Gasta

One of the most fascinating groups I know. Truly superb... The only track that leaves me a bit perplexed is "Even The Spirits Are Afraid," which I always skip because I just don't like it. But the rest... ah, pure dreamy sweetness. "Jelena" is so light, it floats in the air on its own. The duet of "A Life All Mine" with Garm/Trickster G from Ulver is spine-chilling, and "Broken Glass"... well, I really like this album a lot, yes! :D The review didn't convince me completely, especially due to a somewhat incorrect use of punctuation. But it definitely deserves a pass. Ade, I’ll send you some of your reviews :)

What an album, guys, what an album... I agree, no other band has managed to recreate this magic, not even the "little cousins" Tristania (who personally say very little to me, even though I consider "Widow's Weeds" a good work). Along with VDTF, this is one of the most elegant, romantic (in the literary sense of the term), and gray albums I’ve ever heard. I also really like the following "Aégis," despite being on completely different coordinates. It's a shame they then went off the rails..........

@Alia76, comment 24: if with the last sentence you were referring to part of my comment 13, let me clarify that I didn't mean to say that to read something about linguistics you need to read the SDA; I was just saying that "the uselessness" of invented languages that Martina claimed is unfounded, since they have a well-defined structure. Of course, if you want to read something about generative-transformational grammar, you study Chomsky, but that wasn't what I meant. Also, comparing movies and books isn't a very smart thing to do: since the beginning of time, film adaptations have lost compared to books, and furthermore, to deeply appreciate a work like this, it's necessary to dig deep and find its foundations, which give even more relevance to the novel. And I want to specify again that I'm not a fan of fantasy... I don’t go around believing I'm an elf! XD

I need to make a correction to comment 13: I wrote 'a bunch of nonsense,' I should have written "both Germanic languages and Uralic languages (which are both Indo-European...sorry)

Here is a writing on what I was talking about and other things (I think... I read it a long time ago)

I also want to specify that I am not a fantasy fanatic as one might think at this point (in fact, I read little to no fantasy), but I felt it was right to "defend" this work that has been "analyzed" inadequately.

I'm sorry, we're not on the same page. From what I've gathered from your personal profile, you wrote it on the spur of the moment, and a work like this requires much more time than just an hour to be analyzed (it takes weeks to properly analyze a “canonical” novel, think about one that’s 1300 pages long! I mention this because I have an English Literature exam coming up, otherwise I wouldn’t bring it up...). I wouldn't even know where to start critiquing you. Perhaps the most critiquable point is the "good/evil" schema. A couple of years ago, I read something very interesting about this on a website (if I find the link, I’ll add it later). If you pay attention, not everyone is purely good (a phrase to be taken with a grain of salt): Gandalf doesn’t want to keep the Ring because he’s afraid that it could subjugate him, that he might be TEMPTED (and temptation is not "good"); Frodo, while holding onto the Ring for too long, becomes corrupted in a certain sense; his ability to perceive reality gets distorted (okay, it's because of the Ring); Saruman wasn’t actually bad at first (if you read something else related to Tolkien that mentions the Istari—the "Wizards" who came from Valinor—you'll realize that Saruman was their leader, the brightest. But he succumbed to temptation and, using the color symbolism in LotR, went from pure and innocent White to becoming Multicolored, breaking down the White (innocence) to HAVE MORE (greed). It’s no coincidence that Gandalf will later become "The White," taking Saruman's place); Gollum was just a simple Hobbit, one of the most peaceful creatures in Middle-earth: even here, greed corrupted him in spirit and flesh, yet he plays a key role in resolving the story; without him, the Ring wouldn’t have been destroyed (or at least, let’s assume so). As Gandalf says to Frodo in the Mines of Moria, what right did Bilbo have to kill Gollum/Smeagol when he had the chance? It wouldn’t have been wise, because Gollum still had something to offer for the GOOD. Last examples: Melkor/Morgoth and Sauron. Melkor was a Valar, one of the most powerful "deities" created by Iluvatar. Initially, he wasn’t evil; over time, greed (that same greed, read The Silmarillion and the tale of the Silmarils regarding this) caused him to "fall into evil"; the same goes for Sauron (a Maia), his most faithful servant. Regarding the uselessness of writings in "invented languages" (I get chills from the word "useless"...), Mr. Ronald was, as you mentioned, a professor of Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature first, English afterward; he was an eminent philologist, and his passion for languages and speech led him, from a young age, to create strange languages. Middle-earth, Valinor, Númenor, and the entire world and cosmogony he created were made PHILOLOGICALLY-LINGUISTICALLY; he created all of it TO SERVE AS A BACKDROP FOR THE LANGUAGES, which have great substance, if not lexically, certainly phonetically, morphologically, and syntactically (he based them on various languages, both Indo-European and Uralic-Finnish). However, I can agree with you that sometimes the storytelling can become boring (there's a point where I always slow down my reading significantly). I find it unacceptable to make such a superficial analysis without the necessary tools, I’m sorry. Perhaps over time, other considerations will come to mind, for now, I’m done. I apologize if there are incorrect uses of punctuation; I wrote this all in one go... and especially if I couldn’t provide further explanations to counter your points, but I haven’t read the book in several years, and I would need to reread it thoroughly, but those are the thoughts that came to mind at the moment. Philological greetings to everyone...

Thank you! :D Even though I'm missing a big book and a half of Syntax to study... :S And in the meantime, I have 3 other exams. Uhm...better get back to the books now! Bye bye :)

Uhm...but with 'che' the subjunctive goes anyway, even if there are some "additions" in between (like that 'now, a couple of years later,' etc.), the verb form is the subjunctive...right?! Come on, don’t make me panic because I have the Linguistics and Syntax exam on 16/02! XD