linkage/rec

[astridv]

More The Wire:
Article about the late Donnie Andrews, who was the inspiration for Omar Little. Omar is such a larger-than-life character that it hadn't occurred to me he's based on real life people. But no, there are actually stick-up men out there who rob drug dealers for a living. Andrews' story is fascinating.

In his earlier years when he was robbing rival dealers as a young hustler in West Baltimore — experiences that would later form the basis for the popular Omar Little character on the Baltimore crime drama “The Wire” — he vowed to never involve women or children in his crimes.

But after confessing to a murder and helping authorities bring down a crime syndicate, he took on a different mission: working to prevent youth from going down the same path that he did.

The ultimate crossover fanart: Where's Wall-E?

Interesting (and possibly relevant to the Natasha writers):
NONE OF YOUR FREAKING MOVIES GET IT RIGHT: a guide to Russian names.

Comments

[ratcreature]

The Where's Wall-E? art is great, though not to nitpick, but linking to Richard Sargent's site where he sells his art in different versions as poster and also you can see it a bit larger and with a key would be better than linking to a facebook image.

[astridv]

Good point, found a better link.

[jae]

Interesting (and possibly relevant to the Natasha writers)

Not just to the Natasha writers! Thanks.

-J

[astridv]

Welcome. I found it interesting too. I vaguely knew some of it, but it's way more complex than I learned.

[jae]

I did a bunch of research on it a couple of weeks back, so she didn't say a whole LOT I didn't know, but I still found her examples exceedingly useful, mostly because I couldn't find any references that made it clear whether or not the forms of names used can be non-reciprocal if the people have non-equal status (according to her examples they can, and should), or whether both parties then default to the more formal forms.

The "Sie usage must be reciprocal unless one of the parties is a child" convention in German has totally ruined me for other languages, you know? Whenever adults use anything non-reciprocal in other languages, I can't manage to get the 'so-and-so is addressing such-and-such like a child!' feeling out of my head.

-J

[astridv]

Yeah, I first had to get used to the non-reciprocal usage of polite forms in Japanese as well (where it's even more extreme than in Russian). I prefer the German version of equal verbal footing regardless of status. Maybe it's just force of habit.

[jae]

It's definitely force of habit for me--I've been speaking German for going on thirty years, and Dutch for only four or five, and the non-reciprocal instances of formal and informal pronouns sound Just. So. Wrong to me. So wrong that sometimes I deliberately choose the inappropriate pronoun because I can't manage to get the appropriate one out of my mouth (mostly in situations where people who I 'should' be using the formal pronoun with is using the informal one with me).

-J