Light of My Life, Fire of My Loins

[weird_number]

Title: Light of My Life, Fire of My Loins

Author: weird_number

Rating/Warnings: Violence

Summary: America and Russia spend the Cold War bombing themselves, over and over again, but never each other. France and England want nuclear weapons too, but they don't want to test on themselves, no, never that. Nuclear testing through the ages.

Comments

[aureliuszvektor]

Oh my goodness =(

Oh my goodness oh my goodness =/

I had to learn about this in high school, but this is more than mildly painful--and somehow written in a very "French" style, which I enjoy. The colonies, and so on... phew.

Regrettably, I don't feel that I can give you a better review at this point, but I certainly enjoyed this, and I think your writing is improving quite a bit from the last thing I read.

(Don't worry about your French, either--it's A+ =)

[aureliuszvektor]

Wait, and the title is a quotation from Lolita! How did I not notice that?

Good lord D:

[weird_number]

Thanks! :) Yeah, I was actually going to make more references to Lolita, mainly about the way England and France were using their (former) colonies for testing, but that ended up being a title-only thing.

Yay, another enjoyer of French-style stories. I usually like French movies, which are done in a similar (disjointed) manner. :D

Oh, and I'm glad my French worked out. Btw, do you speak French as a native speaker? :)

[aureliuszvektor]

Oh, man... that would have been so crazy. I've only read Lolita once, and I felt incredibly dirty the entire time, but I have to admit it was a good novel.

Ah, French movies! I'll admit that I haven't seen many, since I prefer reading in general--but I did like Amelie, and have a horrible thing for the 1999 Hunchback of Notre Dame musical.

I'm not a native speaker, but I started learning when I was 5 and nearly majored in it. So, I guess I'm probably functionally bilingual, but my vocabulary is a bit smaller and--just as in English--I still make errors sometimes, especially if it's been a long time since I read or heard it.

[weird_number]

Same, same! I read it freshman year of college, and it was superbly written but extremely creepy.

I've only really read French texts in class -- Candide was basically it. (And it was plenty gruesome as I remember, haha)

That's awesome that you started learning it so young. Was it one of those immersion programs? (Our school had one for Spanish, but unfortunately I didn't continue learning it.)

[aureliuszvektor]

Nah, my mom found a local woman who was doing a sort of out-of-house French program--sort of half baby-sitting, half teaching everyone French, since she wanted to teach her kids and build up a community of French-speaking children. We had to move almost immediately after that, but somehow my mother kept finding after-school programs until I could finally take it in high school

[weird_number]

That's very cool! :)

Yeah, I have the same issue with Chinese -- sometimes there will be this word that's more concise or that I'm more used to in Chinese and I'll blank on the English phrase.

Heh, I didn't particularly like it when we read it in class either, and it also had to do with my French teacher (yours sounds hilarious though!). She was very strongly opinionated, and anyone who didn't share her opinion on things was ostracized, so I didn't like the class at all. College French is by far better. I reread Candide later (the English translation) and enjoyed it much more though. :P

[aureliuszvektor]

Oh, you speak Chinese! That's a really amazing language. I can say... er... "chopsticks," "how are you," "okay," "no," and "my dog is death." Yeah, I'm pretty much useless. Doesn't keep me from wishing greedily, though. Can you read in it, or only speak? I've always thought "Gosh, I'd like to learn Chinese so I can read Journey to the West," but no dice thus far. I'm twenty-one and can fit my sum knowledge into one line of an LJ comment >_>

And I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying College French. I always want to tell more people to study it, but I feel a bit bad. Wishing the plus-que-parfait on anyone else seems pretty cruel.

[weird_number]

I'm sure if you took Chinese it would be a lot of fun! :) I can read and speak Chinese, courtesy of my mother, mostly. (I think if my only experience were at Chinese school, I would've hated it like everyone else). I'm actually taking a Chinese lit class right now, and it's quite interesting (I have an over-interest in languages, haha).

Oh yes, the plus-que-parfait is quite the pain! At least French is easy in the beginning though...but then it quickly turns into false advertising. :P

[aureliuszvektor]

Bah, I meant the subjonctif. Damned French, with its confusing conjugation names. Definitely false advertising. Enormous amounts of false advertising.

I'll keep that in mind about the Chinese, then, because it would be too sad to give up right now. Thanks for the motivation!