the floor and allowing Lord Avex to step onto his hand and then onto his shoulder as he stood back up.
The rest of the crowd watched in wide eyed awe, though they were, luckily, well trained enough not to do or say anything stupid, despite their large eyes and quivering lips, which suggested they wanted nothing better than to cuddle the stuffed-animal-esque alien that rested on his shoulder,
"The cannons are in place, Admiral, and I have examined each of the pods, and they are ready to be deployed."
"Thank you Lord Avex, your work is much appreciated."
It was just then that Sunny walked across the deck to join them. She was wearing her space suit as well and carried her helmet under one arm. The new recruits staired on in shock as she walked over to stand next to him,
*"The machine guns have been mounted and are ready to go Admiral, a few of our number have volunteered to go with the marines as extra support.
Behind her at least a dozen other Drev raised their fists into the air and chanted their excitement not all that different from the line of marines on the far end of the hangar.
Admiral Vir nodded, turning back towards the group of young pilots, not much younger than himself, and stepped up onto the nearest crate.
"On behalf of the Galactic Assembly and the Vrul council, I thank all the men and women here for agreeing to accompany us on this mission today. You will be the first airborne unit in history to participate in an operation off Earth as their first assignment. You are thousands of lightyears away from home, orbiting an alien planet thousands of years older than our own, and today your mission is not one of destruction, but of liberation. For thousands of years the Vrul have been trapped inside their walls, until time and tradition made them forget about the dangers lurking outside."
He turned his eyes to look over every last man and women that stood before him,
"What we are about to face is like nothing humanity has ever faced before, below the soil of this planet lies a plague dormant for thousands of years, a horde, like locusts ready to rise up and infect the city. Now we have our protections, we have our suits, and the Vrul have their shielded city, but it is our job to start ridding the planet of its plague."
He smiled,
”Some say this is war and we are underprepared and too few to make a difference! But listen to me! I say this is NOT war! This is pest control! They have the superior numbers, but other than that they are only superior in one respect. They are better at dying!”
That got a chuckle out of the young pilots, though the old Major didn’t know why.
*"Plus, it always helps to have door mounted machine guns and a little rock 'n roll."
There was a sharp cheer from the men and women before him who raised their fists into the air. Behind them the marines joined in, and so did the Drev, who, he was pleased to say, had taken to rock like they had guitar solos for breakfast.
Still grinning, he reached up, pulled on his helmet,
"Right, let's get this done."
He pointed to Sunny, Ramirez, Maverick and a few others,
"With me in the lead chopper. The rest of you split off and gear up."
His words were obeyed almost immediately as he stepped over to what had once looked like a pod, but was now clearly a very specialized sort of chopper.
As he slid into the pilot's seat, and the others strapped in behind, he heard,
"I thought you were a fighter pilot, not a helicopter pilot?"
They pulled on their helmets.
Adam adjusted his harnesses,
"I can fly ANYTHING! From spaceships to paper planes, you can bet your ass if it leaves the ground, I know how to fly it! It’s like I was born to fly!”
Maverick buckled herself into the door gunner position,
"Yeah, but if it has wheels, you better bet he's probably gonna back it over your mailbox."
"Put a sock in it Maverick, that is hardly my fault. I never really got the opportunity to practice… or get a real civilian drivers license for that matter."
The door at the back shut and locked tight.
All around them other doors were being locked into place, and once all of the pilots had indicated they were ready to go, Admiral Vir gave the signal, and he felt the ship change course. He adjusted his comms set and called up to the bridge where Simon would be piloting them into position.
"How are we looking, Simon?"
"Almost in position Admiral."
"Now remember to pull back into low orbit once you let us drop, or else the gravity well is going to pull you in, and it is going to be a bitch to get her back out."
"Yes sir, I know sir."
"Good."
He turned his eyes forward as a red light burst into life above their heads. Everyone evacuated the airlock as the fifty pods were brought by rail towards the doors. Behind him he could hear the others chanting something, though his heart was hammering so hard he could hardly hear what they were saying.
Funny thing is, he bet he felt like every one of those new pilots getting ready for their first mission. He didn't know if it was just him, but it felt like this every single time, and he wouldn't trade it for the world. He ignored the tingling sensation in his bladder as the light blinked green before the airlock door, and the ramp slid open.
All went silent, and below him he watched as the light of the Vrul homeworld washed over the deck before him pouring like golden honey.
The sight was breathtaking, steeling the air from his lungs as he looked down.
"Damn."
It would just never get old, would it?
*”Alright, before we drop, time for the a fitting background.”?
He clicked a button and the sound of an orchestra started playing in their comms.
”There we go!”
"Prepare for drop, in three, two, one, drop."
The latch on the back of the rail released, and suddenly they were falling away from the ship. Adam was pressed back in his seat as they accelerated downwards towards the open atmosphere.
Lights blinked on the console ahead of him and the tracking screen picked up his target.
They were approaching, and they were approaching fast.
They were entering the atmosphere now, and he felt it as their pod began to rock and rattled around him and fire began to lick up on the southside of his pod. It was almost deafening as they roared into the atmosphere. He turned on his comms watching as other pods roared into the atmosphere back and behind him. He could see them on his radar as they roared downward.
He had to wonder what it must be like for them.
Their first mission, and they were doing a high altitude drop onto an alien planet.
He almost envied them their excitement. Because he had already done stuff like this before, and he was still grinning like an idiot.
They kept falling for what felt like minutes.
Light rose up around them as the sky behind them turned blue. Clouds passed below them in great swaths, and he reached down to the controls ready to deploy.
He set of a general count for the rest of the pilots.
Three
Two
One
He pulled the release, and the engine roared to life. There was a sudden firing as the engine spurted downward, lifting them airborne for a second and slowing their descent. His innards dropped as G force allowed his stomach to crawl into his feet. Then the rotors deployed like a fan. There was a sharp chunk and then a whirr as they began to fall again, and then the rotors caught, and began to spin. The rear rotor did the same sliding into position. Both caught with a roar, and he whooped with adrenaline.
They had reached planetside.
For the next few minutes they made their way over the horizon towards their destination, this time accompanied by a song that was already a bit more on the rock ‘n roll side.
After a while Adam toggled his radio.
"Alright, everyone get ready for combat, time to stop sitting on your helmets and actually put them on! Prepare the packages and ready the door guns."
Behind him the doors were slid open, causing a rush of air to blast into the open carriage as Maverick rolled the gun into position and locked it at the door with a loud snap. On the other side Maverick was doing the same.
*Redditors note: Yes she is definitely doing twice the work here while Ramirez takes a nap, I am 100% certain! That’s what happens if you take “work on the double too literally!*
Beside him. Sunny took control of the extra rear mounted guns set in place especially for this mission.
Adam had more guns already built into the chopper, as well as missiles if he felt like it.
Beside him and below him, he watched as fifty other choppers deployed like his. Some of them were a bit wobbly, but everything he saw seemed to go well.
"Alright everyone take it in low, and on my mark deploy the cannons."
He angled them lower, roaring towards his target.
Below them, the Vrul city was a glassy blue purple bubble against the orange, brown landscape.
He took point, and the other choppers fell into flight beside him, clustered in ten open groups of five helicopters each, and together they rolled in low over the landscape, not twenty feet above the ground in some cases, though those were only the pilots who were comfortable getting that close. From here he could see the thudding of their rotors causing the dirt to shake and the strange trees to quiver.
The wildlife began to roll out in different directions, racing across the ground and away from the roaring choppers as if they knew what was coming, He scanned the ground, with Maverick and Ramirez leaning on the machine guns behind him.
"See anything yet?"
"Not yet."
He opened his comms to everyone else,
"Alright everyone, deploy sonic cannons in three, two, one, go!"
The first line of lyrics, and the first drumline rolled from the directional cannons, blasting the ground with a focused beam of sound like a laser for noise.
He whooped, bobbing his head to the music, the sound so powerful he was able to hear it over the roaring of the rotors.
He sure hoped the Vrul had taken his advice and hidden in their deep emergency bunkers for this.
They roared over the landscape, turning in a huge clockwise circle over the landscape.
"Report if you see anything."
He ordered.
At first, it didn't seem like anything was going to happen, and he worried that his idea, which had seemed so cool and also by chance pretty tactical to begin with, was nothing but a waste of resources. How embarrassing was that going to be to explain to the UNSC…
Yes, I borrowed the entire 113th graduating class to go on a joyride around the Vrul capital city, yes here is my rank and gun, I will now go live on the moon in exile never to show my face again.
"Sir! I have something."
"Go on."
"Just south of the city, sir. I have movement coming from the trees in thermal."
"Same here sir."
He was at the point of the circle, so he wasn't likely to see it, made sense.
"Alright, let's give it a pass. I want as many of those bugs out of the ground before we start shooting."
They roared over the ground with the sound of the base rattling the stone below them. As he watched, one of the strange animals he had seen running, tipped over as the cannon passed over it and fell to the ground twitching. Apparently pattern tolerance was not something that many things on this planet had.
"Sorry guy, but things are going to be better when we are done…"
Rocks jumped and rattled as they took a wide turn around the city.
He could see the shield pulsing against the sonic waves that were bouncing off the ground and back into the air.
The blades of the helicopters cut through the air so fast it was like a light grey translucent wall against the sky.
They had almost made a full rotation.
"Holy shit!”
For a second he wondered who had spoken until he realized that it was himself.
They were everywhere, swarming like ants over the landscape, turning the ground black in some places as they crawled over each other in confused circles. As the music got closer, their purposeful movement turned into awkward confusion.
"Stagger!"
The formations staggered, falling behind each other so that everyone was always covering one segment.
"Ready to deploy the sonic attack on my mark, in three, two, one, mark."
It was a guitar solo this time, one that he had listened to thousands of times, and one that he couldn't have resisted using to kill zombie Vrul.
Th drumline cut in as the third obvious pattern in the song, and as it roared over the wave of zombified Vrul, there was an immediate reaction as they all began staggering and falling to the ground, behind him he felt as the guns opened fire on either side with a sharp and satisfying brrrrrrrrt as the rotating barrels started spitting hot lead at 1,000 rounds per minute.
He laughed with something like maniacal glee as the powerful rounds poured into the infected creatures, ripping them apart, sometimes four at a time, sending a wave of yellow pollen up into the air, to be kicked up by helicopter blades as they passed over. His circle kept him closest to the wall, so he was able to catch the majority of them before they could even attempt to make it to the city.
He toggled his own guns, and stitched a line of bullets over a completely black mass, which erupted into a burst of yellow. His circle took him around to where the Vrul had managed to make it to the wall of the city, and had begun climbing each other like they planned to create a ladder using bodies to the top of the wall.
He gunned them down with great prejudice.
As they moved along the wall, more and more of the creatures had piled themselves higher and higher, but that is not a trend that they allowed to last long.
One of the piles managed to make itself three quarters of the way up the wall before their sonic attack hit them, causing the tower to collapse as both glorious drum lines and bullets roared into them.
He carved a circle through the sky coming over their first line of attack, where dark bodies were doing the best to crawl over their fallen brethren and pools of yellowed pollen having fallen to the ground. Ahead of him he could see a cloud of yellow where the following helicopter was stitching its way over the landscape with great prejudice.
Behind him, he thought he heard Maverick cackle like a swamp witch as she loaded another belt of ammunition.
”Get sooomeeeeee!”
Ahhh bitches love cannons he thought to himself with a smile.
Yeah sure, people back home were cool, but they would never be this cool, flying over an alien landscape, killing alien zombies while listening to a little ACDC. They could dream but nothing would ever be more awesome.
He couldn't wait to tell his siblings.
His sister would be so jealous.
She had always been a fan of the zombie genre.
"Admiral, Admiral I think some of them are starting to fly."
Came the nervous comment over the comm.
"Alright, remember the drill, just keep calm, and go higher if you can, then when you have enough clustered below you, drop one of the canisters."
There was an acknowledgement over the comms.
With that announcement still running through his head, he got ready to drop one of his own canisters.
He was in view of the last helicopter as it rose into the air pursued by hundreds of little black dots that would erupt into yellow spores as they were hit by machine gun fire, and then something dropped from the bottom of the chopper, and then exploded just above the rising infected.
Thousands of tiny organic needles rained down on the Vrul, cutting straight through their helium sacks, and sending them crashing downwards, into their companions, and finally to the ground where they erupted on impact, killing even more of their companions.
Cool…
But also such a shame they weren’t allowed to use anything flammable due to the climate and potential risks…
Up ahead, a wall of black rose before him, but he was faster.
They rose into the air and he roared over the wall, dropping one, two and then three canisters in quick succession, causing a wave of them to drop to the ground. The following helicopters followed his lead. He was having to rise higher and higher into the air, but still he was managing to keep ahead of them, they were slow, and he was fast, but that didn't stop a few of them from getting in front of him.
There was a jolt as his rotors hit one of them, and he gritted his teeth.
It was fine, one or two was fine as long as he didn't allow them to gum it up.
He pulled back and up and continued to drop more and more of the canisters.
One or two of them floated high enough to make it close to his sonic cannon, but they were blown back and the pressure caused their helium sacks to rupture.
[…]
The Vrul council stood on the wall overlooking the outside of the city as a wall of the Vrul infected rose into the sky, obscuring everything in a wave of dark bodies. Human helicopters roared in a wide circle around the city, and everywhere they went yellow spores erupted into the air. All of them wore safety masks and massive ear protection as a precaution, but that didn't stop the fear that rose up in them as they stepped back arms held out in shock. Dr. Krill stared on in fascination and awe. He wasn't wearing hearing protection like the others, he could handle human music to a certain degree, and it was pretty muffled through the shielding.
He watched in shock and awe as one of the helicopters cut too low, and rolled right into a dense thicket of the floating bodies. There was a horrific eruption of yellow as the rotors caught hundreds of the creatures, and then the helicopter itself began to spin out of control, crashing and rupturing Vrul as it roared towards the ground.
The emergency systems deployed, firing one last time to slow the chopper's crash. The sudden burst of flame ruptured a line of the Vrul infected before it finally plowed into the ground sending up a wave of yellow spores.
"Sweet Nebulon."
One of the council muttered.
”This is war… utter and total annihilation, it’s the plague century all over again!”
Two more helicopters went down, and it looked as if there weren't going to be enough bullets.
”What have they done!?"
[…]
"Everyone, on me, increase sonic cannons! Now!"
He had seen the three choppers go down, and he had seen all three of their safety measures deploy, but he couldn't be sure if any of them had survived.
"Avoid the crash sites. Everyone on me!"
The entire fleet of remaining choppers clustered together, turning up the volume on their sonic cannons, and the combined force was so powerful that some of the bodies began to rupture even without gunfire though it still tore downwards.
They took two more passes before he saw his ammunition running low. That was fine. The Vrul bodies were no longer coming in waves and it would be harder to hit them from above, now that they weren't just coming in a tide of bodies.
He aimed for one of the crash sites.
"I want a group of us to set down. Only choppers with Drev on them!"
There was agreement as ten choppers split off to the three crash sites.
Adam roared down from the sky, and set down on a smoking heap of yellow coated bodies.
He cut the engine, and reach back to pull his spear from where it was attached to the floor of the chopper. It wasn't a Drev spear and it wasn't a human spear but something in between, with the reverse spike on the end like they had leant it with the NeoSpartans.
He turned in his seat just in time to see the two marines push their machine guns out of position and one of the infected Vrul to come charging at Ramirez.
A spear appeared in his hand in that moment, and he ran it through the face.
Sunny was behind him a second later, and together they were out the door, three of them armed with spears, Maverick armed with her assault rifle, and together they made their way towards the downed chopper.
Making it there just in time to see as a pile of clustered Vrul was ruptured from within, and a very angry Drev came roaring out.
He recognized from the height who it was.
"Kanan!"
He heard Sunny yell.
They ran over to help, sweeping through the cluster of Vrul zombies.
”Kanan are you and the others okay?”
”Yes, though I have to say all these bodies coming at us is nearly too overwhelming… it is like that time you threw a Marvel themed costume party and so many of the Marines went as Thor...”
Kanan said casually, cleaving through waves of the approaching zombie Vrul like a god of war, his space suit already colored completely yellow.
”WHAT!?”
”You know I wanted something a little more Loki…”
Adam was too busy killing the Vrul zombies to roll his eyes.
Instead, he just turned to the Marine behind Kanan, who was helping the young pilot out of the wreck of the helicopter.
”Are you guys fine? If yes can you help us clear the ground?”
He asked, while realizing the Marine was one of the older men on his crew and more importantly one of the key members of the group of fathers Kanan regularly played card games with.
”We are totally fine. All these Vrul bodies softened our crash like feathers. It was like that one time we challenged death to a pillow fight… our deeds had big reaper-cushions.”
”Alright that’s it, spread out and get to killing!”
”And later it shall be time for grilling!”
Kanan and the Marine answered in unison, but followed his orders suit, joined by the young pilot, Maverick and Ramirez.
”Sigh, this is worse than Yeb since she watched too much Dr. Who.”
Adam remarked to Sunny.
”I don’t know, I’d say that’s pretty tame, especially considering our big super duper nerd on the ship who cant stop to geek out about the littlest things at any opportunity. Though isn’t that what we love about these people?”
Sunny answered with a playful smile, shaking off the last dead Vrul from her spear, turned around and made her way towards where the others were dealing with a new wave of incoming Vrul.
”Who do you mea…. Ohhhhhhh! Touche!”
Adam mumbled to himself, before joining them as they began fanning out across the open plane.
[…]
He turned up the speakers on the outside of his suit and allowed it to blare music as he raced towards anything that still looked to be moving.
A few of them were still floating into the sky, but the remaining helicopters were taking care of those, and Maverick with her rifle from the ground on occasion.
He ran one through the face, turned and clubbed the other in the head like he was swinging for a home run.
His blade sliced straight through the neck of one as he staggered over the uneven ground.
To the side of him, Sunny was cutting through them with impunity like a god of war, touching them though they never touched her, the yellowed gore spattering her suit.
As more and more of the Vrul were cut out of the sky, more and more choppers landed, and men and women filed out, running in open lines, using whatever they could to dispatch the remaining bodies.
He saw one of the new pilots grab a Vrul by the neck, and twist it like he was breaking the neck of a chicken, surprised when the entire head came off. He kind of hoped the Vrul council did not see that.
By the end of the battle. Four of their choppers had been downed. Two humans were dead, both of them in the crashes, and at least four more critically injured.
He felt bad about it.
But he couldn't have predicted that.
At least none of the pilots had died.
Two of his marines had though, tossed from the choppers as they were falling from the sky. It made him sick to think about their families, the ones that he would have to send letters to, but he tried not to think about that for now.
Thousands upon thousands of the Vrul zombies were dead, and even as he thought this, dozens more were being dispatched by hand by humans who were no more than walking radios at this point, having chosen their own theme songs to fight zombies.
Some of their picks were quite surprising, though he couldn't blame them for their humor or their irony.
They still had a long way to go, but at least he knew how it could be done.
Vrul past, hopefully, would never come back to haunt them.
The two songs I imagine Adam picked for this was:
…
…
*Redditors note: yes that IS an open question for YOU!*
Previous First Next
Want to find a specific one, see the whole list or check fanart?
Here is the link to the master-post.
Intro post by me
OC-whole collection
Patreon of the author
Thanks for reading! As you saw in the title, this is a cross posted story written by starrfallknightrise and I'll just upload some of it here for you guys, if you are interested and want to read ahead, the original story-collection can be found on tumblr or wattpad to read for free. (link above this text under "OC:..." ) It is the Empyrean Iris story collection by starfallknightrise. Also, if you want to know more about the story collection i made an intro post about it, so feel free to check that out to see what other great characters to look forward to! (Link also above this text). I have no affiliations to the author; just thought I’d share some of the great stories you might enjoy a lot!
Obviously, I have Charlie’s permission to post this and for the people already knowing the stories, or starting to read them: If you follow the link and check out the story you will see some differences. I made some small (non-artistic) changes, mainly correcting writing mistakes, pronoun correction and some small additional info here and there of things which were not thought of/forgotten or even were added/changed in later stories (like the “USS->UNSC” prefix of Stabby, Chalar=/->Sunny etc). As well as some "biggemajor" changes in descriptions and info’s for the same stringency/continuity reason. That can be explained by the story collection being, well a story collection at the start with many standalone-stories just starring the same people, but later on it gets more to a stringent storyline with backstories and throwbacks. (For example Adam Vir has some HEAVY scars over his body, following his bones, which were not really talked about up till half the collection, where it says it covers his whole body and you find out via backflash that he had them the whole time and how he got them, they just weren't mentioned before. However, I would think a doctor would at least see these scars before that, especially since he gets analyzed, treated and goes shirtless/in T-shirts in some stories). So TLDR: Writing and some descriptions are slightly changed, with full OK from the author, since he himself did not bother to correct these things before.