Vecderg

rant below

i mentioned in one of my previous chosts that i was going to make a dedicated post about me and conlangs, but... man there's a lot i want to talk about!! mostly because i also want to talk about my general language journey. while normally i wouldn't feel obliged to dump all this info, i know there's a number of people following me here specifically for conlangs, so i might as well talk about what's up lol

tl;dr i'm still working on one or more conlang youtube tutorials, but have few other conlang projects planned. i'm currently studying japanese, and this will probably be the majority of my language focus for a while, especially since my studies are now taking up to 1-2 hrs a day.

still the most fascinating thing to me on my language journey is how english having the DNA of other languages isn't always a vague "oh, that word just went out of use a thousand years ago and we split off," a lot of the time we literally still use the word but just not in its base form

the only example i can think of right now is "legible." like we USE this word and we all know it means "readable," but if "-ible" means able then "leg-" means read. and that's basically just what "read" is in italian (3rd person form is legge)!! and there are so many of these in romance languages, at some point it's like getting jumpscared by english every two seconds

this is a thought i've had for a while, but i saw someone today say "why are all the best stories nowadays from small creators?" and i feel like that's become a recent growing sentiment.

the answer is that indie works have always been good (art, music, games, etc.), but one of the big differences between indie and AAA is that you don't hear about indie works unless they're good. if an AAA project is bad, it usually becomes the outrage of the week, because the expectations are high and everybody has heard about it beforehand. if an indie project is bad, then it usually dies quietly.

there have been some outrages, but it's usually 1) due to very good marketing that causes high hopes (RIP Mighty No. 9), or 2) due to a project that was very good but something happened to it (RIP Them's Fightin' Herds). usually, you don't hear about bad indie projects. usually, you don't even hear about good indie projects. you only hear about the exceptional ones.

with that in mind, the other reasons are a bit more obvious. cheaper tools and programs like Blender are becoming more common, accessible, and powerful, which make it much easier for indie creators to enter the industry and create quality content. at the same time, AAA studios are pressured to play for profit, which rewards cheaper budgets and shorter production cycles.

since a lot of AAA studios are getting comfy with being mediocre, a lot of people are paying attention to indie studios now, and i think that's great! i also hope that it drives AAA studios to higher standards, which cough can probably be achieved by paying their workers and treating them better...